\u201cI\u2019m not sure historians are interested in this subject. We know very little about life here through the centuries, about the lives of the people who held a hoe in one hand and a rifle in the other. There aren\u2019t even any travel writers who described it \u2013 nobody dared to come near the border because of the constant threat of Turkish attacks, of having to pay the so-called blood tax, of being taken into slavery or, even worse, of being impaled on a stake,\u201d he says and adds that \u201cthe towns of Banija were never properly urbanized because of this threat of war.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\tThe Sisak-Moslavina County, to which the whole of Banija belongs, as has often been pointed out recently, is one of the poorest in Croatia.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe poverty of this region is evident in the general standard of living \u2013 in the kind of cars people drive and the houses they live in. It was still easier in socialism, even though many people from Banija were resettled in Vojvodina after the Second World War. People here are resilient. They have learned to live modestly, used to troubles,\u201d our interviewee says to us in the park where we chat while waiting for a meeting with the parish priest, Sa\u0161a Umi\u010devi\u0107<\/strong>.<\/p>\n On the day of our arrival, the weekly newspaper Nacional<\/em> published an interview with Petrinja doctor, writer and cultural worker Boris Vrga<\/strong>, and a part of his answer needs to be quoted in full, for it summarizes the state of Petrinja regardless of the earthquake.<\/p>\n Petrinja was connected to the world by railway back in 1903, but since 1995, it no longer is. We don\u2019t need to emphasize what a civilizational step back that is in the modern world, where everyone fights for traffic connections<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cThe earthquake that hit Petrinja revealed the authorities\u2019 neglect of this city and the area of Banovina, which have suffered an enormous economic and demographic decline in the last few decades. Petrinja was connected to the world by railway back in 1903, but since 1995, it no longer is. We don\u2019t need to emphasize what a civilizational step back that is in the modern world, where everyone fights for traffic connections. Petrinja had two specialized hospitals before the war, a pulmonology and a psychiatric one, and now it has none. All that is left of the pulmonology hospital is the pulmonology department of the Sisak General Hospital. There was the Medical Center that provided complete ambulatory and hospital care for the population, and now we only have the Community Health Center Petrinja, which functions at a considerably lower level. The city no longer has a court or a gymnasium as an independent school, and one of the best-known teacher training colleges in Croatia, the Pedagogical Academy in Petrinja, has become a department of the Faculty of Teacher Education of the University of Zagreb. Sport life has declined as well, especially wrestling. Petrinja wrestlers were champions of the former state several times and brought Olympic medals to the city. The Gavrilovi\u0107 Factory, which used to employ more than three thousand workers and was the engine of the overall development of Petrinja and Banovina, now employs only about five hundred people. The owner of the factory completely neglected the cooperatives, which were the lifeline of villages around Petrinja. The transportation company Slavijatrans, once one of the largest in the former state, went out of business. All this has led to a demographic catastrophe in Banovina, where there are more than twenty villages without a single inhabitant today. All these facts confirm your thesis of an intentional or unintentional neglect of Petrinja, and this especially affects me as a person living in Petrinja and as someone who has encouraged his children to tie their lives to this city,\u201d Vrga told Nacional <\/em>journalist Zrinka Vrabec Mojze\u0161<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The road from Zagreb to Petrinja is depressing. It remains unclear why the highway from Zagreb towards Sisak and Petrinja, which could have brought investors, stopped midway, at Lekenik, and has remained there for several years. One reason for gloominess is also traveling in an old car which you enter through one door, and exit through another, without heating, useful for air temperatures below zero, with a broken speedometer, odometer and windshield washer pump, which made us stop, throw snow on the windshield glass and wipe it with the worn-out wipers several times. We started from the center of Zagreb, from the parking lot of the City Administration building, dominated by a derelict and eerie building which, until relatively recently, housed Zagreba\u010dka banka. This building brings to Zagreb a whiff of a war zone. Ten meters after this eyesore is the Monument to the Homeland, clearly too big and obstructive for the space between the City Administration and the Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall. After this comes the aesthetically unpleasing monument to the first Croatian president, Franjo Tu\u0111man<\/strong>, with a row of unnecessary fountains, and then, along the whole way to Petrinja \u2013 the gloomy lifelessness of winter, grimy snow along the road, overgrown and tended fields covered in snow, numerous houses without facades and other unfinished, oversized homes, road-killed cats and the like. By the time you get from Zagreb, the cracked head of Croatia, to Banija, its empty and wounded stomach, you are already somewhat mentally prepared for Petrinja, which, despite the efforts and goodness of volunteers and the efficiency of state services, still looks as if a war ravaged it today. Activists are still around, although we didn\u2019t find many of those who removed damaged chimneys \u2013 this work by ninja roofers, as they were humorously called by Livija Stani\u0161i\u0107<\/strong> in the magazine Grazia<\/em>, is probably mostly done by now.<\/p>\n Ruins are still being cleared, the locals and volunteers are busy about the place, and Banija still enjoys the empathy and help of all of Croatia and the neighboring countries \u2013 it isn\u2019t forgotten yet.<\/p>\n We meet the parish priest, Sa\u0161a Umi\u010devi\u0107, in the area still called Pigik by the locals, after the trade fair PIGIK (Petrinja Exhibition of Gastronomy and Culinary Arts) held here in 1965 and 1966. One inhabitant tells us that he saw writers Miroslav Krle\u017ea<\/strong> and Enes \u010cengi\u0107<\/strong> at the fair, feasting day after day, while another tells us that, for their first date, he took his wife there for some buffalo testicles, which he describes as \u201ca delicacy of the first rank.\u201d<\/p>\n We find Umi\u010devi\u0107 with a member of the Civil Defense of Republika Srpska, waiting for new containers for the citizens left without homes, and Du\u0161ko \u0106utilo<\/strong>, director of the Fund for Aid to Refugees, Expelled and Displaced Persons of Vojvodina.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will ensure the donation of construction materials, so now we are inspecting the area and population affected by the earthquake to see what the needs are,\u201d \u0106utilo explains.<\/p>\n \u201cBefore the state took over the preparation of meals from volunteers, the food was much better and more varied. Now they serve canned cabbage every day,\u201d Umi\u010devi\u0107 reveals. Who wants to eat cabbage every day, we ask rhetorically. \u201cOf course,\u201d \u0106utilo agrees.<\/p>\n In front of the damaged Church of St. Nikola and its graveyard, we are met by Milijana No\u017eini\u0107<\/strong> from the Serb National Council, but also from the village Jo\u0161avica near Petrinja. \u201cNow the whole of Croatia sees that we have neither asphalt roads nor a telephone signal in villages like mine,\u201d she adds. There is no signal here, and the fact that there is still no electricity in some places in Lika, the birthplace of the inventor of the alternating current, Nikola Tesla<\/strong>, has become a well-known absurdity.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Church of St. Nikola dates from the time of the founding of the Petrinja parish, the beginning of the 19th<\/sup> century. The graves of the first parish priests of Petrinja are here. The Petrinja parish had twenty functioning churches before the Second World War, five after it, and now it has none. They will be built again, but life cannot be brought back,\u201d Umi\u010devi\u0107 says.<\/p>\n The Petrinja parish had twenty functioning churches before the Second World War, five after it, and now it has none. They will be built again, but life cannot be brought back<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Graves have shifted due to the earthquake, and a geodetic analysis will show by how much.<\/p>\n \u201cSeven hundred homes belong to the parish,\u201d Umi\u010devi\u0107 continues. \u201cIts diameter is 160 km, encompassing Petrinja and 55 villages. I come from Putinci in Vojvodina. It would be unusual to go from there to Belgrade to officiate at funerals, and we sometimes cover such distances here,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n We go back to the city center, to the spot where the Church of St. Spyridon is being built. Fourth time\u2019s the charm, we would say, for the first church in Petrinja dedicated to this saint, built near the end of the 18th<\/sup> century by 89 prominent Petrinja citizens, was destroyed by the Ustasha in 1941. The new church, built in 1976, was destroyed in 1991. This building housed the iconostasis made by Karlovac painter \u0110or\u0111e Petrovi\u0107<\/strong>. Three years later, the citizens started building the same church anew, but what had been built was torn down a year later, and a parking space was built at the site. Now the church is being built again.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Church of St. Spyridon will be a beautiful ornament of the city. Architecturally, it will not stand out from the surrounding buildings, but rather fit into the ambient,\u201d Umi\u010devi\u0107 says.<\/p>\n Who else could we find in Petrinja\u2019s center in such a situation if not the omnipresent Andrija Jarak<\/strong> from Nova TV, the best-known TV reporter? The locals recognize him, approach him on their own and give their comments \u2013 it\u2019s almost enough for him to stand in one spot to get a news report.<\/p>\n In front of what was once the Banija Hotel (not Banovina), across from the ruinous parish house, we find \u017deljko Vujnovi\u0107<\/strong>, whose wedding was held in the restaurant of this hotel with 18 rooms on July 31, 1982, on the very day when the town center was battered by a whirlwind, which missed Vujanovi\u0107 by a few minutes. With him is Dragutin<\/strong> Toki\u0107<\/strong>, who worked in this hotel for 38 years, until retirement, and they are soon joined by a musician from Vujanovi\u0107\u2019s wedding. \u201cThere is no hotel here now. There is no industry, nor anything else. Everything is neglected in Banija,\u201d Vujanovi\u0107 says.<\/p>\n Glina, where we went next, looked run-down before the earthquake \u2013 many buildings have remained ruinous since the war. Its main street, however, now looks better than the center of Petrinja, but only that street. House Pele\u0161, where the Croatian anthem, composed by Josif<\/strong> Runjanin<\/strong>, was first played and sung, is undamaged, but this whole town has nevertheless been damaged for a long time. That house, in fact, had been destroyed during the war, and a replica was built later.<\/p>\n \u201cAs long as you stay alive, it\u2019s alright,\u201d cattle farmer \u0110uro<\/strong> Baki\u0107<\/strong> comments on the recent earthquakes.<\/p>\n We find him in Majske Poljane. Upon arriving to this, now very well-known, village, we suddenly had to stop because of work on the power lines, and on this stop we met the tireless Branka Bak\u0161i\u0107 Miti\u0107<\/strong>, the deputy mayor of Glina, who directed us to a parking spot. This politician, who became widely known during these troubles, has taken even this task upon herself.<\/p>\n She has detailed insight into all the issues; she is constantly in the field, overseeing the repairs, and she led us to Baki\u0107. \u201cLet the government of Serbia rebuild one Banija village. Let them at least asphalt the roads in Majske Poljane,\u201d she says to the men from Vojvodina. Her active efforts stand out even more when compared with the unsatisfactory performance of Mayor Stjepan Kostanjevi\u0107<\/strong>. \u201cHe is nowhere to be seen,\u201d one local mentioned to another in front of the town store.<\/p>\n \u0110uro Baki\u0107\u2019s bulls escaped during the earthquake. They are smart animals, he says, because \u201cwhen you see a rabbit run away, you run, too.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere were ten bulls and eight or nine calves. The cows have returned, the bulls have not,\u201d he tells us.<\/p>\n His family is housed in a container.<\/p>\n \u201cWe fatten bulls and sell meat. Before the war we produced milk, but we gave up on that because of the low purchase price,\u201d he explains. \u201cI went into logging for a while, but I couldn\u2019t stand that \u2013 you go mad trying to find the owners and make a deal,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n He returned from Stara Pazova, where he went as a refugee. His house, now unusable due to the damage in the earthquake, was rebuilt after the war by a Norwegian fund.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have been in Majske Poljane for three hundred years. There are no mixed marriages here. When we combined agriculture and industry, we lived nicely \u2013 we would work in the ironworks and raise cattle at home,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n The Glina parish is headed by thirty-year-old Goran Kalamanda<\/strong>, who arrived here a year and a half ago from the Banja Luka area. \u201cI haven\u2019t had any problems as a Serb in Glina, nor have I had complaints about this from the parishioners,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n His parish also encompasses a wide and sparsely populated area with around nine hundred Serbs. \u201cThese people have been through a lot, and an earthquake was the last thing they needed. Nothing is certain anymore,\u201d says Kalamanda, who went with us to Baki\u0107 in Majske Poljane. He adds: \u201cThere aren\u2019t many young people \u2013 some thirty children attend religious education classes. Villages are mostly deserted. There were some people in Majske Poljane, but when the old die, this will become desolate.\u201d<\/p>\nNeglect and demographic catastrophe<\/strong><\/h5>\n
From the cracked head of Croatia to its wounded stomach<\/strong><\/h5>\n
<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\tHelp from all sides<\/strong><\/h5>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>The same church \u2013 rebuilt for the fourth time<\/strong><\/h5>\n
<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/a>Glina has been damaged for a long time<\/strong><\/h5>\n
<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\tAs long as you stay alive<\/strong><\/h5>\n
<\/a><\/a><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\tWhen the old die, this will become desolate<\/strong><\/h5>\n
<\/a>