From War Torn to Tourist Town Yugoslavia, Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo…these are all words that evoke, at least in the mind of the common American, the thought of war and ethnic cleansing. When mentioned in common speech, people tend to look at you like you are slightly crazy. To say, “Yeah, I’m going to Croatia for vacation next week,” people tend to think you’ve gone off your rocker. There is pretty simple reasoning behind this concern from friends and family: people know very little about this part of the world other than the conflict that occurred here in the nineties. After the fall of communism in the region, Yugoslavia found itself in an odd position. As a loose grouping of six different republics with multiple ethnic groups and multiple languages, it was tough to see what
... read more