7–24–16, Senj
Its Sunday morning in Senj, but in the alleys and streets of this medieval town it feels like a weekday. People, locals, are up and buying and selling, yelling at each other. It’s mainly Germans and Austrians they service here, English is no longer everywhere, and I am frequently reduced to stammering and gesturing.
Last night was the second day of Uskok Days, a kind of cosplay recreation of certain historical events in the context of a town festival. The defining period for Senj seems to be when it was the only independent city town on the Adriatic, resisting Venetian rule and fighting off the Ottomans simultaneously. It essentially became a pirate enclave, marauding the Venetian fleet and attracting misanthropes from far and wide, much like the Star Wars bar. The brochures here emphasize that the town was “free” during that time (it’s in the EU now). It’s hard not to like their story, brutal as the details are. Maybe a little like Texas, with the Austrians as the Yankees, the Venetians as the Mexicans, and the Ottomans as Comanches I suppose. But the Ottoman part is not well covered here in Uskok Days.
The defining feature of the town is a fortress overlooking the village and harbor, named Nehaj which translates as “Don’t Care”. Something a Texan, or a Honey Badger, would say. The Uskoks had been run out of their home at Klis and coming to Senj seemed to consciously decide to err on the side of overbuilding the new fort. It worked, the fort was besieged many times and never taken. The Uskoks eventually joined the Habsburg empire, but under more favorable terms than they might have, and cashiers here speak German now.
Those Ottomans though, they are conspicuous in the festivities by their absence, as if their descendants no longer existed here while the Uskoks’ survived and thrived. Last night they staged a battle at the wharf and the Ottomans did not do well. In the 16th century they conquered much of the Balkan Peninsula and drove people like the Uskoks from their homes. It’s about 500 years later, the same basic ethnicities exist here, and the same basic dynamics. Twenty years ago, when the region was all Yugoslavia, the Serbs managed to infiltrate the officer corps of the Yugoslav Army and made a bid to solve the Bosniak (Ottoman) Problem by resettlement and genocide. This is why cosplay Ottomans at the wharf in Senj makes me nervous.
I have had urges to make an excursion into Poland and Ukraine to visit Danzig & the Vistula Delta. In the 16th century, my ancestors fled Holland to join with others from Switzerland and Germany to settle there in what was then Royal Prussia. I think it was there that the Mennonite culture crystallized, preceding the greater diaspora. In the Vistula settlement, they established their language, Plautdietsch, or low-german, which my college German teacher never heard of and which spellcheck does not recognize. I just want to see what the place feels like, then go to Chortiza, Ukraine and to subsequent settlements from there. Then on yet another trip, I’d visit Mennonite colonies in South America, at which point I would either be a Mennonite or ready to move on.
For a society that had a civil war within memory of most citizens, no one seems to be hesitant to set off fireworks and cannon in the evenings. I wonder if PTSD has a place in the public consciousness like it does in America. Or maybe the incessant church bells have numbed the inhabitants of this town. We are one block from the bell tower and for three days, I’ve been unable to crack the code of what the various bell patterns mean. In France, if it’s eight o’clock, you get 8 bells on the dot. In Senj it seems like they leave the rope for the bell unguarded. The ringing is excessive and chaotic, roughly centered around the top of the hour.
