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Before the war Zrinko Cibula, Sarengrad's leading shopkeeper and tavern owner, grazed 50 of his cows on the island, and his neighbors had hundreds more, along with 1,000 pigs and as many as 200 horses. The village had its own boat to ferry the livestock over to the island in the spring and back again in the fall. Now it's the Serbs who keep their livestock there, and their maps show a border placing Sarengradska Ada inside Serbia.
Two of Zrinko's friends, Vladimir Kovesalija and Alojzije Markovic, take me on a ramshackle boat tour up the river and past the island. On it we see a proud herd of horses running down to drink from the bank of the Danube. Vlado at the tiller can't be persuaded to move in closer; just last August, he says, two villagers who tried to visit the island were beaten and jailed across the border. "One day, though, it will be ours again, just like Vukovar and Ilok," he says, naming two nearby towns under long siege and occupation by the Serbs. "They said that was Serb ground, too, but it didn't end up that way."
Not exactly. In the autumn of 1991 Vukovar was turned into rubble by one of the most punishing artillery barrages of the 20th century. The Croatian government of the time heroically called it a Croatian Stalingrad, but now Mayor Vladimir Stengl has had enough of symbolism. "We have 10 or 15 different peace organizations here in Vukovar," he says, steely blue eyes blazing. "I don't know what any of them do." The city has become a favorite destination for people on missions of mercy. "There are all these people who want to come here and cry," says Stengl. "They think they're doing us a great honor just by coming. Yesterday it was another Slovenian choir. We don't need it."
What they need in Vukovar is an economy. Aside from construction work, much of it done by Romanians at wages that draw sneers from Croats, there is almost nothing to do. The banks of the Danube are crowded with men fishing. I had bought a rod and reel at the Arizona for $15, so I sat down with Petar Brkic, availed myself of his offer of a sticky maggot, and caught a little white fish he called a sabljar. Brkic saved it as bait. Maybe he could use it to land a sturgeon. With seven kids and no job, he considers fresh fish more a necessity than a luxury.
Later that evening, a mad taxi driver named Zoltan was barreling me through the hills of southern Hungary toward a town called Villany. There I was to meet Jozsef Bock, a man whose fortunes have improved as much over the last 10 years as those of his ex-Yugoslav neighbors to the south have deteriorated. Bock, whose ancestors came to Villany in the mid-18th century at the invitation of the Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa, produces spectacular red wines on his 25-hectare estate, all but a cherished two hectares of which he has purchased since 1990. His vineyards, at roughly the same latitude as Bordeaux, are similarly blessed with good earth and ample sun. "When Hungary joins the E.U., we'll have real possibilities," Bock says. But he's even keener about the more immediate prospects: this year's phenomenal crop. "We had so much sun, and just when we needed it a little rain," he says. "2000 will be one to hold onto for a long time."
To cross the Danube from the Hungarian town of Esztergom to Sturovo in Slovakia, you first have to wait. The ferry Zalka — a simple tugboat lashed to an even simpler barge — takes a slow arc across the river, correcting for the strong current. It plies its course just east of the ruin of the Maria Valeria bridge, blown up by retreating Nazis at Christmas 1944. For most of the 1990s, animosity between the nationalist government of Slovak Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar and the Hungarian government stalled rebuilding of the bridge. Meciar saw no advantage in improving the links to the motherland for the estimated 600,000 ethnic Hungarians in Slovakia, most of them in the south along the Danube. In September his more congenial successor, Mikulas Dzurinda, signed an agreement with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to rebuild the bridge.
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Fresh Start
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