day 2
Day 2 (Tuesday, 3rd of October 2022):
educational trip to Vukovar;
an international handball match
Educational trip to Vukovar
The second day of our meeting brought us to Vukovar. We visited the Memorial centre of the homeland war (Croatian war of independence) in Vukovar. An officer who led us through the exhibition told us the situation in the besieged city of Vukovar in 1991 as an contemporary witness. und ein Test, welche Version gerade zu sehen ist Nr.2 nämlich...
Vukovar had been under siege and constant bombardement for nearly three months and, at the end, was completely destroyed.
About 3000 people had died; many of those who survived were expelled when Vukovar finally fell due to "ethnic cleansing" and were refugees in other parts of Croatia or Europe. Seeing the pictures and objects in the memorial centre and hearing the report first-hand we could imagine a bit - but just a bit - how life must have been and how life changed in 1991. Our eye witness was a young civil engeneer in 1991 and suddenly he found himself a member in an improvised group of soldiers. And more: We realized that the situation was repeating itself in our time in Mariupol and other cities of the Ukraine.
One of the rooms in the memorial centre showed mines that had been in the soil around Vukovar and other places in Croatia that had been mined as a continued threat to both soldiers and civilians.
We also learned about war as an important reason for migration (also) in Europe as many families fled as direct consequence of the war of independence in the 1990s, not only from Croatia, but also Bosnia and other regions - like today from the Ukraine.
We realised the truth behind the motto of our project: "Frieden ist keine Selbstverständlichkeit | peace is not something that can be taken for granted".
There HAD been war in Europe only 30 years ago and there IS war again today.
Our eye witness patiently answered the many questions we asked.
This long talk and the insight in this biography in really dark time left us in a pensive mood when we left for a visit to the City museum of Vukovar.
The City museum is in the Eltz manor, a beautiful Baroque palace situated directly at the river Danube.
Some parts of its renovated facade, however, showed that also the castle like the whole city had suffered during the battle of Vukovar in 1991.
The City museum, however, also told us about "times of light" in Vukovar, a city whose population always had been a mixture of many ethnical groups. In this way it also told the history of Croatia which had been under the influence of many different empires until it finally reached its inependence.
Due to its location at the river Danube Vukovar had been a wealthy city.
The first settlement began in prehistoric time as the little "Vukovar dove" shows.
We saw an impressive collection of documents, furniture, pieces of art and got an authentic insight in the life of the citizens of Vukovar and the town's rich past and the change between times of light and times of darkness.
An international handball match
How to continue on a day like this?
There was need for talk and reflection and this was the plan for the next day in school.
This evening lead us back to the presence and life in Nasice. An Nasice at this evening meant: handball.
There was an important game between the local team RK Nexe and a team of the first Polish handball league, KS Azoty Pulawy. European League Qualification! The Polish team had won the first game in Poland; now Nexe had to win by at least 7 goals to qualify for the EHF champions league.
And they did!
All Erasmus students - host and guest students - were invited to watch the match and become part of the incredible atmosphere around a first class handball match.
After the match the students, too, used the chance to play handball in the stadium.
Click here for the third day of our meeting: