Zagreb, Croatia -- Croatia is crescent shaped, ironically because it clung to its coast while resisting the Ottomans who threatened from Bosnia for centuries. Hungarians took it over in 1102 and held on until the "war to end all wars" which we call WWI. It then joined its neighbors in becoming Yugoslavia. It declared independence in 1991 -- but fought the Serbian-dominated Yugoslav army for 5 bloody years. This most recent of Europe's wars is all but forgotten by most Americans -- but not by our guides who lived through it and described some sights through tear-tinged eyes. A UN tribunal continues to prosecute many of its war criminals (mostly Serbs but some Croatian generals as well). While our trip was primarily along the rock-cragged Dalmatian coast 1 of Croatia's over 1000 islands, we started in Zagreb, Croatia's political and cultural capital.

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