The prize of conflict

151

My Dear Friend of Democracy, 

You can't go by train from Croatia to Bosnia Herzegovina. Train service was abandoned several years ago.

Nowadays, you have to leave the train in Kostanjnica, Croatia, take a taxi to Novi Grad in Bosnia, there, at the train station (see photo above), you board a (very old) train again to go further to Banja Luka, the largest city of Republika Srpska, which is also the de facto capital of the one of the two entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina (the other being the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina).

"Croatia is in the EU, Bosnia is on Mars", the taxi driver, a man in his fourties, said on our 20 minute ride to Novi Grad (30 euros) yesterday. 

He is right. When crossing the border, the difference in living standards is obvious at first sight: unrenovated houses, bumpy roads, and barely any rail network left in Bosnia Herzegovina. In economic terms: the gross domestic product per capita here is just a quarter of the European Union average. 

If he would prefer his country being part of EU, I asked the taxi driver before getting off the car in his home town Novi Grad. „Of course,“ he answered, „better is better.“ And I wondered how much greater would prosperity be in his wonderful country with its beautiful landscapes if the many ethnic groups here would focused more on cooperation than confrontation?

See you in Europe, 

Johannes