![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/files\/2024\/12\/DSC00662.jpg\")
<\/a> ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/files\/2024\/12\/DSC00691.jpg\")
<\/a>One of the miracles to me of World War II was the creation of a south Slav kingdom in the Balkans, replacing one of the tinder boxes that had triggered wars before erupting in World War I.\u00a0 But that had blown up in the ethnic rivalries after the death of Tito, and the bitter fighting of 1991-1995\u00a0 could be seen in several towns ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/files\/2024\/12\/DSC00632-rotated.jpg\")
<\/a> ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/files\/2024\/12\/osijek.jpg\")
<\/a>along the river.\u00a0 Our first stop in Croatia was Osijek, as in so many Danubian towns, a one-time Roman colony.\u00a0 The current town began around the 12th century, and was occupied by the Turks for over 150 years.\u00a0 Austrian authorities built a fortress, Tvrda, that is still one of the landmarks ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/files\/2008\/08\/vukovar.jpg\")
<\/a>of the town of about 100,000.\u00a0 Baroque churches, a town square, a monument of gratitude for ending the plague–checks all the boxes.\u00a0 Croatian Serbian tensions led to Croatia siding with the Nazis.<\/p>\nBelgrade, capital of Serbia, and one of the most Reminiscences 2024 One of the miracles to me of World War II was the creation of a south Slav kingdom in the Balkans, replacing one of the tinder boxes that had triggered wars before erupting in World War I.\u00a0 But that had blown up in the ethnic rivalries after the death of Tito, and the … Continue reading “Kingdom of the Serbs and Croats”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-budapest-to-the-black-sea-2008"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5118"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8395,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5118\/revisions\/8395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>continuously occupied cities in Europe was our next stop.\u00a0 The city of over one million changed hands<\/a> between Rome, Byzantium, the Frankish kingdom,\u00a0 Bulgarian Kingdom, and the Ottomans. The Serbian Revolution led to independence by 1841.\u00a0 Because of Belgrade’s strategic location, the city has been in 115 wars, razed 44 times, bombed 5 times and besieged many times, according to Wikipedia.\u00a0 One of those five times was the 1999 “accident” when the Americans strafed the Chinese embassy.\u00a0 Amazing <\/a> <\/a>anything is left.\u00a0 The synagogue dates from the 1920s, and the major Serbian Orthodox Church, St. Stava, begun in the 1930s, was not completed until the 1980s.\u00a0 Still, I overlooked the Sava River where the guns of August (1914) began World War I.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"