An overview that would make my history professors cringe

And God said (sort of), “If this is what they begun to do, then we need to go down and confuse them…”

First there were dinosaurs which at some point evolved from Neanderthals to walking, talking, thinking, warring, working, creating and propagating human beings.

The following people called these lands home:
Tribes, Dynasties & Cultures: Neanderthals, Dacians, prehistoric Bronze Age, Thracians, Barbarians, Celts, Romas (Gypsies), Ottomans, Saxons, Habsburgs, Soviets, Mongols….

City-States & Countries: Macedonians, Asians, Balkans, Turks (not to be confused with the Ottoman), Greeks, Romans, Venetians, Italians, Germans, Austrians, Russians, Albanians, Yugoslavians (which no longer exists but once included Croatia & Serbia and Slovenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia, & Kosovo). And the Hungarians, Slavonics, Slovenes (the southern Slavs=Serbians), Croatians, Bulgarians & Romanians….

And let’s not forget Causes & Religions: Byzantiums, Socialists, Communists, Nazis, Jewish, Christian (Catholics, East & West Orthodox, & Protestants), Muslims… (Generally: Serbs, Bulgarians & Romanians are Orthodox Catholics; Croatians & Hungarians are Roman Catholic; Bosnian Slavs (throughout Serbia, Croatia & Montenegro) are Muslims)….

Which leads me to – they all were in one another’s homes, heads, and the air they were trying to breathe from time-to-time.

You get the picture, the Tower of Babel came crashing down in Eastern Europe and we are left with the Hungarians, Serbians, Croatians, Bulgarians and Romanians. At least that’s what they call themselves today and they are the people-countries that we visit on this trip.

Mon, June 3 – Vukovar, Croatia. We hear of the dissolution of Yugoslavia from the Croatians point of view. We wake docked in Vukovar, a town nearly destroyed by the Serbs starting in 1991. They were occupied until 1995, over 90% of the buildings were destroyed and thousands of people killed. Our guide, tries not to dwell on the negative, but he can’t help but portray Milošević as a son-of-a-bitch. Does that rhyme? Of course it does, I’ll write a little poem — to the tune of Zaccheaus was a wee little man…

Milošević was a son-of-a-bitch; a son-of-a bitch was he.
He raped and murdered and oppressed – evil indignities.
And when the people had enough of crimes against humanity.
They said “Slobodan, we’re taking you down,
And you’re going to jail at The Hague.
And you’re going to jail at The Hague.”