I think we are both agreed on the need to avoid trivialisation, and have to agree to differ on what we think our respective blogs are for. Viva la difference!

The main point I was trying to make was not about our place of domicile and was maybe confused because I tried to personalize the post. Its more that both communities live in denial (and probably need to so as to survive) of problems at their very core. It just happened that both events occurred during the same week. If I knew of another way to help (especially the Lapthornes) I would – all I know is to try to keep these things in the spotlight a little longer – it seems to me everyone else is attempting to trivalize the loss of life. The post was not abouts ‘hits’ or ratings or tourist numbers or ‘school pride’.

Even though you and I are supposed to be writing more light-hearted ‘travel’ or ‘expat’ blogs sometimes we have a responsibility to tell people the reality of Croatia (and Australia) – and to stop printing all the ‘happy’ stories for a little while – and in a small way keep the pressure on those at the top (in both communities).

(My true thoughts about the Britt case can be found here under the username “shanejulie” – http://visitcroatia.proboards21.com/index.cgi?board=news&action=display&thread=6409&page=4 .)

Here in Croatia, more than anywhere else I’ve lived (England, Ireland and France) and visited, I’ve particularly valued an over riding sense of personal safety. It’s a fact that crime rates are relatively low in Croatia but it’s impossible to put a price on the feeling of being able to walk around, almost anywhere, and at all hours of the day, feeling unthreatened.

That doesn’t help Britt’s family, or the families of those at Scotch College in Perth who chose to end their own lives, and I feel extremely uncomfortable mixing any sort of discussion on where to live, or how to enjoy Croatia, in the context of the very serious main content of the posting and bearing in mind the lives lost.

It’s one thing being relieved to see the back of English newspapers – the scores of major and minor tragedies and system failures, in relative context and from an abstract position; quite another to see a posting such as this in an altogether different setting.

I guess we’ll all be relieved when Lifejacket Adventures
resolve their location dilemmas and hope that the decision is not overly based on the tragic circumstances they report. There is a lot more to discuss, but not at the risk of trivialising the loss of life that is the main feature of this posting.

To sort of add something in to your whole issue of safety and tourism in Croatia, here’s what the Rough Guide Croatia says under Crime and Personal Safety > Sexual Harassment:
“Croatian men like to regard the annual deluge of foreign female tourists as fair game, but any display of Mediterranean machismo tends to be leavened by genuine attempts at gallantry and charm. A suitably firm response should be enough to cope with unwanted attentions. Alternatively, try to imitate the repertoire of stony silences and withering looks employed by the local women.”

Leave it to a British guide to say that the guys are pretty much asses, but in the nicest way possible. It’s just unfortunate that there is more of a physically threatening undertone to this these days.

In regards as to where to raise kids, for me being in the US, the choice is easy in that pretty much anywhere in Europe is vastly superior. Children in the future are going to need to have multi-lingual abilities and that simply can’t happen in the US. That and due to the size of European countries, there is an immediate sense of others in the world as opposed to the US which few citizens leave (at best 30% of us have passports and it’s more like less than 20%). Also the social systems in the US are abysmal. Having no national health care system is reprehensible. I have no idea as to how many parallels there are with Australia, but at the very least a child growing up in Croatia will learn Croatian, English, and probably German and/or Italian. That’s not bad despite all the political ills of the crescent currently.

-miquel