Head On My Shoulders

After going through Budapest, I made it down to Croatia to hang out in the city of Zagreb. I was able to meet up with some of the kids I met a few days before while at Fluff Fest. They were a good group of punks that remind me a lot of my friends back home in West Covina. I met Josip while posting on the good ol´B9Board. He took me around the city to visit all the old parts.

What I found most infatuating was the modern day war history of the region. I am relatively aware of the controversy among borders after the fall of Yugoslavia, but it was pretty incredible to hear about it first hand. All I knew about prior to this visit was that there was a fight going on in the early 90s along the borders of Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia; it was mainly intertwined with some religious differences. Now, I have come to see how much deeper the conflict goes, and I have witnessed the current situation of a war-torn country.

While there, we headed to a punk festival called Monte Paradiso. It was located in the seaside town of Pula. The punks were definitely out in full swing. The fest was located in an old military barrack in the middle of the city. It is now a squat. The bands all wanted to sound like Discharge, but we did see Vitamin X. Overall, the show really made me appreciate the local punk movement that we have in Southern California. It seemed as though all the kids here were just there to get drunk, look dirty, and act violently. It was rather a bummer to see such a poor misappopriation of the punk movement.

The kids I hung out with were great though. We stayed up all night for two nights in a row. It was rather out of my element being that childish sleeping schedules are kind of my thing. They made an awesome barbeque, and I taught them how to play some hacky sack.