En route to Novi Sad we heard about the protests in Vukovar, (or Вуковар as the Serbian population would want it to be referred to) that had recently erupted over a longstanding dispute about minority language, that led to the newly erected Cyrillic signs being torn down from public buildings and three days of rallies and protests.*Protest image from this BBC News article. Since the 2011 census in Vukovar, it was recorded that the population of Serbians in the Croatian town had exceeded one third, which was the ‘legal’ requirement to have bilingual signs in both the Latin (Croatian), and…

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We left the common pastures of Croatia and again skirted the border between Croatia and Bosnia, finally crossing for a lunch spot at the border control point. Here an Italian man stopped to wish us well on our journey, only to then return 10 minutes later with a huge watermelon and bottles of fizzy pop; it was a warm welcome back to Bosnia. After the border crossing, the traces of the war became more and more apparent. Only too aware of the landmines that still contaminate the land, we were careful to find our camping spots either on recently made…

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Through a contact at Green Action Zagreb, our next destination was to meet activist fighting for the right to common pastures in Croatia. We made camp in their common field, and took a wash in the Sava – some of us even swimming across to Bosnia on the other side! The next morning we met some of the people who volunteer to keep the pastures alive and free for all. Gajna, an NGO and voluntary organisation founded in 2007, have been working to reserve the habitat of the land and keep it in use and free from industrial agriculture and…

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