Food Not Bombs in Zagreb

While in Zagreb for less than a week, I was starting to feel a little nostalgia of the activist community back home at school. It is a community where personal image disappears, when every day details such as homework and my personal academic future doesn’t matter as much, and when what matters most is the strength and cooperation of a group of people gathered together to attain a common goal. I missed it already. I needed to feel that support, comradeship, and solidarity with people and wondered if I could find it in such a foreign city.

While sipping strong espresso, a social commonplace in most Southeastern European countries, my friend Lindsay invited me to a Food Not Bombs meeting in Zagreb. Food Not Bombs is an international movement where people cook local food bought or donated to give out to those less fortunate, or anyone who wants some grub before continuing their days. In Worcester, where I go to school, there is an expansive population of poor people, a lot of unemployment, and because of this cultural richness is usually lost in the gloomy nature of the developing city streets. It was exciting to find a similar community of people thousands of miles away from my own home. I needed it.

We headed to the street where the activist webpage told us the meeting would be. Through a small opening between buildings we walked down the small alleyway to what we thought was the place and waited for a while. Nobody was around. On the buildings was graffiti, illustrating the kinds of stories these people were trying to show symbolically. What stood out most were the words “I am not his story”, showing possible feminist ideals and the subject of silencing the past these people had once experienced during the wars. Within the walls around me screamed experiences completely unimaginable to my mind but similar to my own people’s history. It was comforting.

Soon a young man peddled through the alleyway on his bike, with his head mostly shaved except for a spot on the top where long hair flowed out. He dressed in dark clothes, locking his bike up to a post and lighting up a cigarette. His clothes were symbolically universal to anarchism and activism in general—dark clothes, the interesting hair do, the cigarette, the bike, the patches found on his clothes. A taste of my familiar family of activists from home.

“Bog”, I said walking up to him. “Govorite li engleski?”

“Malo”, he replied, sitting down on the sidewalk looking up at me.

“Is there a meeting for Food Not Bombs?”

“Da, yes, at seven o’clock”.

I introduced myself, and he to I, and then Lindsay as well. He is from Rijeke, a small town southwest of Zagreb. He has been living in the city for a while, making tofu and volunteering. We chatted for a while as others biked in, all with the symbolical clothes and hair unique to this particular community found internationally. We introduced ourselves to everyone, and at quarter past 7 we started the meeting—completely in Croatian.

A woman sitting to the right of me, Dora, asked us where we were from and was surprised, assuming we were German from the way we spoke Croatian. We laughed, silently wishing that we were, in fact, not from America, a bit weary of our country’s appearance to the rest of the world. We sat, attempting to listen to the conversation as it unfolded. Alas, we got nothing, but my new friend Dora explained that they were setting a time to cook this Saturday and a place to hand out the food. We passed around a bottle of Macedonian liquor, similar to Greek Ouzo, our new friends urging us to drink because we came to their meeting!

Time went on and cigarettes were lit and devoured, the bottle of Ouzo slowly reaching its end. I realized that the meeting was long over and they were just sitting chatting with one another. Once they realized we hardly spoke any Croatian, they began weaving in their broken English into the conversation, asking where we were from and why we were there. They were happy to hear that Food Not Bombs was practicing in so many other places in the world. Certainly this would be a community I could go to in my free time, to socialize, to meet the local community around me and to get a better grasp of the stories behind the words and images plastered to each clean slab of stone. I walked away early, hoping to get home with enough time to chat with my family and finish my homework. Dora looked at me before I left and said, “Don’t get too drunk on Friday night; you must come help us help others”. She is from Belgrade, squatting here in Zagreb helping out to help others. I noticed here, similarly to what I was used to, was the combination of socializing, having fun, and doing good things all at the same time. We must be happy if we are to work happily. We must know each other personally and professionally. And of course, good people are everywhere, even if they are stuck behind an alleyway in Zagreb, Croatia far away from your usual stomping ground. They will always invite you into their circle as we are all part of the same tribe. It was good to be reminded of that.