Round the world expedition. Croatia - meeting with the oldest Ukrainian diaspora.
By noon on October 19, we arrived in Zagreb. We stopped at a very nice hostel called "Apartment 63". The rain did not let us walk around the city, and there were still a couple of hours before meeting with fellow countrymen.
At the Ukrainian Embassy in Croatia, slightly soaked, we were warmly welcomed by Ambassador Oleksandr Levchenko, the First Secretary and their assistants. Here, as well as in all other embassies, we were given tea and coffee to drink, which is always very handy, because we had just left the road... In half an hour we managed not only to tell about the trip, but also to find out what contribution the embassy makes to development of Ukrainians.
And also Ukraine should adopt one more experience. Since Croatia is a long country, the traditions of the northern and southern regions are somewhat different.
So that the population is homogeneous and there are no cultural or communication differences, here for 15 years children from the northern regions have been taken on vacation to the south, and from the south - to the north. This is a good practice and I think if our guys from the eastern regions were often taken to western Ukraine and vice versa, then the country would be United not only in words and papers ...
Half an hour later, the ambassador and I met with representatives of the Ukrainian diaspora - the coordinator for cultural and humanitarian cooperation Olga Sablyak and the head of the Ukrainian cultural and educational society "Kobzar" Slavko Burda. She turned out to be one of the oldest: they are mainly descendants of those who moved to the territory of Croatia during the Austro-Hungarian Empire (late 19th century), as well as between the First and Second World Wars.
There are few economic migrants here, since good specialists go further north - to Germany, Denmark, Sweden - where salaries are higher.
Today there are about 2000 Ukrainians in Croatia. We were pleasantly surprised how well they speak Ukrainian. They told how they moved, how they live, how they study, what a unifying principle is the Greek Catholic Church, because it is thanks to it that Ukrainians managed to preserve their language, traditions, culture here, although they are already living in the third or fourth generation.
And we went further.
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