Rating: 
Summary: Interesting and stimulating, but not always based on facts.
Review: Being a Croatian myself, I would recommend this book to any reader interested in acquiring a better understanding of what's going on in Eastern Europe, and in Croatia in particular. However, these stories and essays are not always founded on facts and that is disappointing because one would expect more from an established writer and a journalist like Slavenka Drakulic. This is partly a reason for controversy that Mrs. Drakulic is facing in her country. What I find truly annoying is the fact that occasional factual omissions or inaccuracies drive a more knowledgeable reader to sometimes "defend" not only Croatia as a country of young and still fragile democracy but also it's Government which is far from perfect (and which never won my vote on elections). For illustration: many people would disagree with Mrs. Drakulic when she says "It is very difficult (...) to start believing that an individual opinion, initiative or vote really could make a difference" (p. 4 in a paper back edition). But it is a fact that a certain causal link is yet to be established between what most (Croatian) people feel and think and how they fail to express the same at elections. Calling Croatia "an extreme nationalist country" (p. 9 in a paper back edition) is a gross exaggeration. How can one say that for country in which a radical (or: extreme) national party wins 3% of entire electoral body in a time when Croatia was burning in flames of Yugoslavian aggression. In a time like that one would expect that much more people would get carried away with extreme nationalism, however the vast majority "only" felt patriotism. Extreme nationalist parties have significantly more seats in parliaments of, for example, Italy of France and yet hardly anyone would dare calling those countries "extreme nationalistic". The overt simplification when describing associations between Croatian and German governments "because of the mutual nazi past" (p. 84 of a paper back edition) is outrageous. Croatia had a nazi-puppet regime! in WW2 that was by far outnumbered by its opposition. Croatia was not the most populated country in former Yugoslavia, yet it had the strongest and most numerous resistance of any other 5 constituent Yugoslav republics. According to the French author Alain Finkielkraut ("Common peut-on être Croate?") Croatia with some 4 million inhabitants had a stronger fascist resistance movement in WW2 than France had. This, along the fact that the newly established Croatian state is a follower (as stated in Croatian Constitution) of the very anti-fascist force that won the WW2 in former Yugoslavia makes any common denominators with the German nazi regime highly inappropriate. The same applies for the following pages when elaborating on general notions on importance of uniforms on examples of Arkan, a Serb responsible for some of the worst war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia as opposed to anonymous Croatian soldier who threw a rock on a vehicle. Drawing common denominator on these two individuals looks like fishing for controversy and publicity. The mentioned book of A. Finkielkraut can be recommended for number of interesting essays on Croatian struggle for independence in the 1990s including some thoughts about biased Israeli standpoint toward new Croatia who were so often blinded by Yugoslav propaganda that even some great Jewish authorities like Ellie Wiesel and Simon Wiesental failed to see a number of imposing similarities of Croatian position in the recent war to the Jewish in the WW2. When writing about Croatian president, F. Tudjman, instead of mentioning some of the undoubtedly wrong judgements and decisions made by him, Mrs. Drakulic repeats some of the platitudes of Yugoslavian propaganda. When mentioning a 50th anniversary of the end of the WW2 and a gathering of world statesmen in London for that occasion, Mrs. Drakulic writes that "Tudjman had been a bit afraid he might not be invited because of Croatia's reputation in the Western world for having rehabilitated Pavelic's wartime fasc! ist regime" but fails to mention that it would be quite difficult to explain Tudjman's absence as he is the single remaining living statesman who was personally fighting (as a Colonel in Croatian resistance, later General) in the WW2 with anti-fascists movement. "How strange" Drakulic writes (p. 189-90 in a paperback edition) "that this man in his books disputed the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust in Europe, and the number of people killed in the Croatian concentration camp in Jasenovac was present at the opening of the Holocaust Museum in Washington (...)". Again no mention of the hard facts that the number of Jasenovac victims although horribly high was significantly inflated by former Yugoslavian regime. Some of the highest authorities among historian who were studying this matter, including Serbian and Croatian historians (KOCOVIC, Bogoljub and ZERJAVEC, Vladimir) agree that the numbers - for long time accepted as factual - were more than 10 times inflated. And there are even some argumentum per hominem against Croatian president by Mrs. Drakulic when writing "There is something repulsive about his grimace" and mentioning "his greed for life", failing to mention that his grimace is a partially consequence of a survived stroke and that "greed for life" can only be commendable for a man who despite his age and a serious illness continues to fight for what he, as a democratically elected Croatian president, believes is right for Croatia.
Rating:
Summary: Drakulic Again Considers Everyday Life in Eastern Europe
Review: Drakulic delivers another series of short essays, in the style of her earlier "How We Survived Communism". In "Café Europa", the reader is carried from Croatia across western Europe during the few short years since Croatia emerged from war as an independent state, caught somewhere between its Balkan history and its European ambitions. She ruminates on subjects as far afield as her distaste for the word "we" because of its communist overtones, which leads to the verdict that the western concept of "I", of self-reliance and modernity in a civil state, is a notion still to be embraced in eastern Europe. It is for precisely the same reason that she admires Americans their fetish for perfect teeth, because they represent self-respect and independence from shoddy state-sponsored dental care. Many of the essays in the book deal with the peculiar talent in eastern Europe for hiding and forgetting the past, thereby evading responsibility and missing the opportunity to learn from it. This flair for forgetfulness causes Drakulic's mother to fear for the sanctity of her husband's grave, marked by a communist star vulnerable to those who would destroy symbols of forty years of communism. It is this same talent that allows fascist "Ustasha" symbols from the 1940s to be revived in the 1990s under the guise of nationalism. The same phenomenon that impels each generation of politicians to rename streets and plazas in order to avoid any public recognition of historical figures whose views place them, at least temporarily, on the wrong side of today's political fences. It is this same failure of history that forces a Croatian journalist to mince words and ask facile questions during an exclusive interview with Dinko Sakic, the notorious concentration camp commander. Drakulic is a bit exasperated when, on a visit to Israel, she is barraged with questions about Croatia's fascist role during World War II. "To grow up under communism means to live forever in the present. Once the final social order had been established, there was no need to look backwards - or forwards, for that matter.... Perhaps this is the reason why we are now, with this recent war, sentenced to live in the past. Sometimes I ask myself whether this is the punishment for our lack of interest in history, for our fear, silence and irresponsibility towards ourselves. For our ingnorance." She realizes that Croatia as a society has failed to examine and integrate the lessons of its fascist period, and this failure, this willful forgetfulness, is itself a type of evil complicity perpetually spawning new crises, including the high-tension ethnic conflicts that yielded the 1991-1995 wars. The only jarring note is the essay titled "Why I Never Visited Moscow", in which Drakulic bemoans the fact that she has been categorized as an eastern European writer. This seems a bit hypocritical given that all of "Café Europa" including the very cover blurbs, much like her previous books, is premised on the fact that she is a particularly talented eastern European writer and astute social critic who has interesting and insightful things to say about the region. Perhaps Drakulic, who has won awards, fame, and money with her admirable accounts of eastern Europe, is being a bit self-righteous when she complains about being viewed as an eastern European writer.
Rating:
Summary: Drakulic Again Considers Everyday Life in Eastern Europe
Review: Drakulic delivers another series of short essays, in the style of her earlier "How We Survived Communism". In "Café Europa", the reader is carried from Croatia across western Europe during the few short years since Croatia emerged from war as an independent state, caught somewhere between its Balkan history and its European ambitions. She ruminates on subjects as far afield as her distaste for the word "we" because of its communist overtones, which leads to the verdict that the western concept of "I", of self-reliance and modernity in a civil state, is a notion still to be embraced in eastern Europe. It is for precisely the same reason that she admires Americans their fetish for perfect teeth, because they represent self-respect and independence from shoddy state-sponsored dental care. Many of the essays in the book deal with the peculiar talent in eastern Europe for hiding and forgetting the past, thereby evading responsibility and missing the opportunity to learn from it. This flair for forgetfulness causes Drakulic's mother to fear for the sanctity of her husband's grave, marked by a communist star vulnerable to those who would destroy symbols of forty years of communism. It is this same talent that allows fascist "Ustasha" symbols from the 1940s to be revived in the 1990s under the guise of nationalism. The same phenomenon that impels each generation of politicians to rename streets and plazas in order to avoid any public recognition of historical figures whose views place them, at least temporarily, on the wrong side of today's political fences. It is this same failure of history that forces a Croatian journalist to mince words and ask facile questions during an exclusive interview with Dinko Sakic, the notorious concentration camp commander. Drakulic is a bit exasperated when, on a visit to Israel, she is barraged with questions about Croatia's fascist role during World War II. "To grow up under communism means to live forever in the present. Once the final social order had been established, there was no need to look backwards - or forwards, for that matter.... Perhaps this is the reason why we are now, with this recent war, sentenced to live in the past. Sometimes I ask myself whether this is the punishment for our lack of interest in history, for our fear, silence and irresponsibility towards ourselves. For our ingnorance." She realizes that Croatia as a society has failed to examine and integrate the lessons of its fascist period, and this failure, this willful forgetfulness, is itself a type of evil complicity perpetually spawning new crises, including the high-tension ethnic conflicts that yielded the 1991-1995 wars. The only jarring note is the essay titled "Why I Never Visited Moscow", in which Drakulic bemoans the fact that she has been categorized as an eastern European writer. This seems a bit hypocritical given that all of "Café Europa" including the very cover blurbs, much like her previous books, is premised on the fact that she is a particularly talented eastern European writer and astute social critic who has interesting and insightful things to say about the region. Perhaps Drakulic, who has won awards, fame, and money with her admirable accounts of eastern Europe, is being a bit self-righteous when she complains about being viewed as an eastern European writer.
Rating:
Summary: raw take on post-communist realities
Review: Drakulic gives a raw, honest take on the realities of post-communist Eastern Europe--that not everything is all right when democracy kicks in. She tackles the assimilation of a "we" first-person plural instead of the "I" first-person singular, because "we" is all they were ever taught under communism. This kind of mentality leads to a sort of helplessness in people who lived under the previous regime--because they so got used to the government taking care of everything (right down to free state-established dentists), they cannot cope with the new political reality and sometimes yearn for the old times. The next generation have it easier, "because they started to work under the new conditions, and these are all they know. They suffer because of the lack of a safety net, but they don't feel it as a loss." Drakulic becomes frank, witty and sometimes funny with her takes on Eastern Europe: from bad teeth, buying at sales, lack of toilet paper, her father's "guilt", right down to Zoe Ceausescu's horribly pink bathroom. She strips away any notions that Eastern Europe has "rejoined" the Continent, thus forming the illusion of a united "Europe". Her writing is simple and straightforward, very easy to read.
Rating: 
Summary: Cafe Europa: the details of life
Review: I find that one cannot appreciate history, even recent history, until one has accrued a little "history" of ones own. The combination of Ms. Drakulic's nurture (in Croatia) with her nature (sensitive and thoughtful) yields a fascinating read into the whys-and-wherefors of actions and reactions in the Balkans. Nationality vs. regionality (in Istria) is not merely an Istrian concept, but indeed one that truly affects every human being. Poignant was her story of the regular changing of the names of public sites, as if a new regime can wash away years of ones own personal history. I am eager for more of her writings: engrossing.
Rating:
Summary: Cafe Europa: the details of life
Review: I find that one cannot appreciate history, even recent history, until one has accrued a little "history" of ones own. The combination of Ms. Drakulic's nurture (in Croatia) with her nature (sensitive and thoughtful) yields a fascinating read into the whys-and-wherefors of actions and reactions in the Balkans. Nationality vs. regionality (in Istria) is not merely an Istrian concept, but indeed one that truly affects every human being. Poignant was her story of the regular changing of the names of public sites, as if a new regime can wash away years of ones own personal history. I am eager for more of her writings: engrossing.
Rating: 
Summary: interesting but kind of questionable
Review: i just finished this book. i found it interesting and somewhat enlightening, but i also felt like many of drakulic's arguments were based on assumptions that she did not really prove to me to be true. i think that i would like to read another book on this topic, but by another author, i want more concrete details and less analysis and interpretation. there were parts of the book where i just started thinking that drakulic was making things up. there is not a single footnote in the entire book and she quotes no sources. she mentions talking to various friends and families but she does not drop any names. i have only ever read a little bit of her other works (communism and how we laughed about it or something like that) and i don't really like her style. i recently read a book called neighbors, it was about poland and jews there, that author of that book says where all his info comes from and he does an amazing job of documenting his information. drakulic is the polar opposite. i would not recomment this book, unless you are interested in viewing someone's opinion on post-communist eastern block states.
Rating:
Summary: An extremely interesting and very personal book
Review: I'm just now finishing reading the last essay in this book. A friend from eastern Germany passed "How We Survived Communism And Even Laughed" on to me last year. I have to say that I found both books hard to put down, though I sometimes felt that Ms. Drakulic's characterizations of ordinary life under communism -and of attitudes and motives of people living in post-communist Europe- seemed very broadly drawn. While my own experience in post-communist Europe was limited to a year-long 'visit', my suspicions that Ms. Drakulic may sometimes go overboard in the connections she draws between the social psychology of poverty and attitudes toward civic responsibility in this context were somewhat supported by the reactions (to these two books) of friends who had been raised under European communism. The conversations we had about these books were at least, if not more, interesting than the books themselves. Ms. Drakulic's message is an engaging one, accessible in style and intensely personal (which she openly states in her introduction to this book). Her open and direct approach was very valuable to me as a reader, even when I felt I couldn't really follow her arguments to the bigger conclusions about life (in post-communist countries and in general) that she seems to want to persuade her readers of in "Cafe Europa".
Rating:
Summary: An extremely interesting and very personal book
Review: I'm just now finishing reading the last essay in this book. A friend from eastern Germany passed "How We Survived Communism And Even Laughed" on to me last year. I have to say that I found both books hard to put down, though I sometimes felt that Ms. Drakulic's characterizations of ordinary life under communism -and of attitudes and motives of people living in post-communist Europe- seemed very broadly drawn. While my own experience in post-communist Europe was limited to a year-long 'visit', my suspicions that Ms. Drakulic may sometimes go overboard in the connections she draws between the social psychology of poverty and attitudes toward civic responsibility in this context were somewhat supported by the reactions (to these two books) of friends who had been raised under European communism. The conversations we had about these books were at least, if not more, interesting than the books themselves. Ms. Drakulic's message is an engaging one, accessible in style and intensely personal (which she openly states in her introduction to this book). Her open and direct approach was very valuable to me as a reader, even when I felt I couldn't really follow her arguments to the bigger conclusions about life (in post-communist countries and in general) that she seems to want to persuade her readers of in "Cafe Europa".
Rating:
Summary: Compelling
Review: I've seen movies, documentals and I have read articles and history books about life under communism. I read this book while I was traveling in the Czech Republic. I took part in a study abroad program in Prague and Brno, so I attended lectures about the history of the Czech Republic and about East Europe in general. When I was reading this book I couldn't imagine how people were leaving in East Europe. The way this book is written, in its direct and simple language, shows you the desperation and sadness of the people, the way they were oppressed and the means they got around the authorities. It's just well written and at the end it leaves a wound in your heart.
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