Life in Sesvete is an everyday struggle – you have to fight with kilometers and stereotypes.
Sesvete is the easternmost part of Zagreb, and Zagreb’s traffic is not the best in the world (to put it mildly), so that explains pretty much everything about kilometers. Thus, this work will focus more on stereotypes.
The typical stereotype is that we are all tracksuit-wearing, turbofolk-listening hillbillies that couldn’t find Zagreb’s main square without Google Maps. There are even some popular internet memes suggesting that.
One I came across, made by Facebook page named ”Life of people from downtown Zagreb”, says: ”When I put on my baggy tracksuit and ugly shoes, everyone thinks I’m from Sesvete.” The other one, pretty popular recently, depicts two guys dressed in traditional clothes from rural Croatia riding a horse carriage, with a caption: ”People from Sesvete coming to Zagreb Christmas market.”
I have to admit, there is some truth in mentioned stereotypes, and I actually find these memes funny. There is no point in whining, that’s not what you learn on the streets of our dirty old neighborhood. It’s an old industrial, post-apocalyptic looking, working-class, blue collar part of the city that gives you no-nonsense, go hard or go home attitude.
City kids will never know the struggle. A simple thing like a night out somewhere in the city center can turn into a real adventure – getting home can take hours. And how about working on the other side of the city and not having a car, waking up at dawn and commuting for an hour or so? It’s this little, everyday things that toughen you up as you grow up.
As for the stereotypes, just bring them on – one can always use them as a motivation to prove people wrong.
Everyday Struggle 