Driving towards Vukovar from the west on the wide, new road into the city, a variety of business premises, gas stations and large port cranescan be seen standing side by side alongside the banks of the River Danube.

Vukovar may still be seen as a symbol of the wartime destruction of the 1990sbut today it seems like any other town in the area. However, the‘Croatian Stalingrad’, as it was once called due to the resistance of its defenders and the enormous destruction it sustained while it was besieged more than 30 years ago, still bears the scars of its past.

Vukovar makes headlines these days mainly due to continuing inter-ethnic tensions which are usually highlighted around the anniversary of the fall of the city when Croatia’s political elite come to visit, or as a negative example of emigration. But locals would like the city’s reputation to be reconsidered and updated.

“Today, the situation is actually much better than it was, although one can notice the growth of prices of everyday goods as well as of real estate. But then again, they are less high in comparison to the prices in other cities,” said Ruzica Dufek from local property agency Vukovarka.

“Until five years ago, apartments were sold for up to 400 euros per square metre; now they are around 600 and above. A good location and a new building can be sold for 1,000 euros per square metre,” she added.

The relatively low prices are due to the fact that salaries are lower in this part of Croatia, which has an impact on the prices charged for real estate.

About five percent of real-estate transactions involve foreigners who have no family connections toVukovar but have decided to move here, at least for a while.

“Right now there are five families from Rijeka who bought houses to move in when they retire. They can’t stand the hills, the rainy weather and the city crowds anymore, so they moved to Vukovar,” said Dufek.

Lying on a plain by the mighty Danube, the city has fertile land, a major river port and the Lavoslav Ruzicka College of Applied Sciences, which brings in students, creating demand for small apartments and studios. The number of apartment rentals has also risen due to incoming foreign workers.

“For example, we have met foreign workers from India who were looking for accommodation, as well as other foreign nationals who are moving to this part of Croatia,” said Dufek.

She added that the tourism rental sector is also getting stronger. “All smaller apartments in a good location are rented out for tourism purposes, or sold immediately,” she said.

Vukovar is on the Srijem cycling route, which is connected to the European Euro Velo 6 Atlantic-to-Black-Sea route and is one of the points where cyclists often make an overnight stop.

This has given an additional impetus to the development of tourist accommodation. Wine routes and bicycling trails are also developing and competing with the war-related tourism that was until now the main reason for visiting Vukovar.

‘Small, well-connected and beautiful’

As for doing business, the city administration insists that Vukovar is the best place to invest in Croatia because of the numerous benefits it offers to entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs are exempt from paying profit and income tax; they are also able to get a refund of 50 percent of the contributions for health and pension insurance payments for their employees if they based in the City of Vukovar.

From 2015 to date, more than 3.3 million euros have been allocated from the city budget to support entrepreneurs. On the top of this, there are grants provided through the Fund for the Reconstruction and Development of the City of Vukovar, which means that since 2015, more than eight million euros have been allocated to support entrepreneurs from the area. Last year alone, 160 Vukovar entrepreneurs received grants.

In an attempt to boost the population, the city provides a one-time financial payout for each child born, and was the first in Croatia to introduce partial subsidies of utility bills for families with three or more children up to 16 years of age.

Branimir Bradaric, who has been a correspondent from Vukovar for more than 20 years for the national daily newspaper Vecernji List and AlJazeera, follows Vukovar’s political and social life closely and is perhaps the most informed person in the city.

“Café owners have a problem finding waiters, despite the fact that they offer good salaries. Anyone who comes to live in Vukovar, especially if they are highly qualified, will have everything,” said Bradaric.

“The city is small, well-connected and beautiful; everything can be reached on foot in 15 minutes; there are shops and shopping centres; Vukovar has the most modern swimming pool in the country, alongside the football stadium, many parks and the Danube,” he added. “Osijek is about 30 kilometres away, Vinkovci is 15. Serbia is close, as well as Bosnia.”

Despite the advantages of living in Vukovar, the public perception of the city is one of a place where tensions are constantly high, he said: “When I go somewhere, the very question ‘how is it in Vukovar?’ [implying that there are problems] really annoys me.”

He acknowledged that incidents do occur, but they are mostly clashes between football fans, which have more to do with their violent subculture than ethnic intolerance.

Bradaric claimed that there are politicians on both sides who are comfortable with such the perception that ethnic tensions persist, because that’s how they stir up passions in order to win votes.

“When they have no other results to show, then the way ahead is to use tensions,” he said. “As for life, it goes on quite normally. Serbs and Croats come together and enter into relationships and marriages, play sports together more than we read in the media. There are companies established by Croats and Serbs, various business partnerships…”

Bradaric thinks that the biggest problem is that local politicians do not havean adequate vision for the city.

“Is it normal that since the peaceful reintegration [in 1996-98] until today, the mayor [who is Croat] and the deputy mayor [who is elected by Serbs] have never held a media conference together? That has never happened! Is that normal?”he asked rhetorically.

Vukovar was reintegrated back into Croatia without any renewed fighting or human casualties, and Bradaric argued that the city’s main problems are economic rather than ethnically-related.

“It is politics that largely creates this image of Vukovar for the outside world. It suits them [politicians] because of their interests and positions that people get the wrong image of the city,” he said. “Vukovar is actually a peaceful and orderly place.”