Slavenka Drakulic: Euro-Consumer and Design Critic

I, too, can vouch for that feeling of belonging to Europe when I take a look at my own bathroom (which is also a toilet), even though Croatia is not yet a member of the EU. Still, we will become members in a short while, in exactly three years, as our politicians like to tell us. That is, we're almost there – as I can see on detergent boxes of both Ariel and Omo.

It looks promising because I, too, am addressed in my local language. And just like Stasiuk, I marvel at the fact that my language is recognized, or at least, that the market recognizes Croatia. After all, does the market not come before politics? Some say that it decides politics. Procter&Gamble now have a factory in the Czech Republic and soon they will probably have one in Croatia. It will provide jobs to at least some of our 17% unemployed (that's the unofficial number – officially we have 11%). I continue to marvel about the "brighter future" or about paradise in spe.

"But then, looking at the detergent box, I notice that there's a difference between those who are in the EU and those of us who aren't: though we have information printed on the box in our language, the instructions for use are printed on a sticker and glued to it! No, we aren't there yet; I see that Stasiuk is a step ahead of me.

"Unlike Stasiuk, I'm a woman. Therefore, my bathroom contains more than a detergent, but all sorts of creams and shower gels, oils, and hair products. And I'm not ashamed to admit that at all. On the contrary, I waited a long time to see these Lancôme and Helena Rubinstein, those Estée Lauder and Givenchy and Chanel and Dior products right there, on my shelves. Or better said, I waited to be able to buy them in shops in Zagreb, instead of buying them in Graz or Trieste or some other western city I happened to visit.

"They are more expensive in Zagreb, but that's the price I'm prepared to pay to have them here, at hand. Because, of course, like most women, I believe that a skin-smoothing massage exfoliator, a "moist, luscious cream, enriched with hyper-oxygenated plant oil", will not only leave my skin as silky-soft as a baby's, "but will produce" – and this is even more important – "a feeling of bodily harmony and an immediate sense of wellbeing". In short, it promises to work a miracle. Like most women in the East or in the West, I believe in these kinds of miracles. So much so, that I throw away empty jars of fancy products with a heavy heart. From time to time a suspicion overcomes me, and I ask myself all sorts of normal, but superfluous questions, such as: Why do I need all these cosmetics? (I don't, nobody does.) Why does every part of my body need another cream? (It doesn't.) But that's only in certain moments of weakness, when my belief in cosmetics, the market, advertising, capitalism, the West, democracy, human rights, etc., undergoes a crisis – something every religious person will understand. When I don't question the idiocy of spending money on these useless trivia, I enjoy using them.

"Actually, I enjoy the look of my bathroom today because I'm old enough to remember the bathroom of my parent's apartment in the early fifties, when Plavi radion washing powder was the only one that existed. Or an even earlier bathroom with no washing powder whatsoever, just a bar of Jelen soap...."