Lipovac

Lipovac is a village located in Srijem, eastern Croatia, at the border with Serbia. It is administratively part of the Nijemci municipality. The population is 1,243 (census 2001).

The village is located near the end point of the highway A3, to the south of the Bosut river. During the Croatian war of independence, it was occupied by Serbian forces.

Highway mentions

Because of the nearby highway exit and the borderline, the village gained some surprising prominence in the 1990s, when the Croatian road authorities sectioned the former highway "Bratstvo i jedinstvo", and Lipovac happened to be the last stop before the newly created border with Serbia. Subsequently, all road signs that previously said "Beograd" (Belgrade, located to the east), were replaced to say "Lipovac". The highway itself was no longer referred to as "autocesta Zagreb-Beograd" but instead "autocesta Zagreb-Lipovac".

This move was widely considered to be disingenuous, but it was a fairly practical stop-gap measure, because the signs mentioning Belgrade were regularly getting vandalized. Later, as tensions between the two countries subsided, in the west the mention of Lipovac was slowly replaced with Slavonski Brod, which was where the modern highway ended. In the 2000s, when the section between Slavonski Brod and Lipovac was being reconstructed, there were again signs mentioning exclusively Lipovac, but towards the east, the signs towards Belgrade reappeared.

References

* [http://www.croatia.hr/English/Destinacije/Destinacija.aspx?idDestination=491 Croatia National Tourist Board website: Lipovac]