I am the luckiest man in the world. I'm 76 years old, and I've already spent eight of my 9 lives I'm currently enjoying Life Number 9 in Croatia as a retired music professor. Every week, I'm just happy that my luck appears to be holding.
For me, it is normal to survive terrible circumstances. I have already learned what it feels like to survive an airplane crash, a train "flying" into a cold river, not to mention various car and bus accidents.
My first lucky escape happened on the very first day of my life, June 3, 1929, in the ancient town of Dubrovnik on the southern Adriatic Sea. My father Martin and mother Slavka, who was seven months pregnant, went on a one-day fishing trip in a tiny boat close to the island of Lokrum. While my father was fishing, my mother unexpectedly gave birth.
It was a miracle I stayed alive because my father, in a panic, washed me, a newborn baby, in the cold seawater. He also tied my belly button with fishing line; it took hours before we got back to Dubrovnik and entered a hospital. On arriving at the hospital, I was already stiff from cold an exposure, but the doctors still saved me.
That was the first time when my family realized I was a special person protected with some kind of "lucky umbrella".
The 1960s might have been the era of peace and love, but it was a decade of trouble for me. I survived one accident after another, starting with the train crash in January,1962 that I count as Life Number 2.
The train slipped from the track and we ended up in the cold water of the river Neretva that flows through Bosnia and Herzegovina. I managed to break the thick glass on the train window while under the water. The water was so cold that you can't imagine it. Somehow, I still had enough strength to save an old woman but I lost consciousness while swimming to the shore of the river; my luck held and people from a nearby village saved both me and the woman I pulled from the wreckage. Seventeen people weren't so lucky and died in the crash.
In 1963, I spent Life Number 3. That was the first and the last time in my life that I've traveled on an airplane. It was a flight from the Croatian capital Zagreb to the Adriatic port of Rijeka. The airplane reportedly touched the top of Parg Mountain in western Croatia; what I remember is the airplane's back door opened and I fell through!
Newspapers later reported that I fell for 850 meters before landing in a large heap of hay. I was in coma in a hospital for three days before I woke up. Doctors in the Zagreb hospital told me I was a phenomenon. This time, 20 people died in the plane crash.
Lives Number 4 and 5 confirmed my status as a phenomenon again in 1968 in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I was a music teacher in a primary school. On a school trip, the bus ended up in the Bosna River after falling from a four-meter-high bridge close to Odzak. Both the driver and I luckily survived. The real luck was that we dropped off 25 kids minutes before the accident.
Lives 6 and 7 went on my car in the 1970s. I would have never bought a Russian Zhiguli if I knew they had a tendency to catch fire. In fact, I survived the burning of the car not once but twice. Both times, my fourth wife and I escaped from the burning car in the nick of time, just as the flames were about to engulf us.
Life Number 8: The last big accident (knock on wood!) I experienced was in 1994 when I became a refugee from the war. I was driving my Czech Skoda car close to Karlobag in western Croatia when a UN peacekeeper crashed into me with an armoured vehicle.
Somehow, I fell out of the opened door of my car before it ended up in a 150 meter deep hole and exploded. I broke three ribs and injured a hip but stayed alive.
A much better period came for me soon after this accident, but I had a feeling that my luck would change. It simply couldn't get much worse.
In 2002, I got really lucky. I won one million US dollars in the Croatian national lottery. In the Petrinja region in western Croatia, where I live, I've bought a house, and built a small chapel to thank God for all my lucky escapes and one lucky win, and I've also given a lot of things to all the people I love.
So, I'm back at the beginning because I spent all the money I won. I spent it without worrying because if I've learned one thing after using up eight lives, life is for living. I still test my luck but only by playing the lottery - that's it.
An Australian company wanted me to star in a commercial for their crisps and chips, but no way was I going to Australia. I do not fly - why push my luck at 37,000 feet? Nor do I want to travel by ship because one boating accident is enough for anyone, especially on day one, and after two more icy escapes from death by drowning, I like to hug the shore. So I did the Australian commercial in the studios in Zagreb and not in Australia. You know, I would like to stay the luckiest man alive.
