good week...a few observations...a few adventures...

Well…I thought that I would take the time to write one more entry, for my own memory’s sake, to record the things that actually happened here in the last week or so since I last sat down to write.

So with the excessive snow fall and the fact that I was really in the mood to get some serious work done, last weekend was largely dedicated to writing. I really don’t mind at this point that I don’t know that many people socially. I have a couple friends here in Belgrade, plus a few in the broader region and that is fine with me for now. I am just so thoroughly enjoying time to write, and think about my work.

There is also this odd thing that others have commented on as well, and that is the fact that being here, working and productive, safe and solvent, but alone in a lot of ways…well…it gives one a chance to be really introspective, and I am really pleased about this. I have needed some mental and physical space from work and from home and all of that for a long time. I feel like the last 10 years has been a lot of rushing from one place to the next, from one country to the next, from one project to the next, and for a while I have been craving some time to get perspective…on my life, on what it means to be a “real live” adult, on what I want from life and from my career…and being here is really giving me the opportunity to do that, so I was happy to be on my own for much of last weekend.

Saturday of last weekend my landlord, Aci, came over to collect the rent, talk about the bills, etc. He lives in the north of the country, near the border with Hungary, so it was a bit of a drive, and with the snow, it took longer than usual for him, so it was nice to sit and chat with him for a little while. When I first met him and his wife, Caca, on my first night here, I liked them instantly. They are cool, and interesting and open, just really great people. I really appreciate their candor about their war-time experiences and how it changed their lives….or really interrupted and paused their lives…and I respect their global minded views.

Sadly, this time Caca couldn’t come because she was working, but Aci brought instead his teen-age son, just turned 18, and just got his driver’s license, (the age is 18 here)so Aci even let him drive!! Additionally they brought for me a desk for working!!! HOORAY! As well as a DVD player and a coffee machine! (though by now I have gotten used to boiling Turkish coffee or drinking these delightful instant coffees that I get at the grocery). When Aci’s son hooked up the DVD player, there was a DVD in there already so we used it to test. The video was the son’s Punk band, for which he plays guitar, called “South Punk” – cute, eh – and their posters are the characters from South Park but headless. Anyhow, I really enjoyed their company for the afternoon, and I look forward to seeing them next month. Also, when the weather gets nicer, I will go spend a weekend at their village in the north, so I am excited about that as well.

On Sunday of last weekend, after a day of working, I went and had dinner with my Fulbright colleague, “E,” and his wife, “M,” (who is one of my few friends here) and their 3 kids. I am sure I have said this before, but I am crazy about their kids! Smart, cute, nice kids! 3 boys! I think they are 2, 5 and 7. What an amazing thing for her to move here with no language knowledge and no abroad experience with all the kids and all of that!! I also think that if Serbia were your first abroad experience you would definitely appreciate Western European travel much differently.

What I mean is that a person who has first experienced some of the more difficult aspects of living in a less economically prosperous nation would not be one of those annoying Americans in Paris or in Italy who complain loudly that the 4-star hotel is hardly up to their 4-star standards, (standard complaints from Americans include small rooms, noise, stinky bathrooms, stinky people, no English TV (or no TV at all) and staff that doesn’t speak English [oh the nerve! People who don’t speak English in a country that doesn’t have English as an official language! Didn’t they know “Joe 6-pack and Sally Winebox were coming to see the Eiffel tower!] ).

Yes, it is true that most Euro-hotels, even 4-star ones, are much older than American hotels, with much smaller rooms and fewer amenities than American ones. That is just how it is. My opinion is any place that is not ridiculously expensive where you have no bedbugs+ private shower and bathroom + sheets and towels included = a pretty excellent Euro-hotel experience! You don’t go to Italy to sit in your hotel room anyway!

Anyhow, I imagine that coming to Serbia, which is great in a lot of ways, but is very different from home in a lot of ways, is a culture shock experience and this family with whom I am friends has done a truly excellent job. I have no doubt that anyone who came to Serbia as their first Euro-trip, and especially someone who managed 3 kids here for a year on their first abroad experience, will find even a 2 star Italian hotel totally suitable! (In fact maybe everyone should have to spend a week in a less economically prosperous country before they are allowed to go to France or Italy!) OK…well I digress…in short – great family, great meal, we have a nice time together and my time here has been made a million times easier with them here!

So last week then…Monday – home working.

Tuesday – I was to be at school for a meeting with my mentor, “S”. I was kind of frustrated because 1st - I never get work done there, which means I gave up a day of work, and 2nd because “S” has called me in for the same meeting like 4 times. We talk about the same things, but we never decide anything…what I will teach, when, etc. At this meeting, after the same conversation we have had on four other occasions, she told me she wants to meet me again on Friday morning. UGH! So to be sure that Friday’s meeting was more productive, I spent some time coming up with a few proposals and concrete ideas for her to actually choose from, and this seems to have worked out a lot better.

Anyhow, as we left the office on Tuesday the tram ride home took ages b/c the trams were diverted from the town center. Tuesday was the one year anniversary of the official declaration of Kosovo’s independence from Serbia and we had been getting messages from the embassy all week about the potential for mass protests. Last year the protests turned violent, the US embassy was set on fire and one protester died. As we got back home it was starting to get dark and you could smell burning in the air and hear whistles and yelling. I was supposed to meet a different friend that night for dinner, but I cancelled and decided I would prefer to stay inside and out of site. The protests were fine, easily contained and not too crazy, but better safe than sorry I think!

[So for anyone who may not be aware of the history and context of the region, I have created another post called “overly-simplified regional historical and contemporary political context…in a nutshell” so you can get an idea of what happened in this region and what is happening now]

Wednesday – Was my day to work at Women in Black this week, and I described the snowy drama of the whole thing in a previous post… Basically, after wandering in the heavy snow, confused by the fact that all my landmarks looked so different in the snow, I eventually made it to work, though late and wet.

So my other friend here is an American girl, “J,” who I work with there at WiB. She is a fulltime worker with them, and I basically help her with whatever she needs as her work load is way more than one person could do.

After work Wednesday we decided to go out for food and drinks. Having cancelled our plans several times before because I was absorbed in writing, I couldn’t cancel again even thought I was so wet and so cold and did not want to be out in the snow…but I do like this person a lot, so I sucked it up and we went out. After about 1 ½ hours wandering aimlessly in the snow with no clear plan of where to go, I was once again very wet and cold and really no longer interested in social interaction. I was about to throw up the white flag when we found an adorable coffee place, stylish and cozy, and we had a drink and chatted for a couple hours. It was nice. It’s nice to have a friend with similar intellectual interests as I have because we are able to kick ideas around together, which I think we both like very much.

Thursday was a work at home day again – though I watched episodes of the shows I downloaded a little more than I should have…bad bad girl! I don’t have cable TV here, so I really just either turn on Serbian news to practice listening or occasionally I find a late night English movie. Other than that, I download episodes occasionally that I am meant to watch as I am winding down in the evening, but when the new LOST comes out each week I cannot help myself!

So that brings me to Friday…an action packed day but overall the very best day of the week this past week! I was up early to go meet my mentor with which I had a fabulous meeting this time…a real breakthrough!! I will be teaching a Critical Media Studies grad seminar and team teaching another course for the Women’s Studies Center. HOORAY! I will also be helping her work on archiving tons of news media footage from the war on the website she has designed for the Media Center here at the university. I am so happy we had a good meeting and she seems to finally be warming up and respecting me!

We also decided that I should begin Serbian lessons, and I think I will start when I get back from Budapest. I have heard that there are free classes being offered in the city center at the Philology School, so I am looking into it.

After I left her I realized that once again I forgot to put my map in my bag so I flagged a taxi to go to my next destination. Now…I wouldn’t normally report something as mundane as a taxi ride, but I have to tell you about this strange “ABBA-esque” near obsession I am noticing here. 1st of all, every time I go to the grocery store there is ABBA and ABBA-like disco music blaring from the ceiling speakers. The first few times I thought it was a coincidence, but by now I have actually come to recognize the songs and even find myself singing along!!! (God the poor employees! I wonder if it plays all day, or it just happens to be on when I go in the evenings).

Anyhow, as I got into the taxi on Friday, there was this awesome ABBA-inspired song playing and the hook went something like

“Yes sir, I ken boooogie, if the mood it hits me right. Yes sir I can booooogie Boooogie Voogie”

And yes, the exaggerated “oooo” in boogie and then the “v” in what I assume is “woogie.”

This is cracking me up in the taxi with a driver who is fit, very masculine, about 45 yrs old, and jammin’ to this silly song…a song that will never leave my head I am afraid!

Anyhow, my destination in the “Boooogie Voogie” taxi was the city headquarters of the national airline JAT Airlines – downtown. I needed to buy my ticket to Macedonia where I will go for a conference next month…HOORAY! And I had to go in person because there was some problem on the website and the whole week it would not take my credit card. Sooo…I had to explain to the guy what happened, ask him to be sure I didn’t buy like 10 tickets, and then buy the ticket that I needed. I was nervous, but “Boooogie Voogie” had brightened my mood, so I was excited to give it all a try….And the best part was that I conducted the entire transaction in Serbian! Like a 20 minute conversation! I don’t even know if he spoke English!

So elated and high from that little successful conversation and my great meeting with my mentor earlier, I walked home through the city and took some nice photos (you can see below) of various government buildings and cool stuff in the downtown.

Then…what I thought would be the absolute icing on the cake…I went and bought a printer!!! FINALLY! I will use it at my house while I am here and then will donate it to the university when I leave.

But…the day got even better when, after coming home for a few hours work, I met up with my friend “M.” We had a couple drinks at their place and hung with the family, then we decided to try to find a cool spot for dinner…and HOORAY again!!! We were successful!!!

The place is located in the part of town they call “Silicon Valley” based on the predominance of plastic surgery gangster girlfriends that frequent the places. Now I am totally not comfortable at these types of places, but it was early enough that I felt like us “normals” would be OK.

The place was soooo cute! It looked like one of the cool Phillie spots, (or, for any readers from the former UGA/Athens crowd, like a larger version of 283 Bar) with small dinner tables in the front window.

OK, so the staff was not the nicest to us, and the waiter ignored us a little, but I don’t really care. I am not here for the service. The food, however, made-up for everything! It was the best restaurant meal I have had here!! We shared a salad and a pizza – a perfect amount of food – and the salad was a big green spinach salad with egg and bacon and grilled chicken…really great! The pizza was equally awesome! And even though by the time we were finishing, some of the Silicon “Barbie” type crew was starting to arrive, a group of which sat next to us and after a while I realized they were talking about us and making fun of us…I again couldn’t care less!

I was a little uncomfortable once I realized they were talking mean about is, but in all honesty, my general attitude about it is “Look, you are super pretty, and that’s great…good for you…work it for all its worth. I however am largely quite plain, and cannot really do anything about that. I do however take a little solace in the fact that I am here, visiting your country, taking in all the great things about it, but eventually I get to leave and you are stuck here with just your mirror and your gansta boyfriend…so laugh it up Barbie! No skin off my nose!”

So afterward we went back to “M” and “E”’s house, had a few more drinks and then I went home. It was a really good day all-and-all!

OK, so thanks for reading and here’s a few new photos I took Friday with descriptions and explanations.

I’ll write more when I get back from Budapest after next weekend…

Government Ministry Buildings:

OK, I don’t remember exactly what Government Business goes on here, but it is clearly important and the buildings were cool.

Trg Republika

This is the main square in the downtown where some of the major streets come together. You are right in front of the shopping street, next to the Studenski Trg, and right at the intersection of 3 major roads. In front of the statue is where you usually meet up with people to hang out. As in you say to your friends, like “Meet me at 8pm in Trg Repulika.”

Now I have no idea what the actual story with the guy in the statue pointing outward is supposed to be, but he is Knez Mihailova, for whom the shopping street is named, and Knez means like “Prince.” I have no idea what his role in Serbian history is, but I did think it was funny that that bird landed right on his head, and I don’t know what he is pointing at, but I was imaging that it is Kosovo and that he is saying “Yeah, that place is going to cause you guys some major shit storms over the years. You sure it’s worth it?”

Finally I took a close up of the inscription on the statue mostly to show what the local Cyrillic alphabet actually looks like.

overly-simplified regional historical and contemporary political context…in a nutshell

So for anyone who is not aware, let me give you just a really brief, version of the Kosovo situation…and some regional historical and contemporary cultural context. I am aware that this is somewhat glossing over a lot of stuff and oversimplifying and all of that, so if you are an expert on the region, please bear in mind that I put this together for people who don’t know very much about it, just so they can understand a little bit.

OK…In a nutshell…

So first of all I am assuming you know where Serbia is…But just in case…

First imagine Italy. Now cross the sea going east. Now you are in Croatia. Keep coming east, you go through Bosnia, now think of where Greece is. North of Greece (and of course North of Macedonia), South of Hungary, West of Romania and Bulgaria, East of Croatia and Bosnia. (You can also see where Albania touches the most Southwest tip as well). So, Essentially Serbia is in like the heart of Southeastern Europe.

So there is a region in southern Serbia known as Kosovo. It is a place where, historically, a lot of Serbian Orthodox monasteries are located, and given that the church has always kept Serbian history, language, and culture alive, even when the nation has been under domination, it has an importance to Serbian cultural identity in the present because it is a big part of the past.

Importantly, Kosovo in 1389 is the place that is thought of as having been the beginning of 500 years of Turkish domination. The details and their veracity are debated, as time and literature have clearly changed the story through the years, but in essence, the Turkish Sultan Murad, acting on a tip from a traitorous Serb villain, attacked the Serbs there, and defeated them. However, the night before the attack, the Serbian hero of the story was visited by an angel who told him that even though the Serbs would be dominated by the Turks and would suffer for a long time, this defeat was necessary and would if they held their faith, their suffering over this time would guarantee them a chosen place in heaven. Then, even though the Serbs would be vanquished anyhow, the Serbian hero of the story snuck into the tent of the Sultan Murad and assassinated him before being killed himself.

And so the Serbs would be dominated by the Turks for over 500 years. And this is also why there are Muslims in this region. The Serbs kept their Christian religion, even though it meant persecution. But people who were willing to convert were allowed special treatment by the Turks, and were generally left alone. In this way, a number of people, especially in the part of the region now known as Bosnia, took Islam as their faith. However, given that their culture was largely intertwined with Serbs (Orthodox), Croats (Catholic) and all three peoples in general lived in various stages of togetherness and apartness sharing language, traditions, culture, etc. through the ages, and especially given the largely secular nature of communism under Tito, the Muslims here were far from fanatical, and when the country was Yugoslavia, it was common for holidays of all faiths to be celebrated by everyone.

So, back to the Turkish times…Bosnia was divided between the Turkish dominated part (with Serbia) and a part that followed Croatia. While Croatia was under the “Turkish Yoke” for some of the time, they were dominated later and wriggled free sooner than did Serbia (though only to be dominated shortly thereafter by the Austro-Hungarians). When Kosovo was first conquered by the Turks, many of the Serbs living there fled to the part of the as yet unconquered Croatia, settling around 1389 in the part of Croatia known as Krajina. But the legacy of their exodus from Kosovo still remains a sort of national “wound” in Serbian history.

Now, over 600 years later, these Serbs have lived in Croatia for over 600 years are still considered Serbs – not Croats! This is hard for us to understand because you are “American” as soon as you are born in America, or as soon as you no longer have an accent and you assimilate into our culture. And we have a nation with so many races, and religions and ethnicities. But these two/three virtually indistinguishable groups consider themselves to have fundamentally different and distinct ethnicities. Just as race is a cultural determined phenomenon that creates markers of separation in our culture, it is religion that determines ethnicity in this culture – so that the Serbs who converted in Islam under the Turks are no longer “Serbs,” but the Serbs who have lived in Croatia for 600 years are still “Serbs” because they practice Orthodox Christianity while Croats practice Roman Catholicism.

What makes them retain the ethnic identity of “Serb” or “Croat” regardless of which of the three nations they now live in (Croatia, Bosnia or Serbia) is not the language, as the languages are nearly identical and were officially blended under Tito, nor their appearance, as it is impossible to tell a Serb from a Croat by looking. Neither is it their general cultural temperament, their values, nor their food, drink or hospitality customs. In some cases you may be able to guess based on their name, but this is not always a consistent marker between Croats and Serbs either, but is a little more clear with the Muslims.

What make these people in Krajina who immigrated hundreds of years ago from Serbia, who are so are racially, culturally and linguistically nearly identical to the Croats as to not be distinguishable even to one, another, by sight alone, is the tiny matter, seemingly little more than a “narcissism of minor difference” to an outsider, is religion. Both groups are Christians, and pre-protestant reformation Christians at that, but Serbs are part of the Orthodox tradition and Croats are part of the Catholic tradition. And while both have saints, and advent and Christmas, and Lent and Easter and priests, and icons in the church, and stained glass and stinky incense, and can even receive communion in one another’s church (for which, at least for Catholics, Orthodoxy is the only other faith that can receive Communion in the Catholic church without converting and going through the process of the classes and a ceremony relevant to the sacrament), the peoples of the region choose to obsess over the minute differences between these two faiths as the primary marker of ethnic difference between the two.

So if you are Catholic, you are Croat and vice versa and if you are Serb you are Orthodox and vice versa. It doesn’t matter if your family has lived in Croatia for longer than the US has ever been a country, and that your passport is a Croatian passport which claims that you are a citizen of Croatia. You are not Croatian unless you are Catholic, and no Catholic is a Serb.

So from the outside, when I first started coming to this region, having only had met Greek Orthodox people from this tradition, and in the US at that, when asked one day about my religion, having replied “Catholic, how about you?” To which the Serbian person responded “Orthodox.” And I then in turn responded “Same thing really.” I had quite a shock and a difficult time understanding what I had done to evoke the person’s wrath who proceeded to tell me how the two are WAY different. Not wanting to offend further I kept my mouth shut,, but was really thinking to myself, well to someone who is Muslim or Hindu or of some other non-Christian faith tradition, the two look pretty damn similar!

OK, so without getting into too much crazy historical details, suffice to say that for a thousand years these peoples lived in various stages of peace and harmony as well as stages of conflict. They sometimes worked together and sometimes worked against each other. Each was dominated, sometimes together, sometimes by different rulers.

If you remember your WWI history, you will remember that it was a Serb in Bosnia – in Sarajevo to be exact – Gavorillo Princip – who assassinated Archduke Ferdinand and began WWI. After WWI, with Allied help, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was established, with Serbia having a ruling interest because of their war efforts on the side of the Allies. But even though the Kingdom lasted from 1918 – 1941, it was always a somewhat unhappy marriage because the Croats did not like being ruled, and were not really happy in the Kingdom under a Serbian King. There were strains of Croat nationalism emerging, but not all of them were violent or fascist or extremist. However, the small group of Croatian nationalists that would win the day by allying with the Nazis in WWII were violent extremists and were happy to take it out on the Serbs.

So, in comes WWII, as the whole of Europe was attempting, and was one by one largely failing, to fend off the Nazi threat. The Croatian nationalist fascist movement as the Ustase rose up in Croatia, initially independently of the Nazis, but soon with their full support. The Ustase carried out systematic round-ups and executions of the region’s Roma (Gypsy) population at Nazi request, but it was the zeal and vigor with which the Ustase executed Serbs that would shock even the Nazis.

Support for the Ustase by no means permeated every aspect of Croatian society. Many Croats eventually joined the ranks of Tito’s Partisans, who would eventually put an end to Ustase rule and Nazi occupation of the region without direct Allied support and intervention. After forcing the Axis powers out of the region, Tito then established the Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia, which incorporated all 6 of the so called South Slavic nations and peoples into a single nation of 6 equally regarded and equally powerful states. Still, before the Partisan victory, the Ustase would execute a number of Serbs that ranges (according to the account) from 24,000 – 7 million.

Meanwhile, Serbia officially was on the side of the Allies in WWII, but there was still a violent extremist nationalist tendency in Serbia as well – the Chetniks. No less violent than the Ustashe, and no less dogmatic, the Chetniks committed crimes in WWII, there’s no doubt, but the extent and degree was much less, thought not for lack of desire.

After WWII, under the federated Yugoslavia, Tito quickly and quietly dealt harsh punishments to known Ustase criminals, after which the matter was severely downplayed and was erased from public memory. Yet, as I mentioned earlier, the religious leaders of the Serbian church, as self-appointed custodians of Serbian language, history and culture, kept the dual insult of the Ustase assault on Serbs and the forced Yugoslav national amnesia about the events of WWII alive and well and festering like an open wound.

Tito’s Yugoslavia – It would be disingenuous idealized nostalgia to claim that there was no ethnic consciousness from the mid-1940s until Tito’s death in 1980s. However, it is fair to say that in the light of the extreme ethnic violence that would come to pass in the 1990s - or even in relation to the exaggerated ethnic consciousness and division that still exists today - that ethnic tension in most of Yugoslavia - with the exception of Kosovo - was not a common feature of daily life for most people, who mixed socially, professionally and even romantically with people of other ethnic groups. People of all ethnic groups old enough to have spent the majority of their lives in Yugoslavia each speak to a time when all groups’ holidays were celebrated by all, and ethnicity largely made little difference – that is unless you happened to be a person who suffered, personally or through the loss of a loved one, at the hands of the Ustase, or at the hands of the Serbian nationalist Chetniks .

So, back to Kosovo for a second - As borders and peoples do, things shifted around a lot between 1389 the end of WWII, and people who were “ethnically” Albanian came to settle in Kosovo through the years (with a large number coming from Albania to Tito’s Yugoslavia as Albanian Communism was much more closed and oppressive). In the more modern age – the 20th century let’s say - some Serbs returned to Kosovo, and some had remained from earlier times, but by the time Tito united the region after WWII as one nation – Yugoslavia – made up of 6 “states” (Macedonia, Croatia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Bosnia and Serbia) there was a significant enough number of Albanians living in Kosovo so as to constitute a “national minority.”

Given that Serbia had such a large land mass, and that there was both a faction of nationalist Serbs (Chetniks) who wanted Serbia to reign over the others as its own larger nation, and given that Serbs were major victims of the Croatian Ustashe (a wound that could easily have been stoked to induce retributive violence) Tito worried that Serbia would be hard to control and might dominate. So, while he put the seat of government in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, he also divided Serbia’s influence by deeming there to be 2 autonomous provinces in Serbia where the national minorities made up a significant segment of the population – Vojvodina in the north (with a large Hungarian minority) and Kosovo in the south.

So under Tito, Yugoslavia was a pretty prosperous system, far from perfect, but pretty good all-and-all. In refusing to align himself with either the Soviet communists or the West, Tito carved out a niche for the nation as a non-aligned nation, whose location and somewhat more open, more benevolent socialist system made it both a place of great strategic importance to both sides as well as more approachable and acceptable to the West. Because of this, the nation flourished economically, and the people enjoyed freedom of travel more broad and open than anyone else in the world at the time.

Still, even with the general peace among the regions groups that Tito strictly enforced by downplaying a lot of historical issues and stressing that, above all else, the peoples of the region are united as Yugoslavs first, and only then as ethnic groups, and the prosperity the nation enjoyed during the Tito years, there was still sporadic trouble in Kosovo as Albanians often agitated for greater rights and privileges. Meanwhile, this area was the most economically destitute in the whole Yugoslavia (the UN guys I’ve talked with who have been stationed there throughout the last 10 years actually have used the word “shithole”) and with no opportunities and increasing tensions between the Serbs and Albanians there, Serbian people who could afford to leave often did so, moving instead to places in Serbia and Yugoslavia at large where there was more opportunity for them.

Now…fast forward a bit to 1980 – Tito dies with no successor. The system of government he left as his legacy (a rotational presidency that would move among each of the republics) was weak at best and as the Soviet Union weakened and the Berlin wall came down, Yugoslavia was no longer of strategic importance and a lot of the wealth it had enjoyed dried up. In this environment, when political and economic instability met with political greed, ambition and opportunism it was a recipe for disaster.

The Albanians in Kosovo were growing more numerous and more vocal. The Serbs there were feeling threatened, and given Kosovo’s national historical significance to Serbs, it became a convenient and useful political cause to the aspirations of Slobodan Milosevic. Tensions between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo had escalated to the point of occasional violence against one another, but these were exaggerated and sensationalized in the press of both sides. Milosevic seized on this atmosphere to rally Serb nationalism and present himself as the answer to this impending Albanian “threat” to the Serb nation. By 1989 Milosevic became Serbia’s leader, giving his most famous national address on the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo. It appeared inevitable that there would be a war for Kosovo.

However, as Serbian nationalism grew, and feeding one another, Croatian nationalism grew alongside it, the other republics started to fear for their borders and their people with the large shadow Milosevic’s Serbia was casting. In 1990, Slovenia declared independence from Yugoslavia. Encouraged by the war for Slovenia, which lasted just a few weeks, Croatia then declared its independence in 1991, but with a significant number of Serbs living in Croatia’s Krajina region, and reports of atrocities being committed against them, Milosevic was not so quick to let Croatia go, and so the stage was set for the first major theatre of war.

When Bosnia declared its independence in 1992, it became clear that Kosovo would have to wait. The three sides fought, with Croatia and Serbia each trying to take large bites of Bosnia while also fighting each other. By the time the wars officially ended in 1995, each side had committed war crimes, with the Serbs and Croats having committed the lion’s share. Hundreds of thousands of civilians on all sides were brutally tortured, raped, driven from their homes and executed.

In Croatia, a strongly Catholic country, where there have long been many European tourists who feel connected to the beauty of the region, and who has had a more well defined tradition of relations with western Europe (having been under Austro-Hungarian instead of Turkish rule, and as such having grown-up a bit more “European” in the appearance of the cities and the sympathies of the people) there has been a lot of foreign investment and aid designed to repair the physical damage from the war, which not waged nearly as long there as in Bosnia besides. As a result, where there are certainly still visible wounds of war on the landscape, particularly in areas less widely visited by tourists as well as in areas that are inhabited by Croatian Serbs. Still, with some exceptions, and the lingering problem of potential landmines littering some of the most beautiful nature cites in the country, Croatia seems to have fared relatively well in the sense of physical repair. The condition of repair of the Croatian social fabric is somewhat more dubious.

Bosnia, however was not as lucky. Still in a somewhat uneasy peace and existing as two separate states within one nation, the physical, emotional, and social scars of war still mar the landscape.

As the dust settled, it was not too long before the Kosovo crisis would come up in Serbia again. Serbian nationalist politicians needed a cause to stay relevant, and the intervening years had allowed the Kosovar Albanians to form become much better organized militia units. The two sides agitated and occasionally attacked each other between 1996 – 1998, and the media on both sides picked up the same sensational reporting as it had employed previously.

Things intensified in 1998 & 1999, and the international media started reporting (perhaps somewhat one-sidedly) that the Serbs were using the same “ethnic cleansing” strategies as they had used in Bosnia. By this time the worst atrocities of the Bosnian and Croatian wars were coming to light and Western nations (and specifically President Clinton and the US) were dealing with enormous guilt over not having intervened more forcefully and effectively in Bosnia. As images of fleeing civilians streamed into Western living rooms, with Bosnian atrocities fresh in the minds of people and politicians, Clinton convinced NATO to support and engage in airstrikes on Serbia.

From March – June 1999, NATO waged a well intentioned, but sloppily carried out air war against the Serbs, resulting in many mistakes, and more Serbian civilian causalities than had been foreseen or intended. The air strikes did result in Serbia pulling out of Kosovo and the UN being granted transitional authority. Kosovo would remain part of Serbia, though contested and still somewhat autonomous. Still, most remaining Serbs now left their Kosovo homes.

The impression held by many Serbian people after this, even those who had been opposed to Milosevic and the wars to begin with, was that the world was unfairly singling out Serbs for blame and punishment. Animosity over the mistakes and causalities from the NATO bombings were an intense national wound – one that still festers today. For some, the idea that a foreign power would come in and try to force Serbia to give up this part of their nation that had been a part of their national heritage and history for centuries seemed ludicrous. “By what right?” they wondered, as they felt that the Albanians had run them out of their own national historical birthright and that this was then supported and enforced by NATO.

Other, more moderate Serbian voices did not agree with Milosevic nor with his strategies, but agreed even less with NATO’s bombing of Serbian civilians, and hence were still filled with animosity toward NATO, the UN and specifically toward the US and President Clinton.

When all was said and done, war profiteers (mafia) made huge business in all the countries during the war, and these gangsters are still a huge problem in Serbia (as well as a residual problem in the other nations). Additionally, both Tudjman in Croatia and Milosevic in Serbia actually appropriated millions of dollars of the people’s money from the banks. In Serbia this has led to many people living in utter destitution.

When the human, material and financial cost of the war, came into the people’s consciousness, coupled with Serbia’s international pariah status that continued under Milosevic’s continued rule and his obvious criminal activity at the expense of the people, Milosevic had lost most of his support. In 2000 he lost the election, but refused at first to cede power, leading to a popular revolt which eventually resulted in reform leader Zoran Dzindzic being elected as the Serbian president. Dzindzic would turn Milosevic over the The Hague for trial in 2001. But in 2003, Dzindzic was assassinated by Serbian Radical Nationalists, and Milosevic died during the last stages of his trial in 2006, before he could actually be convicted.

Kosovo remained under clumsy and somewhat unstable UN control until February 17th, 2008, when Kosovo declared its independence as a sovereign and democratic nation. By this time, just 10% of the remaining population was Serbian. The EU, UN and USA all recognized Kosovo’s independence, and while many Serbian people have grown tired of conflict and are just as happy to see the Kosovo issue over and done with, there are still many who were violently angry, and the protests ensued that day that then turned into riots throughout Belgrade. The US embassy was set on fire, and one protester died. Even many of those Serbs who have grown weary of conflict and are just ready to put an end to strife in the region are still resentful of the ways in which the EU, UN & USA have muscled the people and nation of Serbia.

Life's lessons that Weather has Taught...

OK…well…another week of exciting adventures in Belgrade!! But before I write a post about the week, there is something I want to share that I think deserves its own post – THE WEATHER! (This should not surprise those who are aware of my bizarre semi-secret obsession with the weather).

Since the last time I wrote – like 10 days ago – it has been snowing pretty much constantly. It will stop for a day or so, the sidewalks will clear up, and then it just snows like mad again! It’s fine, because it’s not really that cold, it hovers around freezing, a few degrees above and a few degrees below – so compared to Michigan or Cleveland (where combined I have spent over ½ my life) it is really not so bad. And while there is easily a couple feet of snow, (at least) this is still not as miserable as winters growing up in the Great Lakes Region. The only hassle really is that I have to walk everywhere, which I usually LOVE, but when the sidewalk is icy and I am wet and my work clothes are dirty before I even get to work…I can sometimes feel a little frustrated.

Though again, I have to say, I have a visceral memory of walking to class in Michigan, with snow waist high and air so cold that your snot would freeze inside your nose when you breath. And that much snow leaves HUGE puddles on the road, so I also remember cars speeding through intersections and super-soaking us on the way to or from classes on more than one occasion! (At least the drivers here, while wild and unpredictable in every other sense, seem to slow down in consideration of the walkers they pass when there is a lot of wet snow. Perhaps because they too walk most of the time?)

I also remember so many Michigan winters as a pizza delivery driver – wearing long johns under my clothes on top and bottom, and full winter gear, with gloves missing the fingertips so I could count money…I remember feeling that bone chilling cold that gets even worse once you are wet, both from the snow that sticks to you and melts as you go in and out, and from the sweat that gathers while you are inside, from all the layers of clothes, and makes you feel like you will never be warm again. (I remember sticking my hands inside the convection oven, where the pizzas cooked, to thaw them between runs!)

I am not exaggerating when I say that the physical sensations of being so unbearably, painfully cold during those Great Lakes winters in Michigan are the most distinct, sharp, physical memories I have. Usually when you think about a time you were in pain or were uncomfortable, you recall that you were uncomfortable, but you cannot recall the actual physical feeling – [someone told me once that is a defense mechanism that your brain uses to protect you from the physical recollection of trauma, and I assume what makes people able give birth multiple times.] Anyhow, I have tons of great memories from all different times in my life, but as far as a physical memory, one in which I can still recall and reconstruct the actual physical sensation, I can recall the physical discomfort of Michigan winter – from delivering pizza, to walking to class, to living in an apartment with broken heat in a sub-zero February.

During that time, when I was delivering pizzas to pay for college (maybe 4 years? Maybe more in total), I was the only female delivery driver. Over that time period I was held-up and robbed (of my cash and the pizzas) three different times – once with a knife, once with a broken bottle and once with a gun. Yet, even more than being held-up, of which I remember things about the events, but don’t really remember the fear or trauma, what I really remember about that job is the winter COLD!

(As a significant – non-cold/non-trauma based memory - I also remember that a couple times a month, at the end of the night [3am by the time we were done], a few of the guys and I would drive over the border to Windsor, Ontario (Canada) – like 20 minutes away - and take our tip money to the casino. Afterward, before going home, we would raid the HUGE Canadian recycle bins behind the casino because Michigan has a “bottle return” recycling program, where you get 10cents for each bottle and can. Filling the trunk to capacity, we’d then bring them to the automated return centers back in Michigan and make between $100 - $200 each trip!)

The only other one of those really intense physical memories I have is also associated with cold. When I was 18, after 3 terms of what should’ve been a 4 term academic year of my 1st year at Ohio State, I was “too cool for school” and considered dropping out. I was recruited from some representatives on campus, and got a summer job at Cedar Point Amusement Park (which is in north-central Ohio between Toledo & Cleveland on Lake Erie, and which boasts the most roller coasters of any park in the US!). Overall it was a really fun summer job, with college students from all over the country working there. You lived in dorms on the grounds, and had full run of the park on your days off (The whole culture of working at that place was a whole crazy world I may write about some other time).

However, those of us that came early, before the season began, arrived at the park, in March to start clean-up. It was still icy cold and we worked outside in a light misty freezing rain for 10 hours a day. By mid-day everything was too wet to insulate you anymore and by the end of the day my fingers were white and my toes were numb. I remember feeling as if I would lose fingers and toes.

I also remember that experience teaching me a few things…

Even though the hard, cold, wet part of the job was over in 3 – 4 weeks, working so hard outside in the wet and cold, 6 - 7 days a week, 10 – 12 hours a day, was challenging. I gained a great sense of appreciation and sympathy for my dad who had worked outside 6 - 7 days a week, 10 – 12 hours a day, for my whole life, and never complained or called in sick.

In addition to a new adult respect for my father, I also realized at that point that I would NEVER want to be in a position that I would have to work outside for a living. I took my time about getting back to school in a serious way, intermittently following the Grateful Dead (another potential post to write another day!), working at a greasy chicken-wing restaurant, managing a Pizza Hut and taking classes sporadically for the next 2 years – first back at Ohio State and then at Community college after moving back to Cleveland with my family.

Although through my first stinging outdoor lesson in manual labor at Cedar Point, and the equally challenging lessons I learned in food-service, I acquired a strong work ethic and a healthy respect both for people who labor and people who serve for a living, my youthful delusions of “too cool for school” quickly faded. I went to Michigan to visit a friend whom I had known from Cedar Point and from Dead tour, and after a week with her and the “college life,” I went home to Cleveland, packed my things, and moved to Michigan to work for the summer, apply for school again and sign-up for Fall classes.

Though I worked full time for most of my undergrad education, once I was back in the haven of college, there was no looking back. I mean seriously… I was not only the first in my family to graduate from college, I actually just sort of went back when I was 20 years old, and then never left. After my undergrad degree I stayed in school for 7 more years for grad school, moving to Georgia for the last 5 of those years to finish my graduate work. If I know just two things about myself it is 1) I HATE cold and 2) I love to learn.

Well, anyhow, to get back to the point of this post, suffice to say, that it was the Great Lakes region’s snot-freezing cold, the mountainous snow, the unending winter (that seemed to go from Halloween through Memorial Day) that made me swear, once I moved to Georgia, that I’d never return to a cold climate.

And yet somehow, in the US, once again I live in a cold part of the country – Phillie - and in the larger world, my favorite place to live – Holland - is actually one of the windiest, rainiest places I’ve ever been…though the temps are not that terrible (a week or so of unbearable, and then hovering near freezing for the rest of the winter) and with a leather jacket to block the wind, I was still able to ride my bike everywhere nearly every day (my MOST favorite part of living in Holland – bike culture for everyone regardless of age and massive bike lanes throughout the whole country – urban and rural alike).

[Summer in Holland is a bit strange. I LOVE it that it stays light until 11pm (though that makes for a DARK winter) but the temps never really get warm…the hottest of the hot is like 70 F degrees, and yet Dutch people (who I think are part Polar Bear) still swim in the North Sea!)

One really great lesson I learned living in Holland - I had moved there in the week between xmas and NYE, and it was some kind of ridiculous cold snap. It doesn't usually get that cold in Holland, but like I had mentioned, the place is famous for generally crap weather most of the time - it is WINDY (hence the windmills) and it rains nearly every day for at least a little while. So after I'd lived there a few weeks and had met a Dutch friend to go out with in the evenings, she phoned one evening and asked if I wanted to go to a party with her at a club.

"Oh..." I said "I don't know...I mean the weather is so awful! Maybe we should wait for another time."

"Another time!" She said almost in disbelief. "But c'mon, this is Holland! If you wait for nice weather you will never go out!" [I phrase I heard repeated by many Dutch people after that day]

"C'mon." she said "Grab an umbrella, put on your coat."

After that day I realized that is exactly how Dutch people seem to look at it. Yes, of course it is nice when the weather is nice, but that cannot be counted on, not on any given day, so just expect it. While this is probably not true of every single Dutch person, and it is kind of an exagerated stereotype, it's not entirely untrue that - by-and-large - regardless of weather, many Dutch people of all ages are on their bikes, an umbrella in one hand, the mobile phone in the other, pedalling down the street to wherever their destination! Women will wear their fashionable clothes and cute skirts rain-or-shine.

And hence in Holland, I learned 1) Except in most extreme cases, that weather is not an excuse to NOT do something, and ; 2) Biking is quite possibly the most enjoyable form of daily transport I can even imagine! And if I could live somewhere in the US with that kind of bike culture I would give up my car and move there in a minute!

OK, so pardon the digression...I was talking about Holland vs. Phillie in relation to weather...

So...while these places are cold, and do certainly have a winter season (as opposed to a winter month in Georgia), nothing is like the mid-West, Great Lakes winter!!

In Phillie (and the surrounding area) they close down for the same minute amount of snow and/or ice that made me giggle in amazement at the stand-still everything would come to when there was even the threat of snow in Georgia! (We mid-West Great Lakes folk are of hearty stock! – As example, recall: Obama mocking the DC school closing with an inch of snow).

The same strange phenomenon of people rushing to the store to buy out every bit of stock of milk and bread that had me in confused stitches in Georgia is only marginally less intense in Phillie – as if the roads will somehow be impassible for weeks and no milk or bread will be available for an indefinite period! [And yet I don’t remember my university in Michigan being closed even a single time (and once it was windchill of -40 degrees Fahrenheit!).] And while Phillie will have the occasional brutally cold snap – I would say totaling 3 weeks of the year with temps below 20 F and maybe 7 – 10 of those in the single digits or below. So all-in-all, while I would prefer to live either back in the south, or in California, if I MUST live in the cold, Phillie is not so bad.

OK…so all of that to say…Belgrade is sort of like a blend of all of these places…

Like Georgia, you can easily have weeks at a time in the dead of winter when you barely need a jacket! A few weeks ago we had a whole week of light jacket super sunshine!

Like the Great Lakes mid-West, stuff here does not close for weather! But, even though there is a lot of snow, it has not been brutally cold. Dress warm, wear boots, hat, scarf, gloves and warm coat and you will be fine.

During my first winter In Georgia, there was – as is usual one or two days during the winter - an ice-storm. I called my landlord and asked him to come “salt the walk,” and he seemed totally confused. He showed up about an hour later with a shaker of table salt and asked me to explain again what he should do with it. During that same storm, upon realizing I was caught out without a snowbrush/ice-scraper, I asked in the drug-store if they knew where I could buy a “snowbrush.” They asked me 3 times to repeat what I was asking for, calling over other employees, and still they didn’t know what I was talking about. (Incidentally, these days not only led to school closings, but to EVERYTHING in town closing – banks, stores, everything but gas stations!)

So while in Serbia there seems to be no concept of closing for inclement weather, they also seem to be equally blissfully unaware of advancements in snow removal beyond the shovel, as I have yet to see a single plow, nor have I seen road or sidewalk salt. I have no idea how the snow gets off the road here. It seems that people just drive on it, it gets packed down, and then as it warms up to those few degrees above freezing during the day, it largely goes away on the road.

But the sidewalks are a different story… On the sidewalk the snow gets impacted to that it is a relatively smooth-ish walking surface, and during the day it is soft enough that you have traction in snow boots (though still many women are wearing ridiculous heels…). But in the evening it all turns treacherous as the top layer that was soft in the daytime becomes shiny and slick with ice.

This problem is doubly compacted on the “walking street,” where all the fancy shops are located in the center of town, b/c the surface of that road is a sort of smooth marble-looking stone that, even with rain, is super slick, but which becomes a little like an ice-rink in the snow. However, the shopping street was only a problem on the days it was actually snowing, as there are city workers shoveling there, in addition to small snow sweeping machines (length of a snowmobile, height of a zamboni [ice-smoothing machine you see at hockey games in the US], with 2 round sweeping mechanisms underneath) that sweep it all off to the side.

The other small problem I have had with the snow here is somewhat more bizarre, and probably has something to do with my own spacey-personality, spotty sense of direction, and visual learning style…

So after being here for 6 weeks now, I know how to get to both of my jobs, and I know how to get to most places I need to go. If I am uncertain, I study the map before I go, and I now know enough of the major landmarks that I can easily orient from them. If a place is brand new, and in a totally unfamiliar part of town, and I have to be there at a specific time, I will take a taxi to get there the first time…so I am not late and I know where I need to go. But as I am leaving I will walk or take the tram/bus, and then I will be able to find it again the next time.

However, I guess the fact that I am a visual learner has been reinforced because once the snow came so heavy and thick, everything looked different, and it presented a few problems with my orientation.

So, last Wednesday when I was on my way to the Women in Black office for work, the snow was coming down as thick and heavy as a raining downpour. It had been doing this the whole day Tuesday, through the night, and all day and night on Wednesday. So when, around 11am on Wednesday I left to walk the 20 minutes to work, it had been snowing like this for about 24 hours and even the sweeping machines could not keep the shopping street clear (which is how I learned how slippery it is…but thank goodness it was not me who fell this time, but some 6 ft. bleach blond glamazon in high heels!).

I left myself 10 extra minutes because of the weather, and started off. Up my street, across the big intersection, up the big hill, past the student square, unto the shopping street, down a few blocks, through a narrow street, then….wait…what now…

I look up to see if I’m in the right spot, but everything looks so different covered in snow…I suddenly feel totally lost! I walk a while in what I think is the right direction…wait…no…nothing looks familiar…DAMN!

Now I am late…and my feet are starting to get cold…God it is really coming down out here…oh now here is the little park I usually come to…but wait….it looks different…am I coming at it from a different direction? Damn! I better turn around, I think I am going the wrong way…

Hey…I think that’s like the 2nd time I’ve passed that grocery store…God my hair is getting so wet! The Serbs at work are going to think I will die for sure…they are so weird about the wet hair thing…ok…I think I am going the right way now…yeah…this looks familiar…good things starting to look familiar…

…HEY…wait a second…How did I get back on the shopping street again!!! Shit! No wonder it looked familiar! I was just here like 10 minutes ago! I am sooo late now!!! And soooo wet!!! The snow is sticking to my eyelashes….I am getting tired of slipping…I know I am going to fall on my ass and….OK…just be calm…step under the awning and look at your map…

…CRAP! How could I have forgotten to put the map in my bag!!! Now I will never find it! I will die out here in the snow and no one will find me until April when the wild dogs have eaten ½ of my face…and speaking of the wild dogs…how do they survive in this weather…FOCUS!...

OK…c’mon…you have this under control…WHYY DOES EVERYTHING LOOK SO UNFAMILIAR! I feel like old people you see on TV who wander away from home and forget where they came from

…OK…here’s what you’re going to do, commit to a direction, walk in that direction, and you WILL come to recognize stuff. It is not all new for goodness sake, it’s just snow!

All right, so this way…OK I got a good feeling about this…hey wait….is that the same grocery store again?!? Either I am totally crazy or I have somehow passed the same store 3 times! It’s like I am on one of those gag TV shows!...crap…trust myself or doubt myself…well either way keep walking or you’ll freeze to death….

…Oh…hey…what’s this? OH MY GAWD! This is the big street I cross right before the bus station that leads me to the stairs that take me to the street with the three porno-huts across the street from where I work!!! …. Got to remember to ask the women at work what they think about running a feminist organization next to the porno huts…

OK, don’t get too excited, you still have to make it down all those stairs and an icy hill without falling before you are home free…carefully…carefully…focus…

Oh my god, I am so close now…oh wait which door is it again? This one…no that one…oh right its this other one…OK!!! I made it!!! Phew!

So with a little getting lost I eventually made it to work. The leader was not even there, which was fine with me since I was late anyway, and my work for this place is largely independent, so while I wished a little that I was home and dry, as I spent the rest of the day in the freezing office with wet hair, feet and pants, I was at the same time so proud to have made it there finally, and glad to be there working on the project I was doing for them (helping to transcribe some really amazing women’s issues documentaries from around the world so that they can be subtitled in Serbian and shown to women all over the region).

OK, well I guess I will close this entry by sharing what I have liked best about the snowy weather here. It is threefold…

1st – I have made a decision to get as much focused writing done as possible while it is the poor weather. This has meant that any day I do not have to go to one of my jobs, I work on my writing and research from the time I get up until the time I go to bed. The fact that I don’t know many people here makes this easier and I feel super productive.

2nd – It is snowy, but not that cold! So you can generally go about your business with just a little extra care.

3rd – The snow makes everything look really pretty!!! It is light and fluffy and covering all the trees and muddy patches where grass should be, and even the ugly buildings in my neighborhood. It makes it all feel so cozy!!

OK, so thanks for reading! Hope it was entertaining for you. I will try to make one more post about the actual adventures I had in the last week, and will write again next week when I get back from next weekend in Budapest!

graffiti - Political Ruminations

So I have decided that I need to dedicate an entry to graffiti. Now graffiti is pretty much a regular feature of most urban landscapes. I don’t remember seeing much in Toronto nor in Vancouver, and I have heard that Tokyo is incredibly clean, so there may not be any there either…but as a general rule of thumb, graffiti is a part of a city’s backdrop, though in varying forms.

In general – and I am not an expert -the most common forms of graffiti across the board seems to be “tagging” and the more general passionate statement – like “Bowie ROCKS!” Or “I LOVE LINDA!” Or even slander like “Keri is a Slut!” You also have as a common variety the names of sports teams – either on their own or with accompanying praise or loathing. [A comedian named Dmitri Martin talks about graffiti in one of his acts – he jokes about how graffiti is always the outpouring of an intense feeling, like “U2 RULZ!” or “I LOVE Kelly!” He ponders why there is no luke warm graffiti – like “I like Marcy as a friend” or “White Stripes are OK, but not really the best band out there.”]

In some places you have more political graffiti, and there have been historical moments, in our country and in others, when political graffiti was read as a sort of “voice of the people” – coming in unsanctioned ways, and often countering the “powers that be” in some way. From my experience, socially conscious or politically active graffiti seems to take the form of either impactful statements or images…and here is where the artistry of graffiti begins!

Now it seems to me that there is a lot you can tell about a place by the form and content of its graffiti. In Phillie, there is a fine line between graffiti and public/vernacular art, with tags and scrawling but also with many murals, etc., many of which speak to the racial struggles of the city’s past and the cultural diversity of its present.

A step up from this is the graffiti I have seen in Berlin (to which I have not been for quite a while, but from what I remember…). In Berlin there is, of course, regular graffiti, but I remember really enjoying seeing the remaining pieces and photos of the Berlin wall with so much really moving graffiti and vernacular art. Graffiti is so much a part of the landscape in Berlin that a WWII/anti-Fascist memorial that was built there about 10 years ago was intentionally constructed in such a way and placed in such a space so that the public’s range of feelings and debate over the monument’s meaning would take place through the graffiti that the artists anticipated people would layer upon the monument.

In Amsterdam the graffiti is rampant, and seems to take the more common “tagging” form…but I don’t remember much in the way of inflammatory or political statement. Paris seems to have a combination of activist and more personally general graffiti. In Spain I remember seeing a significant amount of Basque separatist graffiti. In Central and South America, Communist/Socialist graffiti and murals were an important part of the vernacular nature of those emerging movements. And on-and-on… in cities all over the world.

So…here in Belgrade, you also have your share of graffiti. There is some amount of proliferation of creepy nationalist symbols (like the cross with the “4 S’s” which means “only unity saves the Serbs” – a nationalist rallying cry that I will explain further in another entry) as well as names of bands (“Pearl Jam” – 90s bands seem to still be quite popular), sports teams (“Red Star” – one of 2 local professional soccer teams, the other being “Partisans”) and what appears to be either some kind of gang, or perhaps a favorite night club (“Alcatraz”)…not certain.

You then have a few more interesting layers or graffiti…

On the one hand, there is strong political feeling expressed through some graffiti - a lot of stuff about Kosovo, an occasional anti-Bush, or anti-US, or anti-NATO slogan, and various things, positive and negative, about local political parties and politicians.

Now given that most everything is in Cyrillic script, I have gotten used to just sort of spacing out and not paying much attention to the signs and writing. But I have decided to commit to learning Cyrillic so that I can improve my language skills faster, so this week I have been paying better attention (and have been speaking a lot more Serbian…but that is a story for another entry).

So…as I was making my way to the grocery store this week one afternoon, I was trying to read everything I saw…signs and graffiti…whether in Latin or Cyrillic. My favorite piece of graffiti that I saw this week said “Boris Tadic je lep covek, jebo bih ga…” which, if I am translating both the words and the sentiment properly, means “Boris Tadic [the Serbian president] is a good looking guy, I’d fuck him…” When I saw this piece of graffiti, in Latin script, I walked by it for a minute, when it dawned on me what it said. It struck me as so funny, both because of what it said, and because I understood it, that I turned around and went back up the block to be sure what I saw. I then had to photograph it.



Graffiti reading "Boris Tadic is a good looking guy - I'd fuck him..."


But, while that one was the original impetus for my writing an entry on graffiti, it is far from the most moving graffiti I have seen here…

There is a place in the center of Belgrade called “Studenski Trg” or “Students’ Square.” In this several block radius, I have lately become aware of all the sort of organized chaos of messages which appear - I can only guess - to have developed from student actions for social change. [Students here seem to generally take as a part of their college years a commitment to collective organizing for social awareness and change.]

So… The first strand of this graffiti looks as if it was done with stencils (b/c it is largely uniform in shape and size), and has black lettering. I gather it was done to show support for and encourage collective student organization. The main message of these is “Students for students” and “together we are stronger.” A nice, solidarity message, neatly written, and more cooperative than agitational. [will get a photo next time I walk by]

There is a second strand of Studenki Trg graffiti that appears more confrontational – more geared toward raising consciousness. The messages in this thread are done in either red or black, and they are apparently a response to what the authors regard as an outdated, hierarchical higher-education system. Here you have “Knowledge is for everyone,” “Knowledge is not a material commodity,” and my personal favorite “I know he wears no clothes,” – which I assume is a clever use of the Emperor Wears no Clothes in reference to the importance of critical thought, and more importantly, to make a statement about the authoritarian system of leaning here, wherein the professor is the unquestioned authority. I like these ones very much, and given their cleverness, they are likely effective with students. [will get photos next time I am near there]

When I started to attend to these messages, I was excited by the fact that there are these kinds of student groups here, and that they are seizing public space in this way! Still…while I do like these very much, they are still not my favorite…

There is yet another thread of graffiti that I have seen pretty much all over the city, radiating out from the Studenski Trg. When I realized what these messages were saying, and the fact that there is obviously many individuals who participated in this graffiti, based on how wide-spread it is and the uniqueness of each one, I got a little choked up…I actually get a little teary when I see it…especially when I discover new ones with messages I have not seen before.

So this one is also a stencil, but with different font than the others, and it is also in black. Each one is different, though some repeat. They all begin with the black stenciled words “U 2009 Zelim…” or “In 2009 I wish for…” (Or “I would most like…”). Then there are statements written after this – some in the same stencil, some in scrawl, some in other fonts, etc. And they say things like “In 2009 I wish for…world peace.” Or “In 2009 I wish for…more money in this country!” Or “In 2009 I wish for…no one in my country to be a refugee.” Or “In 2009 I wish for…no hunger.” [will get photos of these as well...]

And the one that brings me to tears…every time…“In 2009 I wish … to live in a country that I don’t want to leave.” This is not suggesting that the writer wishes to leave Serbia for somewhere “better,” but instead is suggesting that the writer wishes for this country to be a place where the young people want to stay. There is a “brain drain” here, like in so many other economically less-developed countries, which means that those young people who are, bright, talented, ambitious and who have big dreams seek opportunities go abroad for school and/or for work as soon as they are able.

People’s parents also want this for them, especially now, because many of the parents of these young Serbian high school and college students are of a generation who remembers growing up in Yugoslavia, when times were richer and more hopeful and whose own lives and dreams were disrupted in the 1990s when dreams of a future career, stable life and economic prosperity were frozen in time for more than a decade.

As the social, cultural, governing and economic systems they grew up with collapsed, their dreams and plans for the future were subsumed in the ruins - immediately usurped by the direct cost of war (military service was by mandatory conscription in Yugoslavia so some guys were mandated to go to war, while people were victims of violence), by an suddenly unstable political and economic climate (some lost their life savings almost overnight as Yugoslavia collapsed and inflation raged, and what was left in the banks was robbed by corrupt politicians), by family obligations (as there was no longer a social state to care for people), and most significantly, by the sudden need to worry daily, constantly, about survival – safety, heat, clean water, hunger.

As my landlord, who left the university in Belgrade during this time, told me, “There was no more thought about the future, no more living, suddenly we were just surviving and this is what consumed all your thoughts...”

It reminds me of “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs,” which uses the visual metaphor of a pyramid to note the ways in which we rank and fill our basic human needs. At the bottom of the pyramid, you have things like food, shelter, etc. Then you have safety. Then you have belonging – being a part of a family or close “kinship” group. Then higher socializing type needs, and finally at the top, but the smallest bit, you have wants, desires, aspirations – general fulfillment. You cannot work for the next level up if the lower level is not stably fulfilled. So it you don’t have food and shelter, you cannot concern yourself with bigger safety needs. If you do not have safety, you can’t worry about socializing with friends, and especially not about working for some kind of larger future goals of personal fulfillment.

So by the time things stabilized, more than a decade had passed, and this generation was no longer of the age or innocence for dreams. Besides, there was no longer money or investment in the country, and largely even if one had held on to those dreams one had prior to this point, they were no longer viable. And so these many of these parents have a dream now for their children. Most often this involves getting them 1st – out of the village and into the city, and then out of the country and working abroad where this younger generation can taste some of the possibility, and cosmopolitanism and hope and zest for life that their parents had seen vanish in front of them.

So that’s what makes my heart ache a little about that graffiti, “In 2009 I wish … to live in a country that I don’t want to leave.” It reminds me that the people here went from living, like us in the US, in such a way that the lower pyramid needs were taken for granted, and many people’s lives were consumed by higher social status needs and personal fulfillment needs. Then – in an instant –these “top of the pyramid” needs were no longer a relevant pursuit as suddenly safety, hunger, shelter, water…the basic human needs were thrust to the forefront of most people’s existence. There is a lot about being here – in Serbia specifically - that reminds me of stories of the “Great Depression,” but many people who live in this country remember a time, not that long ago, when there was wealth, promise, peace and a greater freedom of travel than was enjoyed by any other nation’s people in the world at the time [as a result of Yugoslavia’s conscious and strategic “non-alignment” with neither the West nor the Soviet bloc – more about this in another post].

I think a lot about the way different generations experienced the region’s 1990s conflicts– whether I am here in Serbia or in Bosnia or in Croatia – because I often hear similar stories from people in their 30s and 40s. And this can happen to any of us, at any time…the rug can be pulled out from under us! (I mean something very similar happened to many regular people living in Bahgdad a few years ago…)

On another level, the “In 2009 I wish … to live in a country that I don’t want to leave” message makes me sad because the message suggests both that the writer loves her country, and yet that she knows she will have to leave if she is to achieve her potential. The content of the message, in the context of the last 15 – 20 years in this region, suggests to me that the writer is cognizant of the things that need to change, and yet her words suggest a sense of frustration and powerlessness.

So what this all leads me to think is that, while it is nowhere near the same political situation or level of intensity, I realized as I was thinking all of this through in the past few days, that nearly a decade ago, when Clinton was in his last term and the possibility of a W. Bush presidency was first on the wind, a friend in Budapest joked with me that “W.” would be the next president. I believe I said both “No Way! That’ll NEVER happen!” and maybe something like “anyway, how bad could he be? Even if he wins, he’s out in 4 years like his father.”

Then came the Bush/Gore-Florida-Supreme Court election drama, then came 9/11, then came the vicious silencing of dissent, then there emerged a sort of black-and-white, with-us-or-against-us cultural attitude - nationalism disguised as patriotic duty and moral superiority - reinforced by the triumvirate of FOXNews, the rapid politicization of Christianity, and terrifyingly nationalist country music.

Along with this came a new ferocious racism, then the wars, and the normalization of dehumanization and violence reached its zenith with Guantanamo Bay and Abu Gharib.

Then came the contempt and wrath of most other world nations. And even after all of this, “W” was elected again!

And then there was the mess that was the aftermath of Katrina, and the state and federal governments’ complete mishandling of the situation, and finally the crumbling of the financial markets and what could potentially be economic ruin the likes of which could change the social, cultural and economic landscape of our nation for ever.

Now don’t mistake me here, I am not trying to imply it is all “W”’s fault. He is only one man, and seems largely to have been chosen by his party’s leaders b/c he is easily a “company man” – I see him as like the tip of the iceberg – the part you see, which may look frightening, but much larger and more dangerous part is there below the surface.

Further, any person in the White House at that time would have had a lot on their plate - the terrorist attacks, hurricane Katrina, those things would have happened on anyone’s watch to be sure. AND... while there is no doubt that his handling of these traumatic events exacerbated the nation’s problems, and there is no doubt in my mind that there were much more insidious minds behind the choices – rhetorical and material – that “W” made, the American public needs to take a share of the blame here as well. This guy was elected! At least once, and for all intents and purposes, TWICE!

“W” in-and-of himself is less like some evil genius that tricked the public and more accurately the pinnacle of the ethnocentric, uncritical, willfully globally unaware, non-politically participatory, indolent, consumerist culture that we as a people had allowed to build up around us (since at least the late 1970s or early 1980s as far as I can tell). Democracy only functions when people participate in an active an informed way!

Still, in the decade since I glibly disregarded my friend’s teasing, my political innocence has totally disintegrated. There have been many times, given what I study, when the parallels between the political discourses, in conjunction with the sensational and inflammatory ethnocentric media, and the supporting pop-culture threads in the US in the last decade have reminded me so much of the crisis regions that I study.

While I realize this is an oversimplification… Like the US, Yugoslavia was a prosperous nation. Like Bush, Milosevic, initially, was a popular leader who claimed to be acting on the will and in the best interest of protecting the Serbian people, and with his rise to power came the corresponding flattery from state sympathetic media (which then curbed the critical journalism of other media outlets). Popular culture (specifically in the forms of patriotic themed films about history and Serbia’s counterpart to American “New Country,” a type of music called “Turbo-Folk”) as well as a clear, though unofficial, renaissance of religion and its inference in political life followed suit.

When the wars of secession began, they were not fought on Serbian soil (in fact not until the 1999 NATO bombing did the Serbian nation see actual attacks on Serbian soil). And so, it was through media depictions and political discourses that the people learned what was happening in the course of these wars, and the events were framed in such a way as to convince the people that the wars were being fought for their protection, and that the enemy they were fighting was vicious, inhumane and subhuman. Popular culture reinforced these messages, reinvigorating patriotic/nationalist identity and reinterpreting important historical moments to fit the needs of the present.

Meanwhile, Serbia became synonymous with war and nationalism within the wider world, and when all was said and done, they were left with a horrific legacy, a traumatized populace, and abject poverty – partially b/c of the war, partially b/c of NATO sanctions, partially b/c of the corrupt government who grew fat on both the war and the people’s money. When the Serbian people finally stood up and ousted Milosevic, and elected reformer Zoran Dzindzic as their new leader, there was a huge swell of hope. (Sadly, it was short-lived as Dzindzic was assassinated.)

So while we are nowhere near to the steep “fall from Grace” that the Serbian people & nation have experienced, I do see parallels in our national situations, and I understand the feelings of frustration and hopelessness/helplessness expressed by the wish “ … to live in a country that I don’t want to leave.”

The hope that Obama represents in my mind – a hope for a new era for our nation, for changes in the way we do things - has made me realize that I had become completely disillusioned and disenchanted with the United States over the last decade, and that I too, for a long time, felt hopeless and helpless and wished that I lived in a country I didn’t want to leave.

I hope for the person who wrote that statement that Serbia will become that place that young people no longer want to leave– some days I really can see it happening and others … well… not so much!

For our own country, I hope that the new government is a sign that our own country is emerging from the decade of what seems to me to have been, in retrospect, the apex of all the potential pitfalls of wealth, power and capitalism – excess, conspicuous consumption, willful (blissful?) ignorance, and increasing emptiness and meaninglessness of the proclaimed pillar of our nation – participatory, representative Democracy.

I hope that the extraordinary passion the American people showed for this last election, with its many historical “firsts,” and its unprecedented voter turn-out, signals the fact that the American people are ready to take back their nation, and to take an active role to create and maintain the type of nation that the people want.

I am optimistic about the possibilities for our nation’s future, and I hope that through the work and will of the American people that our country will be “a country that I don’t want to leave.”

Just in time for Valentine's Day!

Just in time for Valentine’s Day… yes that’s right… a marriage proposal!

A young taxi driver named Bojan who drove me to get my residency visa today (for those keeping score, that’s my 4th trip to the Ministry for “Strangers” … ahhh…Serbian Bureaucracy!) has pledged his undying love for me and asked for my hand in marriage. He says that before he met me (in his taxi about an hour ago) he thought he would be a “free man” for life, but now he says he is my man. He says that this arrangement will work out especially well for me because he can help me with my language skills.

He wishes to come back to Philadelphia with me (and have many babies) precisely so that he can visit neighboring San Francisco. He is also convinced that I have met Clint Eastwood and Julia Roberts, who he claims live in Philadelphia! (and apparently commute to work in San Francisco?) And told me that it is his lifelong dream to be with “American girl name Christina” and to see New York. I am the luckiest girl in Serbia!

(I am not so good with Geography, is San Francisco between Phillie and NYC? And where is Clint Eastwood’s house? Can he see Ben Franklin from his window?)

In other news…Belgrade has become a winter wonderland! After stretch of 5 warm and sunny days without a jacket, I had considered sending my boots and winter coat home. But when I woke yesterday, there was about an inch of snow on my window ledge and it has been snowing steadily since then…and looks as if it will continue for several days and even possibly a week! I actually think it looks beautiful!! And even though it is really snowy, it is not that cold…maybe in the high 20s…so it is not too bad to go outside when I need to…BUT I am not doing too much outside these snowy days as I am trying to take advantage of the weather to get as much work done as possible…and I am making some excellent progress!

Belgrade as winter wonderland! (as seen from my apartment)

The last few days I have renewed my love affair with Edward Said and have read and written like a maniac! I have also been downloading from itunes the weekly episodes of LOST and Heroes (as well as The Office) to watch at night as I am winding down. Now…The Office is as funny and well scripted as ever. I like it very much. It did not lose its touch with the union of Jim & Pam and has really taken on a life of its own after mimicking very closely its British counterpart for the 1st few seasons.

LOST is still so suspenseful and awesome and I love every minute of it…though I am hoping the time switching thing ends soon and I was a little disappointed with the cursory treatment of Russeau’s story – she got shortchanged!! Still, I was on the edge of my seat the whole episode and was breathlessly cursing the moment it ended. I have also been rewatching old seasons and I have realized how clever the writers are. The 1st time through I was so focused on the story that I missed the fact that you have a host of philosophers embedded in the characters (obviously Locke & Hume, but also Bentham, Russeau, and Said as well as Edmund Burke – there may be others I am missing). I also now think that the main characters are supposed to represent the 7 deadly sins, though I haven’t worked that all out yet. (This is what I have thought of so far…Hurley is Gluttony, Sawyer is Greed, Jack is either pride or envy, Boone & Shannon were Lust (but Shannon could be Vanity as well), Ana Lucia & Said are Vengeance, Kate - ? not sure…, Jin is Pride, Charlie may have been Sloth, Nicki & Paolo were greed, there may be others, but Locke, Libby, Bernard & Rose and Claire seem to be the antitheses and it is unclear where Sun falls in this theory).

Oh, and by the way, in honor of Valentine’s Day I will disclose a little love secret…I have several super secret boyfriends on Lost, 2 of whom are now dead…Said is my main boyfriend – I love him the most and have from the beginning. I love his personality and his body and his accent. The funny thing is I heard the actor Naveen Andrews (who plays Said) talking in an interview and I like the actor way less than I like the character. Jin is my other boyfriend – though I only like him for his looks. I also liked Boone & Mr. Echo – both dead, and both distant 3rds to the others.

Heroes on the other hand…I am a little disappointed with. I LOVED the 1st season. The 2nd season was good, but the strike threw a wrench in the works. Season 3 start out OK, but now I am not so sure about it. The writing is not as good as LOST, but also there are so many unclear choices, deserted plotlines, and recycled stale themes.

I have so many questions!

…where is Micah? What is with Tracey – formerly Nicky!?!? (Nicky annoyed me, but Tracey is even worse!) They seem to have run out of interesting things to do with Claire and Hiro (the best characters of season 1). Where is the little girl that Parkman & Suresh protected? What happened to Parkman’s kid and pregnant wife? Still so many mysteries from season 1 that are not solved. And the only character that seems to be allowed interesting story lines is Sylar, and still his story is inconsistent and confusing.

The only thing I can think of is that they are running each group of episodes like individual comic books so that there is minimal character development and disjointed story telling, with each collection of episodes acting as an individual story about the characters. I am not giving up on it yet, but I am really hoping it gets better again.

Finally, I had the strangest dream last night…I dreamt I was in the WaWa for like 5 hours and there was all these random wierdos that worked there and each had a nickname. There was “mama” who was the older woman, chubby, bad teeth, loud and not very bright, but sweet and everyone loved her. There was “Princess” who was a hot, slutty, “but-a-face” 19 year old, and her cohort “Queen Bee” who was an equally skanky but sweet single mother in her 30s. Now “Mama” was having a secret affair with “grease” who was the skinny, oily late 20s guy who smelled of cars and cigarettes. And there was one guy (the only one who is actually a person who works at the WaWa in my neighborhood in NJ) who is a good looking Pakistani guy who looks to be in his late 20s. I can’t remember his name in real life, and he did not have a nickname in the dream.

For some reason in the dream I was trapped inside WaWa for hours and I kept buying snack food, cigarettes and lotto tickets with the hope I would be allowed out. I was then forced to sit through a WaWa educational training seminar with them, and I sat next to the Pakistani guy and talked to him (probably b/c in real life he is my super secret WaWa crush).

In all…a very strange dream!

And a very strange day today!

But I am back to work! Thanks for reading and will write again next week or when something else interesting happens…

Happy Valentine’s Day and have a great weekend.

Something silly I saw on FB (just so my number of posts d/n sit at "13" for too long...)

OK, so this post has no real relevance except that I did not want my number of posts to sit at "13" for too long. Yes I know it is a stupid superstition, but I need all the luck I can get...

So here is a silly thing I saw on FB. You can do it too.

1. REAL NAME (no real relevance )
Xina Peacock [NOTE: not my real real name, but my real cyber identity]

2. WITNESS PROTECTION NAME:(mother and fathers middle names)
Carol Anthony [NOTE: This one is already taken by a former colleague!]

3. NASCAR NAME:(first name of your mother's dad, father's dad)
George Michael [NOTE: I think that this one is already taken as well!]

4. STAR WARS NAME:(the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first name)
Peaxi

5. DETECTIVE NAME:(favorite color, favorite animal)
Blue Dolphin [NOTE: should be Blue Polar Bear, but that sounds less intriguing]

6. SOAP OPERA NAME:(middle name, town where you were born)
Marie Willoughby

7. SUPERHERO NAME: (2nd fav color, fav drink, add "THE" to the beginning)
THE Purple Maker [Hmmm...sounds lame! What's my super power? Bruising others?]

8. FLY NAME:(first 2 letters of 1st name, last 2 letters of your last name)
Xick [Which I guess you could pronounce "Chick"]

9.STREET NAME:(fav ice cream flavor, fav cookie)
Vanilla White Chocolate

10. SKANK NAME: (1st pet's name, street you grew up on)
Princess Erica

11. GANGSTA NAME:(first 3 letters of last name plus 'izzle')
Peaizzle

13. YOUR IRAQI NAME:(2nd letter of your first name, 3rd letter of your last name, first two letters of your middle name, last two letters of your first name then last three letters of your last name)
Iamana Ock

14. YOUR GOTH NAME:(black, and the name of one of your pets)
Black Monkey [Now that is a way better Superhero name!]

15. STRIPPER NAME: (name of your fav perfume/cologne, fav candy)
Juicy Score [Not bad, but XXXina is already built in!]

My living space...for E.B.

Having made several posts yesterday I had not intended to post again until next week, but I have had a request from E.B. to write a post about my apartment with photos, so here goes…

When you first enter my building through the red iron doors, you take a very small, old elevator to the top floor from where you walk up 2 more flights. There you find my cozy little flat at the very top of the building. It is unclear if these last 2 floors were an afterthought to the building itself, but I do like being at the top as I can see out over the expanse of mud and blocks that surround me, and have a great view of the neighborhoods gangs of stray dogs that occupy the space below.

Doors to get into the place

Inside the scarey elevator

A view of the scarey elevator

One very good thing is that the walls and floors seem fairly thick, so with the exception of being able to hear the elevator creeking and clanking all night long, the only neighbors I hear are either coming and going on the stairs, or the small baby who sleeps in the apartment next to me, who I do hear crying at night, but not too loudly. The floors in my flat are tile, some of it very nice, and a few tiny throw rugs. This is fine for me, but unfortunate for the people below who I can only imagine must hear me walking and dropping things more than they would like.

The flat itself is nicely renovated, but sparsely furnished, with blank walls, and window coverings that resemble the thickness and coverage of cheap toilet paper. I have managed to create more coverage in the main bedroom by adding extra “toilet paper” panels, so I can get that room fairly dark. The upshot is that there is a lot of light and many windows, which I like very much. Also lacking seems to be electrical outlets. There are like 4 outlets for the whole apartment. But I have solved this problem by getting a few power strips.

Once inside, I have a large living area with a TV (but no cable, so only a few channels in the local language, which is useful for practicing listening, but not as useful for mindless entertainment). Also in this living area there is a couch and chair, both of which are pieced together from various other pieces of furniture and held together with what appears to be large staples. The couch pulls out into a rickety double bed, outfitted with a “mattress” that is about ½ inch thick (but the guests that came last weekend did sleep on it, and did not seem to have sustained any injury, which is promising).

My living room area

My piecemeal couch - note the different colors from different pieces of furniture

View of neighborhood from the living room window (on a rainy day)

Behind the living room furniture is the part of the flat I hate…the “table”/workspace. This consists of a small, round, wicker patio table with 2 wicker patio chairs. My computer takes up the entire space with no room for books or anything else. I have looked into getting a desk, but it is not cheap. I have however asked my landlord if he could bring something a little larger when he comes to collect the rent next week…so here’s hoping! One person did suggest that I wrangle local Roma to come and build me a table, but that somehow does not seem like the best idea for me at this point.

Also in this part is the main heater (electric) and the apartment’s only mirror. So this part is also my “vanity” space. I may try to get another mirror as there is, oddly enough, a mirror shop at the bottom of the stairs. There is also a longer wicker bench which is currently serving as a sort of bookshelf/work stuff storage space. Cluttered and unattractive though it is, I only have myself to impress at this point, so I am fine with it.

Behind this part is the kitchen space. Here you have a really nice tile floor that looks like stone, while ceramic tile walls and black faux-marble counter tops – all and all pretty nice looking. There is a huge counter space, nice cabinet space, a very tiny stove and oven and a small fridge about twice the size of a dorm fridge. Luckily this fridge also has a small freezer space (with one ice tray!) so I can buy some frozen veggies and avoid the mean ladies in the grocery store’s fresh veggie section! (When the weather gets nicer I will buy my veggies from the open-air market.)

The kitchen also contains my washing machine (for which I am very grateful!). [For those not familiar with the Euro-typical laundry situation, there is no clothes dryer. You hang-dry your clothes. For houses with a bathtub there is often a rack that you hoist above the tub once you’ve hung your wet clothes. For houses without a tub you use a large free standing drying rack and hang your clothes. I have lived in only one Euro-flat with a dryer, so I think the hang drying system is most common.]

View of my "workspace" and living room from kitchen

My kitchen appliances

View of my kitchen and "workspace"

view from my kitchen window - this pink building is is bad shape!

The pink building looks a lot nicer on a sunny day!

Off the living area is the larger bedroom, which is the one I sleep in, is outfitted with a large closet space, an electric heater and an actual bed which seems to be queen sized! NOTE: this is NOT the typical Euro-bed with 2 smaller beds pushed together that I have grown accustomed to here, but is an actual large sized bed! Lumpy and misshapen though it is, I am happy with it, and have many blankets and pillows to aid in a good night’s sleep. This is probably my favorite room in the house, even though the blank walls and emptiness of the space made me feel a little depressed in the beginning. I now like this room a lot because of the way the red curtains make the room glow. I also found a bright green comforter for this room which brightens it up considerably.

My room :-)

My bathroom is rather small, but quite clean and cute. There is a nice tile floor in here as well, with a clean, new stand-up shower, and lovely green ceramic tiled walls. The mirror in the bathroom is placed for someone much taller than I, and I can see from about my nose up. There is also a shaving mirror, but I cannot even see the top of my head in that mirror! My favorite feature of the bathroom is the purple hippos on the shower floor that are the slip guards – so cute! My least favorite part is the big step-up into the shower, the metal lip of which has given me more than one bloody toe already!

My shower/bathroom

My tub hippos

Finally, next to the bathroom you have the smaller bedroom – the one I like to call the Kermit the Frog room. I use this room for hanging my laundry and ironing and changing my clothes when I get out of the shower (as it is right next to the bathroom). This room is very tiny, but is a fine space for overnight guests as it is private and not right next to the living room or the larger bedroom. So why do I call it the Kermit room? I am pretty sure that the bed in this room was made for Kermit the Frog! It may be the smallest adult bed I have ever seen! In terms of length it is probably long enough for most adults, but the width is much smaller than a standard single bed in the US – reminding me of the width of a bus seat.

Kermit the frog bed

For the time I am here and for myself (and even one other muppet sized person) the flat is an excellent size, with a nice layout and a good shape. I love it that it is on the top floor, and while the neighborhood is one of the least attractive I have seen here in Belgrade, it is an excellent location and while locals think it is too expensive, by our standards the price is good. Though I wish there was a balcony, and a better workspace, everything else about the place is just fine with me. When I think about the fact that this sized flat would be for an entire family, I feel claustrophobic just imagining it! But that is the American way! We like our space!

So that’s it! My little home! Enjoy the pics and if you come visit, the Kermit room is yours!

Thanks for reading...and I promise no more posts until next week!