Moj Beogradski Zivot...

Well, I guess it has been quite some time since my last post detailing my Belgrade life. I had promised myself to try to post weekly, but things have sped up exponentially for me in the last month, increasing in intensity weekly, and while the blog has been on my “to do” list each weekend, my actual professional work has taken precedence. But in the interest of trying to record as much of my time here as possible, I figured I’d better take a moment to catch up here…so here goes…

Since my last post things have gotten quite busy and have been really exciting. I am now team teaching a graduate seminar in Critical Media Studies with my faculty mentor, “S,” and will be teaching a stand-alone undergraduate Critical Media course as well. So I am pretty excited about all of that.

My undergrad class is a great group. They are all women, which I am thrilled about, and they are really excited to learn. One student told me that at the university here, they rarely have an opportunity to take a critical seminar, nor to think critically about media and culture and the ways they intersect. The model of teaching here tends to be lecture-memorize-repeat, so a course that is largely discussion based is a very different experience for most undergraduates.

I am also team teaching a Women’s Studies course with a woman who I admire greatly, “D.”

“D,” a Serbian woman who incidentally got her PhD at Rutgers and who speaks finer English than I, recently gave a brilliant lecture here where she adapts some of the central ideas of Hannah Arendt to speak to the process of post-conflict transition here. “D” has been a great ally and friend to me, and I am so happy to know her!! Anyhow, “D” runs the Women’s Studies Center here in Belgrade. When she started the center it was considered too radical to be part of the university, and she built and maintained it all with outside funding, offering unofficial degrees with free classes taught by professors from the university, unpaid, that were taken by students on their own in conjunction with their regular courses. The center is now a part of the university, but it has been a long road, and the whole process has made “D” a well respected and admired member of the scholarly, peace-activist and feminist communities here.

Possibly the most exciting development in my own university-centered scholarly life here is that I have been invited by the university to stay on for the fall semester. I do not know if this will be a possibility as yet, because there still has to be funding from my fellowship to make this possible, but the embassy here has endorsed me, so now I am waiting to see what Washington will offer. If the offer is enough for me to live on, and if my current home institution in the US approves, I will stay until December.

While living here presents its unique challenges and it is certainly no picnic on a day-to-day basis, the work I am doing here feels so important and relevant, and I am getting so much writing and thinking done! I sincerely hope that it works out that I can stay. If so, I will come home to the US for 6 weeks, from mid-July through labor day, and will come back to Serbia through mid-December. If not, I will go home to NJ in mid-July and will prepare for my fall term in the US. Aside from the work I am doing at the university, another reason I would very much like to stay on here for a while more is my work with the local feminist peace activist group, Women in Black.

Since my last post, in the course of my volunteer position with Women In Black, I was able to attend a lecture by a local feminist scholar, Zagorica Golubovic. She had been part of a movement during the Tito years that was removed from the universities for anti-Tito protests, was reinstated in the 1980s, and then retired during the Milosevic years when she found she did not agree with nationalist policies either. Her lecture was fantastic! Very contemporary! And also most interesting to me was the fact that the entire lecture was in Serbian, yet she spoke so clearly and passionately that I totally understood. After the lecture, when I spoke with her, it turns out that she was a guest professor at Haverford during the years between her dismissal and her return to the Serbian academy…more evidence to me that Haverford College is a model institution in my mind!

The group hosts many interesting lectures. Today there was one by a Biology Professor on bio-ethics and embryonic research, in which the new Obama lift on Bush’s ban figured prominently. In a few weeks I will be speaking to the group as well…though I doubt if I will be as impressive as the people I have seen speak there so far!

Further, another important part of the group’s work is their public demonstrations. Ranging from post-war issues to gender equality to gay rights (a topic that receives a terrifying amount of venom here) the organization stages public demonstrations of many varieties. They also engage in various regional outreach programs and other related training seminars for would-be activists across the region.

I thoroughly enjoy working for this group. I am meeting so many fascinating people, learning endless things about the past and contemporary political and social culture of the region, and am gaining infinite insight for my scholarly writing. Also, due in no small part to the fact that the group’s figure head, a 3 time Nobel Peace Prize nominee and world renowned activist, speaks largely only in Serbian and at such a pace as to give my own notorious excited ramblings a run for their money, my language skills are improving exponentially! I have also been so fortunate as to have made a genuine friend here in “J.”

Honest, funny and charming with super-hero intellect and an ever greater gift for patience, “J,” an American girl from California with a degree from Smith who is here for a two year post in between her MA and PhD in history, has become a sort of “partner in crime.” Together we decipher Cyrillic signs, Serbian language and vague directions to traverse both the city and the landscape of the organization.

While my weeks here typically consist of week-days at the university, and at the Women in Black, and evenings and weekends in my apartment furiously writing, I have occasionally taken time for other things. Each week I usually have dinner at least one night with the family of my Fulbright colleague “E” and his wife “M.” This has become so enjoyable that I come to think of it as going home to the family for dinner. A concert of a nice home-cooked meal, (as opposed to my usual fair of packaged soup, pasta, frozen spinach or whatever else can be made in ten minutes or less), a few glasses of whiskey, and a few hours of conversation that ranges from music to the wonders of daily Serbian life to chats with the kids about various things (including their occasional sightings of the Belgrade zoo’s one-eyed seal pup, and the school-day intrigues of the two older boys), I look forward to these weekly meals.

Also, usually once a week, “J” and I try to go out for a drink and a chat. While finding the desired place is often a challenge, the truth is that the walk is typically more of the “event” than the sitting for the drink itself. While I have had a few good experiences going out in the city here, more often than not it is abundantly clear that we are not exactly the most desired clientele. It is hard to explain really…it is not anything specific about “J” and I, more about the culture here, and the way they feel about Americans in general. I think I can best explain it by way of a chance encounter I had on my way home a few days ago…

While walking down the street at about 9pm, I was approached by two women who were…unusually…smiling! They asked me in Serbian if I knew where a certain restaurant was located. Thrilled that I actually understood what they were asking, I answered in Serbian that I did not know, but that I had a Belgrade guidebook with me. I pulled out the book, and they immediately switched to accented English, exclaiming in giggles that they had been practicing what they would say in Serbian for 2 blocks before they decided to approach someone! It turned out I was talking with two Italians who work for their embassy here. I asked them how they like living in Belgrade and one responded “It’s OK…I mean we like it….it just takes some getting used to!” The other than chimed in “Yeah, I mean it is like there is a penalty for smiling here, as if it is against the law!”

And that about sums it up…it’s nice, but it takes some getting used to. People are lovely, but not exactly thrilled that you are here. And smiling, especially on the street in the company of strangers, is about as common as eyeglasses for a Cyclops. To further emphasize this point, Cafes, bars and restaurants will typically, even if empty, have “reserved” signs on the tables, and if you don’t appear to be their desired clientele, they will often claim that there is a birthday party coming in, and that they have no room.

This is frustrating, and makes me really uncomfortable because I hate knowing that I am in a situation where people do not like me. I don’t care that I know that there are people in the world that do not like me…as a concept I mean…because no one is liked by everyone and no one likes everyone, and usually I will either avoid people who I know do not like me, or if forced into a situation with them, both parties will be civil and make appropriate pretenses. So I find it difficult to know that at any given moment at least ½ of the people on the street already do not like me, simply because I am American.

Now, I completely understand why, in theory, people in other countries may not like Americans, especially given our foreign policy, our tradition of cultural and capitalist imperialism, and the ways in which we are somewhat of a loud, globally unaware, “bull in a China shop” as travelers – and especially given the local take on our role here in the 1990s, the NATO bombings in 1999, and what is perceived as our meddling in the affairs of this nation overall. However, these are stereotypes and one can make generalizations about any culture, or can dislike any nation’s government policies, but still, when you meet people, you give them a fair shake. Some people here do give us a fair shake, but many do not. This makes me supremely anxious and uncomfortable whenever I leave the house. I try to see it as an opportunity to be an “ambassador of my people,” but more often than not, I move through space being as invisible as possible, and hoping to avoid unanticipated encounters.

This in conjunction with the loose temporal urgency of people here (nothing is important enough to be done NOW), the broken streets that seem to conspire against my attempts to remain upright (I fell again today with the force of an egg dropped from a 5th story roof…my left knee is in such pain that I hope I have not done permanent damage), the grammatical puzzle that plagues my efforts to master the language (there are no prepositions, instead, each word changes its form to denote prepositions), and a host of other minor frustrations, as well as the overwhelming sadness I feel when I see the poverty of the formerly middle class, and the fact that there is so much potential and desire in the nation’s youth that is thwarted by the backwards bureaucracy so resistant to change and the draconian travel and visa restrictions that the rest of Europe and the US place on the people here because of the government and their f’d-up politics, means that this is not what I would consider a particularly easy place to be a foreigner.

Still, even with these frustrations, I am deliriously happy for the opportunity to be here. I love my work at the university and with the WiB. I love the fact that I am getting so much writing and scholarly work done. I love the challenges of learning to negotiate my day-to-day life here. And I especially love the fact that being here makes me hyper-aware of all of the things I take for granted every day, and, as cheesy as it is, makes me appreciate small things I have at home.

I love it that I am grappling with a foreign language, and that I live in a place where my every wish is not as easy as hopping in the car and heading to the nearest shop. I love it that students and interested citizens (as well as university profs and activists) will attend lectures or performances in their free time…without extra credit or incentive. I love that it is normal to have a beer or glass of wine with lunch, but that rarely do I see people intoxicated. I love walking everywhere (when I don’t fall down), and much of the time I actually like being invisible.

OK…one last bit to say here…

I want to tell you about a great night out I had last weekend…

We had been invited by the embassy to attend a performance at the Philharmonic hall of a string quartet that was visiting. I brought “J” and we met “E” and “M” there as well. We all got dressed in the best clothes we brought, which is not saying much considering you are only allowed 2 suitcases and one of mine was filled with books! When we arrived at the hall, the first thing I noticed was that everyone, from age 8 to age 80, was dressed in modern, stylish clothes with matching shoes and expensive handbags…yes I felt a little ashamed as I became increasingly aware of how shabby my clothes looked in comparison, but I was not going to let that put a damper on my evening…I had so been anticipating a fun evening out!

The performance was lovely! And afterward there was a wine and champagne reception – (where incidentally some of the same impeccably dressed folks could be seen pouring 3 or 4 free glasses of wine into larger cups to get as much free wine as possible) – and we stayed a bit, had a glass of wine and chatted. I was excited that I actually ran into a few Serbian people I now know here, as well as a few Americans I have met at the embassy.

Afterward, the four of us went to the nearby, well-known Plato café where we had a few cocktails and chatted. Having had a babysitter for the first time since their arrival in September, “E” and “M” went home at about 10pm, and “J” and I met up with a her roommate and another friend of hers. Us girls then went out to one of the hundreds of floating nightclubs that line the rivers here.

When we first arrived it was totally empty, with only us and the workers. We were about to leave when someone stopped us and said that within ½ hour the place would be packed. Skeptical, but ready for another drink, we decided to stay for one drink and see what happened. Almost immediately the music started and it was hot! Soon joined by a Serbian friend of one of the girls, we started chatting and dancing a bit, and true to the bartender’s word, the place was soon so packed there was barely room to move! The music was funky and fun, and we danced like crazy for hours! When we decided we were tired and ready to leave - at about 3am - the place was still so packed that it took us about 10 minutes to work our way to the door! All-in-all…the most fun night I’ve had out in Belgrade since my arrival! While my nights out in Budapest were all fantastic fun, I had not been out for a really fun night in Belgrade since my arrival, and this one was just what I had needed!!

So…next Tuesday I leave for Skopje, Macedonia for a conference, and will then spend the weekend with my cousin and some friends in Holland. In the five days before that adventure begins I have a mountain of work on my plate for this weekend, classes to teach, and a WiB day on Monday. I am looking forward to seeing Skopje, and to being back in Holland for a few days. After that, I will come back and will host a Dutch artist/activist for a few days while she does some work here in Belgrade, and will further come back to a schedule of classes, WiB work, writing and invited lectures that is already forming the foundations of the inevitable mountain of anxiety that I know will overcome me while I am gone.

Still I am excited for the inevitable adventures I will have in the next week, and I look forward to coming back and writing about it.

As always, thanks for reading! Until next time…