Belgrade in Spring!

I know I haven’t written in a while and it is not for lack of things to say so much as lack of time to say them. It took me the first few months to gain local trust and acceptance and now that I have (to a certain extent) I am on non-stop go over here!

OK, well I guess the first thing I should share is the big news…I have been awarded a grant to stay here in Belgrade until December! I will go home for a few weeks to see Gram and fam, but then I am back here to teach and research. I had been waiting to hear for quite a while, and the day I found out I had resigned myself to the fact that I was going home, and started to get excited about tuna sandwiches, my bike, my cat and my beach… but I am really happy that I am able to stay. The fact that it took so long to get on the inside track – both in the organizations I am researching and at the university – means that I really do need extra time to get things accomplished.

Other news…springtime in Belgrade is fantastic! People had promised it would be so, but the harsh nature of the winter (both in terms of the weather and the people) made me doubt it. However, the weather has been gorgeous for about 3 weeks now and as soon as the sun came out, the city seemed to triple in population, all the cafes set up outside seating, and suddenly people became more friendly! I am so happy about this turn of events!! And the people are lovely! The women are so thin and fabulously (although scantily) dressed, and I actually saw a man today who looked like he stepped off a billboard...so good looking that I instantly felt much much uglier! The women are wearing crazy high heels, and another trend here seems to be capri pants or shorts with tights and high-heel boots or stilettos. Not sure I could pull it off, but fun to see! Oh...and one girl yesterday was wearing a loosely crochted red sweater and a white thong...nothing else but stiletto boots!

The upshot of all of this beauty of spring is that even the commute to my jobs each day is more fun as everyone is happy and much much kinder. Also, everything is green, and even my neighborhood which, if you think back to the early pics, was ugly and depressing in the winter is alive, green and beautiful! The downside is that with all of these ridiculously lovely and skeletally thin people around, I am so self-conscious of my body and my looks that I wish I could be invisible!

With regard to my work/life balance – I am still doing much more work than socializing, but my work has been really exciting and I finally feel like I am starting to know some people in Belgrade, so all of that is fantastic. On the plus side – I am teaching my own course and giving lectures in a few other profs courses and this has been getting better and better each week! My work with the activist orgs in the region is going well too. They are starting to trust me more and give me more responsibility. On the less positive side – my stupid computer caught a virus (well more like stupid me b/c it happened when I tried to get a free download of LOST) and even after lots of time working it out with my dad, things still are not back to super perfect order.

Another down-side of my Beogradski Zivot lately is the things I have been missing… It is not the same things consistently, for the most part, but it is different things in varying intensities each week. Tuna sandwiches, my cat, Golden Grams, my bike, my cat, my family, the gym, my cat, my beach, my friends, Phillie restaurants, and my cat. I have also been missing actual physical human contact. I am so touch deprived that I am totally tempted to adopt a cat or dog while I am here and to bring it home at the end, but I am desperately trying to resist this urge. There are so many homeless pets here, and I want to pet them all, but I am afraid that they have parasites and other nasty things that feral, trash eating animals pick-up, so I am resisting this urge as well.

Which reminds me… I went to the zoo again yesterday afternoon. So many zoo babies it is adorable! Baby zebra, baby bear, baby wolves, baby lions…etc. I just wanted to hug them all! But I didn’t and I wouldn’t because as cute as they are, wild animals do not want to be kissed and hugged… Which brings me to my next point…

One really strange thing about the Belgrade zoo is that it is totally a “personal responsibility” zone. In most of the enclosures there is no space between the fence or cage and the sidewalk so you can easily stick your fingers in the cage. There are signs on each that say (in Serbian and English) THESE ARE DANGEROUS ANIMALS! DO NOT TOUCH!! But people ignore these signs to a certain extent. When it concerns the wolves and smaller deer-like creatures it is no matter as they seem relatively tame. But there is a cheetah exhibit that is death-defying in this capacity! Yesterday, as the small children squealed excitedly outside its enclosure, one of the cheetahs paced back and forth in anticipation of a child-sized snack. I wonder how many fingers are lost each year! Clearly this is a no law-suit nation totally relying on personal responsibility. If you are dumb enough to put your hand in a cheetah’s cage and that cheetah happens to make your hand a snack, you are responsible for the choice you made. A good system in theory, but astounding for us Americans.

Another great development for me is that I am finally starting to crack the code of the Cyrillic alphabet. The good thing is that I am finally able to decipher store windows, street signs and local graffiti, which because I am a visual learner is helping my language skills along. The bad part is that, more often than not, the graffiti and posters that I am now able to read are actually saying things that I was better off not understanding! Advocating nationalist creeps for president, begging for death to Nato/America/EU, and a whole barrage of nationalist slogans can be seen in poster and graffiti form! However, along with this, I have also noticed another hilarious phenomenon…

Now I have seen this before in other non-English speaking countries, but had forgotten about it…it is the phenomenon of non-sensical English writing. From t-shirts advocating US professional sports teams that don’t exist (New York Wolves) to unwittingly worn dirty slogans (Easy Lay, or Brazilian Wax Bikini Team), to erred knock-offs (like Mike instead of Nike), to my favorite – amusing mistakes that change the whole intended meaning. My recent favorite of these is the girl I saw on the tram a few weeks ago on my way home from work. Here stood this stick-thin hottie (as are most of the women here…so thin that from behind their legs look like if you picked up a piece of cooked spaghetti in the center) in a t-shirt depicting a cartoon stylish girl with her hands full of shopping bags. The text underneath said “Why not go to the suburbs for a day of shooting friends and fun!” Hilarious! Clearly “shooting” is supposed to be “shopping,” but to me, it is even more impactful as an ironic critique of the suburbs.

I have also seen a few “idioms” that just do not seem to translate into English in a way that I can make sense of. One local billboard says “It is difficult to force a frog into water!” Hmmm… I am not quite sure what this means, and the fact that it is an ad for mobile phones is even more confounding. I am guessing that it is suggesting that because a frog is already naturally inclined toward water that should he claim he was forced, it is a specious claim on the frog’s part. Like the misguided idea that a girl dressed provocatively who claims sexual harassment is not credible b/c her look “asks” to be sexually harassed? Or the even more uncomfortable phrase “you can’t rape the willing”??? I don’t know really. I have been thinking about it for a week though and I can’t decide what it means!

Another one I heard this weekend is supposed to be a Danish idiom – “In the dark all cats are grey.” At first I thought this was a sort of socialist statement that everyone is equal – like “we all put our pants on one leg at a time.” So imagine my surprise to learn the meaning as having to do with “hooking-up.” Like it doesn’t really matter what your “hook-up” looks like, as long as you are getting laid, because “in the dark, all cats are grey.” Hmmm…

Beyond the fact that my daily comings-and-goings have thankfully become routine in that I rarely get lost and have regained enough language to complete most simple transactions, I have a few exciting things coming up in the next few weeks…

- One of my besties, “A,” who grew up here, but now lives in Holland, is coming to visit her family and me for a week starting Monday!! WOO-HOO! I am so excited!! And while she is here I am getting my hair cut and colored – and it is far past due for this!

- Australian “L” is coming back through town on his way to Greece, which should be fun.

- A Bosnian activist/filmmaker/professor friend is coming through in a couple weeks, and I have organized a screening of his film while he is here! This is great b/c I am working in conjunction with several of the organizations here to make it possible. I am excited to get exposure for the film and to work more closely with the groups.

- AND…I am seeing “P” for 8 days in May! We are going to Italy!! His first time to Europe, so it should be fun. Will surely write about this and post pics!!

OK, well I have to cut this entry here b/c I have work to do. Will try to write more soon as the days go by. Thanks for reading and happy spring!

Down the Shore...

Here it is...what you've been waiting for...

I saw this link on a friend's facebook and I had to add it here.

It's for everyone whose asked me what it is like to live in South Jersey...

http://www.philebrity.com/2009/04/06/breaking-rain-clears-sun-comes-out-phileb-staff-hops-in-the-car-to-go-to-guido-beach/

And one for Emma...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY4SF8xWKFo

Belgrade zoo...amazing animals...

Went to Belgrade zoo yesterday. Lovely day...spring is here and all is lovely. I had a visitor over the weekend (a guest from Holland) and on Sunday morn we went to the Belgrade zoo. I will write about the whole visit later, but just had to share a few pics from the zoo.

Check out this amazing peacock that is in the Belgrade zoo... I've never seen anything like it!

So beautiful! Puts a regular peacock to shame!

When it is closed, it looks like a wedding dress...

Hard to believe that something so elegant and lovely is a male!

This one appears to be a mixed breed....or perhaps the elusive "skunk peacock"

I had never seen this bird before either...the zoo had so many cool birds. But this one reminded me that...like the strip club Deja Vu in Michigan...this zoo has hundreds of beautiful birds and one ugly one.

Porno-Skopje!

PORNO-SKOPJE
Hi all! So I’ve had so many exciting adventures since the last time I wrote I am not even sure if I can get to writing about all of them tonight! But I will begin with my trip to Skopje, Macedonia - where I went for an academic conference.

I should first start by saying Skopje is awesome! What a super fun, really beautiful place! Great wine, friendly, attractive people, tons of good restaurants, beautiful scenery, and really affordable!!

After a harried few days teaching, packing and getting sorted out, I took the late flight into Skopje after teaching on Tuesday night. Arriving around 11pm, the hotel had sent a driver to pick me up. When I got into his very comfortable car, he immediately turned on the video screen in the passenger seat and proceeded to play a mix of pop and hip-hop videos for me…his favorites mostly, but he did take a few requests. After the ½ hour drive to my hotel, the driver, Goce, then let me check in, and drove me to get something to eat. He would then be my driver for most of the time there…which worked out excellently!

Goce dropped me off at the pizza place. I ordered a pizza for take away, and walked back to the hotel (about 10 minutes walk). On the way I passed a total of about 15 people, and much to my delighted surprise, each one looked up, smiled and said “Dobar vece” or the more informal “Zdravo!” Quite a change from Belgrade!

I got back to my room – which I must add, far exceeded my expectations! Clean, friendly, comfy, free wireless, etc. I highly recommend Hotel 7 to anyone going to Skopje. I turned on the TV while I ate my dinner. I was thrilled to find I had nearly 100 channels in English, Greek, German, Hungarian, Serbian, Macedonian, and maybe a few others. I watched an episode of CSI and then turned on CNN (for the 1st time in months!). When that got boring I began to flip around…and that’s then the unexpected happened…

…At one moment the TV was talking at a reasonable sound level about president Obama, but with an innocent flip of the channel it was suddenly blaringly loud, graphic pornography with a woman yelling “smack my ass! Smack my ass!” It’s late, the walls are thin, I flip it quickly, but the next channel is a Spanish telenovella. I go up one more, and NO JOKE…more graphic porn! To spare you 98 channels of this, I will summarize by saying that about every 3rd channel was a different manifestation and degree of pornography. There was a drag queen with a boy, a series of slides with skin pics, girl-on-girl, 2 girls and a boy...you name it!

It began to strike me as hilarious. First because I felt like “Don’t they know that they can charge for this stuff in hotel rooms?” And second because in Serbia I my TV gets 9 channels that are pretty much constantly playing one of four genres of TV show A) Political discussion, B) Slutty girls singing and dancing, C) Spanish telenovellas, and/or D) Gameshows. I come to Skopje and am not only spoiled for programming choice, but I seem to have dropped into a zone where “anything goes.” This atmosphere of friendliness in conjunction with what seems like a relatively open culture strikes me more like Budapest than like Belgrade.

OK, the next morning Goce picked me up to go to the conference. As Macedonia is like all mountains (which I did not realize) it was snowing pretty badly. The first day of the conference was held at a private university called FON. Here all the university students wear uniforms. They are all really attractive, and the facilities are finer than any university I have been to in the US. The talks were mostly very interesting. The people were a good mix of Macedonians, and other internationals, and there was a mix of youngish, mid-ish, and older than Moses. Every several hours we had a coffee break and were taken to the campus lounge – which looked like a swanky martini bar!

After the conference, Goce picked me up and drove me back to the hotel. That night I met up with a Macedonian friend who I know from a conference in Bosnia a few years back, “I.” We went out to dinner at a traditional kavana, drank rakia, ate delicious local specialties and giggled a lot. After dinner “I” gave me a tour of the city. We took photos at Mother Teresa’s house, and she showed me the train station which is one of the only remaining buildings from the terrible earthquake that shook Skopje in the 1960s. In fact, nearly every Macedonian I spoke to mentioned the earthquake, and someone said that as many as 1 in 5 people in Skopje died (or were injured…I can’t recall) in the earthquake.

Train station - stopped in time of earthquake

Interestingly, there is an old bridge in Skopje that looks like many other old bridges in the region…and most like the WWI bridge in Sarajevo. The bridge also withstood the earthquake. A few years ago, when they were restoring the bridge, they found a ton of dynamite in the bridge that had been left there when the Nazis pulled out in WWII. Amazingly, it did not detonate for the Nazis, and even more amazingly, it did not detonate during the earthquake!

At the Old Bridge

The next morning, Goce picked me up again and drove me to the pick-up point where all the remaining conference people met at like 7am to drive to Lake Ohrid. By now the sun had come out and I could see for the first time how really mountainous and lovely Skopje was! As we drove to Ohrid, we stopped on the outskirts of a town called Tetovo to hear a couple lectures at the South East European University. Lovely town, but a rather strange looking campus – modular.

At the South East European University - Tetovo

We then went on the Ohrid…and it was so very lovely! Reminded me of a combination of Lake Louise (near Banff where my sister got married) and Dubrovnik. A big, clean, mountain stream fed lake surrounded by a village reminiscent of Dubrovnik – with an ancient fortress, centuries old churches, an ancient Roman excavation site, and all surrounded again by huge mountains. After spending the day walking around, touring the sites, we went to the local Culinary/Hospitality Vocational High School and had wine, rakia and food. After a few rakias, and a few laughs with the director, most of the group left to go shopping a 3 of us stayed for another rakia and a chat with the director.

Church at Lake Ohrid

Beautiful scenery of Ohrid

Lake Ohrid

Me at Lake Ohrid

The trip home was long, of course, and we had some added drama when the bus unwittingly left one man’s wife at the rest-stop on the top of the mountain (one lane road) and we had to figure out how to get her back. When we got back to Skopje, I went for a bite to eat with one of the new conference buddies I had been hanging out with, “D”.

The perfect ending to a perfect day…we went to a MEXICAN restaurant (MY FAVE!) and had burritos and mojitos. “D’s” girlfriend – a stunningly beautiful, friendly and fun woman – met up with us, and had a few drinks and then all walked home together laughing and being silly. As we walked I told them about the porno-channel experience, and not a minute after I finished telling them about it, we came around the corner to face a huge billboard. Depicted on this immense advertisement for some mobile phone company is a (sexy) nun with puffy lips like Angela Jolie injected with Novocain. I said “Whoa! What’s with the Porno-nun?” To which “D” said “That is why the pope is always happy!” And in that moment it seemed like the place was a “pornoSkopje!”

The last day of the conference Goce had another job, and I decided to walk outside and just flag any taxi. Now, up to this point I had Goce driving me, had been with people from the city, and had gotten by with speaking Serbian and English. I hadn’t picked up a map (like an idiot) and figured it would be no problem to get where I was going. I flagged the first cab I saw…BIG MISTAKE! I think a good rule of thumb is that if the car looks like it was likely already a rust-bucket death-trap 10 years ago, you should probably not get in. I would also say that if you absent-mindedly do flag this type of cab, but the driver has less than 5 teeth, go ahead and let that one go by. But no…I got in, and to my surprise, this driver did not speak Serbian or English…nor did he have any idea where I wanted to go. When he dropped me off at some high school and I had no map and no idea where I was…I began to panic a little! It wasn’t a bad neighborhood, I just felt really stupid and conspicuous and lost.

After a bit of wandering, I flagged another cab…a nice one…and was brought to my destination. The last day our lectures were at a 3rd university – the Electrical Engineering Faculty. Here we saw all kinds of electrical stuff, concept cars (so Jersey baby!) and a exhibition of their commercial video program. We then disbanded as a conference and a group of us went to lunch. It was a beautiful day! We had a long lunch with amazing regional wine and then walked the city together…seeing the old bridge, the fortress and other sites.


Concept car w/Jersey style

As we were making our way to the birthplace of Mother Teresa (a Catholic Albanian born in Skopje) I hear someone calling my name. Who would I know here I wonder? I turn around to see the Australian, “L” who I had hung out with in Belgrade the previous week! He joined our clan and we proceeded to visit the Mother Teresa house and then proceeded to the old market – the Turkish part of the city. Coffee, sweets, and then we toured an old Hamam (Turkish bath house) that was now an art museum…lovely!

Mother Teresa's House


Hamam (Turkish Bath House) in Old Market

Museum inside Hamam

That night, my last in Skopje, I first went out with “I” and her friends to a great little bar that is attached to a huge art space. We had such a great time! And Aussie “L” met us as well. Afterward, “L” and I went to a party hosted by “D.” What a lovely flat! We snacked, drank rakia, listened to music…all of that. The evening was decisively ended when “D,” who had sat in front of the computer to change the music, suddenly began to snore very loudly…asleep at the wheel!

The next day Goce picked me up to take me to the airport. Hung-over and exhausted, I made my way to the tiny Skopje airport to fly to Cologne, to take a train to Amsterdam for a few days…and that is where I will stop for now. I will write all about A’dam later this week. Again - I had a blast in Skopje! Can't wait to go back!