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!