a little light reading
Turning my embattered blog away from the political for a moment. . .
On Friday night, I sat in a park drinking wine with D. After he failed at opening the bottle with his teeth (classy I know. And it had a bottle cap, not a cork.), he asked the nearby police officers for help. The opened the bottle for us.
The whole episode, police-enabled public drinking, did not seem out of the ordinary to me. Only upon retelling the incident to A & J, fellow Americans, did it sound strange. Where I come from, one doesn't drink in parks - at least without disguising it - and one would never ask a cop for help with a bottle of wine.
Another amusing (but only because it didn't happen to me) incident: Last night, the aforementioned expats and I went out for fancy curry. As A and I stepped off the bus, her phone somehow leapt out of her purse bounced once and fell down a sewer grate. We stood there for a while hatching plans to retrieve it (if we come back tomorrow, when it's light, with tongs. . .), before realizing that it's a lost cause.
When I got home, I promptly wrote down all of the numbers I have stored in my phone, just in case my phone has a similar death wish.
On Friday night, I sat in a park drinking wine with D. After he failed at opening the bottle with his teeth (classy I know. And it had a bottle cap, not a cork.), he asked the nearby police officers for help. The opened the bottle for us.
The whole episode, police-enabled public drinking, did not seem out of the ordinary to me. Only upon retelling the incident to A & J, fellow Americans, did it sound strange. Where I come from, one doesn't drink in parks - at least without disguising it - and one would never ask a cop for help with a bottle of wine.
Another amusing (but only because it didn't happen to me) incident: Last night, the aforementioned expats and I went out for fancy curry. As A and I stepped off the bus, her phone somehow leapt out of her purse bounced once and fell down a sewer grate. We stood there for a while hatching plans to retrieve it (if we come back tomorrow, when it's light, with tongs. . .), before realizing that it's a lost cause.
When I got home, I promptly wrote down all of the numbers I have stored in my phone, just in case my phone has a similar death wish.
posted by rachel @ 1:31 PM
4 Comments:
At 11:10 PM,
Anonymous said…
Rachel,
This anegdote is, as the Serbs say, a "pearl" ("brilliant"). The closest experience I can come up with is asking cops in Amsterdam to give us a light for our hand-rolled cigarettes. They somehow seemed relieved it was all we asked for. Regarding speaking Serbian -- I often have to "tone down" by Serbian-ness when dealing with the Anglo-Saxsons. The expressions like "I'm so tired, I'm dying" or "I'm so bored I could kill myself" don't sound half as normal as they do in Serbian. I won't even go into swear-words or jucier expressions -- there's no translation or comparison.
pozdrav,
Milica
At 2:24 AM,
Anonymous said…
A bottle cap red wine, opening with his teeth? Wha', he hangs about behind Taco Bell in his spare time? White trash! :P
At 4:02 AM,
Anonymous said…
I once offered the local firefighters a hamburger when they came to my house because a grease fire had set off the smoke alarm. I don't think they ate it, though.
P.s. Wow, I just read the comments on your conference posting...I had no idea people were so into reading other people's blogs that they don't know! Also, I just learned yesterday that Montenegro is no longer in a union with Serbia. I guess I missed that news this summer.
At 7:31 PM,
Anonymous said…
Well,
Allyson -- I read Rachel's blog ragularly, because it's very interesting and also beacause I was born in Belgrade -- so I guess I'm a bit sentimental. She writes so well and she's great at capturing the atmosphere of the place.
Regarding "white trash" comment, I wouldn't be so hasty -- the person in question can be a neuro-surgeon for all we know -- the Balkans are a peculiar place.
I believe that what you refer to only exist in the US, in Europe they don't have such classifications.
To stick to the topic, -- uninhibited behaviour in public, today in London, I witnessed a woman being arrested for shoplifting. While they were interrogating her in front of the store, beside the police van -- she wanted to have a "cig" and asked the policeman to light it up for her (she wasn't even hand-cuffed) and he readily obliged. That would never happen in the US...there was something rather touching about the whole scene...
best,
Milica
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