Pustolovina: adventure in Serbian

redirection

2008-01-16T19:59:00.001+01:00

I have a new blog.
It's pink!
It's uncreatively named!
It's here!

Jesus, please save me from your followers

2007-11-13T17:01:00.000+01:00

I have another film to add to my recently-started list of films that a soon-to-be returning American should probably avoid: ‘Jesus Camp.’ It’s an amazing, powerful, fascinating, horrifying documentary about American Evangelical Christian children. Can people really use war metaphors for spreading the word of God? (The literal translation of the Serbian title of the film is ‘Jesus’ Soldiers.’) How can religious leaders instill such guilt, shame, and obedience in ten year olds (A lot of it seemed to be approaching emotional abuse?)? What sort of theology could call Harry Potter and far-from-scary ghost stories sinful? How can religion make no mention of love and justice in this world?

Thankfully, there was a brief respite from the frustration when a pre-scandal Ted Haggard preached hypocritically. I don’t feel good about taking pleasure in other’s downfall, but schadenfreude was a welcome change from outrage. (It was too bad that there was no mention of the scandal in the film; I am sure my fellow audience members would have loved to have known about it.)

While ‘Sicko’ left me feeling small and helpless, I left ‘Jesus Camp’ feeling energized. My future plans involve studying theology, working for ecumenism, and strengthening my own small church, a church will encourages questions, mixes rationality and faith, respects others' beliefs, and encourages members to seek justice in the world. I still have doubts and fears about this plan, but seeing this film reminded me of how much need there is.

enter doubts

2007-11-12T17:22:00.000+01:00

On Saturday night, I saw ‘Sicko,’ which was interesting and depressing. The first half of it—before a tour of a British millionaire doctor’s home and the romanticization of the Cuban medical system—is probably my favorite thing that Michael Moore has done, possibly because he is in it so little. I was really annoyed by the way he introduced Hillary Clinton, though, making comments about her appearance that just wouldn’t be made about a male politician. (That immediately preceding the screening, I had a long talk with MK and J about how Clinton is scrutinized in ways men are not [her laugh] didn’t help things.)

It was a hard film, probably not the best choice for right before I return to the states (at least my health insurance will last until February). The final lines of the film, in which Moore’s voiceover says something along the lines of ‘most countries think in terms of “we,” while American’s think about “me”’ struck a chord. Do I really want to be returning to that?

As I was gathering my things, I overheard the conversation of the people sitting in front of me. A woman said (in Serbian, of course) that ‘America is only for the pretty, the young, and the healthy.’ Again, words resonated. I walked out of the theater feeling much more daunted by the prospect of reintegrating into American culture.

Start spreading the news. I’m leaving next week.

2007-11-12T17:21:00.000+01:00

Last week, coworker N took K and I out for some jazz. We went to a kafana in Zemun where a group of jazz musicians congregate every Tuesday. It’s an older crowd – at the beginning of the show, K and I were the youngest ones in the place by at least 20 years, but the people watching, excellent music, and N’s hospitality more than made up for it.

I rarely listen to jazz, which is ridiculous, as I really enjoy it. I recognized many of the standards they played from my high school jazz band career and, remembering my own lack of skillfulness, appreciated the music even more.

A highlight of the night was the last song. Somehow, the singer—probably the best scatter I have ever hear—learned that there were a couple of Americans in the audience. He announced this fact and sang, ‘New York, New York’ in our honor. It was really lovely to be serenaded and made to feel welcome by a roomful of mostly senior citizens.

It was one of those ‘only in Serbia’ moments. It will be strange to return to a life in which being an American is not distinctive.

Three Costume Day

2007-11-01T16:09:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was Halloween, one of my favorite holidays, but unfortunately one that isn’t really celebrated here. Still, I managed to. And I managed to wear three costumes, a Halloween trifecta that I have never achieved before.

On the Women in Black calendar, October 31 isn’t Halloween, but the anniversary of the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which calls for women to be involved in peacemaking and a gender perspective in peacekeeping missions. To mark the day, we had a press conference, street performance, meeting with members of the Serbian Assembly and network meeting.

I participated in the performance. Eight of us began dressed in roles assigned by patriarchy: a bride, a priest, a soldier, numerous housewives (I was a pregnant housewife). We then faced a mirror, asked if that was what we wanted, and transformed into something else – activists, feminists, politicians. I became a futbalerka. I dribbled my ball around the square, amazed that I had retained some muscle memory of how to do such things, slowly getting soaked by the rain.

And then in the evening, another transformation. A few friends and I decided to throw a Halloween party in a small café. We invited nearly everyone we knew. I was impressed with the number of people who showed up and the number of amazing costumes. I was a fairy princess: wings, wand, crown, polka-dotted sun dress (pictures coming soon). If there had been a costume contest, I would have given prizes to Cruella De Vil (who somehow made half her hair white) and MK and B, who were Tymoshenko and Yushenko (complete with a creepy dioxin-poisoned face), respectively. Definitely the most creative costume idea. (And my friends and I further reveal ourselves to be big nerds.)

I throw parties very rarely. I was nervous about this one, wondering if anyone would come, thinking to myself early in the night that if I didn’t care so much for Halloween, there was no way that I would go out on such a dark and stormy night. A few hours into the party, though, J, A, and I looked around the small café, full of witches, a devil, a gangster, a French woman, a vampire, and a number of people not in costume, and called the night a success.

Is she Balki or am I?

2007-10-26T14:56:00.000+02:00

Isn’t having a surprise foreigner come to live with you the premise for a bad sitcom?... But I think I might be the foreigner in this situation.

F and I have talked about how my going back to Seattle will be like a TV shows set in high schools in which the characters all go to college together (so many people from my Portland life + my family + people from my childhood live there now/still). Little did I expect that my life would take on a plotline from primetime TV quite so soon.

A few days back, I received an e-mail telling me my landlord would be coming to town. She has lived in Phoenix for the past four years. We’ve never met. She knocked on my door seven hours later and has been staying with me ever since. She’s nice enough (well, except for her waking me up last night to recap her day), but it’s not the most fun I have ever had. There was no warning. And while my lease does say I should have 24 hours notice of any landlord plan to visit the apartment (and nothing about joining me to live here), I am trying not to be a jerkface about it. I’ve been lucky to live here. I am sure it must be weird for her to see my Pirates of the Caribbean poster and postcards up all over her wall.

Living with strangers is not something that I am fond of, not something that I was planning to do again so soon. I like being able to be loud and messy in my own space – not that I am particularly loud or messy. Having the possibility is what matters. I don’t like having people tell me to clean (which happened this morning – cleaning is my plan for tomorrow morning). I didn’t realize how dependent I have become on having my own refuge of sorts from the world, where I can sit and embroider while listening to Dan Savage’s podcasts without fear of offending delicate ears.

Still, it’s not all bad. Having her around means that she will take care of the few minor home repairs that I have been too lazy/lacking appropriate vocabulary to deal with.

Let the hilarity ensue.

At least there were no snakes

2007-10-23T14:51:00.001+02:00

I had a terrible travel day coming back—I was sick enough that I couldn’t get too worked up about it, though.

My flight was early in the morning. My roommate also had an early flight, so we went together. We first caught a taxi to a train station, where we were supposed to catch a train to the airport. Even with her French, we couldn’t figure out if the trains were running and none of the English rugby fans sleeping in the station were any less clueless than we were. After about a half an hour, I started to get panicky. We decided to take a taxi – we arrived at the airport with plenty of time. I checked in and got on my first plane of the day.

Somehow, I managed to lose my boarding pass for the second flight. I was expecting headaches because of this, but the customs man was kind and when I finally got to my gate, the clerk there just printed out another one for me (a bit worrying, when I think about it now.)

And then, I arrived in Belgrade, but my luggage didn’t. At this point, I was too exhausted to care very much, only slightly worried that I would never see my possessions again. My bag just decided to stay an extra day in Milan. It was delivered to my flat last night.

I am hoping that these events take care of all of my bad travel karma for a while.

on strikes and old friends

2007-10-23T14:50:00.000+02:00

One less-than-desirable aspect of Paris was the strikes. On Thursday, the metro was completely shut down; it ran on a limited basis for the rest of the week. Not realizing what a headache the strikes would be, I made plans to meet up with a childhood friend, who now lives in Paris, studying baroque violin. After trekking quite a distance on foot, we met and joined in part of the strike march. It was enormous. I don’t know if I have ever seen a march so large. My favorite aspect of it was that many of the union groups had trucks from which they were selling snacks and drinks. Emma Goldman said that she didn’t want to be part of a revolution if she couldn’t dance. I might amend that to say that I wouldn’t want to be part of a revolution that has no mojitos.

After walking with a strike for a bit, we went for coffee. At a quiet moment in our conversation, I overheard the people at the table next to us. I understood what they were saying. My first thought was, ‘I know French!’ It took me a few seconds to realize that they were actually speaking Serbian. If only language acquisition was that easy...

Return

2007-10-23T14:49:00.000+02:00

I got back Sunday from five days in Paris. I have never been one of those oooohhh Paris types, but I have been converted. I see what all of the fuss is about. It is the most beautiful city I have ever seen. Someday, I will return and see more of it. (I was there for a conference and had little free time.)

The conference, organized by The World Student Christian Federation Europe Region, was entitled ‘Is Religion a Source of Peace or Violence?,’ which is something that I spend a ridiculous amount of time thinking about. I presented a workshop on ‘Religion, Identity, and War in the Former Yugoslavia,’ which sparked a really interesting discussion on if nationalism is necessary sometimes.

And the free time, such as it was, was also good, filled with interesting chats that I will be playing over and over again in my head for the coming weeks.

a dash of nepotism

2007-10-10T15:58:00.000+02:00

I can't imagine that many of my readers, except my parents, would also be interested in my brother's new blog, but I could be wrong.

There might be tremendous amounts of interest in a blog devoted to one Seattle Mariner with a funny name, especially in the off-season (at least for the Mariners).

Maybe he is actually giving the people what they want.

sticks and stones... and Neo-Nazis

2007-10-08T15:15:00.000+02:00

Yesterday, on our way back from a seminar on ‘Warning Signs of Fundamentalism and Feminist Responses,’ my fellow Women in Black and I attended an anti-fascist rally and march in Novi Sad.

Weeks ago, a collection of neo-Nazi organizations had been given a permit to hold a rally in Novi Sad yesterday (which was Himmler’s birthday). It was later revoked due to a law that prohibits the promotion of ethnic and religious hatred. The groups then vowed to gather without their permit.

Local NGOs thought it was important to stage a counter protest to show that fascism is not welcome in Novi Sad, the main city in Vojvodina, the most ethnically, linguistically, and religiously diverse region of Serbia. I agree with such sentiments and, although I was a bit nervous, thought it was important to participate.

The group I was traveling with arrived a bit late, but quickly found the rest of the Women in Black and picked up banners (Mine read ‘Women in Black against Fascism.’) and Pace rainbow flags. We listened to speeches by representatives of NGOs (including Women in Black’s Marija Perković), professors, and a representative of the local Jewish community before the few thousand of us started to march through the town accompanied by police in full riot gear.

We reached a point where there was a park below street level on the left side of the street, with only a low fence and a row of police officers between the park and the street. A vocal group of fascists was in the park. Since the park was so low and I was on the far side of the street, I didn’t see how many of them there were; I only saw them when they climbed up the fence. Others in the group went to the fence to confront the Nazis. I stayed where I was. Rocks started to fly toward us. A golf ball-sized rock hit me in the shoulder.

I would like to say that this attack didn’t faze me, that I continued to hold my banner and kept marching, but that would be a lie. I dropped my side of the banner and moved further away from the park. My eyes started to well, more from shock, sadness, and lack of sleep than any physical pain. (The rock didn’t even cause a bruise.) My heart was hurting much more than my shoulder; it hurts to think that there are people who think it is permissible to throw stones at (or shoot or bomb, for that matter) people with whom they disagree. This pain grew when rocks, sticks, and bottles starting being thrown into the park as well as from it. I wanted us not to stoop to their level.

I quickly found some familiar faces and tried, in my now especially shaky Serbian, to explain what happened; the tears in my eyes and my hand rubbing my shoulder were much more eloquent than my words. I wanted to sit on the curb, hide behind a car, and weep, but I didn’t. I had Women in Black around me offering hugs, kisses, cookies, and, today, flowers. I stood with a small group far from the fence someone’s arm around me, dodging further projectiles.

After a few more minutes of rocks, accompanied by yelling and possibly the first genuine Hitler salutes I have seen in real life, the police, who had been standing between the two groups the whole time, began to intervene.

L and I walked hand in hand, continuing with the parade route. Later, after we met up with S, the two of them told me, jokingly, ‘Welcome to Serbia,’ and ‘This is normal.’ Even in jest, these words were the most soul-crushing of all. I don’t want to live in a world where such things are normal, where teargas and stones are ordinary responses to peaceful protests, where ideas like fascism and Nazism have an ounce of credibility. I want to live in a world where my heart and soul are not covered in scars and calluses because of the way things are.

Later, N told me, ‘It is time for you to go home.’ At that moment, I wanted nothing more than that, to be home, with family and friends, far from there. It was a selfish impulse; not everyone could escape like that. And it wouldn’t solve anything, except give me some emotional distance, allow me to assume a mentality where I can read about the war in Iraq and the democracy protests in Burma, but not ache for them in the same way I do for rocks thrown at a peaceful protest that I am part of. I know that the situations in Iraq and Burma are much more serious, that many people are dying there. I am doing what I can in my own small ways (Women in Black held a vigil for Burma today.), but still, I feel slightly immoral—or at least without moral consistency—knowing that what happens in those places doesn’t make me want to sit on the curb and cry the same way that a rock thrown by a Nazi does when it hits me in the shoulder.

On a lighter, more musical note

2007-10-08T15:13:00.000+02:00

Before the protests, I attended my last Women in Black seminar. It was lovely; in a beautiful conference center of sorts attached to a Catholic Church in a small village in Nearly Hungary, Vojvodina. (I wish I knew Hungarian.)

As is customary, there was a dance party on Saturday night. At one point, we were dancing to a group of dance hits of the ‘70s: ABBA, that ‘it’s raining men’ song. ‘YMCA’ came on, a song I hadn’t heard in ages. I was having fun dancing to it – when the chorus came, no one else made the letters with their arms; they all looked at me a bit funny.

So, just so you know, cultural imperialism has spread to that point that people listen to The Village People all over the world, but do not dance to it in the same way.

priestly pedophilia and religious symbols in courtrooms: the great unifiers

2007-10-03T15:17:00.000+02:00

I spent my yesterday morning translating articles to go on the website of an affinity group for an upcoming conference. The articles were about secularism and fundamentalism.

The first was about the case of an Orthodox bishop accused of molesting boys. He was acquitted, but only after dragging out the trial long enough so the statutes of limitations for half of the charges expired (an ingenious defense strategy, I must say). The boys’ lawyer is now bringing a case to the Supreme Court, alleging that the boys were discriminated against and maltreated during the trial. It reminded me of the various priest sex scandals that have been sprouting like mushrooms after rain in the US for the past few years.

The second article described recent events in Croatia. Apparently, a judge has refused to hear cases in a courtroom in which a cross is displayed. The head judge refuses to take it down. Substitute a ginormous stone slab with the Ten Commandments etched on it and you will have Ray Moore in Alabama.

It really is a small world after all.

On Endurance

2007-09-28T15:10:00.000+02:00

Two days ago, an American researcher interviewed me about Women in Black. One of her questions was, ‘What are Women in Black’s greatest accomplishments?” In addition to the standard answers I give on every grant application, I found myself saying that the fact that they still exist, sixteen years after the vigils began, despite numerous challenges, difficulties, hurdles and obstacles, amazes me and is an accomplishment in itself. The researcher was pleased with my answer; it was one of the ones she had me repeat into her recorder in order to quote me correctly.

That night, I had a coffee with I— at the most Starbucks-like coffee place I have seen in Belgrade (service at a counter, not a table; 3 sizes of drinks; suspiciously similar typeface). She’s taking off for Geneva shortly, assuming she gets her visa. In the course of our conversation, we discussed some foreigners that we know who have become disillusioned with this place and left. I— praised me for living here for so long, for adjusting to a foreign place.

It’s strange to give and receive the same slightly unusual compliment over the course of four hours. Maybe standards are too low if the simple act of continuing to exist merits praise (especially in my case—millions of people live in Belgrade).

Still, I will take compliments where I find them.

…And Back

2007-09-24T14:25:00.001+02:00

After nearly two weeks out of town (and away from the internet), I am back in Belgrade. It feels good to be home, but it’s bittersweet. Except for some just-before-I-leave two-days-in-Sarajevo craziness, this is my last time coming back to Belgrade from abroad. This morning was my last time registering at the police station. It’s hard to get sentimental about jumping through bureaucratic hoops, but somehow, strangely, I am.

…To Sarajevo…

2007-09-24T14:24:00.001+02:00

From the coast, I headed to Sarajevo, to meet up with people from working putting on a speaking tour on religious fundamentalism. I arrived in Sarajevo hours before they did, so I spent some time wandering around the city.

I hadn’t been in Sarajevo in about a year and a half. The only times I had been there before were with two good friends who were once a couple and with my family. I wandered the slightly-familiar streets feeling a bit melancholy and alone. My thoughts were interrupted by S, a woman I had met days before at the coast. We chatted for a moment and she invited me out for ice cream. As we walked to the ice cream shop, we ran into E, another woman I had met at the coast.

It’s hard to feel melancholy when one is eating ice cream with a new acquaintance.

…To Drvenik…

2007-09-24T14:23:00.000+02:00

A day after J left, I joined a coworker at her summer house on the Croatian coast. The name of the town I went to Drvenik, is nearly a translation of my hometown. (Drven = ‘wooden;’ I hail from Woodinville.) Fortunately, Drvenik is far from that nondescript suburb in many other ways – it is on the sea and is swarming with Czech tourists for starters.

It was a lovely vacation, the kind I never take. My vacations tend to be about doing things – visiting people or seeing sights. In Drvenik, I stayed with people I see regularly and there isn’t too much to see there. I had walked every street by the end of my first day. (Although, if I had been ambitious, I could have taken a bus or ferry to another town.)

I spent my days not doing much, reading, swimming, wandering, embroidering, drinking coffee, learning how to make hurmašica, chatting, watching TV. By the end of the week, it had gotten a bit old, but it felt really good to come back to work wanting the busyness, instead of feeling like I need a vacation to recover from my vacation.

Maybe I should take such lazy vacations more often.

From Belgrade…

2007-09-24T14:22:00.000+02:00

It was nearly three weeks ago now that J came to visit. It was lovely to see her and show off my city – even if she seemed to have brought with her weather from her native Toronto.

Barring something unforeseen, it was my last time to show off this place to a visiting friend. It’s become a routine – Kalemegdan, Sveta Petka, The Nikola Tesla Museum, burek, rakija – but with a few additions based on her interests and my favorite new discoveries – Kalenić pijaca and the fun underwear store at blok 70.

We spent a lot of time talking about identity, something that I spend much of my work life pondering, something that she was being forced to face throughout her travels in central and southeastern Europe because she does not look like everyone’s mental image of a WASPy flannel-wearing lumberjack Canadian. Her father is from Hong Kong, which, if one is fond of dividing human beings into fractions (I find it distasteful.) would make her half-Chinese. To further complicate things, her last name is Korean; no one is really sure how that happened.

“Where are you really from?” is the question that people keep asking.

I hoped it would be different when I took her to work—these are the people that spend so much time talking about chosen vs. imposed identities, after all. I was disappointed. A coworker became quite insistent with her “Where are you really from?”s. When J answered only with, “Canada,” my colleague assumed, “Oh, so you’re Eskimo?”

To stop the questions that were beginning to embarrass everyone, I finally took her aside and explained J’s father’s immigration.

Sigh.

Because I don’t spend enough time online as it is

2007-09-07T14:28:00.000+02:00

Much to my brother’s surprise, I recently joined facebook.

It is all part of a larger campaign. I am trying to ease my way back into people’s lives at home. I am well aware that I play a relatively small role in the day-to-day lives of friends and family back home. They can’t call me up to go to the movies; all of our interactions are mediated through computer screens or telephone lines. It would be presumptuous of me to assume I can walk back in and expropriate their Friday nights and Saturday afternoons for my own purposes.

I am slowly trying to increase my presence, as best as can be done from here. I am working hard – but maybe not succeeding particularly well – at writing better and more frequent e-mails. I am sending more postcards, which visiting J appropriately calls ‘Remember me? I love you!’-o-grams.

And after receiving an invite from A, I joined facebook, which I am learning is a great devourer of time. This prong of my re-entry plan isn’t going as effectively as I would like, as so far, about 75% of my facebook friends live outside of the US. (Most are members of my volunteer program.)

But, at least I will be able to keep in better touch with them.

Next Up: Singing like I don’t Need the Money

2007-09-07T14:21:00.000+02:00

When I walked into the party in Struga, at the second annual Women’s Peace Coalition conference, a dance version of Oh, Susannah, was playing. I chuckled and found myself a seat well away from the dance floor.

I’ve never been very confident in my dancing ability. I do okay in large crowds in dark rooms, but in smaller groups, where people are actually watching me, I get nervous and feel awkward. I start thinking too much and don’t enjoy myself. As I sat there, I thought about this and thought ‘what if I decide that I am just not going to worry about my dancing skills tonight? I would probably enjoy myself more.

And so I did. (I wish such an effort of will would work in other areas of my life.) I allowed myself to sit down when songs I didn’t know how to dance to (read: Albanian pop songs) came on, but danced to most of the rest of it, including two more plays of the Oh, Susannah dance remix.

As Latin American music played, I realized that I had at least some muscle memory of how to salsa – not enough to be impressive in Nicaragua, but I could more than hold my own among Serbians and Kosovars. And then, highlight of the night, Bomba, the song I heard at least 5 times a day in Nicaragua. I always loved it when that song came on in the clubs there because lyrics tell you how to dance – I always felt less awkward knowing where I was supposed to put my hands and whatnot. Here, it was no different.

A J different from the previously mentioned ones, a friend from college, is in town. Two nights ago, at the end of a long night of crafting, we told the stories of relatively recent relationships that ended badly. I recounted The Epic Saga of BC for the first time in maybe a year as well as the W Saga Now with a Spring of 2007 Postscript. J had winning tales of her own.

In this retelling, I had an emotional distance from my stories that I hadn’t had before. They had much more of a ‘hear about this ridiculous thing that happened’ air than a ‘here about how I was done wrong’ one. I have no doubt that traces of the scars remain, but they are no longer open wounds. It was a really satisfying realization.

It’s been quite a while since I have had someone to feel ridiculous about; I am starting to want that again. I know that right now would be the worst possible timing for meeting my one true love.

I would settle for a silly unactionable crush..

Playing house

2007-09-07T14:20:00.000+02:00

I spent most of last week living at A’s flat. She was gone for the summer, but she has air conditioning, so J, J, and I moved in to escape the heat for a bit. (Which seems so sad now, as we seemed to have skipped early fall and the weather is now something out of November.)

It was lovely, though. I forgot how nice it can be living with someone. We had dinners together every night and our evenings passed in an effortlessly fun way that doesn’t happen as easily living alone. I missed my Portland house a bit, but it was good to see that I don’t need those specific people to have such a good living environment.

Reassuring, as after a few months, I think it will be quite a while before I am living by myself again.

This Day in History

2007-08-28T19:10:00.000+02:00

On August, 28, 1976, the NY Cosmos beat the Seattle Sounders 2-1 for the North American Soccer League Cup… and two very special people got married.

On August 28, 1977, Ron Guidry (the signature in my palm of my first baseball glove) faced just 28 men as the New York Yankees beat the Texas Rangers 1-0… and two very special people celebrated their first anniversary.

On August 28, 1978, Ja’afar Sharif-Emami was appointed premier of Iran… and two very special people celebrated their second anniversary.

On August 28, 1979, an IRA bomb exploded in the Great Market in Brussels… and two very special people celebrated their third anniversary.

On August 28, 1980, Corina Ungureanu, a world class Romanian gymnast who competed internationally from 1993 to 1999, was born… and two very special people celebrated their fourth anniversary.

On August 28, 1981, John Hinckley Jr. pled innocent… and two very special people celebrated their fifth anniversary.

On August 28, 1982, country singer LeAnn Rimes was born… and two very special people celebrated their sixth anniversary.

On August 28, 1983, Joseph Kreckman set a record with 2,215 clay pigeons shot in an hour… and two very special people celebrated their seventh anniversary.

On August 28, 1984, The Jackson’s Victory Tour broke the record for concert ticket sales… and two very special people celebrated their eighth anniversary.

On August 28, 1985, writer and actress Ruth Gordon died… and two very special people celebrated their ninth anniversary.

On August 28, 1986, a state of siege was declared in Bolivia… and two very special people celebrated their tenth anniversary.

On August 28, 1987, Mike Schmidt passed Ted Williams and Willie McCovey with 522 HRs… and two very special people celebrated their eleventh anniversary.

On August 28, 1988, the fortieth Emmy Awards were held (Winners included 30something and The Wonder Years.)… and two very special people celebrated their twelfth anniversary.

On August 28, 1989, Jim Bakker’s fraud and conspiracy trial began… and two very special people celebrated their thirteenth anniversary.

On August 28, 1990, Iraq declared Kuwait its 19th province… and two very special people celebrated their fourteenth anniversary.

On August 28, 1991, a drunk driver crashed into Union Square Station in New York City, causing a train derailment that killed six and injured dozens… and two very special people celebrated their fifteenth anniversary.

On August 28, 1992, Muttia Muralitharan made his Test Cricket debut versus Australia in Colombo… and two very special people celebrated their sixteenth anniversary.

On August 28, 1993, 76 people died in an airplane crash in Tajikistan… and two very special people celebrated their seventeenth anniversary.

On August 28, 1994, the first Japanese gay pride parade was held… and two very special people celebrated their eighteenth anniversary.

On August 28, 1995, a mortar shell killed 38 people in Sarajevo… and two very special people celebrated their nineteenth anniversary.

On August 28, 1996, the Democratic Party nominated Bill Clinton for a second term… and two very special people celebrated their twentieth anniversary.

On August 28, 1997, riders were stuck upside down for 90 minutes at a Belgian amusement park… and two very special people celebrated their twenty-first anniversary.

On August 28, 1998, Pakistan’s National Assembly passed a law to make the Qu’ran and Sunnah ‘Supreme Law’ (The bill was later defeated in the Senate.)… and two very special people celebrated their twenty-second anniversary.

On August 28, 1999, The Sixth Sense topped the U.S. weekend box office, earning over eight million dollars… and two very special people celebrated their twenty-third anniversary.

On August 28, 2000, The US State Department issued a travel warning for Lebanon… and two very special people celebrated their twenty-fourth anniversary.

On August 28, 2001 the first indictment under The Digital Millennium Copyright Act was returned… and two very special people celebrated their twenty-fifth anniversary.

On August 28, 2002, prosecutors indicted WorldCom executives Scott Sullivan and Buford Yates Jr. in connection with the company’s collapse… and two very special people celebrated their twenty-sixth anniversary.

On August 28, 2003, the London Blackout, a 34-minute power outage, occurred… and two very special people celebrated their twenty-seventh anniversary.

On August 28, 2004, George Brunstad, age 70, became the oldest person to swim the English Channel… and two very special people celebrated their twenty-eighth anniversary.

On August 28, 2005, Iraqi negotiators submitted a new constitution to the parliament… and two very special people celebrated their twenty-ninth anniversary.

On August 28, 2006, Kofi Annan demanded that Hezbollah release two captured Israeli soldiers to the International Red Cross and that Israel lift its air and sea blockade of Lebanon… and two very special people celebrated their thirtieth anniversary.

On August 28, 2007, there was a total lunar eclipse… and two very special people celebrated their thirty-first anniversary.

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad!

90 days

2007-08-23T15:28:00.001+02:00

I was looking at my calendar a few days ago. I realized that, at most, I have 90 days left until I leave Belgrade. Counting backwards, I realized that I am equidistant between last May and going home. And May seems recent.

I might be leaving even sooner, though. I still haven’t bought my ticket—I have to wait for my replacement to be chosen and the details to be worked out with her. I just know I will be home by Thanksgiving.

For months, I have been telling myself that I don’t need to think about what comes next until after I return from Northern Ireland. That milestone has passed; time to start planning.

I alternate between excitement and terror at returning to the states. I am beyond excited to see family and friends and return to the world of easy eavesdropping, cheap ethnic food, and excellent thrift stores, but I am scared that it will be hard as well, that I will forget the Serbian I have spent endless hours acquiring, that I won’t be able to find a job that I like, that I have built up an idealized version of home that reality will disappoint, that I won’t be able to integrate my experience here into the next phase of my life, that I will bore everyone I meet with an endless series of ‘In Belgrade…’ stories. I know I will miss the life I have built for myself here and the friends I have made. If only Seattle-Belgrade was an easier commute…

I am trying to motivate myself to tackle some of this over the weekend, as I will have keys to an out-of-town friend’s air conditioned DSL-equipped flat.

Wish me luck.

Two Good Days

2007-08-17T16:09:00.000+02:00

In the past week, I have had to exceptionally good days.

Day One: Portaferry/Strangford, Northern Ireland

N, A, and I made a daytrip to Portaferry and Stangford, two cities on the East Coast of Northern Ireland. After arriving, we got our morning caffeine and played few games of crazy eights at a lovely little café, before heading off to the aquarium. I learned all sorts of fun facts like: sharks take a tasting bite of everything that they eat, to see if they like it, before they keep eating. Sharks don’t like the taste of people, so almost all shark attacks are only one bite.

The aquarium also houses a seal sanctuary. Every year, the sanctuary chooses a theme for the names for seals they rescue. This year’s is American states. In the past, they have included Harry Potter characters, winter clothes (long john, anorak), Indian dishes, and desserts. We had a conversation later about future name themes – my favorite suggestions included colors, artists not recognized in their lifetime, and the word for seal in other languages.

After the aquarium, we took the ferry across the mouth of a bay to Strangford, a small village. The weather was quite bad—rainy and cold, so we huddled in the enclosed bit of the ferry. We had a happy wander and lunch in Strangford before heading back to Portaferry. We followed the walking tour of the city printed in a brochure we picked up at the Tourist Information Office.

As it was still cold and we had a few hours before the next bus back to Belfast, we hoped to find a café to while away the time. One of my least favorite aspects of Northern Irish life is that everything closes early. Cafes and many stores shut at 5. I don’t understand how anyone does their shopping. We ended up at a hotel. The staff was busy with a wedding, so we sat in the reception area, ate yummy desserts, and were pleased that they forgot about us for a few hours.

Upon returning to Belfast, we joined in a going away party for someone I had never met before.

Day Two: Yesterday, Belgrade

Z, a coworker has long-promised to take me out on her boat, but we have had trouble finding the time—mostly because when I have been in Belgrade, I have been overwhelmed with work. Yesterday, with most of the rest of my coworkers on vacation or at a conference abroad, we found the time. N, another coworker/friend and I met Z and her husband at the marina in Zemun and we headed out to the river. Every the obliging tour guides, they took us past Kalemegdan, so I could see the city from the water. We headed up the Sava, along Ada to look at the vikendice, usually, but not always small floating cabins where people spend their weekends (hence the name). We stopped and swam for a while. The water was amazingly warm.

We climbed back on the boat and feasted on fried eggplant, pita, and fruit, washed down with beer and vinjak, before heading back down the river. We then stopped at Lino Beach, on the Danube, where Z and N ran into everyone they went to school with. Of course, these old friends where invited back to the boat for a coffee and watermelon. We sat and drank and ate and chatted and watched the sun set over Zemun before heading back to the marina and the bustle of city life.

If Only There was a Freaks and Geeks Reunion Movie…

2007-08-17T16:02:00.000+02:00

Months ago, upon its release in the US, a few people, knowing my great love for Freaks and Geeks, asked for my thoughts on Knocked Up. The film finally made it to Serbia last week; a friend and I saw it a few days ago.

I went in to the theater not expecting too much, but wanting to be surprised. I was. It was silly and enjoyable. It was nice to see Bill, my Freaks and Geeks hero, again, albeit in a much harier incarnation. The film reminded me of Better Off Dead, in that many of the near-constant jokes didn’t resonate with me (the searching for an ob-gyn bit and the bouncer bit, among others), but the sheer quantity of jokes meant that I was frequently laughing at something.

My biggest problem with the film was that I had to force my suspension of disbelief twice. That shouldn’t be something that I have to do consciously while watching a film. The first hard-to-swallow aspect was that our two heroes would actually sleep with each other. Alcohol can only explain so much. Would two such divergent types even be at the same club? I also had trouble accepting that the heroine didn’t seem to even consider abortion. True, there wouldn’t be much of a film if she had made that decision, but it was too strange for a young, economically insecure (I would imagine, since she lives with her sister’s family, but she has a good job – another bit that I didn’t get.) woman who became pregnant after a one-night stand to not seriously ponder it. It seems like a textbook example of why abortion should be legal.

Although, it was fun to see some many of the romantic comedy notions turned on their head as the two heroes do all of the getting-to-know-you, falling-in-love bits after they have already conceived a child.

‘American’ native speaker, beginner at 'Northern Irish'

2007-08-17T15:38:00.000+02:00

When foreigners ask me about the Serbo-Croatian successor languages (Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, and now, Montenegrin), my standards response is, ‘They are very similar, but there are differences in vocabulary, usage, and accent. It would be like calling what we speak in the US, “American” and what Australians speak “Australian,” not English.

And now, after spending my first significant (read: venturing outside the airport) period of time in a non-North American English-speaking environment, I have developed an appreciation for the differences between the differences in the ‘North American’ and ‘Northern Irish’ dialects of my native language.

Understanding every word of a phrase but still having no idea of what the phrase means is a not uncommon thing for me in Serbian, but I wasn’t expecting it to happen in a land of English speakers. In Northern Ireland, there were Sprite advertisements in the busses which read ‘obey your thirst for chancing your arm.’ I spent quite a while staring at it, unsuccessfully willing it to make sense. Later, one of my hosts sent me the link for this site, explaining it all.

Another of my favorite UK-isms is ‘The Troubles,’ the euphemism for the conflict between Catholic and Protestant communities in Northern Ireland. ‘The Troubles’ sounds like a child having difficulty learning multiplication tables, so small and manageable (just bribe her with pie!).

If only naming it that way made it so…

I thought they were only supposed to come in threes

2007-08-14T15:31:00.000+02:00

I am fortunate enough to not confront death regularly. It has been a long time since a friend or family member has died. In recent weeks, though, death has crept into my life, lurking at the edges, snatching people-once-removed from me. None of the people who have died are close to me—I haven’t met all of them—but they matter a lot to people in my life. I have been reminded of how lucky I have been.

A few weeks ago, the father of K, the woman who coordinates my volunteer program, died. He had been in the hospital for months. K had been making frequent Atlantic crossings to be with family.

A few days after that, a professor beloved by many of my friends from college died after a long illness. I never took any of his classes, but had a few really nice interactions with him.

Most scarily, the mother of B, a good friend from college, died in a hiking accident. She was relatively young and healthy. She was an excellent cook. I didn’t tell my parents about her death before they set off on their recent hiking vacation, not wanting to subconsciously suggest anything to them.

And my best friend’s grandfather also passed, or ‘fell asleep’ as is frequently written on the older tombstones at the Derry City Cemetery (where I took a long, ponderous wander last week). I have very fond memories of watching Jeopardy! and Mariners’ games with him and impressing him with my knowledge of random trivia.

Big, beautiful, Northern Ireland-style murals (but with fewer guns and no nationalist symbols) should be painted for all of them.

on holiday

2007-08-06T12:56:00.000+02:00

I know discussing how busy one is is among the most boring of conversation topics. Still, I will mention it. The previous two weeks were a flurry of working weekends, proof-reading and translation. I proof-read about 500 pages of tolerably well-translated texts, shaping them into something truly coherent. Not the most fun time. But, although I had my doubts, it did all get done before I left BGD last Friday.

I am in the land of people driving on the wrong side of the road (I always look the wrong way when crossing the street - I will probably adjust just in time to look the wrong way when I return to Belgrade.) and excellent cheddar cheese and weather that makes a Seattle October look balmy by comparison. I walked along the beach on Saturday and went to the ruins of a monster's bridge.

It's weird to be in a mostly English speaking place again- it's been months. (There is some Irish language about too.) And this is my first time in a English speaking place that isn't in North America. It's refreshing to not feel like a jerkface expecting others to accomodate my language deficiencies, although on my first evening here, I couldn't understand a word that N's roommate said; his accent was so thick.

A bit more drama - encore

2007-07-24T16:37:00.000+02:00

The one month deadline that R had given me has passed, so we met up last night, after the sun had set and everything cooled a bit. I wasn’t looking forward to it; I am bad enough at these sorts of talks in English. We wandered around Kalemegdan and listened for a bit to a cover band that played both The Doors and Mano Negra, before sitting on a rock wall overlooking the Sava and having ‘the talk.’ I reiterated that I still do not want to date him. He offered me more time to think it over, but I declined, knowing that wouldn’t be necessary. I told him in my especially-bad-since-I-didn’t-speak-it-for-two-weeks Serbian that I would like to remain his friend. He declined that offer, saying that he already had enough friends.

I was hoping to preserve the friendship, but I know that he has to do what makes sense for him.

-
Still-- and I know I am being selfish; he's hurting more than me now--it hurts a bit to know that the possibility of getting in my pants was all that made my company tolerable to him.

In to the fire

2007-07-24T16:34:00.000+02:00

I have been back in Beograd for nearly a week and am finding it a bit hard to adjust.

I think there’s some culture shock going on. In two weeks, I went from Belgrade, to a mostly Christian retreat (despite promises made to F, I did not walk around in my bikini top as a ‘cool girl. It would not have been understood.) to anything-goes Amsterdam with law school-attending D and his professor-in-odd-corners-of-the-world (Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Seattle) father. And then back to description-defying Belgrade. In addition to the shifting cultures, I am back living alone for the first time in almost three weeks. It's an adjustment.

But mostly, I blame the heat. In the north, I was wearing coats and jeans and long sleeves. Here, I am taking 2-3 cold showers a day. Tomorrow, it should hit 40 Celsius, which is a much less intimidating number than its triple digit Fahrenheit equivalent, but still equally unpleasant.

It makes people act like it’s winter again. No one leaves the house without a good excuse. I find myself plotting the quickest routes from one place to another if I have to go somewhere in the heat of the day. I spent most of the weekend holed up with a few friends in an out-of-town friend’s air-conditioned apartment. On Sunday afternoon, I went out for a coffee with a few friends. We were the only people in the café.

Today, there was no line at the post office when I went to pay the bills (usually I wait for at least five minutes).

The city has become a ghost town.

A'dam

2007-07-16T22:08:00.000+02:00

I am back in the land of internet-connectivity (specifically, Amsterdam, more specifically, my friend D's dorm room) after a retreat in Bonn, at which I laughed more than I had in months. Any attempt to explain the inside jokes that developed over the course of last week would fail.

And Amsterdam is lovely... like an extreme version of Portland. PDX has bike riding, but the streets of A'dam are filled with bikes. (I have been told that bikes outnumber people in this city... and I almost believe it.) While PDX leads the US in strip clubs per capita, A'dam has brothels (not that I visited either...) A similar drug use analogy could also be made. Even the weather is Portland-but-more-so. It feels like a Portland October here, with me toting an umbrella and a jacket everywhere, but frequently wearing only a T-shirt. It's hard to believe that it is still July. (My return to BGD in a few days will relieve me of any fall-like delusion.)

Another fun thing about this city: the Miracle of Amsterdam. It's the only miracle story I know in which vomit plays a central role.

2007-07-07T08:40:00.000+02:00

I am back in Budapest.

One of the most challenging/exciting parts of being in a new place where I do not speak the language is the little surprises and not quite knowing what I am getting myself into.

Yesterday,at a coffee place recommended by RW, we discovered that there are no English-language menus. Instead of just asking for a cappucino, I pointed to a random item on the coffee menu and ended up with a small bowl full of cappucino with cocoa powder. Delicious.

At the Gellert Baths- N's parents generously offered to treat us - we opted, not just for the baths, but for 'mud treatment.' My shoulders, spine, hips, and knees, were covered with thick warm mud. I was wrapped in a sheet, left to lie there in the dark for 20 minutes. I felt like a celebrity.

At lunch, we selected cold fruit, inspired by JW's praise of the colf fruit soup she recently had in the Baltics. Amazing. A yougurt-based soup with a dominant sour cherry flavor, but also with spices and chunks of other fruit (apples, cantalope, currants). The meal also included camambert with sour cherries, eggplant with tomato sauce and Hungarian fish soup. The random restaurant we stumbled upon turned out to serve one of the best meals I have had in a long time.

I travel on to Bonn this afternoon. I am hoping that these pleasant surprises continue, but I have my doubts.

George W. Bush: ethical?

2007-06-26T17:00:00.000+02:00

All of the work time I have been spending on religious fundamentalism seems not to be enough, as I recently started reading The End of Faith by Sam Harris, a book my aunt sent me, on of the recent crop of stridently atheist books being published in the US and UK these days. I don’t agree with many of its arguments, but it makes for interesting reading. Over breakfast this morning, I read the following:

We need only to image how any of our recent conflicts would have looked if we had possessed perfect weapons-weapons that would have allowed us either to temporarily impair or to kill a particular person, or group, at any distance, without harming others or their property…most of us would elect to use weapons of this sort. A moment’s thought reveals that a person’s use of such a weapon would offer a perfect window onto the soul of his ethics.

Consider the all too facile comparisons that have been made between George Bush and Saddam Hussein (or Osama bin Laden, or Hitler, etc.)… How would George Bush have prosecuted the recent war in Iraq with perfect weapons? Would he have targeted the thousands of Iraqi civilians who were maimed or killed by our bombs? Would he have put out the eyes of little girls or torn the arms from their mothers? Whether or not you admire the man’s politics—or the man—there is no reason to think that he would have sanctioned the injury or death of even a single innocent person. What would Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden do with perfect weapons? What would Hitler have done? They would have used them rather differently.

I have never been part of the ‘Bush and Hitler are the same/only difference is the name’ crowd, but neither am I a member of his fan club. After reading this passage, I had to concede, (and it feels like quite a concession) that George Bush, while I don’t agree with him on many things (anything?), is an ethical human being, at least as far as not actively desiring the destruction of innocent individuals makes one ethical.

If it’s good enough for presidents, why not patriarchs?

2007-06-26T16:58:00.000+02:00

I spent the weekend on Zlatar, what I would call a big hill, in Southern Serbia. I had a work seminar on ‘Warning Signs of Fundamentalism and Feminist Responses.’ It was a lovely place – rolling green hills with villages about. It was nice to escape the sweltering city for a bit. Even the water tasted sweeter there. (Which was nice, as the food at the hotel was terrible. I ate mostly cheese and bread for four days.)

I gave my now-routine talk about the religious left. Look, now that we’ve spent days talking about religious fundamentalism, I am going to tell you that religion isn’t all bad. It went well. As always, the Q&A afterwards was interesting.

Someone asked me about the hierarchy in my church, how leaders are chosen. ‘We have an election,’ I replied. ‘The term lasts for four years.’ People were surprised by that, which, in turn, surprised me. Electing the leader of a denomination is a standard practice in Protestantism. Even the Southern Baptists, not known for their progressive views, elect their leaders. That is not how it is done in Orthodoxy. I hadn’t really thought about that before. Yes... I know its obvious, but I hadn't formed the thought before.

Post Father’s Day Clearance

2007-06-20T16:38:00.000+02:00

There have been a few ‘I should write about this’ ideas floating about in my head over the past week or so. Here they are:

I was recently told that I speak Serbian better than the King of Yugoslavia. He was born out of the country (or in a room in London that was temporarily considered part of Yugoslavia just so they could say he was born there) and spent most of his life abroad. Apparently, he’s been studying Serbian for the past fifteen years. Maybe it isn’t saying too much, but it’s still a really nice compliment.

Women in Black recently published a booklet on religious pacifism. I co-wrote it. Much of my job as of late has become being ‘that religious girl who says religion isn’t necessarily bad, but who supports secularism and is against fundamentalism.’ I like this niche and am trying to figure out how I can turn it into a career.

The English word ‘refugee’ is about refuge, what the refugees are seeking, while the Serbian word for refugee, izbeglica, is related to izbeći, to avoid or escape. I am not going to read any deeper meaning into how refugees are seen by both societies. I am not qualified and being so essentialist about language troubles me, but I think it is interesting how these words are constructed.

A few weeks back, an American friend and I spoke about gender in language and how weird a concept it is. During the conversation, I realized that when I am speaking Serbian, I think about people’s genders constantly. Any time I want to say something I think to myself, ‘okay, she’s female, so this is how I construct it…’ Again, I don’t know what the ‘deeper meaning’ of this is, but it’s curious and a little troubling that I always think of people’s gender. It’s not as if I don’t notice others’ gender when I am speaking English, but it is not something I consciously focus in the same way.

My immediate-family-minus-me is going to Portland today for the annual gathering of our church. I am jealous. A weekend seminar on fundamentalism on a mountain in southern Serbia is lovely, but it just doesn’t compare.

I will be going home in five months. I am supposed to be starting to make plans for that. More and more people are starting to ask me about these as-yet-inexistent plans. I am having a really hard time imagining myself not in this place. My fingers are crossed that such thinking will become easier when it starts to turn colder in the fall.

I feel like I have been working a lot recently, between the grant from hell, translating a book, and attending seminars many weekend. Last night, I checked my schedule and realized that I only have one work-free day in June. (Sure, there were a couple of weekend days where I just put in a couple of hours of translating in the mornings.) That day was last Saturday. No wonder I am feeling burned out.

And I am trying to care about tennis. Serbian teniseri players are high on the world rang-list. People talk about it all the time now, but I still can’t manage to work up enthusiasm. There was a big gathering for the triumphant returnees from The French Open a few weeks back. Even though it was only a block from my house and would have been good people watching, I couldn’t muster up the effort.

To je to.

A bit more drama

2007-06-19T14:18:00.000+02:00

I had long suspected my friend R of having more than platonic feelings towards me.

I don’t reciprocate such emotions, but I didn’t know how to address the situation. We speak Serbian together, so anything I would say would lack nuance. But, even if we communicated in English, I still wouldn’t know what to say. An unprompted ‘just so you know, I am not attracted to you’ seems like the height of presumption and rudeness. Is there a way to nip it in the bud?

Last night, I had my prompting to say such things. Over lemonade in Kalemegdan, R told me that he loved me, that he has loved me practically since we met. He even managed to work a few mentions of marriage into this declaration of love. ('Very Austen-esque' was JW’s commentary.)

I told him that he is my friend, that I don’t want to date him. (The thought of marrying anyone at this point in my life is horrifying.) I tried to be as diplomatic and ethical as I could. After I said that I didn’t love him, he suggested I take a month to think it over. Since he had been thinking about telling me this for a month, I should take a month to respond was the thought process. In the abstract, I suppose there is some logic there, in reality: not so much. I told him that I wasn’t going to change my decision, but he insisted, saying I could take even until September if I needed to. I lost the argument; I will be having this same awkward conversation again in July.

After this conversation played out, I made a move to go home. He asked that I stick around for twenty more minutes, as his bus runs infrequently at night. I acquiesced to that small thing; it was an awkward twenty minutes.

It’s hard to talk about movies after a declaration of love.

Šišanje

2007-06-18T17:29:00.000+02:00

I got the best haircut I have had in a long time Saturday morning. Maybe the cut itself wasn't the greatest - my hair has been thinned to an almost-ridiculous degree, but the experience was great.

I went to a place that a woman I know from work recommended. She always has great hair. She’s also in her mid-60’s so I was expecting an old lady salon. No one there—clients or stylists—was over 30, which makes me think even more highly of my friend.

I was a bit nervous about the whole thing. My haircut vocabulary is terrible in English. My usual request is ‘shorter, relatively low maintenance, and please don’t make me look like a triangle head,’ which is typically interpreted well. It had been five months since my last haircut – which I got at my favorite beer-serving punk rock barbershop – but it had kept its shape surprisingly well, so all I had to say this time was ‘shorter.’

But I am getting ahead of myself. The best part of the whole experience was the shampooing. It had been a long time since I had leaned back into a fancy salon sink. (The punks don’t do such things.) Having someone else wash my hair—especially when the shampooing involves scalp massage—is among the best feelings that I know.

And the haircut was good, too. My friend warned me in advance that the hairdresser is not one who chats (something that a foreign friend was warned about a different hairdresser – I think it’s strange that such things are warned about.), so I felt okay when the conversation stopped after a few pleasantries. She echoed the only-in-Serbia comment that I look like Nicole Kidman. I am not one to chat at the salon, anyway, as I like my hairdresser to be giving my hair their full attention… although there was that one time that I read aloud part of a Rushdie novel to F and the punk that was cutting her hair…

And she blow dried my hair straight, which was nice and something I am too impatient to do for myself. I became straight-haired Rachel (which feels like an alternate personality) for a few day, laughing at myself while I showered with a plastic bag on my head to preserve my straight locks.

Months ago in my Serbian class, we read a newspaper article about unemployment. It said that the day after men get fired, they spend all day in the kafana. Women head to the salon after they lose a job. I didn’t understand it then, but now I see why.

A dash of theology

2007-06-12T16:45:00.000+02:00

Over the weekend, I attended a seminar on ‘Warning Signs of Fundamentalism and Feminist Responses.’ I gave a lecture on ‘The Religious Left’ as part of the program. I spoke in English, as my Serbian is not yet advanced enough for much nuance.

I used the ‘go the extra mile’ part of the Sermon on the Mount to illustrate a ‘Jesus supported resistance to authorities’ point. It turns out that the Serbian translation of that phrase is ‘go the extra hour.’ It doesn’t really change the meaning of the idea, but it is curious.

I learned about a discrepancy in translation that is a bit more troubling on the car ride home. A friend asked me about the English translation of ‘Love thy neighbor.’ I translated it to Serbian for her and explained how it is typically interpreted to mean ‘love everyone.’ She said that the Serbian version is much different. She told me that the Serbian version of that passage is ‘Love thy nearest’ and is usually taken to mean ‘love your family.’ It’s interesting—and also troubling—that the translations and interpretations vary so dramatically.

---

I guess that is just another reason (are more needed?) not to take every word in the Bible as the literal truth.

In which I know neither Georgian and Abkhazian history and politics or how to speak Russian

2007-06-12T16:42:00.000+02:00

Late last week, a group of women from Georgia (the country, not the state) and Abkhazia came to my office. It was interesting and I realized how profoundly ignorant I am about that region—discovering the vast areas of my inexpertise seems to be a theme of recent weeks.

It wasn’t quite as interesting for me as it could have been, as the lingua franca between the visitors and my coworkers was Russian. Listening to them speak, reminded me of the beginning of my time here, when I could only understand a few works per sentence, mostly English cognates.

I spent the hours of discussion straining to pick out the shared words between Serbian and Russian, trying to make sense of what people were saying. What I understood was quite interesting. People drew parallels between the breakaway Abkhazia region of Georgia and Serbia’s own Kosovo, discussing UN precedents, similarities and differences in the regions’ histories, etc. The women from Georgia did not support Abkhazian independence—many of them are ethic Georgian refugees from that region—while Women in Black supports Kosovo independence. It was interesting to watch the women from each group try to make sense of each other.

As I walked home that night, I wondered when—if ever—I would use my Serbian after my return to the US. It’s not much of a lingua franca.

apparently, Serbia is not always the bad guy

2007-06-07T14:57:00.000+02:00

It's nice to see that the NYT is giving Serbia some positive press.

In other news of my life, I have realized that the random layout of the keyboard is good for something. If one is removing diacritics from a Serbian text because the computer of a Frenchman one is collaborating with can't read those characters, one's movement is economized. C, Z, D, and S are the only letters I type when doing such a task.

(And yes, I know that taking out the diacritical marks can change words, but I think that is better than have random characters or '_' appear in the middle of words.)

Thanks and no thanks, Mrs. Harris

2007-06-06T14:38:00.000+02:00

Over the past few weeks, there have been torrential downpours most evenings. The sky opens up around 6 in the evening and sheets of water fall, drenching anyone unlucky enough to be caught outside. I have taken to carrying an umbrella with me everywhere and trying to be inside in the early evening.

Last night, I had plans for a lecture at 7. When the nightly storm started at 6, I seriously considered not going. But I went. (Would I still be able to claim Seattle as my home town if rain kept me indoors?) I walked and bussed my way to the hall, passing crowds of people gathered in any covered space, waiting out the rain.

I am glad I faced the rain. The lecturer, a Bulgarian professor at an American college promoting a new edition of her book, was interesting and engaging. She discussed ‘Balkanism’ and concepts of Europe and The Near East. Her vocabulary was amazing—-she used palimpsest as one of her central metaphors. Thankfully, my seventh grade world history teacher spent at least one class period teaching us the meaning of that word.

One of the most interesting ideas that I took away from the lecture was that the first meaning of the word ‘Europe,’ as used by the ancient Greeks, referred to the continental land to the north, i.e. the Balkans. The earliest conceptions of ‘The Near East’ meant the Orthodox/Byzantine lands of Southeastern Europe, i.e. the Balkans. So while the earliest meanings of Europe and the Near East referred to this part of the world, now one calls this place the Near East and there are debates about whether it is truly part of ‘Europe.’ Curious…

After the lecture, a few friends and I went out for a drink. Our discussion touched on the fall of the Roman Empire and I realized how huge the holes are in my knowledge of European history. I was embarrassed. It wasn’t even that I had learned things and since forgotten them. I have never learned European history. My seventh grade world history class barely made it to AD. (Not that I really remember anything about the Mesopotamians or the Minoans, but at least I recieved instruction about them at some point.) My knowledge picks up again with the Corn Laws and The Treaty of Westphalia, and the reconquista, things I picked up in political science and Spanish classes, respectively. Maybe I should learn European history in my vast quantities of spare time.

But ask me about palimpsests and I am your woman.

I hate bureaucracy

2007-05-31T15:31:00.000+02:00

I have never been particularly fond of bureaucracy (who is?), but over the past few days, my distaste for it has grown.

I have spent much of this week working on a grant application. This potential funder requires a ridiculous amount of supporting documents. It requires a lot of forms that are supposedly to conform with US anti-terrorism legislation, but none of our other US-based funders require such things. I spent hours gathering our financial records for the past four years and entering them into the funder’s super-complicated form. I am a college-educated native speaker and I had trouble with it. How are organizations without such a person able to apply?

(Or maybe it’s just that I am losing my edge. First I couldn’t understand Pirates 3, now this… early senility?)

The potential funder also wants all of our founding and governing documents in English and Serbian. I was extremely happy to see that English versions already exist. I was less excited when I discovered that there are no electronic copies of the original Serbian versions. So I spent yesterday afternoon scanning them and running the ones in Latin script through a optical character recognition program. The Cyrillic texts will remain jpegs, as we don’t have the software. Not that they will look at them anyway...

---

And this isn’t even my #1 reason for hating bureaucracy over the past few days. On Monday night, one of my favorite people in the world called me. He will be spending the summer in Amsterdam and we worked out details of when I will visit him there in July. Conspicuously absent from the conversation was any discussion about visas. As an American, I don’t have to think about such things – at least in this corner of the world.

When I arrived at work yesterday, everything was in an uproar. My boss was just denied a Schengen visa. (That’s a visa for all—or nearly all [I haven’t looked into the details and am not inclined to do so right now.] of Western Europe.) She has received one for the past seven years. Her application included a guarantee letter from a German foundation and a letter of invitation from a member of the European Parliament. She’s a middle-aged lady with a job she is passionate about and a husband who will remain here—not an overstay risk in any way that I can imagine.

Just because of the locations of our births, I can traipse across this continent—which isn’t even my home—to visit friends, while she has to stand in lines, prepare all sorts of supporting documents, and cross her fingers that the powers that be will let her accompany women who lost their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons in Srebrenica on a speaking tour. That was what she was planning to do next week.

Again (can it ever be said enough times?), I hate bureaucracy.

The world (or at least Belgrade) is small

2007-05-29T15:03:00.000+02:00

I am becoming friends with MK, someone who contacted me after a work-related google led her to this blog. We have a ridiculous number of things in common. We are the same age, are from the same region of the US, both started college in Boston, both work in the NGO sector, and are charming, intelligent, beautiful and modest.

On Sunday, I joined her and a friend for a drink. MK explained how we met and I—, her friend, told me that she reads my blog. And she remembers what I have written. At points in the conversation, she would say things like, “yeah, so your brother was in Greece last year…” Slightly disconcerting that she would know such things, that anyone who doesn’t know me would pay attention to my ramblings, but also flattering.

At one point, I started telling a story about a guy she met a few days previously at a party. He’s Japanese, studying Yugoslav history at the university.

Doubting the existence of two Japanese Yugoslav history scholars in this town, I interrupted. “What’s his name? I think I know him.”

“It starts with a K, I think,” said I—.

“K—?” I asked.

“That’s it,” she answered.

“Wait,” MK joined in. “Does he wear glasses? I think I met him at a club.”

I’ve heard people describe Belgrade as a really big village. With happenings like these, I am starting to believe them.

disappointment at the movies...

2007-05-29T14:52:00.000+02:00

In the past few weeks, I saw two of the big summer blockbusters, Spider-Man 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean 3. Both of them could have been much much better. Why do movie-makers now feel the need to make plots so convoluted? The moment Pirates 3 ended, I turned to my movie watching companion and said, ‘I can’t tell you what happened in that movie?’ That shouldn’t happen. I should be able to recount the plot of a summer blockbuster…

The reviewer at slate.com described the watching that movie as passing 'through confusion and boredom into a state of Buddhist passivity.’ So true. And while Johnny was easy on the eyes, he wasn’t ridiculous or quotable in the way he was in the first of the series. Disappointment. And why did his entrance involve his nose taking up the whole screen? I mean, I'm sure there are a number of people in the audience there purely because of his beauty... why do that?

But hope does spring eternal, as they say. I just finished a New York Times Magazine article about Judd Apatow, the creator of Freaks and Geeks, my favorite television show ever. He’s coming out with a new film this summer and it features about half the cast from that show. It’s good to see that Martin Starr is getting work.

Now, if only it makes it to screens in Belgrade…

Language frustration, RIP

2007-05-25T15:22:00.000+02:00

Over the past few weeks, I have made my peace with Serbian…

No one—except people who are trying to flatter me—thinks that I am a native speaker, but it is rare that I can’t make myself understood or understand what others want to tell me. I have even started to be able to have interesting discussions in this language. Just this morning, I finished my first book read for pleasure in Serbian, that great masterwork of Serbian literature Are You There God, it’s Me, Margaret? (One of my favorite parts of the book was the footnotes explaining things like Thanksgiving.) So, I have a fourth grade reading level. Not too shabby, really. It’s satisfying… maybe the hours spent with flashcards are starting to pay off.

I’m still not skilled enough to do much translating from English to Serbian (Mrzim padeže.), but a new task at work has been to check other people’s English to Serbian translations. It’s satisfying to catch it when people mistranslate homonyms or don’t understand metaphors. On Monday night, I spent hours watching a documentary about war profiteering in Iraq, checking the first draft of Serbian subtitles. Lots of thick—mostly Southern—accents. It took me a few tries to decipher them; the translator stood no chance.

As part of that project, I explained the non-sexual meaning of ‘incestuous,’ as in “Washington is a very incestuous town.” Always good to discuss sleeping with relatives in the office.

---

And now that language has ceased to be a fount of frustration and anxiety, I am finding all sorts of other things to be nervous and worried about arising to take its place (post-November plans being number one on the list). Not too satisfying…

I am trying, but not very successfully, to view the whole thing as flattering

2007-05-17T17:25:00.000+02:00

The director of my volunteer program is in town. I’ve spent the day with him wandering around the city center, drinking coffee, and introducing him to the people I work with.

A few hours back, I helped him check into a hotel. This was done nearly all in English. (The desk clerk spoke English well & when such things are the case, it’s nice to include the monolingual American in the discussion, especially as he is the one who will be staying in the hotel.) At the end of the check-in procedures, the woman turned to me and said, ‘Do you speak Serbian?’ When I replied with, ‘a little, I’m learning,’ she told me, in Serbian, that if I plan to "accompany" the gentleman in his room, I will have to leave an ID document at the front desk.

My parents and grandmother stayed at the same hotel a year ago; they even checked in with the same desk clerk, but no such comment was made, even though I spent a few hours in their rooms watching TV, helping them settle in, and chatting.

I felt like I was reclaiming my virtue when, just a moment later, in full view of the desk clerk, I saw my director off at the elevator and walked home.

I don’t think I will be using that hotel again.

Not so much in praise of the parliamentary system

2007-05-14T17:14:00.000+02:00

A companion piece to an earlier post, of sorts

And in other voting-related news, Serbia has a new government—finally—after the elections in January. Back in January, I was a fan of the parliamentary system; proportional representation is such a fine idea. The past four months of constant news about negotiations between political parties to form a new government (and the final result being exactly what most people were predicting in the days after the election) has made me appreciate the simplicity of the winner-take-all American electoral system (well, except for the electoral college, which is still ridiculous [and the 2000 pregnant chad debacle and the most recent Washington State governor’s race]).

So no one is too surprised by the new government, but it does come as some relief. The acting leader (the official leader is on trial in The Hague) of the Serbian Radical (and not in a good way) Party became assembly speaker for a bit.

After five days of him, the more centrist parties that are in the government look lovely by comparison.

in which I get all deep about Eurovision

2007-05-14T15:17:00.000+02:00

I can’t even begin to count the number of times that I have heard the song since that victorious night, on car radios, at last night’s victory concert, sung by random passersby. I’m not sick of it yet. If you want to join in the fun and have this song become your constant companion, click here.

And it’s really hard to not get all deeper meaning about it, even though it makes me feel like an 8^th grader writing a book report. What does it mean that Europe picked a ballad in Serbian sung by a lesbian (The rumors have been confirmed.) as the best song and the runner up was a Ukranian drag queen? Sign of acceptance or a restriction of sexual minorities to The Annual Freak Parade (to steal JC's words)?

And what does it mean that Martti Ahtisaari, Finnish UN Special Envoy for the Kosovo Final Status Negotiations, made a special public congratulatory statement to Marija (the singer) and Marija herself talked about this victory being for a ‘new Serbia?’

Can a cheesy, but very good, pop song really be that significant?

And in probably my favorite bit of look, there is significance here, last night’s celebratory ‘Thank You, Marija’ event was at Belgrade City Hall, which is located more-or-less across the street from the Federal Assembly Building, where the Milošević memorial was held 14 months ago. Not only was the average age of the attendees at last night’s event decades younger than the average age at Milošević’s shindig, but they were all facing in the opposite direction. Look, it’s the new Serbia facing a new direction. So heavy-handed.

A parting tip for future Eurovision watchers: while it may seem clever at first to have ‘every time they switch languages mid-song, have a drink’ be part of the evening’s festivities, I would advise against it. Inevitably, there will be a song like this year’s Romanian entrant; six guys, each of whom sing in a different language tell someone (the same someone?) that they love her. My glass was affixed to my cup for three solid minutes, only stopping to refill at the musical interlude.

‘Mi’ smo pobedili

2007-05-13T02:03:00.000+02:00

So, a few weeks ago, when my friends and I were planning our Eurovision party, I said, ‘if Serbia wins, I will come back next year to see Eurovision in Belgrade.’ [I am planning to blow this popsicle stand in November.] I never thought it would actually happen. I mean, the song is lovely, but its in Serbian. The singer has a beautiful voice, but her physical form… not so much. As much as I’d like such things not to matter, I recognize that they do. It’s even rumored that she’s a lesbian. That might play well in the Low Countries and Scandinavia, but not as well in the former Soviet bloc.

But she won…

So I’ll be returning to Belgrade next year. Friends and I even made a pact to meet up next year and then every five years wherever Eurovision is taking place for reunion and cheesy spectacle-watching.

I spent the night with friends, watching the show and realizing that naša pesma had a shot. Sadly, this year’s show was short on singing monsters (although there was a song about vampires and lots of gothy chicks), dancers emerging from pianos, and dancing robots. I still think Andorra, with a French speaking group of seventeen year olds (so emo—they looked like they needed a hug and a bowl of soup) playing music reminiscent of Blink 182—but about saving the world—were the best.

And then the voting: I know I am dorky to say such a thing, but I enjoy watching the votes roll in. It’s interesting to see the regionalism at play in who the votes go to. Of course, Greece got the top place in Cypriots’ votes and Moldova gave the most points to Romania. I think it’s a distinct advantage for the Ex-Yu region that it is now 6 countries—and if I recall correctly, Serbia got top votes from all of them. My palms are still sore from all of the cheering as I watched the votes roll in.

And throughout it all, I kept using ‘we’ to refer to Serbia. It’ the first time I have done such a thing, but it felt really good. And after ‘we’ won, we headed to Belgrade’s main square where people gathered to celebrate, singing ‘our’ winning song (I need to learn all of the words) and chanting ‘Serbia, Serbia, Serbia.’

---

I so often feel like an outsider in this place. It was nice to have a night of belonging… even if it was because of a lovely, but cheesy, pop song.

Ekstra Fanci

2007-05-10T16:13:00.000+02:00

The number of English words that have crept into Serbian is quite astounding and I am very thankful for all of them.

My favorites, though, are the words that don’t mean the same thing in Serbian. None of these words have yet become proper Serbian, but I enjoy them.

In Tutin, I met a girl who said the word ‘extra,’ or as it is spelled here, ‘ekstra’ all the time. But for her, it is a synonym of good. ‘That’s really extra.’ So amusing.

M and her friends use the word ‘fancy’ as a pejorative for the Pink/Grand/kitsch culture that is dominant here and that they strongly dislike. Most people don’t use the word with any negative connotation. Even though I know that, I was a bit taken aback when M’s mom told me that I looked ‘fanci’ on the day I left Zaječar.

Appendix Appendix

2007-05-10T16:06:00.000+02:00

I spent last weekend with M, in her hometown, Zaječar. It’s in Eastern Serbia, a few kilometers from Bulgaria, in a region known as ‘the appendix of

Serbia

’ (at least that is what I was told). Some thoughts, experiences, etc. of the trip:

-I think a lot of why I was invited a long was to serve as a buffer between M and many of the people in her life. Things couldn’t get too intense between her and her parents, between her and her ex-girlfriend, or her and her ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend (one of the most attractive people that I have seen in real life in months), if I am sitting in the room trying to follow along with the conversation.

-I think I ate only one meal a day, but I definitely made up for any caloric deficiency that that would have cause with coffee and beer consumption.

-I have long thought that Serbia is where American TV comes to die. There are all sorts of odd shows that are on the air here, some of which get quite a following. M’s friends are really into That 70s Show, which is broadcast a few times per day on the town TV station. I also watched an episode of a cartoon called Funky Cops, about bell-bottom wearing disco cops in San Francisco. Bizarre.

-M’s brother is the closest thing to a white hat that I have come across in Serbia. If his room had had a Dave Matthews Band poster, if would have been complete. Even though I was never particularly fond of those guys, there was something strangely comforting about running into one here.

-On Saturday night we attended a maskenball (costume party) at the local youth cultural center. I felt bad that had no costume, but it turned out that no one was dressed up. Of about 100 people, there were five in costume, counting M’s ex who wasn’t dressed up, but since she’s a bit gothy the party organizers thought she was. (How I missed E.) There was a 300 euro prize for the best costume. Had I put any effort into putting together a costume, I could have walked away with it (and crossed something off my life list).

-On a few tipsy nights, we played a word game. The first person said a word and the next person repeated that word and added another. At first, we played with random words in Serbian [I chimed in with my favorites—kikiriki (peanut), fioka (drawer), and piksla (ashtray).] We then switched to making actual sentences:

Juče
Juče, ja
Juče, ja sam
Juče, ja sam bila gola
Juče, ja sam bila gola na
Juče, ja sam bila gola na travanu…

(Yesterday, I was naked in a field…)

All the while, I was nervously awaiting my turn, hoping not to embarrass myself too terribly with my bad grammar.

We also played a round or two in English. My favorite go-round, started with ‘hello, my uncle is crazy and very nuts…’ It turned M’s friend’s living room into a strange, strange _________-Anonymous meeting.

All About M

2007-05-08T15:59:00.000+02:00

M is a coworker of mine who is fast becoming a friend. We pass slow afternoons in the office watching music videos online and discussing The L Word. She has an obsession with the show that is really amusing. The theme song is here ‘you just got a text message’ tone. She's a popular girl, so it means that it is constantly going off. I can’t even count the number of times that we have had conversations about which of the lesbians we know are most like the characters on the show. (Her resemblance to Shane, both physically and personality-ly is uncanny.) Not being a lesbian means that I am like no one. There is no unequivocally straight girl on the show.

In addition to being fun, M is also one of the strongest people that I know. She’s only 20, but has had enough living to fill at least three decades.

A small example of this is her coming out story, which is horrendous. She’s from a small city. When she came out, her family disowned her and sent her to a psychiatrist, spending what little money they had in hopes of ‘curing’ her. She spent months in a medicated stupor, arguing with her family and being harassed by nearly everyone in town. At one point, she convinced a male friend of hers to act as her boyfriend, so everyone would leave her alone. That didn’t work.

She ended up moving in with her grandparents across town, but still argued with her parents all the time. This came to a head when, during an argument with her father, she punched a hole in the wall, screaming that if he didn’t kill her she would do it herself. She was sent to a mental hospital, where she was put on more drugs and slept away most of three months.

After all of this, her mother realized that M was ‘still her daughter’ and that she still loves her. She started to accept her…

Unsurprisingly, M moved to the big city as soon as she could. (I find it interesting that the come-out-then-move-to-the-city narrative is dominant here too.)

And if this story isn’t heartbreaking enough, M still has all sorts of health problems, after effects from the medicines she was put on. Those drugs surely weren’t designed for curing homosexuality.

And still some people would insist that this whole ugly episode was her choice.

I spent last weekend with M in her hometown. Fascinating. I will try to shape my thoughts and experiences into something coherent and post it soon.

a very disappointed person is watching Tootsie right now

2007-04-27T17:26:00.000+02:00

I have had a bad headache for the past few days - my fingers are crossed that it is finally gone.

Two days ago, I decided that all I was up for after work was watching a movie. As the British Council was already closed, I turned to my friendly neighborhood software pirater. After flipping through his discs for a bit, I settled on a Dustin Hoffman collection. It had a lot of movies that I hadn't seen and heard were pretty good, Kramer vs. Kramer, Rain Man, etc. I checked to make sure that there was a disc inside (yeah, I've purchased an empty case before. ) and that the number written on the disc matched the number on the case.

I took the disc home and made some popcorn, preparing to be distracted from the pain in my head. I popped in the disc, but there was no Dustin to be had. There was only pornography. From the titles and images of the movie posters (do such films have posters?), it appears to be the variety that features young women and animals, not my cup of tea.

And not a headache cure.

random aside

2007-04-25T15:54:00.000+02:00

I was doing a bit of wiki-reading (that can't really count as research, can it?) on St. Francis of Assisi & got sucked into the lists of patron saints, which I find fascinating.

I started by looking for someone who could be my patron saint, but I got distracted. My new favorite saint--but I only made it to the Ds-- is St. Drogo (good name, right?). Not only was he able to be in two places at once, he is the patron saint of coffee house owners, cattle, hernias, and those who others find repulsive, quite the combination.

And now back to our regularly scheduled blogging about my life, Serbia, etc.

Good things

2007-04-24T15:34:00.000+02:00

This morning at half past six, I was awakened by my phone ringing. It was A (not the self-scalding Portland-dwelling one from the sushi post, one who lives here). ‘Can I come over right now?’ she asked.

‘Okay,’ I replied, fearing the worst. Had she had a fight with her ex-boyfriend/current housemate? Why couldn’t she just wait a few hours? And it’s my birthday. I really don’t want to deal with this right now.

I should have dwelt on the birthday thought a bit longer. But if I had, I would have not been so wonderfully surprised when four excessively-cheerful-for-so-early-in-the-morning friends bearing breakfast appeared at my door and started singing to me. French toast and muffins and juice and pineapple are an excellent way to start a birthday. And when they all left for work, I realized that it isn’t even my birthday yet in my native time zone. It’s a little strange to finish the celebration so early.

Other good things: 16 days until the first night of Eurovision. 29 days until Pirates #3 is released here (both of which I expect to be cheesy and—possibly—not worth looking forward to in such a way, but I am still excited. It’s fun to have a countdown. And my friends have already started planning our Eurovision party. We’re making T-shirts).

A Bit of Commerce

2007-04-24T15:32:00.000+02:00

Last night, I finally had a long-anticipated coffee with JV. (We have talked about having coffee for months, made plans, but one of us always had to cancel.) She’s buying something off eBay (‘be an enzyme!’) and wanted me to use my having-a-credit-card-that-bills-to-the-US privilege (which I never thought of as a privilege before) to send the money for her via PayPal. [Bangladesh is in the PayPal network, but

Serbia

isn’t…what does that mean?]

So my streak of eBay avoidance is coming to an end… does it still count if I am only using the site to help out a friend?

Anyway, at one point in the conversation, she was telling me how local activists frequently copy the actions of western activists without thinking about the local context. An example of this was her involvement in organizing a Buy Nothing Day in Serbia 10 years ago.

“But 10 years ago, Serbia was under international sanctions. Wasn’t every day a Buy Nothing Day?”

“It was,” she sheepishly admitted.

This Buy Nothing Day: Serbian Edition has to be one of the most ridiculous things that I have heard about recently.

Just thinking about it makes me giggle.

Sushi Night

2007-04-24T15:30:00.000+02:00

In my old Portland life, my housemates and I used to have semi-regular sushi nights, inviting over friends to make and eat sushi. They were always lovely relaxed evenings filled with fun and often haphazard looking sushi rolls.

At my last Portland Sushi Night (actually at A’s apartment in Hillsboro), one of the more memorable, A managed to scald his leg with miso soup and spent the rest of the night not wearing pants.

After a hiatus of nearly two years, I had my first Belgrade Sushi Night on Sunday—and it passed without major incident. There were no burns or articles of clothing removed.

What there was was delicious eating and good conversation. Silly foodie that I am, I was worried about if the Chinese soy sauce and rice vinegar that I was using would taste too different from their Japanese equivalents. Possibly my taste buds have dulled a bit due to lack of exposure to ethnic food, but I couldn’t taste a major difference.

At the close of the evening, a friend officially labeled my flat ‘the good eating house.’

And to your left, some sort of old thing

2007-04-24T15:25:00.000+02:00

I now can speak two words of Albanian, two of the most useless words imaginable: monkey and juggler.

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Seventeen Albanian women came to my work on Friday. They are members of women’s groups and came to exchange ideas with us. Some of us joined them for dinner (where, after listening to them sing beautifully, JW and I sang ‘This Land is Your Land’).

I also served as their turistički vodić on Saturday morning, leading them through Kalemegdan and to some shopping areas nearby. We watched street performers for a bit (hence my new Albanian vocabulary). Fun and interesting and a bit ridiculous. It was a good, but strange feeling to be their guide to this town (a task that fell to me because the no other English speakers were available—and I am trying to be more hospitable), sharing history and other insights about this place. I spend so much time feeling like an outsider (even though the nice lady at the natural food store asked if I was an American who was born in Serbia or a ‘real American,’ the first time I’ve received such an endorsement of my language skills [months ago, K in Bosnia told me that people said that to her and I was so jealous.]). It’s interesting to realize that there are others who are more ‘out’ than me.

And I even managed to add to my list of foreign-language equivalents of “it’s Greek to me.” The Albanians say, “you are departing from China.” The Swedes say, “that’s Greek” or “that’s Chinese.”

Srpski, Italijanski, sve jedno

2007-04-20T14:31:00.000+02:00

So, I've recently been introduced to The L Word, a silly and overdramatic, but addictive lesbian soap opera that a lot of my friends and collegues here love. (I think I am still partial to Queer as Folk for my queer soap opera needs, but this is fun too.) It seems fair to watch the lesbian soap opera with them and talk about it with them since they watch so many movies with hetrosexual love stories (I mean, what movie doesn't have a heterosexual love story?) with me.

In the most recent episode that I saw, the beautiful art gallery director goes to visit the just-retired director of a foundation that has given her all sorts of money in the past. This woman and her beautiful young foreign lover are being massaged. She says something about 'her Nikola.' And I get excited. That's a name from this part of the world.

The lovers then have a conversation - her part in English, his in BCS (It sounded a bit stilted to me. It wasn't proper beogradski srpski, but was still comprehensible.), with a translator, Vesna, chiming in from across the room. The scene ends and we never see the pair again.

But then, in the credits, he is not 'Nikola,' but 'Orlando' and the translator is credited as 'The Italian Translator.'

The show is silly to begin with, but this is ridiculous.

For my father

2007-04-20T14:05:00.000+02:00

Danas je divan dan, divan dan, divan dan

Našem Gregu rođendan, rođendan, rođendan

Živeo, živeo, i srećan nam bio

---

Estos son las mañanitas que cantaba el Rey David

A los muchachos bonitos se les cantamos así.

Despierta, muy bien, despierta

Mira que amaneció.

Y los pajaritos cantan

La luna ya se metió.

El día que tu naciste,

Nacieron todos los flores

En tu pila del bautismo

Cantarón los reseñores.

Ya viene amanaciedo,

La luz que día nos dió.

Levantate de mañana.

Mira que amaneció.

---

Eid wiladi, ya gamil

Eid wiladi ya habibi

Eid wiladi ya gamil.

---

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday, Dear Dad,

Happy Birthday to you.

At least I’m I polyglot when it comes to birthday songs.

Big break #4 - updated

2007-04-11T16:25:00.000+02:00

This morning, when I came to my language school, my teacher said, ‘good morning, star’ (in Serbian, of course).

‘What?’ I asked, confused.

‘Today a TV crew is coming to film some of the students.’

And so a group of foreigners was filmed by a crew from a TV station. They asked us how long we have been here, why we came, what we think of Belgrade. We also talked a bit about what we believe in. ‘I believe in friendship,’ was my trite response. Of course, everything we said was pun gresaka (full of mistakes). The segment should be pretty amusing. There was a Frenchman with a thick accent who has only been studying for a few months and made many charming mistakes.

So, I will be making my national television debut (if they don’t edit me out) on Friday morning, as part of a segment of the morning program (more or less ‘Good Morning, Serbia’) on B92. The reporter said it would air sometime between 8:30 and 10:00.

The TV crew said that they will give us copies of the segment. I will post it here eventually… if I am not too ashamed.

UPDATE:
I was one of four people that made it through the editing process to make it on the air. If you were watching B92 at approximately 9:50 this morning, I could be seen explaining how I can't say the letter 'lj' or hear the difference between ‘ć’ and ‘č.’

A note on Islam in the Sandzak

2007-04-11T16:21:00.000+02:00

In one of the many books on the fall of Yugoslavia that I read in preparation for coming to this neck of the woods, the author described Bosniaks as ‘the world’s worst Muslims.’ If religiosity is measured in kindness, generosity, etc., I would disagree, but that is not what the author intended. She (or he)--all the books I read at that time are now a blur--meant that the Bosnian Muslims don’t as closely follow some of the social norms that are prevalent in other Muslim contexts.

The only other Muslim contexts that I can compare the Sandzak to are the Middle East. (I spent six months in Cairo and traveled a bit in neighboring countries.) I am fonder of the Sandzak school of Islam, at least as I saw in practiced by the people I met. It seems let hung up on rules. I am not a fan of religious rigidity about minor things. (Murder is something to be rigid about, eating meat on Fridays isn't.)

(I have been told that imported Wahhabism is on the rise in the region, but I didn’t come into personal contact with it.)

For one, the relationship to alcohol is more relaxed. It is possible to get a beer in most cafes, although most of the people I was with didn’t drink often. (In Cairo, drinking is only for tourists and done almost exclusively in hotel bars.) When a companion was served an alcoholic beer in place of the non-alcoholic one he ordered, he was annoyed that his order was messed up, but not particularly concerned about his accidental alcohol ingestion.

It seems to be mostly men that drink, though. On my last night in Tutin, I was out at a club (they all close at 11pm) and ran into some of my new acquaintances. A few of them told me ‘I am going crazy tonight.’ It was an odd juxtaposition to then look down at their hand to see they were holding a coca-cola bottle. Drinking a few coca-colas does not seem to be particularly crazy-making.

And the relationships between men and women seem more reasonable than what I experienced in Cairo. (Still, I don’t think I could handle Tutin life on a day-to-day basis.) Men and women touch each other and talk to each other on the streets. Friends kiss each other hello. These are all things that I didn’t see when I was in Cairo… There, I lived in a dorm where guards kept watch to make sure that men and women didn’t touch.

But no one ate pork and the call to prayer was just as lovely.

In the Sandzak, it takes longer for the fish to start stinking.

2007-04-11T16:17:00.000+02:00

This is the second year in a row that I have missed Easter. That's okay, though. The crucifixion and empty tomb don't hold a lot of meaning for me. Last year, I was in Serbia for western Easter and

Croatia

for Orthodox Easter. This year, both Easters were on the same day, but I went to hang out with some Muslims. I spent the Easter holiday in Tutin and Novi Pazar, in the Sandzak region (an area in south

Serbia

that is majority Muslim).

I spent my time with a colleague and her family, seeing how she passes the time, meeting her friends, attending family gatherings, checking out the local night life. It was lovely. The level of hospitality was amazing. I wasn’t allowed to pay for anything and was given gifts (a pair of shoes—her family owns a shoe factory, kajmak, coffee, lotion) to take back with me.

What amazed me most about the hospitality was that it seemed so pure. What could they have expected in return? I’m not much of a conversationalist in Serbian, I don’t have many connections. I did manage to help my colleague’s son with part of his DaVinci Code videogame. Just sitting on a bus for 6 hours and being willing to listen and being there was enough.

And these mostly strangers who took me in were disappointed that I left after six days. Such a different cultural norm.

There are plans to see them again shortly, probably for the May Day holidays.

Is hating Belgrade a deal-breaker?

2007-04-11T15:59:00.000+02:00

[Yes, I feel like a ridiculous Carrie Bradshaw trying to tie a big thought together with a reductive sentence.]

Early last week, I went out for a coffee with an acquaintance. A few minutes in, the conversation turned and I thought, oh, this is a date. And so my mental commentary shifted from ‘should he be a new friend’ to ‘do I want to date him?’

Unfortunately, many of the things that made him entertaining to talk to, made him less attractive. The first among these was his hatred of Belgrade. At one point, he asked me to name 10 things that I like about Belgrade, presenting it as some kind of challenge. Although I am not in love with Belgrade (will a city ever take Portland’s place in my heart?), I like it and named five or six things without effort (how parks are everyone’s living room in the summer, kajmak, that there seems to always be a film festival going on & movie tickets are cheap, my job, how nearly every café is elaborately themed and serves coffee and liquor and pop, the way women dress here [not that I intend to dress like them, but they are very fun to look at], etc.) and quickly filled out the rest of the ten.

But he hates it here.

If he was from here and family, lack of opportunity, ridiculous visa regimes, etc. were keeping him here, I would be more sympathetic. But he isn’t. He’s working for the foreign service of one of the world’s most developed countries. He has the resources to make his life different, but shows no initiative in that direction. And he will be serving in the Balkans for at least the next 15 years. Maybe it’s just the influence of a book I have been reading, but I have a lot of trouble understanding someone who seems to be choosing unhappiness. Especially in a city that is big enough to find a few things that bring joy.

When I asked him what he did for fun, he said sleep.
When I told him that I know some people who are really interested in his country and are learning his native language, he didn’t believe me.
When I mentioned that I had dated a Serbian guy for a bit, he became really harsh and judgmental, surprised that I could be attracted to anyone from here.

(True, not a horror story of dating don't like some dates I went on in the states, but still not the best.)

And now maybe I am being the judgmental one, writing him off like this, but my happiness can be fragile here at times. It just doesn’t seem wise to connect myself too deeply to someone that I know from the start is so gloomy.

I never thought that hating Belgrade could be a deal-breaker, but—at least in this instance—it sure seems to be.

Jastrebac

2007-04-02T17:04:00.000+02:00

I spent a lovely weekend at a seminar on transitional justice in Jastrebac, a mountain vacation-place a few hours from Belgrade.

The seminar was interesting, but I had heard most of it before. I attended a very similar conference nearly a year and a half ago. This time, though, I could understand what was going on sans translation. Hooray for progress! And now, with my language skills, I 'get to' serve as a minder of sorts for the non-BCS-speaking foreigners who appear among us. This weekend, that meant trying to help out a co-producer of a movie I have heard of, but never got around to seeing, who was filming us.

The real joy of the weekend was being in nature for a bit. It had been ages since I had been out of a city for real (not just looking at the countryside from the window of a train). Wandering around, looking at trees and brooks and mountains and the signs of spring was renewing, even if the underjunk wasn't quite what I am accustomed to.

I had forgotten how clean air can be.

Other people’s words

2007-03-29T15:11:00.000+02:00

My main project right now is working on a booklet about religious pacifism. I am compiling profiles of religiously pacifist individuals and groups that the Women will translate and distribute in collection with an educational program that confronts religious fundamentalism. “Look, religion isn’t all bad…” or some such.

In the process of researching, I’ve had the chance to read the writings of very articulate folks. Here is a selection of some of the best rhetoric I have discovered. I don’t agree with all of it, especially the please-please-martyr-me tone of the Christian Peacemaker Team call to action, but these are good, articulate words. Yes, eloquent rhetoric makes me happy. Yes, I am nerdy.

From Desmond Tutu, the best speaker I have ever heard in person:

“Jesus did not say, ‘if I be lifted up, I will draw some.’ Jesus said, ‘if I be lifted up, I will draw all, all, all, all, all, all. Black, white, yellow, rich, poor, clever, not so clever, beautiful, not so beautiful. It’s one of the most radical things. All, all, all, all, all, all, all, all. All belong. Gay, lesbian, so-called straight. All are meant to be held in this incredible embrace that will not let us go. All.”

And:

“It is a moral universe that we inhabit, and good and right equity matter in the universe of the God we worship.”

From Rabia Harris, the founder and coordinator of The Muslim Peace Fellowship:

“If the religion we follow makes our lives cramped, fearful, resentful, obsessive, then we are not following the religion taught by The Mercy to the Worlds [Mohammed]. If the Lord we adore fills us with rage or despair, arrogance or ennui, then we are not adoring The Cherisher and Sustainer of the human being. If the God we serve makes us a burden rather than a blessing, then we are not serving The Revealer of the Generous Qur’an.”

And:

"To deny our responsibility to one another, and for one another… is to decline being fully human, to choose to be something less than we are created to be, which means to tyrannize ourselves.”

From a speech given by Ron Sider at the 1984 Mennonite World Congress that led to the formation of Christian Peacemaker Teams:

“We must be prepared to die by the thousands. Those who believed in peace through the sword have not hesitated to die… Again and again, they sacrificed bright futures to the tragic illusion that one more righteous crusade would bring peace in their time… Unless we… are ready to start to die by the thousands in dramatic vigorous new exploits for peace and justice, we should sadly confess that we never really meant what we said, and we dare never whisper another word about pacifism to our sisters and brothers in those desperate lands filled with injustice. Unless we are ready to die developing new nonviolent attempts to reduce conflict, we should confess that we never really meant that the cross was an alternative to the sword.”

One thing that I have learned—and been surprised by—while doing this research is that I don’t think I am a pacifist. War is bad and should never be a first response, but sometimes it should be the last option. On many pacifist websites, there are attempts to answer The Hitler Question (‘…but what about Hitler, how would you silly pacifists have dealt with him?’) Each unconvincing answer (in a pacifist world, he never would have been in power in the first place; the Danes saved some Jews; etc.) has left me less certain of the morality of strict pacifism.

big break #3

2007-03-29T15:03:00.000+02:00

[My first big break in the Serbian media happened in November 2005. My foray into movie stardom occurred last July.]

Women in Black had a vigil on Monday, marking the eighth anniversary of a war crime in Suva Reka, Kosovo. Forty-eight Kosovar Albanians, 47 of them members of the same family were killed by Serbian Interior Ministry Police (this isn’t quite the right way to translate their job title, but I haven’t yet figured out a better translation.)

We stood on the square for an hour. Of course, the press showed up. (We have vigils so often & the press always comes. It doesn’t seem particularly newsworthy at this point, but I am not complaining.) A photo of me, and two people standing next to me, was published in the leftist daily the following day.

I guess I’m some sort of famous now. Not a very impressive sort.

bracing for imminent invasions

2007-03-22T15:08:00.000+01:00

I have spent much time in the past week corresponding with and thinking about possible visitors. If all goes as it could, I could have six visitors in the warm months.

It’s all very flattering. I mean, I like Belgrade a lot, but I know that no one is coming just to see Kalemegdan or Nikola Tesla’s ashes. This reassures me that I haven’t been such as terrible a friend as I have feared for the past 18 months. I have found it really hard to maintain my friendships by e-mail. I have realized that I don’t want to be a long-term expat, so far away from folks that matter. (Unfortunately, I have made friends here that I know I will miss as soon as I return. I just can’t win.)

Regardless, I am very much looking forward to showing off my life here, and in some cases, reciprocating the visit and seeing how my friends are living in other corners of this continent.

nothing too noteworthy

2007-03-22T15:06:00.000+01:00

It’s been a while. I have realized that my life is fairly routine right now, or at least the things that would have seen exciting and blog-worthy a year ago, aren’t any more. I’m not sure if I should be excited or disappointed about that.

A few mildly amusing things have happened that I suppose are worth noting:

I have realized that living alone makes me ridiculously rigid. Last night, while making samosas, I listened to Barack Obama’s speech at the DNC because I always listen to that speech while making samosas. (Or at least the 3 times I have ever made samosas, I have listened to that speech.)

I learned today in my Serbian class that the word for needles, like on a tree, is the diminutive form of the word for needles used to sew. Small easy-to-remember things like that make me very happy.

A few minutes later after I made this discovery, my teacher asked me about the connection between the words ‘iron’ and ‘irony.’ I suppose I am super unobservant, but I never noticed that irony is just iron+y.

I am going to give up movies for a while. I find that my first reaction is to criticize… I think taking a vacation from the form will renew my sense of wonder.

the sight on the street

2007-03-15T16:32:00.000+01:00

Last night, Iron Maiden had a concert in Belgrade (yeah, we get all the hot new stars). They are still really popular here. When the tickets for the show went on sale, there was a long line at one of the ticket selling venues when I walked past it before 9 am.

Yesterday, I ran a few errands yesterday afternoon and everywhere I went there were crowds of people wearing Iron Maiden T-shirts. Not a normal sight on the high-fashion streets of Belgrade, but very good people watching.

I never wear the T-shirt of a band I am seeing in concert. Part of that is I don't buy too many band's T-shirts (or go to too many concerts, frankly. Wearing the T-shirt of the band playing is just too earnest for me, but apparently it is the hip thing to do here (and plenty of people do it in other places as well).

Movies, yet again

2007-03-12T14:48:00.000+01:00

For a while, I have wanted to start watching more local films, but I have felt intimidated. English subtitling is rare and I haven’t been feeling very confident with my Serbian recently.

But faced with an evening of not particularly interesting small talk with an acquaintance who speaks no English, (my language has reached a point where I can small talk very well, but an interesting conversation with nuances is beyond me. I can say, ‘I like this book,’ but explaining why in an intelligent way is not yet in my skill set.) we opted for the movies.

‘Klopka,’ which had previously been recommended to me by a coworker, was playing at a theater near me. So we went. (If there is justice in the world, it will soon by playing at a theater near you too.) And I was pleasantly surprised by my ability to follow the story. I didn’t catch every word of dialogue, but I didn’t miss any significant plot points—at least as far as I know.

And I was pleasantly surprised by the film as well. It’s the story of a family with a son who has a heart problem and requires an expensive operation in German and his parents’ desperate efforts to raise the necessary 26,000 euros. I have heard multiple times that it 'captures modern Serbian life' better than any recent film.

The direction was good, the story compelling, and the film was well acted, but the most satisfying part of the story for me was seeing my current reality reflected back at me on the screen. The story occurs in Belgrade, so I could recognize places—but it was more enjoyable to see the smaller details. The family’s apartment has the same kind of light fixtures as mine. They use the brand of milk that I use. The clothes that people wear are what I see on the street every day.

I’ve been sitting here for five minutes trying to come up with a thoughtful, graceful concluding sentence, but everything I seem able to produce is hackneyed (‘so now I see why the Hollywood studio system is not for the best and diversity in the media is important,’ ‘movies don’t just expand our horizons, they play an important role in making oneself feel legitimate,’ etc. etc.), so I’ll allow you to create your own elegant way to conclude this thought.

It’s like a mad-lib.

A night on the town

2007-03-12T14:44:00.000+01:00

I spent my Friday night celebrating a friend’s birthday at a club that looks like a cave and plays indie pop (the first time I have heard The Postal Service in a public place here – it appears unlikely that it will approach the ubiquity they achieved in Portland, where they were even played in the Fred Meyer), drinking and chatting with an interesting mix of folks – Serbians, French, Finnish, Americans. I learned that the minimum wage in

Finland

is about $10 US.

Some of the Americans were college study abroaders based in Zagreb, here for the weekend. It had been a very long time since I had spent time with American college students. I was asked about my own college years, major, etc. more times in that night than I had been in at least the last year, possibly longer. I just don’t spend that much time thinking about my college life. It was AGES ago. A few months ago, I got a letter about my 5 year college reunion that started with the phrase, ‘we’ve been apart for longer than we were together….’

And the college kids are all so young. Drinking in a bar is still a novelty for them. Consequently, they have that unhealthy relationship with alcohol typical of 20 year old Americans – one threw up, another stumbled along as we helped him back to his hotel. There was not a chance that he would have been able to find it on his own.

Further proof, as if any more is needed, that having the American drinking age be 21 is not a good policy.

flowers or powers?

2007-03-08T16:21:00.000+01:00

Happy International Women's Day!

I spent a bit of today holding a sign celebrating women's autonomy before the police told us to leave. Even though another group said they'd share their permit with us, the police didn't see it that way. At least it was sunny and I met a Portlander.

The main event in the square today was not us, but something sponsored by Avon. For the past few days there have been people all over the place selling flowers and hearts. I've witnessed longer than normal lines in chocolate shops.

So, International Women's Day is losing it's orginal political character, and becoming more of a one-sided Valentine's Day, with some stuff for mothers and friends thrown in. I guess such things are to be expected; no one calls it Mother's Day for Peace anymore either.

And it lessens my American guilt slightly to see that the rest of the world is capable of stripping all of the importance from a holiday without any North American assistance. (No one cares about International Women's Day in the states.)

sign of spring

2007-03-05T17:39:00.000+01:00

I gave my first set of directions to a map-clutching, enormous backpack-toting trio of tourists on my way to work today. They were the first tourist I have helped this year...

I am hoping that my helpfulness is being noted somewhere, so the next time I am a clueless know-nothing, someone will appear to direct me to the train station (or help me with whatever it is I am searching for).

On babies

2007-03-03T20:28:00.000+01:00

I spent Friday night hanging out with a 20 month old. A coworker invited me to tag along on her regular Friday night visit to her sister’s. It was great. I don’t have any children in my life here—or even my life at home. [I know I am at an age where reproducing is not unusual, but so far my friends, my brother, and most everyone else that I know in my age cohort are ignoring our biological clocks.] It’s been nearly two years since I spent any quality time with a toddler.

My friend, the baby’s mother (who, for the record, is 31), and I sat and drank tea and played ball with the little girl. All the while, Teletubbiesi (as they are know here) played in the background. It’s dubbed in Serbian & ridiculous, but fun to watch. M, the little girl, received the DVD only 3 days ago. She is already obsessed. The only crying of the night was when Teletubbiesi was turned off. We also spent some time looking at a children’s picture dictionary, asking M to point out the horses, houses, and puppies. It was a Disney dictionary that the girl’s mother, and my friend had when they were little. M also rode her big wheel around the flat.

It was surprisingly comforting to see that the trappings of childhood here—or at least of M’s childhood- are so familiar.

More movie notes

2007-03-03T20:24:00.000+01:00

Day Night Day Night, which I saw on Thursday, is one of the most haunting movies I have seen in a while. A few times per year, I try to see a movie that I know nothing about. This was one such movie and I was surprised and satisfied. It’s the story of a suicide bomber in New York City. The audience learns nothing, not what her cause is or even her name. In the credits, she is listed only as ‘she.’ My moving going companion and I debated that approach and a few plot points for quite a while after the film ended. It’s a slow film, almost meditative, with minimal dialogue, but fascinating. I’ve seen a few yellow backpacks [what she carries her bomb in] in the past few days. They now make me nervous.

Breaking and Entering was not so intriguing. I wanted to see it because Juliette Binoche plays a Bosnian refugee. She does it well – even saying some phrases in the local language [but speaking English with a Russian accent—I couldn’t have stated that there is a different between Russian- and BCS- (as I hear the American university language departments call Bosno-Croato-Serbian) accented English until her words just didn’t sound quite right]. Her performance did not redeem the film.

Maybe it plays differently in Peoria, but here, to me, it felt exploitative and minimizing to group escaping the siege of Sarajevo with melodramatic plot points like a possibly autistic daughter and a series of robberies. Dramatizing the conflict Juliette’s half-Bosniak half-Serb son has with his Serb relatives shouldn’t be followed by the subplot about the coworker who has a crush on the cleaning lady. The parallels don’t work for me. Maybe they should. Should war and ethnic tensions be as boilerplate in such movies as marital problems? Maybe such things should be portrayed as everyday occurrences? Should the movie get some credit for a least trying to connect the story of a ridiculously wealthy urban planner with the lives of those in the neighborhood he is gentrifying?

Seriousness, as requested by my mother

2007-03-01T13:45:00.000+01:00

A few days ago, my mother asked me for my thoughts on the two recent news stories about Serbia that made it onto NPR – The Hague ruling & soccer hooliganism (what an image this place has).

Last Saturday afternoon, buzzing on cold medicine, I took a short walk around my neighborhood. I hadn’t been outside for a day or so and thought that some air would do me good. And at one point on my walk, I was forced to seek refuge on a side street because of a parade of soccer fans with a large police escort. It was all very surreal. And that’s really all I have to say about such things.

And my feelings about the ICJ ruling are a bit more complicated. (I am realizing I could never be one of those bloggers who instantly responds to the newest news items. I just don’t think that fast.) I am frustrated by the fact that the Court found that the Serbian government could have taken action to prevent atrocities, but didn’t, but that the state was not found guilty of genocide.

Over the last few days, I have been pondering concepts of guilt and responsibility. One of the conclusions I have come to is that I could never be a lawyer. I have a hard time separating criminal guilt from moral responsibility. The Serbian state had the power to prevent deaths but did not exercise that power; there is moral responsibility there. For better or worse, the ICJ doesn’t deal in morality. Should institutions be asked to tackle questions of morality? Public shaming isn’t in fashion anymore.

In addition to pondering these ‘big issues,’ I am dealing with the fallout of the ruling on a far more personal level. It saddened and frustrated coworkers. Adding to this frustration is the decision of Women in Black to cancel our public commemoration of the crimes in Strpci (14 years ago yesterday, Bosniak men were taken off a train and massacred by Serb paramilitaries in South Serbia). This decision was made because of fears for our safety—there was a rally outside the US embassy yesterday; our vigil was planned to start near the rally’s ending time, only a 15 minute walk away. Women in Black activists were afraid of energized ralliers turning violent towards us.

Because of all this, everyone’s been quicker to anger than usual. I am hoping that this passes quickly.

Frivolity, as wanted by me

2007-03-01T13:39:00.000+01:00

The Belgrade Film Festival, one of my favorite things about this city, is on now. It’s a welcome distraction from the recent news. In addition to being able to see interesting movies from all parts, I enjoy this time of year because my work becomes much more relaxed, as everyone shifts their scheduled to accommodate movie showtimes.

Thus far, I have seen only three films, Babel, Imitation of Life, and Little Miss Sunshine. Short reflections:

Babel was a really hard movie to watch – I knew enough going in not to expect happiness. It’s hard for me to watch people make one bad decision after another. And echoing the sentiments of my family members, it really should have been at least two movies. I’m glad I saw it, though and not just because my attempt to explain the plot in my language class resulted in my acquisition of the Serbian words for ‘deaf,’ ‘sign language,’ ‘to injure,’ and ‘veterinarian.’

Imitation of Life was ridiculous, melodramatic, and satisfying. There was swelling music and crises every ten minutes for the two hours of the film. It was a bit strange to follow the story of a black woman trying to pass as white when the print was so bad that everyone was purple-tinted. I was half-hoping for the surprise twist ending of everyone actually being aliens.

I liked Little Miss Sunshine more than I expected to. It's not a best picture, but it is a fun way to amuse myself for a few hours. I think I would have enjoyed it even more if I was watching it in a theater in the states. Much of the film is so America-specific. After the film, I explained to my Serbian companion that child beauty pageants really happen like that in the states. Many times, I was the only one laughing. It reminded me of seeing School of Rock in Woodinville; my mother and I laughed more than everyone else in the sold-out theater put together.

Maybe I should say I should have seen it in an American city.

Budapest

2007-02-20T15:13:00.001+01:00

Practically since my arrival in this part of the world, people have been telling me that I should go to Budapest. Last weekend, I finally made that journey up the Danube.

For me, heaven would look something like the baths at Hotel Gellert in Budapest. (At least part of heaven, another part would look like a library.) They are lovely—two large soaking pools in a room with beautifully tiled walls and a skylight. My guidebook likens it to taking a bath in a cathedral. And there is a steam room, saunas, a swimming pool, showers and other things tucked away in nooks & crannies. And the people watching is good, a mix of tourists and locals of all ages. The locker-room floor is even heated. Glorious.

In short, I had a good weekend in Budapest. It’s a pretty city, a good place to visit. The prevalence of English and the crowds of tourists were a bit overwhelming. I can’t imagine what the place is like in the summer. (I won’t have to imagine, as I will probably be heading back in a few months.) There is falafel there, too, which is most welcome.

As is my custom, I tried some of the local junk food. My favorite was rolls of lemon-flavored cheese dipped in chocolate. Delicious. Another contender was fried bread dough topped with garlic, cheese, and sour cream. Also delicious.

A weekend in Christendom

2007-02-20T15:11:00.000+01:00

The friend I was staying with in Budapest, a fellow volunteer in my program, is working for the World Student Christian Federation. Not surprisingly, she’s a rather devout Christian. Most of her friends in Budapest are people that she met in her Friday night English language Bible study. I attended said Bible study and met a lot of her friends. It was an interesting subculture to join for a few days… but I wouldn’t want to live there.

Everyone was very kind and extremely welcoming, though. A few of the Hungarians in the crowd took the time to answer my rather dumb questions [“Are the what-I-think-of-as-Russian nesting dolls that people are trying to sell to tourists actually from here?” (no.) “Why don’t the supermarkets here give out plastic bags?” (There’s a tax on plastic.) I also learned that when Hungarians don’t understand something, they say, ‘that’s Chinese.’]

I was reminded that heteronormity exists [Yes, I live in a bubble.] and also of a certain variety of self-righteousness. After Bible study and coffee at a café run by Campus Crusade for Christ, we walked home along the Danube. Two obviously chemically-addled men asked, ‘where are you going? Do you want to go to a reggae party?’ as they walked by us. One of my walking companions replied with, ‘no, we’re going to heaven.’ I never knew that reggae parties and heaven were mutually exclusive.

During night number two with the Budapest English-speaking Christians (a night of borscht-eating and praise song-singing, with guitar and recorder accompaniment). The topic of discussion turned to cursing. Everyone is opposed, unsurprisingly, but I challenged them on it. Especially when a curse isn’t directed at someone in anger, when it is used to express frustration or as an adjective, I have no opposition. I rarely curse, but that isn’t based on any moral principles; I believe over-reliance on curse words is a lazy way to talk & it robs the words of their power for when you really need them.

I recognize that not taking the Lord’s name in vain is one of the big rules of Christianity, but it seems rather unchristian to be complaining about someone’s gutter mouth (someone who apparently restricted their curses to the secular sphere) when there are naked to clothe, hungry to feed, and brothers to keep.

The list

2007-02-20T15:04:00.000+01:00

While I was home, nearly a month ago—hard to believe—my mother was working on a list of 100 things to do before she dies. It was part of a mentoring program that she is involved in at her church—both her and her young mentee wrote these lists & compared & borrowed items from one another. I thought it would be a good project & so I started my own list. I don’t know if it is good or bad sign that it took me over a month to complete it. Much of the list-making occurred while I was making dinner, hence the large number of food-related items. Without further ado, here are 100 things that I hope to do before I die:

1. learn to pronounce French
2. have a baby (or 2)
3. learn to make good saag paneer
4. write a book
5. learn to sing
6. get a graduate degree
7. learn to read Cyrillic cursive
8. Forgive BC
9. read the whole Bible
10. meet Johnny Depp
11. make one new good friend every year
12. go to India
13. go to Angkor Wat
14. learn to salsa dance
15. speak Serbian well
16. go to a high school or college reunion
17. go curling
18. learn to play the guitar
19. have a job I love
20. age gracefully
21. learn to make good baba ghanoush
22. have an occasion for wearing a ball gown
23. vote for the winner in a presidential election
24. visit all 50 states (only 7 left)
25. switch between Serbian, Spanish and English without mixing them up
26. learn to use a sewing machine
27. learn basic car maintenance
28. never own a car
29. learn to write legible cursive
30. be an aunt
31. be on This American Life
32. see a music diva’s ridiculous stage show (with many costume changes, backup dancers, and preferably live animals) live
33. read a book by an author from every country in the world
34. learn to whistle
35. learn to wink
36. travel the whole of the Mediterranean Coast
37. learn how marshmallows are made
38. go to Toronto
39. own my own home
40. do an extreme sport
41. find my one true love
~~42. go to Budapest~~
43. go to a strip club
44. watch every episode of Gilmore Girls
45. own a Vespa
46. be someone’s muse
47. win a costume contest
48. figure out what the European Parliament does
49. retire comfortably
50. handpiece and handquilt five quilts
51. attend a taping of The Daily Show
52. Read the Koran
53. figure out what italics have to do with Italians
54. make a quilt with other people
55. attend the proposed FIM reunion
56. watch a movie every day for a month
57. take a belly dancing class
58. understand cricket
59. visit the family farm in Norway
60. live in one place for ten years
61. read the complete works of Jane Austen
62. plan an excellent BVS retreat
63. learn physics
64. live in Portland again
65. go to Ireland
66. go to Kosov@
67. make an Omnivore’s Dilemma-style gathered and grown meal
68. learn about investing
69. make my own yogurt
70. fly first class
71. go wine tasting
72. be a raw foodist for a week
73. be acupunctured
74. get a manicure
75. get a pedicure
76. write a credo
77. win a shopping spree
78. learn to make ajvar
79. learn to make cheesecake
80. learn basic plumbing
81. read On Food and Cooking
82. be a grandma
83. go back to Dahab
84. understand how the internet works
85. go on a trip just with my mother
86. go on a trip just with my father
87. go on a trip just with my brother
88. go to Albania
89. learn the butterfly stroke
90. travel across the US by train
91. be in a long-term relationship
92. learn about linguistics
93. climb three more mountains
94. have a meet-cute
95. attend Eurovision
96. SCUBA again
97. go to sub-Saharan Africa
98. be the object of an ‘I Saw You’ ad
99. build something
100. As the Hungarians say, ‘live happily ever after until I die.’

Maybe I should read Robinson Crusoe

2007-02-13T16:27:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, Swiss Family Robinson was showing at The Yugoslav Film Museum. It’s a movie that I have seen more times than I can count, but not at all in at least the past ten years. I think my parents taped it off TV when I was young. I remember rewinding and watching the action sequence when the pirates attack over and over again. I was a bit nervous that my memory of the movie would be much better than the movie itself.

My speculation will have to continue for another day. I tried to go see it, but wasn’t allowed to. I think it was a special screening of some sort and they had no empty seats, but I didn’t understand all of what the ticket-seller said. I didn’t have my ears primed for a complicated explanation—I was listening to make sure I got the ticket price right.

So I came home and watched a few episodes of Lost and was stunned by the similarities. I guess stranded on a desert island narratives only have so many variations. Both have weird animals and strangers appear. There are love triangles. Both groups are attacked by baddies. (Although Lost is much much scarier about it. I have learned that I can’t watch episodes before bed or I have nightmares.) The Swiss Family are way better in the housing department, though—I would love to live in their treehouse. Living under a tarp or in a weird underground lair is not so appealing.

induction ceremony

2007-02-09T15:29:00.000+01:00

In honor of almost-Valentine's Day, I think it is time for my list of imaginary boyfriends to increase by one. It does not yet include a man who writes books without pictures.

Joining previous inductees Johnny Depp, Gael Garcia Bernal, Ira Glass, Barack Obama, and Craig Thompson (The only one I met in real life. We spoke about bikes and how Portland is better than Iowa and Wisconsin.) is Chris Hedges. He is the author of one of my favorite books and his newest looks equally amazing (only 9 months until I’ll be in an extensive English language bookstore again). If you want to read his smart words, go here. I read it a couple of times last night. It was kind of like a date. We share a lot of interests. We could so totally fall in love while talking about conflicts in the Balkans and scary Christians in the states. I think I want to be him when I grow up.

Or, to quote E when she e-mails me Colbert’s latest bon mot, ‘I want to marry this man’s brain.’

signs of spring

2007-02-09T15:23:00.000+01:00

Belgrade’s winter-that-wasn’t heated up again yesterday, which means that there were even more leafleters in the street.

They congregate at the tops of stairways and other pedestrian-friendly zones, passing out slips of paper to nearly everyone who passes by. I usually can’t walk to work without being offered a stack of papers with ads for parties or boutiques on them. I used to be offended when I received ones for Tai-Bo classes, but I realized that they are vastly outnumbered by the number advertising English classes. If they only knew… I chuckle to myself.

It surprises me how many leafleters there are. I’m hardly a business strategist, but I wouldn’t think that leafleting is a particularly effective marketing technique. No one seems to look at the flyers. Most people either don’t take them or throw them away immediately.

I nearly always take the leaflets. After all, it’s what George Orwell says to do. I make a special effort to take the slips if the leafleters are over 40, which is rare. Most of the leafleters are younger than I am. I can't articulate it, but there is something really sad about middle-aged people handing out slips of paper all day long.

Yum…ouch!

2007-02-01T10:54:00.000+01:00

One of my favorite things to do while traveling is to experience the weird junk food of the places that I am in. I think this fascination can be traced to my discovery of pickle flavored potato chips on a trip to Canada when I was 15.

How people choose to consume there empty calories interests me. In the US, there are Cheetos, while Serbia has Smoki – also made from puffed grain of some sort, but flavored with peanuts instead of cheese. And the Bulgarian entrant into this weird subcategory of food is butter flavored with an even more Styrofoamy texture. There is totally a dissertation here...

A friend recently went to Israel and brought me back what might be the world’s weirdest junk food, ‘Milk Chocolate with Popping Candy.’ It is the love child of a Milka bar and Pop Rocks. I am a big fan of chocolate and of Pop Rocks. But still, this thing is so so weird. I can’t even figure out how to eat it. If I bite into it, the imbedded pop rocks explode and hurt my gums, but it feels weird to just let the whole thing dissolve in my mouth. It’s a pretty amazing eating experience, but I won’t be rushing out to stock up on more. The whole is definitely less than the sum of its parts.

time to insure my tongue?

2007-01-30T20:21:00.000+01:00

I can now add 'bagel taste-tester' to my resume.

A friend met a local fellow recently returned from a decade in Prague. He has decided what Belgrade 'needs' is bagels. So he gathered together a focus group of North Americans to test his wares.

Taste-testing is something I could get into. The bagels were alright - best I have had in Serbia, but that's not saying too much. I have made my own bagels, so I could talk about things like the amount of steam in the oven with a modicum of authority. I don't spend much time here being an authority on anything.

But does Belgrade need bagels? Not at all. They are not something that I miss in the slightest (although others at the gathering said that they are the North American food that they miss the most). There is djevrek here - a round bread sold everywhere. It doesn't seem like bagels would have much of niche.

But good luck to him, I would be happy to reprise my role as a taste tester.

safety

2007-01-30T20:09:00.000+01:00

Two friends/co-workers were attacked by a group of skinheads (or skinhedsi in Serbian) on election night. One was pushed down a flight of stairs in a pedestrian passage I walk through almost everyday.

And what makes this so scary to me is that the attack was targetted. My friend M was recognized as a Women in Black activist & one of the attackers yelled, 'because of you, I have a criminal record.'

I am used to dealing with random violence -- I had a moment on a dark street in Portland a few weeks ago that was scarier than anything I have experienced in Belgrade -- but how does one protect oneself from people who are out to get you?

People are suggesting that we vary our routines (not that those attacked were doing something routine). But how far can or should one go to keep oneself safe? I've been working on a security manual for my volunteer program & the recent victims didn't do anything against our safety rules. I don't know whether to go crazy vigilant or give up.

I'm sure I'll land somewhere in the middle.

in praise of the parliamentary system

2007-01-30T19:58:00.000+01:00

I've been with super-limited internet access since my return to Serbia.

Weeks ago, my mother and I had a conversation about the weird, winner-take-all two-party 'democracy' in the US. Her brilliant point was 'if our system is so great, why don't other places emulate it?' I hadn't put that thought together before.

And now, after watching a parliamentary system in action, my sentiments have been reinforced. It's just more exciting to vote one's hopes than one's fears. And the prospect of having opposition in parliament on both the left and the right (which is what will happen if my sources are correct) is exciting to this nerdy politics lover.

and maybe my study of Serbian will prove useful in my next life after all...

2007-01-17T06:02:00.000+01:00

Some surprising moments:

In an arboretum in LA, I overheard a woman speaking Serbian to what I presumed was her grandchild. Don't go over there, etc. I thought about striking up a conversation, but I didn't have anything to say.

Portland now has a burek food cart downtown. I didn't know it was there until too late. I would have enjoyed it. I also discovered a Serbian restaurant. I looked at the menu & realized that, although it is good to see the proja and čevap are available, I would rather go out for Thai.

I saw Children of Men last night. It's amazing & horrifying. The best movie I have seen this year. And it has some Serbian dialog. A refugee begs 'izvinite... izvinite... molim vas.' Later, when our hero makes a speech, one of the revolutionaries responds with a stream of curses, 'p---- m-----,' etc. I started laughing at it - the only one in the theater to do so, of course - and whispered my translation to my family.

a return to the scene

2007-01-17T05:39:00.000+01:00

Yesterday morning, I took a snowing train ride back up the coast, returning from a week in Portland, my city of ghosts...

Good friends and I had a family reunion of sorts, coming in from our various new places of residence to traipse about the city, eating, reminiscing and enjoying each other's company. This is what is feels like to be surrounded good friends, I reminded myself. It has been a while.

Portland is a city where I fit. I am not too enormous to buy cheap, fabulous clothes. The food is good. The movies are cheap and star my imaginary Mexican boyfriend. It's where Powell's is. I am able to share interesting conversation with strangers - the man in the beer line beside us told us of how he would like to live inside the Seattle Public Library, a woman told me she had tried on my new-to-me coat just hours before I purchased it - and pick up where I left off with old friends. And since it has been a year and a half since I have lived there, it is very easy to over-romanticize the place.

I forget how much I hated my job and how hard and unsuccessfully I worked to find another.

One night, I took a cold 30 block walk to meet A. I left from the flat of a fellow I used to date who's probably coming to Belgrade in a few months. I passed the place where I ate dinner on the worst date of my life. I passed a street light under which I kissed yet another fellow. I remembered the painful ends of my attempts at relationships in that town.

There were very good reasons to leave.

notes on the return

2006-12-29T19:14:00.000+01:00

so I'm safely arrived in the states and my family's California Xmas togetherness extravaganza is nearing a close...

The adjustment back has been hard at times, but not as challenging as I was anticipating... I even got to listen in on a Serbian-language conversation two days ago.

On the way home from the airport, my mom and I stopped at a grocery store. My job was to pick out the ice cream. I wandered the ice cream aisle for a good 5 minutes, staring at the hundreds of flavors... I was too overwhelmed to decide. I came back a few days later and successfully picked out fudge brownie.

On Christmas Eve, I was listing to M all of the weirdnesses of the States, and he said to me, 'you know, this place used to be normal for you.' True.

I am missing blueberry juice something fierce...

I have also been watching a lot of TV mostly bowl games as of late, although words cannot describe my love for the Stewart/Colbert hour of hilarity. During this TV watching, I have discovered a product that seems to encapsulate all that is wrong with the States: restaurant-inspired cat food.

I could write essays about the wrongness of this product, but my grandma's left-handed mouse is scaring me-even though I am left-handed.

into the darkness

2006-12-19T14:59:00.000+01:00

I have spent the past few days getting progressively more excited about my trip home... and then I recieved this e-mail from my mom:

you probably don't get much weather-related news about the Eastside of King County, and it doesn't usually matter, except this time it does. We have been without power due to a big windstorm that hit last Thursday, and there is a very real possibility we may be without power for another five days. Brrrr!

So bring along a pair of long underwear, think about sleeping in a sleeping bag in front of the wood stove, wearing a hat and sweats. We haven't moved our bed downstairs yet, but we are talking about it. At least we can take warm showers.

Plus it's only light in the house from about 7:30 to 4:00. ... In other words, welcome home!

lovely... just lovely. I am a bit less excited now.

A Superstitious Mind

2006-12-18T15:28:00.000+01:00

I don’t think of myself as a superstitious person, but I recently realized that I follow superstitions, lots of superstitions. A sampling of my superstitious habits—with my best effort at tracking their source—follows:

I don’t ever put a bag or purse on the floor. If I did so, all of my money would go away. (This is from Serbia.)

For good luck, I try to make ‘rabbit, rabbit’ the first words I say every month. (This is from J, making it an Iowan tradition?)

I generally don’t sit on the corner of a table, as it would be that I never marry (in Serbia) or that I will be infertile (in Romania). Except, with certain friends I fight over the corner seat because none of us are too eager for spouses or babies.

And all of the alcohol-related ones:

I always look into someone’s eyes when I am clinking glasses with them (what is the word for ‘clinking glasses?’ Toasting is the best I can come up with, but it seems like a speech should be involved. Some English speakers I hang out with have coined the term ‘živeliing’ as živeli is what you say in this part of the world when you clink glasses.) My friend M told me that failing to make eye contact will result in 7 years of bad sex. I have no idea where he picked that up, possibly The Netherlands.

I never živeli with something that isn’t alcohol. I can’t remember who told me that or what the threat of noncompliance is, but I stick to it.

I always take a sip from my glass after živeliing before putting the glass back on the table. I have been told that in certain parts of Slovakia and Ukraine one must put one’s glass back on the table before drinking from it.

---

In sum, I am ridiculous.

crossing my fingers that this post will not spark discussions of my ignorance

2006-12-11T17:00:00.000+01:00

I am going to the states next week—my first time back in over a year. In addition to seeing family and friends and being able to effortlessly eavesdrop, I am looking forward to being able to buy well-labeled spices.

In Serbian, cumin and caraway, despite having very different flavors, have the same name, kim. [I have heard that German doesn’t differentiate between them either.] I don’t get it. They taste so different; how can they share a name?

I am running low on cumin & have been trying to unsuccessfully resupply. I have bought a few packets of kim—the same brand that was cumin before—only to end up with caraway. My attempts at Mexican and Indian food are really suffering.

Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something.
Maybe I should just make rye bread instead.

scariest e-mail ever

2006-11-24T18:27:00.000+01:00

So, I am on the Belgrade US Embassy's e-mail list. When I get a message from them, it is never good news: "stay away from rallies... or certain splavovi."

The most recent one is truly horrifying:

Warden Notice #14-06 American Embassy Belgrade

November 22, 2006

Avian Influenza

How to Prepare for “Sheltering-In-Place”

Health professionals are concerned that the continued spread of a highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1) virus among animals in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe has the potential to significantly threaten human health. If a virus such as H5N1 mutates and spreads easily from one person to another, avian influenza may break out globally. While there are no reports of sustained human-to-human transmission of avian influenza, the U.S. government and international health agencies are preparing for a possible pandemic.

Depending on the severity of a pandemic, commercial airlines might drastically curtail or even cease operations. Travel restrictions could also impede people from returning to the United States or fleeing to other countries. For these reasons, it may make more sense to “shelter-in-place” (i.e., stay home and practice “social distancing” to avoid contagion) for an appropriate period of time.

United States Residents: The Department of Health and Human Services suggests that US residents prepare two weeks of emergency supplies (food, water, medicines, etc.) in order to shelter-in-place during an influenza pandemic.

American Citizens Abroad: Due to varying conditions overseas, Americans abroad should evaluate their situation and prepare emergency supplies accordingly (non-perishable food, potable water, medicines, etc.) for the possibility of sheltering-in-place for at least two and up to twelve weeks. Water purification techniques such as boiling, filtering and/or adding chlorine to locally available rainwater, swimming pools, lakes, rivers and wells may replace the need to store large quantities of water.

What can you do on a daily basis? Cover your cough. Wash your hands regularly with soap and water for at least 20 seconds to eradicate viruses and bacteria or apply a hand sanitizer with a minimum of 60% alcohol content when soap and water are not available. Stay home if you are sick. Vaccinate yourself against seasonal flu.

Travel: American citizens living in or traveling to countries with human or animal cases of H5N1 virus should consider the potential risks. Keep informed of the latest medical guidance and practical information and plan accordingly. Consult www.travel.state.gov for the latest tips on international travel.

On-Line Resources: Detailed information about suggested preparations, as well as planning checklists, are available on the U.S. government’s one-stop web site on pandemic influenza (www.pandemicflu.gov), also the World Health Organization (www.who.int/en/) and the Centers for Disease Control (www.cdc.gov) websites.

12 weeks of 'sheltering-in-place?' Drinking from swimming pools?

Maybe I should unsubscribe from these e-mails.

sweet dream

2006-11-20T14:27:00.000+01:00

On Saturday night, I dreamed of Barack Obama.

I was back in college. He was a professor. It was Thanksgiving. He was organizing an ‘orphan’s thanksgiving’ for all of us who had no where else to go. [I always had places to go on Thanksgiving, but in dreamland I didn’t.] And it became a huge production. People abandoned their plans with their families in order to go to Barack’s house. I was in charge of baking the pies (I explained to Barack how my family always has key lime pie for Thanksgiving, but that I can’t find the ingredients in Belgrade.) and writing the thank-you notes (which made sense in the dream). Over dinner, Barack described Illyrian architecture. (Is there such a thing as Illyrian architecture?) My dreams are rarely so interesting... usually just my teeth falling out.

I do want him to be the next American president… I know he’s a little young and inexperienced, but I am not at all excited about anyone else.

And he passed my dream test, which means quite a bit in my own little world. Usually when I dream about famous people or acquaintances, they do terrible things. In college, I dreamed that one of my professors killed my mom. I couldn’t look him in the eye the rest of the semester.

a first

2006-11-20T14:24:00.000+01:00

I was ‘controlled’ on the tram yesterday. When the ticket-checking man asked to see my ticket, it took me a bit to find it, but it ended without a fine.

I don’t take public transportation too often, maybe an average of once a week. In over a year of living here, this was the first time I was controlled. I am glad that I had bothered to validate my ticket. Sometimes, I don't.

When I was visiting Sarajevo and Zagreb, I was controlled on the first trams I took.

I don’t know if this is praise for those cities or Belgrade.

I am the majority

2006-11-13T14:29:00.000+01:00

So I am literally as pleased as I could be with last week's elections.

In every contest--senate, state rep., state supreme court, initiatives, county ballot measures, etc.-- I voted with the majority. Everything that I voted for won. That has never happened to me before. It's really satisfying.

I feel better about going back to my little corner of the states someday.

Bread and Circuses

2006-11-10T15:58:00.000+01:00

The first half of my yesterday was consumed with bread making. To mark The International Day against Fascism and Anti-Semitism, Women and Black had a vigil followed by a potluck party. The dishes were all Lebanese. I don’t really know why that was decided upon. Maybe it was an attempt to be fair and balanced. Regardless, it was delicious.

It was my first attempt at cooking with Serbian yeast, which comes in a paste, about the consistency of softened butter. The bread wasn’t Hoda’s quality, but I was satisfied and I brought the recipe to a coworker today.

Yesterday evening, I met up with a few Americans that sent an e-mail to Women in Black about a month ago, saying they would be traveling through Belgrade, wanting to know more about the organization. It turns out that they are circus people. They had been volunteering in Kosovo with some sort of reconciliation-through-circus-skills initiative.

As we were walking along the pedestrian street, we happened across some circus punks (I never knew there was such a thing) that they knew. These two guys were putting on a show—impressive juggling (fire, lots of balls), some acrobatics, etc. I hadn’t seen juggling in years—it was really entertaining. Watching the little kids around us get excited was almost as good as the show itself.

When sitting in a park and drinking non-alcoholic spritzer (if there is such a thing) was cut short by a downpour, we sought refuge at A&T’s nearby flat. A’s visiting brother does magic, so the evening ended with card tricks, magically twisted forks, a levitating 500 dinar note, potato juggling and much discussion of the juggling and magic subcultures, which I have learned are very curious places.

vote early, not often

2006-11-07T15:32:00.000+01:00

I dropped my ballot off at the embassy yesterday. It is currently in a diplomatic pouch slowly making its way to Seattle. Convenient for me, my county is still a 'as long as your ballot is post-marked (or embassy-stamped) by election day it counts' place, not a 'we have to have your ballot in our hand when the polls close' place.

Diplomatic pouches are not known for their speed. My ballot will only come into play if there are a couple of recounts, which is not at all unprecedented in my purple homeland.