I arrived in Niš exactly one month ago. In the past thirty-one days, I've had the chance to begin to get to know the city, and to settle into a fairly normal routine.
Southern Serbia is fairly different from Vojvodina, the autonomous province of which Novi Sad is the head. The differences between Novi Sad and Niš have two major origins: geography and history.
Vojvodina is flat. Take your stereotypical image of Kansas, replace the corn with other grains, and scale it down a bit and you've gota a fair picture of Vojvodina. (Vojvodinians will claim they have one or two mountains. This is true by loose definitions of mountains.)
Niš is surrounded by substantial mountains. If Novi Sad is Kansas, Niš is the Appalachian foothills. It started snowing on us during our first week here, and it hasn't let up more than a few days at a time. While my friends back in North Carolina have been enjoying 15°C weather, I've been dealing with -15°C.
Vojvodina was historically part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire while the area around Niš was under Ottoman rule for five hundred years. This affects not only the food (Hungarian goulash is common in Novi Sad while Niš is known for its roštilj [barbecue]) but also their attitudes towards Europe.
Jacob and me above the entrance to the Niš fortress. Photocredit: Yentli
Key to the history of each city is its fortress. Novi Sad sits across the Danube from the Austro-Hungarian era Petrovaradin Fortress, where the international music vestival Exit is held annually. Niš surrounds an old Turkish fortress that has its roots in the Roman era.
Above: Jacob and I complete a statue of a Roman woman. Jacob nails it.
Niš is fairly proud of its ancient history, being the birthplace of three Roman Emperors. But on our tours of the city in our first week here, we were focused on more recent history. Together we visited Ćele kula: the skull tower.
Far from being the super-villain lair that its name suggests, the tower is both monument and warning. The story's a great one, so I have to repeat it.
Entering the chapel that now protects the skull tower
It was the year 1809, five years after the beginning of the First Serbian Uprising against the rule of the Ottoman Turks (who I'm sure have another version of this story). A commander named Stevan Sinđelić was holding the line of the free Serbian state just north of the Turk-occupied Niš fortress. The five thousand Serbian men were able to hold off the twenty thousand Ottomans for a time, but not indefinitely. When they finally overran the trenches, Sinđelić went to the gunpowder storage and fired into the barrels. The explosion killed nearly all of both the rebels and the Turks, and hindered the progress of the Turkish army in putting down the uprising.
Furious, the Turkish commander ordered that a tower be built of the skulls of the rebels to serve as a warning to others. Over nine hundred skulls were originally used, though fewer than sixty remain in the tower now.
Some of the skulls still in the tower. The tower isn't that tall, but since the bricks are human skulls, it's tall enough to get its message across.
Me and the skull allegedly belonging to Sinđelić. It smells like incense (naturally, it's claimed). Photocredit: Yentli
Of course, what was meant as a warning was eventually converted into a memorial. Instead of being afraid, Serbians now come to honor Sinđelić and his sacrifice.
While this gruesome tower has an inspiring story of self-sacrifice for a greater cause, our other stop was far more depressing. We visited the Crveni Krst concentration camp. (Somewhat ironically, Crveni Krst means Red Cross.)
Approaching the Crveni Krst concentration camp.
I'd never been to a concentration camp before, and I wasn't sure what to expect. Crveni Krst was no Auschwitz: genocide happened here, but not at quite the same scale as at the more infamous camps.
In ten days in April 1941, the then Kingdom of Yugoslavia fell to Axis forces. Almost immediately the Nazi occupation established concentration camps at various points around Yugoslavia where they imprisoned Jews, Roma, and various Yugoslav resistance fighters (generally Partisans).
Guards' quarters.
Over 30,000 people are thought to have spent time in the Crveni Krst camp. One of the exhibits in the dormitories is a list of over one hundred people who made a successful escape from the camp on February 12, 1942. This escape was one of the largest until liberation.
Entering the dormitories.
An illustration of the camp.
Over the course of the occupation, ten to twelve thousand prisoners were trucked to the forests of nearby Bubanj to be executed. We didn't make the trek out to the Bubanj memorial yet, though we will soon.
One of the cells. The guide said that over twenty people would be forced to live in one.
One thing to note was that the interior of the building was even colder than the weather outside. It was as if the engineers hadn't been indifferent to comfort but actually trying to make the building miserable.
Exiting the concentration camp.
The Crveni Krst concentration camp is directly on the main road between my neighborhood and the rest of the city. Every day I get to see its remains, standing not only as a memorial to the multitude of victims of this horrible crime but also as a reminder of just how horrible humans can be to each other.
This post turned out to be a lot more about death than I had intended. I'll write more about being miserably cold and my day-to-day life soon.
When I don't update this blog, it's not always because I'm lazy. Sometimes it's because I have things going on. (Usually it's both).
Since my last update, I've gone through a Slava, two Christmases, two New Year's Eves, and moved in with my second homestay family.
A Slava is a family Saint-day. Each Serb family has one, even if they aren't practicing members of the Serbian Orthodox Church. During a family's Slava, the kids are officially excused from school and the parents from work. This time is meant to be spent with family-- essentially, a personalized mini-Thanksgiving. There are plenty of elaborate Slava ceremonies, but for their Slava of Sveti Nikola (Saint Nicholas) my host family kept it pretty plain with a small gathering at grandmother's apartment.. Before the meal, Ivan and his brother broke the special Slava bread, which was made with the four "C"s emblem baked into the top. We then proceeded to eat as much food as we could, but of course by the end there was still enough food for a second feast.
I got sick with some sort of stomach bug right before Christmas, so I missed our final Serbian classes in Novi Sad. Fortunately, I was mostly recovered by Christmas Eve, so I could enjoy yet another feast, this time at the other grandparents' flat.
I should take a minute and talk about Christmases. For those of us who aren't Serbian, Christmas always means December 25th. End of story.
Not so here. The Serbian Orthodox Church follows the Julian calendar, while civil society here, like the rest of the westernized world, follows the Gregorian calendar. The calendars are nearly identical in structure, but due to minor differences in the rule regarding leap years, the Julian calendar is now 13 days later than the Gregorian calendar. This means that Serbian Christmas falls on January 7th. Orthodox and ethnic Serb families generally celebrate only this Christmas.
My host mother's family isn't totally Serb though-- her father is Catholic. So, on December 24th and 25th, "regular" Christmas Eve and Day, he brought us over to celebrate. I also got to skype with my parents and my mom's side of the family in Texas, and despite the fact that we were 5800 miles away, we were still together for Christmas. I also received the greatest gift of all: Cheerwine. Back in North Carolina, I had about one can of the world's greatest soda per day, and I was greatly deprived. Fortunately, though the Cheerwine company doesn't really know where Serbia is, my dad was able to ship me some. I shared with my homestay family, and the taste lived up to my memories.
Carolina in my mind (and my glass)
The next week was my final week working for CZOR. Since it was getting to be the season of Slavas, Christmases, and New Year's Eves, things were mostly winding down. The volunteers had an end-of-the-year evaluation/party, and the next day the CZOR employees had a goodbye gathering for me. I already miss everyone there!
That week and the week following were filled with goodbyes. I met more wonderful people in Novi Sad than I had time to give proper goodbyes, but I know I'll be back briefly in June, if not earlier! Besides, someday I want to come back for Exit Festival.
For New Year's Eve, I went to the main square and listened to Zvonko Bogdan, a Vojvodinian folk musician, followed by Bajaga, a moderately famous rocker from the ex-Yu scene. The crowd was enormous-- there wasn't room to walk anywhere in the square, or in any of the roads feeding into it. At midnight, without any countdown or warning, fireworks went off from the town hall. For five or six minutes the air was continuously lit with an unbreaking stream of explosions, some of which got a little low for comfort.
While I'm talking about fireworks, I should take a moment and talk about firecrackers. I first heard petarde, as they're called in Serbian, around December 27th. Some kids were lighting them, tossing them into the park, and running away to watch the bang. People told me scare stories about kids who'd light them and put them in your hood, and I saw in the news that some Belgrade boy had seriously damaged his hand with a firecracker, but in my experience with petarde, they're mostly just surprising and annoying. The frequency of the petarde only increased until on New Year's Eve, you couldn't go more than a few minutes without hearing a pop from somewhere. Their usage decreased during the days between New Year's Day and Serbian Christmas, but they made a reprise around January 7th.
Serbian Christmas is a time to take your explosives seriously! Don't just take it from me-- here's a political cartoon from the newspaper Blic (Blitz, or Flash) from January 6th, Serbian Christmas Eve:
Woman 1: Are you going to some war again?
Woman 2: Or maybe to overthrow the government?
Man: Of course not! We're getting ready for Christmas.
[[Expanding more about Serbian Christmas later-- give me a little more time]]
On Monday morning, January 9th, after saying goodbye to all my Novosadski friends, and after a long night packing, I piled my luggage into a van and said goodbye to Dušan, Nikola, Sandra, and Ivan. Well, that's not quite accurate. We said "vidimo se," meaning "we'll see each other." As excited as I am for Niš, I already miss the Lukić family, and can't wait to see them again in June.
All of us exhausted, BYPNovi Sad anymore-- right now, Vojvodina has neither hills nor snow.
I'll update this post later with pictures and a description of Serbian Christmas. Afterwards I'll give some impressions of Niš, my new family, and my new work.
This Saturday I woke up a little before noon. Even here in Serbia, I'm maintaining a teenager's sleeping schedule. It was a particularly warm day, and from my window I saw Sandra, my host mom, watching over Nikola and Dusan as they rollerbladed up and down the street.
When I went downstairs and had a late breakfast, I noticed a new map of Telep, our neighborhood, spread out across the table. Two packs of colored pencils were beside it; all were marked with Демократска странка (Demokratska stranka, Democratic Party), the current leading political party in Serbia. As Ivan came inside, he explained to me that campaigners for the May election were already going door-to-door promoting their party. The map of Telep highlighted all the new road construction and other projects around our neighborhood and the city itself. Most of this construction I was familiar with-- it's still going on! I never thought of the North Carolina Department of Transport as efficient, but the difference between the NCDOT and construction here is like the difference between a Corvette and a Yugo. Still, the Democratic Party's flyers were bragging that the Yugo is running at all, which should not be taken for granted.
Nikola had wanted to bring the colored pencils with him to school, but Ivan forbade this. It's wrong, he explained, for kids to be displaying political propaganda before they can truly understand and form opinions on what they're showing.
Later in the day, most of BYP Serbia met up and went to watch a football game. No, I don't mean American football, the sport that's played with almost no foot-to-ball contact, I mean what the rest of the world calls football, and what we call soccer.
I had been warned to stay away from football matches, which, of course, only made me want to attend one even more. Fortunately, I found a way to safely satisfy my curiosity. The game this weekend was between the local team, FK Vojvodina (ranked 3rd in the Serbian "Superliga") and a relatively unknown team, FK Borac Čačak (ranked second from last). Since Čačak is so crappy and not very close, hardly any fans from the opposing team showed up. Occasionally football games get violent here, but generally only when Partizan or Crvena Zvezda, the two Belgrade teams that top the league, shows up. As we were walking toward the game, a group of young men (the youngest, I guessed, was 14 or younger) blocked off a small side road and marched, shouting some sort of chant that we couldn't understand. Remembering the warnings, we ducked off to the side and waited for them to pass. There was no danger; they were far more interested in getting to the stadium than anyone in their path.
As a reward to the Vojvodina fans for their support during a strong season, the club made the game free to all! The Karađorđe Stadium can hold over 15,000 fans, but on this occasion, it was far from full. Though it was free, the fact that the game was pretty much a given win for Vojvodina probably turned a lot of people off.
On the advice of my coworker, we sat on the long side of the stadium, not the North where the more intense football fans gather. During the beginning of the game, they seemed to be more intense versions of American Football fans back in the states: chants, songs, waving flags, and taunts. Since universities in Serbia don't have associated sports teams, the professional teams like FK Vojvodina are the focus of all sports enthusiasm.
The North end of the stadium, with the most avid football fans. Almost visible: a Serbian flag in the shape of Kosovo.
Photo credit: Dominique
The flags, for the most part, were in Vojvodina red and white, with the names of various fan clubs printed across them. Also displayed was a Serbian tricolor with the cross and four cyrillic "s"s (explained at the bottom of this post). Next to another flag of Serbia, right in the middle of the crowd, was an outline of Kosovo with the Serbian flag superimposed on it. Football and patriotism (or nationalism, depending on who you ask) have been tied together closely, and the Vojvodina fans are no exception.
Around halftime the fans in the North broke out flares and torches, a common occurrence here but completely unheard of back in the States. A firetruck was parked in the corner of the stadium, but apparently the flares were not cause for concern, even when one ended up on the track.
The final score was 3-1, with Vojvodina on top. The one Čačak goal was completely avoidable and caused by goalkeeper error, which caused the Vojvodina fans to start heckling their own goalie. He redeemed himself soon enough, and the fans were satisfied with their win.
Right across the street from the building of the Government of the Republic of Serbia, where we met Minister Đelić, stands the ruins of the Yugoslav Ministry of Defense headquarters.
This building and other targets in Belgrade and all around Serbia were bombed in NATO's 1999 air campaign against Yugoslavia (at this point consisting of only Serbia and Montenegro) during the Kosovo War. Here in Novi Sad, all three bridges across the Danube were destroyed. For seventy-eight days, civilians lived in fear of a bomb straying from its target toward residential areas. Sometimes these fears were sadly justified.
The Yugoslav Ministry of Defense building still stands. It's completely uninhabitable, but it remains, in effect, a monument to the suffering during the bombing. No plaques commemorate it, no signs mark it, but driving down Nemanjina Street, a major thoroughfare in Belgrade, you can't avoid it.
No one has blamed me for the war that happened when I was six years old. Everyone's been able to separate politics from real people. To apologize for the '90s would be utterly ridiculous.
But how are you supposed to feel when you see ruins from bombs that had your flag printed on them?
I originally intended for this post to include my entire Belgrade trip, but in writing this I discovered that I obviously had a lot more to say about some days than others. For the sake of actually giving you, dear reader, something to read while I write more, here's what I have just about Monday, November 14.
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On Monday, the first organization we visited was Centar E8. They're a youth-run organization that has some projects similar to CZOR, in that it empowers youth to identify and find solutions to the problems they face every day. While we were there, E8 promoted two projects for us.
The first is called "Budi Muški," or "Be a man," and focuses on male victims of the strong patriarchy pervading Serbian society. Like in many societies, young male Serbians aren't encouraged to work out their problems and emotions through healthy means. Instead, they have to suck it up, and "be a man." This mindset, claims E8, can lead to a violent society. "Budi Muški" is an effort to show that, yes, men can be sensitive and sensible too. We all found this project to be particularly inspiring, since it shows that gender equality isn't all about working with women. Men have problems too.
The second program was "Neću Drogu," or "I don't want drugs." The title is pretty self-explanatory. The US Embassy in Belgrade provides funding and support to this project, which tries to promote anti-drug values in everyday teen culture. The key to success, they think, is to make "Neću Drogu" "cool." More on that later.
These projects were interesting and all, but by far the most touching story was that of one volunteer who had E8 turn his life around. He was a "problem child," he said, but a few E8 workers helped engage him in his school and community enough that he wasn't expelled. He told us about an E8 camping trip, similar in aim to CZOR's cross-border project, where he was tent-mates with a kid from Croatia. For the first hour or so, there was awkward silence, as each former-Yugoslav expected the other's judgement, but soon the two couldn't stop talking-- a volunteer had to come and make them go to bed. The two are now best friends, even years later, and the storyteller has made even more Croatian friends since then. It's taken him time to feel comfortable on visits to Zagreb, his favorite ex-Yugoslavian city and the capital of Croatia, but one-on-one experiences with Croats of all ages have made this easier. His parents, he says, are still less open-minded and more prejudiced, but that too is changing.
This volunteer's tale was a touching and personal story of what I've seen in my travels. The young Bosnians I've met harbor no resentment toward Bosnian Serbs, the Vojvodina Hungarians I've met celebrate their ethnic culture and their Serbian identity, and the Kosovo Albanian and Roma I met care more about quality Serbian rakija and their Serbian girlfriends than about the region's legal status.
All in all, everyone just wants to live their lives, just like anywhere else in the world.
After leaving E8, we went to a Greek place for a quick lunch. We all had cheap and delicious gyros, bringing me back to my trip to Greece this past February. My only regret from this fast-food joint is not ordering Ouzo when I had the chance!
Our next stop was the World Learning Belgrade office. World Learning is the international exchange agency through which Princeton has organized the Bridge Year program in Serbia and Ghana. Here we met Serbian college students who had studied a year in various places around the United States. It was fun hearing their stories, which are the closest we can get to a counterpart of ours.
We left World Learning to visit the office of Božidar Đelić, the Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration. How did Ceca swing this one? Đelić's chief of staff had her undergraduate education at Princeton, and was happy to help arrange this meeting (the third time that Đelić has met BYP volunteers) for us. Katarina Petrović, the chief of staff, has an impressive story herself. After her BS in physics, she decided to return to Serbia and got a job doing press work for the Ministry of Science. She worked her way up through the Ministry until she became Đelić's deputy, and she moved administrations when he did. Petrović's still in her 20s but has already been able to help her country (and advance herself, but that's less important) so much.
From left to right: Ceca (BYP coordinator), me, Jacob, Đelić, Charlotte, Dominique, Yentli, and Petrović
Đelić wanted to hear from us about our perceptions and Serbian teenagers' perceptions of Serbia. We were honest: most of the Serbian teenagers and young adults we've met want to leave the country, primarily because they want a job, but also because they see no future for their homeland. Đelić pointed out that, despite the rhetoric, most are staying. He continued from here, speaking realistically and noting Serbia's shortfalls, but also pointing out its progress. Đelić anticipates that when the EU's decision on Serbia's candidacy for membership comes out on December 9th, it will be a positive recommendation. He doesn't think that the situation in Kosovo will overshadow all of the progress that Serbia has made, and for the country's sake, I hope he's right.
Afterwards, we hurried across the city to an English-language school, where Slobodan Đinović met with us. Đinović was a founding member of Otpor! (name translates to "Resistance!"), the youth-run anti-Milošević movement. The most impressive part of the movement is that it essentially bluffed itself into existence. What started as a sort of game to see how much Đinović & co. could get away with ended up bringing down a dictator. Otpor!'s central "committee" (not a formal organization, so no real name for it) operated with strong discipline, more than any army. After all, anyone can pick up a gun. Non-violence is a lot harder to pull off. They agreed on a single message which they made all their core members memorize. This way, anyone could be a spokesman. Having a designated spokesman makes it easy to decapitate the organization. Whenever Otpor! issued a press release, they had a young person uninvolved with politics (preferably, said Đinović, a pretty girl) deliver the message and then fade away. Their apparent multitude made them look like a viable resistance movement, and their actual number made them difficult to find and stop. Otpor! used high school students to spread the message to their peers, making both the message and the messenger "cool" for being in the know. When the police arrested one of these messengers, the entire community would gather outside the police station immediately and demand his/her release-- after all, s/he's only a student, incapable of doing anything seriously wrong!
Otpor! also spread its image by graffiti and bumper stickers that read "Gotov je!" ("He is finished!" with the "he" referring to Milošević). Posted in every city, these stickers made it seem as though "Gotov je!" was a popular opinion, a self-fulfilling prophecy. Even a decade later, the Otpor! fist graffiti is common (though sometime since then, other vandals have extended the middle finger on almost every fist).
Otpor! grew its network all over Serbia, and soon they had the support of various opposition politicians (Đinović tells me that current President Boris Tadić was the narrator at the New Year's party, 2000, which I blogged about during my first day here). Their growing power prompted Milošević to call early elections. His blatant fraud in the election was the final straw: soon, Milošević was deposed.
Đinović stepped out of politics and Otpor! faded away. He returned to his trade: engineering. He was involved with a Wi-Fi provider that eventually, through a series of mergers, turned into Orion Telekom, one of the largest telecoms in Serbia, of which Đinović is now the CEO. But the revolutionary inside of him still called out: Đinović uses some of his profits from Orion to fund the Centre for Applied NonViolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS), which trains people across the world in the non-violent methods that brought Otpor! victory and the Serbian people freedom.
CANVAS has had several success stories, from Ukraine's Orange Revolution to Georgia's Rose Revolution, and even had a hand or two in Arab Spring. But Đinović wanted to talk about the Maldives, an archipelago nation south-west of India which had its first truly democratic elections in 2008. When Đinović visited one prominent opposition politician, who was under house arrest by President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, the arrestee promised, "When I come into power, you're getting an island." True to his word, when CANVAS-trained activists brought Gayoom out of power in a peaceful revolution, the organization was rewarded with not one but three islands, which they're converting for use as training facilities. I know where I want to intern!
From his work in Otpor! to his continued dedication to non-violent action worldwide, Đinović is easily one of the most inspiring people I've ever met. He left each of us copies of one of his books, Nonviolent Struggle: 50 Crucial Points (free download here!), which is essentially a guide to the philosophy of nonviolence and a direct how-to guide to taking down a dictator. It's pretty much the work of Gene Sharp put into step-by-step instructions. I'm not entirely sure what I'll be doing with the book (no, #OWS, the US isn't a dictatorship yet) but it's fascinating!
Back at home, my friends are all going on Fall Break. Most are going home, some are visiting friends, some are on vacation.
My "Fall Break" was a lot shorter than theirs. Ceca took the other BYP volunteers and me to Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina for a four-day trip. On Thursday afternoon, we piled into a van driven by Željko, our fearless pilot whose driving I've gained a lot of respect for after this trip. We cruised through the flat fields of Vojvodina, the province around Novi Sad, until we found ourselves at the foot of a mountain range. We crossed a bridge on the Drina (not this one) and passed through the border checkpoint without any problems. Just like that, we were in another country.
We stopped for a bathroom break, and I stretched my legs and enjoyed the scenery. I glanced up the nearest hill and asked Ceca, "Is that an old fortress?" She looked up and answered, almost dismissively, "Yes, yes, probably Turkish. They're on every hill here." I'm not sure exactly when the fortress was built, but it's probably older than the United States.
The ruins, slightly obscured in fog
We spent most of the rest of our ride to Sarajevo singing along to whatever music came out of our laptops. I recall that "Party in the USA" was popular as we rode down the Bosnian side of the Drina (Yes, I sung along too).
It was just after sundown when we entered the Sarajevo valley. All around us the hillsides were lit up with apartment buildings, houses, stores, and mosques. Though Sarajevo is roughly the size of Novi Sad (give or take a bit-- reliable census data is hard to come by here) it felt larger upon our arrival, simply because we could see all of it at once.
We dropped our bags off at our hostel and went for dinner to a restaurant that serves traditional Bosnian food. I don't recall exactly what I ate, but I remember it was delicious. The restaurant also had traditional Bosnian folk music by a live band. Some of the other diners were really into the music, and even danced along.
Dancing on the tables. Photo credit: Dominique
The next morning, we set out on a tour of the city. Our tour guide, Amir, was quick to paint a portrait of Sarajevo as a multicultural city. The first few stops on our tour were to a Catholic cathedral, a Serbian Orthodox church, and the largest and most prominent of the city's multitude of mosques.
Serbian Orthodox church
Catholic cathedral
One shot of the mosque-- too big to get in one picture!
We also stopped by the corner where Gavrilo Princip, the Bosnian Serb nationalist, shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, leading to the first World War. Amir explained to us that, depending on who ruled Sarajevo, the monument at this space has historically alternated between a memorial to the Archduke and a monument to Princip. At one point, there were even footprints in the sidewalk so that you could literally stand where Princip was. Today, a compromise plaque marks the site, simply stating the facts.
Neutral wording
Latin Bridge, roughly where the Archduke was
Getting ready to charge the Archduke's car.
We walked up a hill and past a fountain where, if you drink, you'll come back to Sarajevo (but you have to believe in legends, Amir reminded us).
Needless to say, I drank. Photo credit: Dominque
We all drank from the fountain. Mom and Dad, I don't know when I'm going back to Sarajevo, but know that it's in the plans sometime.
Further up the hill was what used to be a public park. Amir told us that when he was a kid, he used to sled down the slope. Now, that's entirely impossible. During the Siege of Sarajevo from 1992 to 1995, Serb snipers picked off anyone who was within range, and their range included the traditional city graveyards. The citizens of Sarajevo used this park and many like it to bury their dead. After the war ended, it simply wasn't feasible to transfer all of the bodies to the old graveyard, so the park was officially converted.
This was the first graveyard I had visited that wasn't covered in crosses. Mostly Muslims were buried here. All were either killed during the war, or relatives of those who died.
Extending up the hill. Usually, Muslim graves point toward Mecca. Because of the circumstances, the bodies aren't oriented in any particular direction.
A small creek runs through the graveyard
The inscription is from the Quran, and reads, roughly, "And do not say about those who have died in the way of Allah, 'They are dead!' No, they are alive, but you do not perceive it." The fleur-de-lis at the bottom is a symbol of Bosnia.
Visible from the graveyard: a mosque, the Orthodox church, and the Catholic Cathedral.
At one point when we were talking about the siege of Sarajevo, Amir mentioned his own experience. "I consider myself lucky," he said, "I only lost my father, my grandmother, my cousin, and our apartment." I wasn't quick to agree with him about luck, but compared to the 11,000 who died, I suppose he was.
Though the city has been largely fixed up since the siege, it still has its scars. Amir, who, like the other Bosnians and Serbians I've met, appreciates dark humor, told us that for a time, Sarajevans referred to their city as the "Swiss cheese city."
In the afternoon, after a nice large lunch of ćevapčići, we visited a professor from the philosophy faculty at the University of Sarajevo. We discussed the role of identity during and after the conflict. Before, under Tito's rule, all three religions lived more or less in harmony. When Yugoslavia began falling apart, the national/ethnic identities that Tito had suppressed came surging forward. Though Catholics/Croats, Orthodox/Serbs, and Muslims/Bosniaks are indistinguishable by looks, they quickly found ways to differentiate themselves. The primary way was by name: a man named Amir or Sulejmanović was probably an ethnic Muslim, for example.
The professor told us about his own experience living in Sarajevo. His name was slightly Serbian, so he was somewhat ostracized within his own faculty. But when his young son, who has an even more Serbian name, was in preschool, the teacher treated him far differently from the others. He would get punished more often than the other kids, with time-outs where he had to sit in a dark room by himself. When the professor finally found out about his treatment, the preschool teacher claimed that it was the child's natural agressive Serbian blood, and not her fault at all.
The irony in all of this is that the child is incredibly ethnically mixed. Croat, Serb, Bosniak, Turk, like many other Bosnians, he's all of the above. His discrimination wasn't even ethnic-- the kid just had the wrong name.
Amazingly, Yentli has a friend who lives in Sarajevo. They met when she was an exchange student at Yentli's high school in Lancaster, PA. The two met back up, and we all joined her friends in a café. Our curfew was unfortunately early (~10:00PM) both nights, so we didn't get to hang out with them as much as we'd have liked.
On Saturday morning, we visited the Tunnel Museum. During the war, Serb forces nearly completely surrounded the city. The UN struck a bargain with them: the UN would control the airport and allow aid relief as long as they ensured that no Bosnians went across the airstrip to the free Bosnian territory. The Sarajevans then dug an 800-meter tunnel under the airport, through which they smuggled food, people, and weapons. One side of this tunnel is preserved.
The house hiding the entrance to the tunnel
The tunnel itself
We then visited the Historical Museum, which was housing a special exhibit on the siege. There was also a "Wall of Truth" where Bosnians posted photographs, messages, and information about friends and families who had died during the war. It was originally timed to coincide with Ratko Mladić's plea at the ICTY, but it has been left up since then.
Flag of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (not the current political entity) with battle scars
"Watch out-- sniper!"
A European watchdog mission accidentally left their satellite phone when they fled during the war. This phone was the only link that the President of BiH had to the outside world during the siege.
Hyperinflation.
Part of the Wall of Truth
More of the Wall of Truth
Jacob and I pose with Tito
For the rest of the day, we had free time. We explored the city and did a bit of shopping. Walking down a major touristy street, we heard some singing/chanting. Glancing around the corner, we found some sort of march with people waving the Turkish flag. The marchers were shouting something in what I presume was Turkish (though even if it were in Bosnian, I wouldn't have understood) but all I understood was "Allahu Akbar," the global refrain of "God is great." I'm still unsure what the protest was about.
It struck me that if we had a group of sixty Muslims carrying a flag and shouting "Allahu Akbar" in the United States, the media would freak out about it. Here, it's not even news.
We also stopped by the large mosque during prayer time to hear the muezzin's call. This was the first time that I had heard the call to prayer in real life, and I found it quite beautiful.
On the way back, I noticed a crate of Jelen Pivo (literally "deer beer," one of the more popular brands in Serbia) at a gas station. I realized that I hadn't noticed either Jelen or Lav, its major competitor, served or advertised anywhere in Sarajevo. What was different about that gas station? Simple. It was in Republika Srpska, the Serb-dominated sub-national entity, while Sarajevo was in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Muslim and Croat section. It was telling that the rift between the two regions is so deep that they don't even serve the same beer. Also noticeable when we crossed into Republika Srpska territory: suddenly, everything was written in Serbian cyrillic, not the latinic script common to Croatian, Bosnian, and Serbian. From names to drinks to alphabets, everything has an ethnic connotation.
On Saturday morning, Dominique and I woke up early. We met up at Futoška Pijaca at 6 AM (šest sati ujutro, na srpskom) and grabbed a bus to Najlon (Nylon) Pijaca, a flea market.
A few of our classmates from our Serbian lessons had gone a couple weeks ago, and they came back with a tuba. Dominique and I didn't intend to join their brass ensemble, but we were curious to see what we could find.
After consulting one of my coworkers, we found out that we were supposed to go very early, but we still showed up before most of the stalls even opened. We wandered around and into a small smoky café, where I grabbed a coffee, more to heat my hands than to wake me up.
After waiting a bit longer, we walked around all of the stalls. Apparently on Saturdays, Najlon focuses more on clothes. But there were plenty of other interesting things there. If you can imagine it, it was at Najlon. Even packaged candy and detergents-- I have no idea how the vendors got those.
I was mostly looking around, but I had one or two vague goals. One, I was always looking for interesting books. Two, my friend Seth's father asked for a Yugoslav/Serbian police or army badge. Dominique was looking around at old cameras.
I found a book of anti-NATO graffiti collected from Belgrade during the bombing. The price I was offered was 100 dinars. I countered with 50 and the vendor immediately accepted-- I could have gone even lower. Clearly, the surcharge for being a foreigner is more than 100%. Still, I don't regret my purchase or spending a few cents extra on it.
Dominique found lots of old cameras, but decided against buying any.
Future Pulitzer winner.
Showing off the special features
I tried to haggle down the price of a Serbian Army pin that I found, but it didn't work. "They [other vendors] sell for 500," the man said in simple Serbian, hoping that I'd understand. I didn't believe him until I found the exact same pin for 500 dinars elsewhere in the market, just as he said. Three hundred dinars later, I was the proud owner of a slightly-broken, possibly replica* Serbian Army pin.
The man had more pins than he had room for.
*Both this vendor and the 500-dinar vendor assured me that theirs were authentic, and each pointed to different signs of their authenticity. The 300-dinar vendor also had one that was clearly a replica to show for comparison.
Seth, forward this picture to your dad.
Declaring ourselves successful, we rode the bus home and napped. I napped on and off for the rest of the day, while Dominique went out later for another round of shopping, this time at proper stores.
