Belgrade – A Conclusion – Part 2

Belgrade – A Conclusion – Part 2

Belgrade is an ugly city…Jelena dragged me here and there which I had not the slightest idea where in Belgrade, which I found to be big, ugly, dirty, gray and polluted. I stealthily looked at almost every Serb who crossed my path to find something, something to explain the reason for my disdain.

No matter how hard I looked, I could not discover anything new, and yet I kept recalling old memories. Hearing the familiar Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian/Serbo-Croatian language made me deliriously happy. The Croats, Bosniaks, and the Serbs speak as if they are singing. When I hear them talk, I feel I can see a river flow. Everybody from old to young, from the capital to the countryside speak loud and clear as how a language should be spoken, especially for a foreigner because you are assured that if you try hard enough, someday you will understand. I looked at men, women, at the way they looked and dressed and turned to Jelena. “You are no different from the Bosniaks in Sarajevo.” “No, we don’t.” She replied.

I wanted to ask them about the war, what they think of Milosevic, if they or their parents voted for him, what they think about Bosnian Serbs and the Muslims, do they support Radovan Karadzic and Mlako Mladic, do they see themselves as victims, will they ever apologize for what happened, is Kosovo’s independence justified, what do they think about Americans. Jeez, how I dreaded the question. First, the Americans supported Bosnia; then the Americans bombed Belgrade and liberated Kosovo. There were many questions which I will never get the answer, but I didn’t care as I had a bigger plan.

“Belgrade is the ugliest city…” said the French architect Le Corbusier. I wholeheartedly agree the moment my train from Novi Sad crept through the countryside and inched its way into the suburb. From the train windows, I saw what seemed to be a monster-sized landfill, but once the train got closer I saw shelters made from junks, and as the train got even closer, I gasped when I spotted people moving around in this lump. Who can they possibly be other than the homeless or gypsies? They are probably gypsies as this place is too degrading for even homeless ‘gadjo’ (‘white’ in Romani langue). Later I learned that not only these people are gypsies, but they are also Gypsies from Kosovo. (There are also different levels of poverty.)  I stood right up from my seat, and a Polish student next to me did the same thing. Without signaling to each other, we stuck our cameras out of the windows and started the Japanese digital frenzy, zooming and clicking and pointing and clicking amidst the giggling and staring from the amused Serbian students. While my brain was still digesting the ‘home’ of the Romani, it got hit by another shock wave as the train moved slowly into New Belgrade. Block after block of dirty and messy grayish-brown apartment buildings appeared from nowhere running parallel to the rail track. I thought I would never see any building messier and dirtier after what I  Tirana, the capital of Albania. It is not like I was not prepared either.

During the past four years, I have lived entirely in Eastern Europe where Soviet’s interpretation of urban development is present everywhere; I even have the privilege to live in two such settlements, first in Poland and then in the Czech Republic. Then why I was shocked if after all Serbian is Eastern Europe? This was the second time felt a strange sense of sadness for Serbia and the ex-Yugoslavia. Two years ago during a hiking trip in Banat, the mountainous western region of Romania, our group walked parallel with the Danube—flowing along the borderline between Serbia and Romania—and passed a narrow stretch where we could see Serbia from across the river. During communism, many Romanians, though very few succeeded—attempted to swim across this river to seek refuge and a better life in the former Yugoslavia. It sounds like a cruel joke now.

How many Romanians want to escape to Serbia? They are EU members while Serbians, Bosnians, Macedonians, Montenegrins and the infantile Kosovars can try in another decade. The Serbs had started many wars in the region only to lose them all. By doing so, they have forfeited the upper advantages, the status and prosperity the former Yugoslavia had over their Eastern counterparts. The Slovakians use the Euros. The Czechs hold their first EU presidency. The Romanians and Bulgarians can legally stick EU symbols on their car license plates. And the Bosnians and Serbians are busy clearing up rocket-shelled buildings and chasing war criminals to make nice with Europe.

I wonder if Serbs have the temperament of the Czechs who shrugged their shoulders when Slovakia seceded from the Federation of Czechoslovakia. They will obviously shriek in hysteria if you say their ancestors were Poles, Hungarians or Slovaks instead of plunging into a political debate. Would thing might have been different?

Belgrade – A Conclusion: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4