“Life is what happens when you are making other plans.” – John Lennon
Do you plan your life to the minute details of how it should be? Most Americans will tell you yes, thanks to all those bargain-on-the-shelf, flying-off-the-chart pop psychology, self-development books like how to organizing your life in 30 minutes, life skills for dummies, etc. and etc. Your school counselors grill you about your life plan: how do you imagine your life five or ten years from now? Heck! Job interviewers interrogate you about your professional outlook to know what you see yourself doing before letting you dig into their 401K. A former boyfriend of my high-school friend told her the age marks when he would buy his first car, mortgage his first house, get a wife. At this rate, I am not surprised if he already knew when the chromosomes of his and his wife would combine to produce the perfect-planed baby. In America, you read “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” to learn how to priority your life to achieve your potential and live your life to the fullest. It is good stuff, and the Americans are right.
“We don’t have a budget plan here.” The former boss of Katka, my Czech roommate from Sarajevo, said to her when she asked him about the company’s budget plan. “But this is a bank; you have to have a budget plan.” She insisted. “Katka, here in the Balkan, we don’t plan, you have to get used to it.” He struck back.
How do you see your life five years from now if your city is under siege, the longest siege of a capital in modern history? Can you see yourself professionally in the next ten years when just by going to school you risk being a target for snipers? What plan do you have for the future when your yesterday neighbor points a gun at you the next day? When you have your first car, first apartment, and first spouse becomes irrelevant if your birth name becomes your death sentence. But this post is not so much about Sarajevo as it is about the lingering demons of its past or more precisely about the people who might have perpetuated these demons.
It’s officially now; I have made it a life goal to visit every single country in Europe. Why? People ask me. I don’t know; a goal is a goal. Some countries you just have to see like the big three Spain, France or Italy. Some, it’s so damn convenient like England where most international flights stop over. Some are too exotically inviting to resist like Greece or Turkey. Some, like Denmark, you fly for the weekend just because you find a ridiculously cheap flight for 25 EUR return. Some like Germany you cross the border to get a new stamp in your passport to legally stay where you are. Some you go to say that you have been to Andorra. Some keep on lurking in your thoughts, and you will never have peace until you get there.
Here comes a problem. ‘Serb’ and ‘Serbia’ provoked an inevitable negative reaction to me. It’s neither right nor wrong; it’s purely psychological. It’s probably the collective emotion I experienced after living in Sarajevo. The war in Bosnia is no longer a piece of news, and the Bosnians are not merely faceless names on the newspaper. I lived, talked, had coffee with them and heard countless stories. Bit by bit their past pain and current hatred became mine. Residing in a Bosniak-controlled city, I could not or didn’t bother to find any Serbs to hear their side of the stories. I left loving almost everything Bosnian and hating everything. Anyway!
Belgrade is an ugly city…
Jelena dragged me around the city which I had not the slightest idea where we were. I found Belgrade to be huge, 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.
The Czechs speak a Western Slavic language which should be similar to Serbo-Croatian, but it seems the language is influenced by the dry and emotionless German language. No matter how hard I try, I can’t take it in. Everybody from old to young, from the capital to the countryside speak loud and clear as for 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 garbage dump, 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 cities, 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 would obviously shriek in hysteria if you say their ancestors were Poles, Hungarians or Slovaks instead of plunging into a political debate or cooking up a plan of a Greater Austro-Hungarian-Czechoslovkian empire. Would thing might have been different?
I arrived in Belgrade with no map and plan, so I left it up to this Serbian friend whom I met accidentally in Andorra. How many people travel to Andorra for just one day and rush back for their flights on the next day? How many of them end up staying with the same host? How many will return to Spain on the same bus? How many will then flight at the same airport? How many will fly on the same morning requiring an overnight sleeping on the same bench? And how many are the exact people you are trying to meet? That was how I met Jelena. Meeting random people on the road also makes me realize that there is a ‘crazier’ and ‘flakier’ version of me and that I am after all normal. I can not retrace the route Jelena and I took anymore because I aimlessly followed her from one boulevard to another while listening to her narration about the city, its history, her life and of course Serbia. Our fist stop was the buildings and radio station bombed by NATO in 1999. They are burned, destroyed and left ruined as a live museum to remind people not to forget. It was only then I fully understood Marko’s contempt toward Americans. Five years ago in a restaurant in Wroclaw, Poland, we sat next to a group of Polish soldiers. Marco pointed at them and smirked. “See how smug they are in that military uniform? Ahh! Americans.” Another Marko, a Croatian, explained to me, “Your country bombed his.” Yeah, but why does it have anything to do with the Poles? Only much later when living in Prague and following the high-profile rocket-and-radar fiasco concocted by America, Poland and Czech that I learned about one of America’s staunchest European ally, Poland.
There wouldn’t be a war without casualty. There wouldn’t be a casualty without a proven dead body. During the month NATO bombed Belgrade, life went on as usual as only military buildings were targeted. “People flocked to the street to cheer, to dance and to point the middle finger up to the sky and shout ‘come here, bring it on!'” Ladimir, my hostel attendance from Novi Sad recalled those days. In April 23rd, 1999 people went to their usual night shift at Radio-Television of Serbia until the building blew up. Families of 16 victims built a granite headstone with the word ‘Zašto’ (‘why’) above the names of those who were killed. Why did TV station belong on a hit list? But even more so, the ex TV boss Dragoljub Milanovic was alleged to deliberately send his employees to work that day knowing they might die, to ensure the propaganda against NATO and solidify the conviction “the world is against Serbia, and we are the victims.”
We walked for half a day before taking a break at a chic hair salon for me to get a ‘Serbian’ haircut with a short bang. We moved on to a restaurant where Jelena ordered a big fat plate of 500g juicy cevapcici, a special grilled minced meat, served in many places in the world but only best in Bosnia and Serbia. Like the Bosnians from Sarajevo, she won the argument and the public mini ‘fight’ as to why she should pay for the meal. I felt like a big sinner letting a vegetarian pay for my meat. With my new Serbo hairs and a stomach full, I walked through the city center of Belgrade to get to Kalemegdan fortress, looking over the Sava river. I used to drink Turkish coffee almost every evening with the cleaning ladies at the school where I worked in Sarajevo. They did not understand me at all, and I understood them very little but they invited me for coffee and talk every day. When I said that I would like to go to Belgrade, Suja complained how small the dried-up Miljaka, the river flows through Sarajevo, was. “But the Sava is very huge.” She made a gesture with her hands to describe its grandeur. I could not detect any sign of malign from her voice and eyes. “And Belgrade is beautiful.” As I was standing on the top of the Kalemegdan, I remembered Suja’s comments and tried to feel and see what it was that brought up the twinkling in the eyes of a 50-year old. This city is awful, and the river isn’t so great. But my perception of Sava is from a passing tourist who sees the river is nothing more than a large volume of water flowing from one place to another. But Suja, Fatima and the other ladies saw the Sava in a different light; it runs through the capital of their former country, the mighty Yugoslavia. It represents their past glory days. Especially when the present is not worth looking forward to, the past maybe is all they have. But I got a surprise, though. No one told me that here from this exact spot I would see the Sava ended and blended in with the Danube, running its course along the Serbia-Romania border, crossing into Bulgaria before emptying itself into the Black Sea. Only then, I understood what Le Corbusier wanted to say.
“Belgrade is the ugliest city in the most beautiful place in the world.”
I never cut my hairs while traveling but I did it in Belgrade maybe so I could be in a closed environment with Serbs. Psychologically, you can not say anything bad about the person who tries to make you pretty. I sat five meters across from Jelena’ former boss who returned to work after recovering from a supposedly terminal illness only to find herself reporting to a former subordinate who was less qualified. Now she looked forward to her early retirement. While walking about the city, Jelena mentioned invitation from a cousin whom she had not seen in a long time and wondered if I would not mind going there with her so she could spend time with both of us. I didn’t want to look overzealous, but secretly I wished Jelena would take the cousin up on offer and take me there with her. To tell the truth, I was eager to meet a real Serb, to sit in her house than trying to decipher random Serbs passing me by on the street. Jelena’s cousins kept asking me if they could fetch me juice or quick snacks.
Their hospitality and friendliness don’t surprise me because it was the similar in Bosnia—despite the horrible things they inflicted on each other, they are pretty much the same. Jelena relentlessly pushed “Do that song!” After a few “no I can’t and no I won’t,” under the quizzing eyes of strangers, I muttered my strength to produce a wave of low noise out of my throat. “Lane moje oh vidah nah. Vise eh tuje. Kada te pomyslim.” This ice-breaker has shamelessly worked every single time for me whenever I’m in contact with Serbs. Like many Eastern Europeans, Serbs are dead serious about Eurovision, and certainly very proud of their culture. Bring up the talented Zeljko Joksimovic, singer/song-writer/musicians and his 2nd placed Eurovision song “Lane Moje” and you are guaranteed to charm a lot of Serbs. The word “Serbia” familiarized itself to me the very instant Marco turned on this song in a hot tiny dorm room in Gliwice. Though the laptop’s crappy speaker produced mediocre sound, I was immediately taken by the enchanting, melancholic melodies. When I lived in Bosnia, now and then when I listened to this song, I thought to myself “how can people who create such beautiful music are capable of such things?”
I was a little bit nervous when Jelena told her cousins that I was from Sarajevo. Over the years, I’ve learned to hide details which might connect to the Bosniaks upon the first meeting with Serbs whom I don’t know. One night last year on the way home in Strasnice, I heard Serbo-Croatian/Bosnian language and stopped a group of tourists to inquire about their origins: Croatians, Serbians or Bosnians. They were very happy when greeted them in their language and sang a bit of their national pride “Molitva.” When you run out of topic to talk to people, maybe just sing.
We giggled the whole way until one of them asked me the next sentence: “How did you learn Serbian?” “Oh. I lived in Sarajevo.” I unknowingly replied. Then I could feel the subtle change in their looks and the smiles they passed from one to another. “So the Muslims there are friendly right?” “Yes, they are.” “They USED TO be friendly.” One person sarcastically asked and answered her question while her friends laughed. From then on “I lived in Sarajevo” is replaced by “I have Croatian friends.” Occasionally I ate cevapi at a Bosnian restaurant in Zizkov and always wanted to strike a conversation with the people who worked there. The problem is I have yet figure out if they are Serbs or Bosniaks. So for every juicy bite of the grilled cevapi and a slurp of salty yogurt is a stealthy slant at the apathetic woman drawing her cigarette and wonder if I should ask for milk. (The only trick I can tell a Serbian from a Bosniak is how they say ‘milk.’ The Serbs say a quick, strong ‘mleko’ while the Bosnians (Croats and Bosniaks) say ‘mlijeko’ with a distinct stretching ‘i’ sound.)
When you generalize the causes of your negative emotion, the negativity tends to be bigger than it seems. Up to then, Serbs are lumped together as one single source of evilness, as cold-blooded murderers and loony nationalists. Thus the pictures I had of them were less then pretty. But I have seen them as a separate individual, heck some even are my friends; I have realized that they are also normal people and tremendously affected by the mess that they caused. The hosteler cum shepherd Ladimir, lethargically blew smoke from his cigarette while explaining to me how he and Serbs lived only day by day, the philosophy which is too shared by Jelena. “This is small fly.” He shrugged when I asked if the current global crisis affected Serbia. “We had worse,” he rolled his eyes. “It was hard in the 2000s, then before during the war with Kosovo, and before that [the Bosnian war] and before that.” Other than Ladimir, others whom I met were women, thus in a way I could easily identify and sympathize with them. They face the same problem like women in my society: a stay-at-home law student who takes care of her small child and ponder her professional outlook; a divorced survivor from a terminal illness wastes away the rest of her professional years waiting for an early escape; a young grad student who finds herself no longer fit in her country. Also, there are countless of nameless Serbs who sell on the street, lean idly by the windows because there is nothing else to do or dwell in the garbage ghetto.
You and I and Americans draft list after list of plans to control and handle unexpected and expected events of our lives; after all, we control our destiny no? For us, it’s easier without the invisible hands which keep sabotaging our every move, shattering our hope and breaking our dream as it did in the ‘Balkan.’ Who knows having no plan ‘life’ finally makes a bit more sense.
Reference:
(*) Milan Kundera’s book ‘Laughter and Forgetting.’
Note: I recommend the book “With their backs to the world: A portrait of Serbia” to learn more about Serbs and their stands on their country and the war.
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My name is Cindy, also rhymes with travel junkie. A friend said I was probably a gipsy in my previous life. One of my many secret missions in life is to convert you to run off every once in awhile.
