SQUISH

Yesterday was a real "only in Serbia" moment.
I was riding the bus down to the main busy street that runs by Ada Cigalnija (wikipedia it for an idea of what it is, although my spelling is almost certainly wrong) when I noticed a massive traffice snarl. It was clearly an accident, and it appeared to have happened at the intersection ahead. I expected a fender bender or at worst some idiots who got Tboned because of driving too aggressively through a red light or something.
The sight that finally greeted my eyes was far more, um, arresting. I can only make a best guess at what happened, and I may be off the mark, but the basic facts were pretty obvious. There was:

A) a large public bus stopped some 20 meters past the accident, with its side sporting some significant scratches, dents and marks, and a few of the windows smashed in.


B) a gypsy cart, badly mangled, although the passengers apparently did not suffer any injuries. As a sidenote, I should mention how original these gypsy vehicles are; they are almost always built completely from scratch from scavenged parts, the ultimate in do-it-yourself. They're powered by lawmower and tractor engines, run on anything from wooden wheels to bicycle wheels, usually have some sort of large space in the back for carrying cardboard boxes or people, and yes, they drive these hodgepodge creatures on all the main roads just like any other car. It's quite a sight to see one cough and sputter by right in the middle of the center of Belgrade, right among BMWs, Mercedes, and of course the ubiquitous Yugos.
This particular gypsy car, however, and perhaps this was the crucial factor in the accident, was not engine powered. It was propelled by...


C) one big ass horse, splattered all over the road in a humongous pool of its own blood which had been spread a good quarter mile down the road by the tires of passing cars.

That was it, no explanation, no crying or hysterical people, just two cops waving people along while a photographer documented various details. Everything had a very "business as usual" feel to it, adding to the already surreal feeling the scene created.

Squish.

Compte Rendu, s’il vous plait

So, where to begin on updating all the stuff that’s happened since I stopped regularly updating here? The lack of updates have been due to me being significantly busy, so there are almost limitless things I could talk about, making it quite difficult to focus on just one thing at a time.

I guess I’ll start with the event(s) of the week, which would likely be Exit festival. Exit is a huuuuuuuge music festival/gonzo spring-break style party that takes place in Novi Sad, a city about an hour and a half north of Belgrade, and has been going on for about 6 years consecutively. It has always been, and remains, a resounding success, and is by far the biggest single yearly event that takes place in Serbia that’s not a holiday or something. I did not go this year, a result of poor planning, budgeting, and just general organization, but it’s definitely something worth checking out. On the bill this year were Prodigy, Beastie Boys, Snoop Dog, Wu Tang clan, and many, many others, all top-notch A-list artists. Sunday night was the last night of Exit. I actually don’t know *that* many people that went this year, as most of the Serbs I know have been there enough times in previous years that that itch has been scratched for them, but it’s definitely a goal of mine now to make it next year.

Completely separate from Exit, Belgrade also hosted on Saturday night what will undoubtedly be the biggest band to come here for many, many years: The Rolling Stones. By all accounts, the concert was a huge success. Initially slated to play in the Belgrade hippodrome (horse racing track), which would have made it the largest venue on their European tour with a capacity of 100,000+ people, it was later moved to a different location due to… horses.

The organizers of the club, realizing that the insane decibels of the Stones concert would almost certainly cause the horses all around the area significant stress, decided to deal with that problem in a delicate manner: by ordering several dozen tons of horse tranquilizers and knocking the animals flat on their asses for the concert. Well, I suppose that it woulda worked… However, the Stones, along with, I’m sure, animal rights activists everywhere, upon hearing of this dastardly plan, felt sorry for the horses, and thus the venue was changed.

The concert was such a big affair that the Serbian government went into a state of alert to deal with it. There were cops and security *everywhere*. I had flashbacks of Presidential speeches next to my office in DC with all the security, except this was for Mick Jagger and Company. I did not go see that concert either, but it must have been quite impressive since Serbs tend to be quite demanding of foreign bands that come playing here…

Last month the Red Hot Chili Peppers came to play in a town somewhere, uh, in the middle of nowhere in Serbia (Indjija), a similarly gigantic and ambitious event. After making tens of thousands of people wait for hours in the rain before coming on stage, they played a lackluster 90 minute set (13 songs) before dashing off. Even worse, the concert promoters/organizers/whatever, in a totally amateurish lack of planning, made absolutely no provisions for what to do *after* the concert, so it was a total free for all between about 70,000 people to squeeze out of *one* parking lot. Basically, anyone who went to that concert ended up coming back to Belgrade, one way or another, the next day at 7 or 8 in the morning. The incredibly hyped experience left a great many with a bitter taste in their mouth.

Similarly harsh criticism has been leveled at many other big acts that have made it to Belgrade this year, such as Busta Rhymes, 50 Cent, and others… So, I suppose the Stones must have done something right, since rave reviews from Serbia are definitely not just handed out freely.

I suppose the whole point of this illustrates the fact that Belgrade is now firmly and definitely back on the “mainstream music” scene, speaking globally. The New York Times article from 2005 about Belgrade mentioned how the place is an “up and coming touring location for major bands” (something like that, not a direct quote). I would correct that by taking out the “up and coming”. Belgrade is now firmly back on the list of major cities to visit for the world’s biggest bands, right alongside Paris, London, Rome, etc, and I would estimate it is quite likely that this trend will continue to move in this direction quickly in the next few years here.

As yet more evidence of this, my own personal FAVORITEBANDOFALLTIMETILLETERNITY (yes, that’s the official title, don’t forget the caps), Tool, is coming here in September. I must admit that is nice to have a clear date and event that you can pinpoint in your life and say that once it has passed and you've lived to see it, you *can* die and at least will have accomplished one thing that mattered. I never thought I would even get to see the extremely reclusive and rarely-emerging Tool even in the U.S. of A., and figured I had pretty much missed my chance forever to see them live when I left. I *never* for a second dared to hope they would come to Belgrade… Maybe Budapest or somewhere else nearby in the area or something, but not BG… and yet it’s going to happen. And I will be there. I still am kind of scared to believe in it. Basically, if anything or anyone keeps me from going to that concert on September 5, 2007, it/they will die a gruesome and most certainly painful death, no exceptions and no mercy.

That happy note concludes this update. J

A bientot!

Appuyez sur le bouton “Restart” s’il vous plait

No, the blog is not dead; it was simply stalled for a while. With apologies to any readers, I’ve decided to try to revive in with a more focused approach. I started writing here in an aimless and hesitant fashion, relatively unsure of what to do with this type of platform.

Instead of being keeping the focus on my own personal developments like if this was some personal diary, I’ve decided to switch to a slightly different approach and try to come up with shorter, relatively unrelated anecdotes about life in Serbia. Hopefully this will give me more flexibility and ideas for more frequent updates.

Time permitting, I will also try to figure out how to get pictures online and onto the blog more often as well, although I make no solid promises there.

So, more to come on stuff that’s actually ABOUT Serbia and living here very soon…

Springtime updates

I have already hit the 6 month mark here in Serbia. Just one year ago today I was sitting in my quiet office job in DC counting down the days till I left and got to start the whole adventure. It’s satisfying to look back on it all now and to see how well everything has turned out. Sort of, I guess. I’m currently out of a job and soon out of an apartment, and yet life overall is still so great here that those don’t even seem like big problems.

My job at the import-export place basically just ran its course. I had no illusions when I started there of it being a long-term affair, and that’s exactly how it turned out. There simply wasn’t much work there for me to do beyond the initial first 3 months, so that’s that and it’s time to go out and find something new, which I’m fully confident will happen.

The apartment situation is less pleasant, but also not that big of a deal. Basically the landlord tried to pull a fast one on us and we called him on it and that’s that. After coming by for a pleasant visit to the apartment last week, we (my roommate and myself) informed him that we wanted to extend the lease another 6 months, which he seemed pleased with, and he was to draw up the new documents for us to sign a few days later. In a phone call the day before we were supposed to sign, among the discussion of various trivial details, he casually dropped the fact that he was also, “by the way, increasing the rent another 100 euros a month”. It was all quite sleazy and cheap, as if he really thought we were stupid enough to just fall for that or not notice it or something, like it would just quietly slide under the carpet. We immediately told him that was completely unacceptable (this place is already an outrageous rip-off as is, but it was easier to keep than going out to find some new place, an ambitious endeavor in Belgrade) and things fell apart from there, so we now have until mid-May to find someplace new.

I look at it as a blessing in disguise, kind of like the job in a way. This will force us to get off our lazy asses and get out there to find something better to live in. I was never particularly thrilled with this rip-off apartment at all, nor did I at any point like, trust or appreciate the landlord with his constant whining excuses, thinly-veiled deceptions, and just general loser weaseling, so I’m actually quite happy we will be done with his worthless ass and have him out of our lives. There still remains the issue of regaining the security deposit, which he is desperately and blatantly doing everything within his power to keep, but that will sort itself out one way or another and then we’ll be finished with him for good.

Same goes for the job, albeit without the leftover bad taste in my mouth; while it was nice, cushy and not stressful, it also wasn’t even remotely challenging or particularly interesting. I had gotten very lazy in general with it, what with the ability to make my own schedule and work at my own pace, so I view it as a good kick in the butt to have that cut off and to be forced to go out and pursue many of the different things I’ve been intending to for months.

Other than that, life is great, fun, chaotic, random, surprising, and unpredictable. I literally never now how any given day is going to end, and that’s a great thing. That’s pretty much the whole update for now…

It continues

More shameless self-promotion... I had another item published online, so now I'm 2 for 2. Not bad... This one was a personal story for a relatively dorky website called common ties, a true incident that happened when I was 11 in the Congo. It's a bit strange for me since this is a pretty private, true story that I really have told very few people about, and to go from that habitual privacy to putting it up there for thousands to read on the internet (with dork-tastic pictures of myself to boot) is, well, a bit uncomfortable for me. But whatever, I got paid for this one and it only took me 2 hours of work, so I really can't complain... The story is here.
In other news, spring has arrived in Belgrade and it's stunning outside. Yesterday I went on an overnight trip to Banja Luka, a city within Republika Srpska, the Serbian enclave in Bosnia. Although the bus rides each way were noticeably longer than advertized (7 long hours) it was a cool trip. The scenery all along the way ranged from interesting to stunning, and Banja Luka itself was a perfectly pleasant town to visit.
The whole point of the short trip (which I took with my roomate and a mutual friend who alternates between living in Belgrade and Banja Luka, he rode over with us) was for us to basically make a border run and get our 3 month tourist visas renewed, so we could renew our police registration cards also. Well... So my roomate could renew his. As you can see from one of my previous blog entries, my attempts at playing by the police's rules didn't go so smoothly. Luckily everything went pretty much according to plan/hopes for this trip. We didn't have any particular troubles at any border (although got more fuss trying to LEAVE Serbia than come back in, go figure). We got our passports stamped correctly and both went to the police station this morning, where, despite much grumbling and foot-dragging, we were able to register as we should. So that problem is solved and I got a nice quick visit out of the whole process.
That's pretty much my update. In the more general sense life is great, never been better. Good weather, good people, good food, good times, and few problems. There is a *slight* possibility that I will start writing for B-92, the biggest and most well known media station in Serbia; after a productive january month, my motivation and inspiration to write sharply dropped, but now I'm trying to get back into it again and keep my momentum going. So, hopefully, there will be more good updates soon...
A bientot

Shameless Self-Promotion

My first article was published today. It is for an Italian online newspaper called Peacereporter that deals with international issues and topics. My article is about the Chinese people in Belgrade and their Chinatown. For now only the Italian version is up, but whatever, it's still cool to see my work in print. The photos were mine also.
Here's the link:
Peacereportner.net

Danger lurks in the most inconspicuous places

The one absolute truth we have in life is that we all have to die, somehow. Traveling around the world, one can become familiar with many different things that can end your life, from third world buses to drug dealers to war-related stuff to all sorts of fun diseases. Part of becoming a real world traveler involves becoming familiar with recognizing bad situations and knowing how to avoid them.

Serbs are a tough, tough people, the product of having survived a great many hardships over their turbulent history. Even today, you gotta be tough to make it in Belgrade. Serbs have had to be strong to deal with wild traffic, NATO bombings, depleted uranium, the wars in the 1990s, Milosevic and his thuggish regime, etc.

Of all the dangerous things in Serbia though, there is one that clearly towers above all else, the simple mention of which will send most Serbs into a cold sweat. The number one killer of Serbs is something so insinuous and devious that it had never even occurred to me to be aware of it before coming here. The most dangerous thing in Serbia is called promaja.

Mention just this word to Serbs and you will be sat down for a serious, serious talk. It is NOT a laughing matter. Promaja, I have been sternly informed on many occasions, can cause any number of horrendous ailments, from obliterating your ovaries (really worrisome for me) to causing crippling neck cricks to freezing your face in absolutely horrible disfigurement (stop laughing, that shit is for real!) to arthritis and blindness/deafness, along with quite a few other serious conditions (like the common cold). This comes from highly reliable scientific sources, I am repeatedly informed by wide-eyed locals. The Russians proved it.

The most tragic thing about promaja is that is occurs because of simple human negligence. You see, Serbs die when anyone is careless enough to leave open a window AS WELL as a door in a given room. The ensuing PROMAJA- possibly known as a draft in other parts of the world- will mercilessly melt the faces of any and all occupants inside. This is a rare occurrence here since people are educated about promaja, so much so that, thankfully, no one has ever actually SEEN a promaja victim, but trust, they’re out there and their plight is atrocious. You can be sure they wish they had paid closer attention to that draft…

I’m not sure if my life can ever be the same now that I’ve been properly trained in counter-promaja tactics. I’ll never be able to relax next to windows, car rides will become a paranoid window-watching exercise, I will have to constantly watch the doors in a room to make sure no air is flowing… I miss the days of blissful ignorance I enjoyed before coming to Serbia. Sometimes what you don’t know really can’t hurt you.

The only thing I can do now is write up this dire warning in the hope of saving my loyal readers from a horrible fate. Now ya know. Also, going outside with wet hair is playing Russian roulette with your life. You can all thank me for this life saving advice next time we meet (checks are also accepted).

A bientot

The Wonders of Post-Communist Bureaucracy

This has been a slow, relatively dull week. I guess this is the quiet post-holiday hangover time for Belgrade. The weather this week has been uniformly gray and dull, the mood seems flat and tired, and pretty much everyone and their mother is sick with something. Everyone is busy preparing for welcome-back-to-school exams, returning to work after holiday vacations, or just resting from the new year and Xmas revelry (both rounds of it).

This week started off on the wrong foot for me, as I got to, once again, experience the joys and wonders of Serbian bureaucracy. All foreigners staying in the country for substantial amounts of time are supposed to register at the nearest police station within 3 days of arrival, according to the law. That’s all fine and dandy, I have no problem with that. If you check into a hotel or are here for work, usually these things are taken care of by the host institution. If you’re living here, your landlord needs to accompany you and vouch for you at the station, which is where my situation becomes complicated. My landlord, being located in Denmark, had to jump through some hoops and fill out paperwork at the Serbian embassy in Denmark, then have it sent here. Naturally, this was done with all due haste; I mean, three and a half months is a perfectly reasonable amount of time for these things.

Now with the paperwork in said landlord’s local cousin’s possession, you’d think things would be ok. After about our third fruitless visit to the police station it was revealed to us (my roommate and I) that it would probably just be simpler to make some sort of border run to get a new entrance visa and come back to register “within the rules” of the 3 day time limit. Since both of us were on the eve of holiday travels, we both thought this was reasonable, and my roommate was actually able to get registered with no hassles upon his return.

When I returned from Prague, however, I was informed that the monolingual local landlord 's cousin (say that three times real fast) could not meet with me and go to the station within 3 days of my arrival; I’d have to wait until Monday, 5 days after my arrival, but I was assured that this would be “no problem”, which I thought was reasonable. I have talked to about a dozen other foreigners here, the majority of which were able to register with no fuss after 3 days, so it would appear that the 3 day rule is not extremely rigid.

I guess that makes me unlucky or something, because I wasted yet ANOTHER goddamn* morning at the stupid ass police station being yelled at in Serbian by surly hung-over cops and being moved around from desk to desk to yet another desk, to another wing of the station, another desk, another office, another desk, downstairs to another office, another desk, another desk, another desk, back upstairs, another official, another desk, all ending up BACK AT THE SAME FUCKING DESK I STARTED AT. All this, just to be told to basically fuck off, I was too late.

Now I’m not sure exactly what they expect me to do. Besides being pissed at my landlord for putting me in this situation by his utter laziness (this is just one gripe among many others I have with him), I do have to express some considerable admiration for the sheer dedication to utter fucking incompetence the Serbian police apparently show in this matter. At the risk of offending any Serbian readers of this blog, I’m gonna make a big statement here. All I need is a simple piece of paper; it simply has my name, address, date of arrival, any police officer’s signature and a stamp. That’s IT. There is NO GODDAMN EXCUSE why this should be so complicated to get, 3 days or not. To my great consternation, I realized as I was leaving the station for the 4^th futile time that SHITTY LITTLE AFRICAN COUNTRIES CAN DO THIS BULLSHIT BETTER THAN SERBIANS. There, I said it. There is just no excuse for people as smart and sophisticated as Serbs to be so goddamn stupid about such a simple ass matter.

Anyways, that’s pretty much the end of the rant. At this point I guess I have no recourse left but to call the US Embassy and see if they can help me where my worthless landlord cannot. In the meantime now, I apparently can’t leave from the main Belgrade airport now; if I want to fly anywhere, I have to book a ticket now from fucking Budapest or something. Not only that but I’m fairly sure this puts me in a somewhat precarious situation legally speaking in Serbia. I’ve made it for three months without being registered ok, but now it’s going to start interfering with my work and stuff. I’ve been commissioned to write a story about the Chinese people in Belgrade, and I want to interview some Serbian immigration or whatever officials. In this part of the world though, people pretty much automatically assume that any foreigner walking around asking questions is a spy. Guess what the first thing they will ask me for is, if I ever schedule an interview with any Serbian govt. official? Yep, police registration. I'm sure it'll be fiiiiiiiiine to walk into Serbian government buildings as a completely illegal foreigner asking questions, that's not suspicious at all or anything.

With such stunningly efficient bureaucracy I’m actually quite shocked that Serbs aren’t the ones who coined the term “going postal”.

*(sorry for the swearing, Grandma)

Amsterdam Impressions

This is what I wrote within hours of my extraction from Amsterdam:

After approximately 42 hours stuck on a crowded bus driving across Europe with a bunch of Serbs, I finally arrived into Amsterdam with the crowd and we checked into the hostel.

Eight days later now I have finally managed to crawl out of the cesspit of Amsterdam, in a style completely appropriate for that length of stay in that city. I’m sitting hungover, sleepless, broke, unshowered and wearing the same clothes for the third day in a row, unshaved, and sick as a dog in the airport in Milan slowly getting re-acquainted with my sanity.

Amsterdam was overwhelming, incredible, utterly bizarre, decadent and depraved, stylish, neat, rich, endlessly fascinating in some ways and utterly dull in others, rational and yet illogical at the same time. I guess the simplest way to describe is as the sum of its parts. To me, it seemed like an extremely nice, lovely and old European city that was rented out for a huge sleazy frat party, 27/7, 365. That was basically it. It was all quite confusing, really; I’ve never seen so many different people from literally around the world in one place, and with everyone getting along so harmoniously and in such an environment. Yet everything in Amsterdam is so seemingly problem free, and the international-ism and tolerance stuff taken so far and so seriously, that in the end it all feels only skin deep and rather shallow. Basically Amsterdam is nothing more than a neat old European city with great architecture where people from around the world go to get completely, utterly and totally fucked up. It’s Disneyworld for adults, or perhaps the international version of Las Vegas. Amazing and yet also quite overrated at the same contradictory time.

Now I’m on my way to Prague, finally, and fittingly leaving Amsterdam like a cat who spent a few too many rough nights in the gutter.

Apres l'aventure Europeene

Once again my procrastinating has left this blog neglected for too long. With great apologies to my many fans :P I’m happy to report that I’m back from almost a month of traveling adventures (or misadventures, depending on your perspective I suppose) through Europe, which makes for a whole lot of updating that I will do in a few parts.

So in more or less chronological order, here’s the summarized update since my last post...

After a short but enjoyable Christmas visit from my dad to Belgrade, I packed my bags and hopped onto a bus to Amsterdam to spend New Year’s there. The trip was organized by a hip young (as in, run by a bunch of young peeps) Serbian travel company, and accordingly the whole trip was fun, chaotic, messy, crazy, enthusiastic, and just generally one heck of an experience. Traveling with Serbs in general was an interesting endeavor that I will write more about later.

The bus ride up was great fun, albeit excruciatingly long, about 42 hours total. We left Belgrade with two double-decker buses on the afternoon of the 28^th of January, and drove through the night. Crossing the border into Hungary ate up a good 5 or 6 hours, and there was some sort of chaotic stop in the middle of the night because of some mess involving lost passports... The original plan called for an 8 hour stop in Munich so the bus drivers could rest, but once in Austria the second bus broke down (didn’t see THAT one coming, didja!), so we ended up in nearby Salzburg, Austria instead. Despite the complications and the change of destination the stop in Salzburg was a terrific little break, providing a chance for a very nice scenic afternoon walk around the city, a great dinner with fantastic German beer, some drunken ice skating and in general just a nice release from the stifling confines of the bus.

The second leg of the trip, from Salzburg to Amsterdam, was considerably rougher. We drove through the night again and this time I just couldn’t get comfortable, my ipod was out of batteries, people were smelly, cranky and tired and arguing, and the hours just dragged on interminably. By the time we finally arrived in Amsterdam the next day, early in the afternoon, it felt like being on some African refugee bus or something.

Nevertheless the trip was quickly forgotten upon arrival in the Dam. I wrote up another blog of my impressions there shortly after I left the place, so I will upload that later and leave this short in the interest of space. After 7 completely crazy fear and loathing-themed days in Amsterdam, I left the place barely intact and hopped onto a plane to Prague, to take a 10 day journalism course there.

I have never arrived in any city in the world so utterly unprepared or uninformed as I did in Prague, but I just didn’t have time to brush up on the place while I was in Amsterdam. I arrived without a clue about what even the currency was, didn’t know a single thing about the place, what to do out of the airport, where to go, nothing. To my great pleasure I was able to just wing it like a pro upon arrival, and was able to get my baggage, find my way downtown on the public transportation and check into my well-hidden hotel without a hitch, which was a nice little confidence builder.

The journalism course and the next 10 days in Prague were utterly fantastic. The course was excellent, with outstanding experienced instructors giving us great advice, the networking was great and tons of great contacts were made, the whole group of students taking the course was terrific, we all got along great and had an utter blast exploring Prague, yadda yadda yadda. Basically 10 totally splendid days, and I was very sorry to reach the conclusion of the course. It was a great way to kickstart 2007.Nonetheless, it was time to head back home to BG...

That was 3 days ago. Now I’m back in good ol’ Serbia, right on the eve of the elections here, and the mood is electric. It is very good to be back, despite having had a great trip.

That’s the short update... I will write more about my impressions of Amsterdam, the journalism course/Prague, and my dad’s visit as soon as I have time, so all my faithful readers will have their patience rewarded soon :)