Pazi Pas: on Dogs

We were rather saddened to hear that the dog belonging to our neighbors on Krk had died. It actually went along with the death of the old goatherd, who had been looking after the old, blind, wheezing dog. Not to worry, opined one of the other villagers, the dog was really old, “maybe six or seven”. In a way, that about sums it up for dogs in the Balkans, and I guess much of southern Europe: a dog does very well if it makes it to six. This shocks the likes of me: my first dog lived to 13 (hobbling, deaf, blind, epileptic, no bladder control, constant visits to the vet in the last years) and my sisters two dogs just died a few months ago aged about 14 (blind, deaf, wheezing and living only for their daily carrot), my other sister has a dog that thrives aged about 9 and going strong(ish).

So we have a dog, as readers will know. And I must admit that now that we have a baby, she is less of a princess than she was, but she still: lives in the house, very often sleeps on our bed, eats only dog food, regularly goes to the doctor, has a passport, travels with us most everywhere, and is generally part of the family. To pacify both G. and her family, we bought a dog house for outside, and I went along at least vaguely with intentions to have her live outside, but I just couldn’t do it: making a seen week old puppy live outside in February just didn't gel. I don’t think I’m so unusual in that I love my dog like a family member, and indeed most Germans, British, Americans, Canadians, Swiss, etc. would heartily agree. Perhaps on farms, people would be a bit less coochie-coo about the animals, but on the whole, people where I come from and where I live behave similarly. Germany, on the whole, is extreme: dogs can more or less go everywhere – we’ve found only one or two restaurants in Germany that don’t allow them – and I’ve heard it said that people are often more welcoming of dogs than children, which is an exaggeration, but not a very gross one.

This is, however, clearly not the case in Serbia, or elsewhere in southern Europe, for that matter. I had, for a time, a relationship with a Spanish woman, and she mentioned one day in passing that she had “dogs” at home. “Oh”, I said, “what are their names?” She gave me a strange look, and said that they didn’t really have names, or that we called them this or that, but it didn’t matter, they were just dogs. Same kind of thing in Serbia: vague memories of dogs one had as a child, inconsistent names, not trained, and “umm…. I can’t remember what happened to him; he ran away, I think”. Of course people love their dogs, but somehow the relationships are most distant: they seem to be only rarely allowed in the house, and even people with flats often condemn (cruelly I think) dogs to live on some tiny balcony.

G’s mother is convinced that our dog caries terrible
germs, and when visiting tells us 2-3 times daily that the dog hair (abundant in the house when she sheds) will be terrible for the baby. I must admit she has a point: their dog regularly walks unattended around the neighborhood and smells like a tramp’s underpants, because she has almost never had a bath, and regularly eats garbage only after she has rolled in it. I wouldn’t let that feral animal anywhere near our baby. In contrast, I believe our dog, who is virtually never unsupervised, to be a lot cleaner than many people I know.


Croatia, though similar in attitude, seems however to be on the turn, at least on the coast. There seem to be a lot more dog-friendly people, and the general trend that they are banned from public places seems to be over-turning. As recently as last spring, one could see harsh warnings that all dogs must be on a leash and muzzled at all times in public, but I haven’t seen so many this summer. Not surprising, I guess, as a large fraction of the tourists are (of course) Germans, and think that if little Maxi-schen can’t come with us, we won’t spend anything.

Perhaps, in any case, G's mother is on the turn too. During a recent visit to Germany we caught her sitting on our sofa with the dog at her feet ("they were cold"), and she spent three days babysitting our daughter alone on Krk and was seemingly very appreciative of Monitsa's amazing instinct to guard the baby and all associated with her.

Numb to the Ex-Yugo experience

My brother-in-law has a new girlfriend. Unlike his last, this one is not naša, or rather, not Serbian. This one is German, and thus, like myself, a foreigner. We met her the other weekend and she seems very nice, but I experienced an alarming sense of irritation at just how enthusiastic she was about Serbia and Serbian (textbook tucked eagerly under her arm). Obviously it’s new love, and with it comes a healthy helping of blind enthusiasm about the new partner and where he's from, so I readily forgive her for this. But I was alarmed by my reaction. For me Serbia – together with Serbian, Croatia, Croatian, the former Yugoslavia, the Balkans, burek, Šlivovica, bad homemade wine served in Knjaz Miloš bottles, Nationalism, typical Balkan men, dangerous driving, the smell of the air in Novi Sad, typical Balkan behavior – are now so ingrained in my life as to be like something between a rather pleasant recurring dream and an untreatable genetic disease.

I had all of that, everything. I had that feeling of first-love with a native from the former Yugoslavia too. I bought every language book there was, and I’m proud to say that I definitely function in this language, if a little clumsily. And not just language books either: a recent survey of my book collection revealed no fewer than twenty books about the history of the place (e.g. Black Lamb, Grey Falcon), or novels by ex-Yugo authors (e.g. Ivo Andrić). I certainly know the lands, or more specifically, I know a lot about Novi Sad, that part of Vojvodina, and Krk in Croatia and its surrounds, where we have a house, and bits about most everywhere else. I know that Serbs don't normally want to go to Split, and that Croats should probably avoid places like Novi Pazar. I know the people as well: warts and all.

But I’ve certainly lost my original sense of mystique about the people and the place: both impress about as often as they disappoint, or in other words, they are normal. I still have, obviously, an emotional attachment to the place, but somehow it is more like a sympathetic cousin than a new friend: the relationship (and by this of course I mean to the place, not to my dear G.) is a bit forced, but not unpleasant.

P.S. Apologies for the long silence. Our daughter M.T. was born in June and time has become a precious commodity. Blog about Balkan Baby Balderdash to come.

Krk diary 2009 Number 1: Y-tong and Krk village culture

Well, our house is almost there. As ever with construction, people are telling you that it will be “about two weeks” for about (say) three months, and costs escalate and what have you, but we saw it yesterday, and the view from what will be the terrace is fantastic – Cres and the blue Adriatic in the distance, just over or through our little Olive grove. It is heaven.

Well, sort of. At least the old Yugo (ca. 1978) is no longer sitting without tires in the property next door, there seem to be fewer wild dogs and children running around than before. Sadly, we heard that the funny old guy who used to walk shirtless and smoking with his flock of twenty goats met his maker a few months ago (we don’t know what became of the goats), which is disappointing for our dog, but she’ll survive.

And maybe I’m just getting used to it, but the gastarbeiter houses look a bit less thrown together. This is something one gets used to in this part of the world. Those who left home 20-30 years ago, worked usually in Germany or Austria, and then returned home, bearing a big Mercedes Benz, a wide-screen TV and enough money to build the dream house. The problem is they normally build it themselves, and often the gastarbeiter (i.e. Guest worker in German) mentality doesn’t go along with a good sense of the aesthetic. Big, modern box-like constructions are favored – I guess because they are easiest, and provide the most room for the whole family, plus a complement of paying guests to bolster the retirement income.

Anyway, in our tiny Krk village, there are fewer houses like this, and indeed many signs of a kind of Western European gentrification: more tastefully renovated old houses (including ours I would like to think), and fewer cinder block monstrosities; tidier rubbish bins, and even better roads. Though the village lacks running water (apparently in a year or two), but now has DSL internet. I’ve got mixed feelings about all of this, I suppose. On the one hand, I think that it will be nicer to live in the village as it is becoming, but on the other, I feel we’ve somehow contributed to the destruction of this little way of life: what was once a village of Krk old-timers and refugees is now a village of well-off former Croatian ex-pats, Austrians, Slovenians and ourselves. I think we and the others really are restoring some kind of traditional Kvarner look-and-feel to the place, but perhaps we lose something more than Y-tong and bad-brickwork in the process. Ah, progress.

Somebody who comes here is nobody

Groucho Marx famously said that he wouldn't care to belong to a club that accepted people like him as members. Something that happened recently in Croatia reminded me of this statement. I met a famous Croatian, who works outside of the country. He could, like many others, have decided to stay away, but he actually gave some of his valuable time to founding something in Croatia, with an aim to give something back to his country. Admirable sentiment, to be sure, and to be fair, he gets a lot of points in some sectors of Croatian society. However, there is, he admits, another side to it: namely that there are many at home who question his true worth, to the point of even denying that he really is well known elsewhere. The problem, it seems, is coming home. He said he moves from the 1st league abroad to the fourth league at home, and as he put it "I'm not very good any more at fighting in the fourth league".

I've experienced this before. Several times in Novi Sad, we had arranged for people to visit who were well known or at least highly experienced outside of Serbia, and the simple fact that they turn up leads to people thinking they are nobody. Some fourth rate academic at the University of (say) Minnesota is, on the other hand, somebody important. I mean he has a website, and has published something, and most importantly, didn't deign to visit this place. He is thus somehow preferable to anybody whom I've actually met.

This is an odd, recurrent theme in the the former Yugoslavia, and I wonder where it comes from. Is it a generally poor sense of national self-worth? That is, the sentiment would run: Why would anybody who was anybody ever come here? There must be something wrong with them. The rather dumb thing is that it has a rather negative effect on anybody who decides to do something useful. What is the point of doing any good if you'll be considered a sap if you do it? Is it better to stay abroad and not bother?

I guess by the same logic, bands like the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, who visited Serbia a few years ago, must be second class? Nah. Maybe I'm just an over-sensitive nobody with a chip on his shoulder.

Pretending not to be what you are

I like to ask people about where they come from, particularly when I see or hear a name with an origin that doesn't tally with who they apparently are. As one might imagine, these days I tend to look for the "ić" endings in their various disguises - I even asked my mother recently about the obviously English name Aldrich that is in our family history (I still wonder, frankly). I have a nominally German colleague who's surname has the German ending itsch and he admits, with just a bit of reluctance, that at least part of his family history is from somewhere down in the Balkans (in fact, he shares a name with a famous, heroic Croatian politician who is now on the 200 kuna note).

A few years ago, I met a rather strange Austrian fellow once who's surname was pretty clearly simply the name of an animal in a Slavic language. When I asked him where he was from, he said that he was from the south of Austria, some old family. When I said that it sounded curiously like the animal name in Serbian, a Slovenian, also in attendance, broke in and said that it was in fact exactly the word in Slovenian. Ah, I said, so some of your ancestors must have come from Slovenia, zar ne? No, he said, it was south Austrian. Eventually, I think he conceded that his name was probably Slavic, but there was also this reluctance to do so.

There are other examples that are more poignant somehow, in that they involve people denying their true origin rather than their ancestry. I heard of people in the UK who would say that they were (say) Irish but were actually be Czech, and of course anybody who's lived in both North America and the UK can probably spout off dozens of examples of people feigning Britishness despite being born in (say) Oklahoma. And the fake accents can make your ears bleed, even if people from (say) Oklahoma would probably never notice. Once I met an American living in Paris who, upon hearing that I lived in the UK for a long time, said: "I'm glad you don't have that stupid accent that so many people try to make up".

Not all people deny their ancestry. Certainly in the once highly multi-national Austria, I've met a lot of people who embrace it. But it is just frequent enough to warrant mention. The simple fact of the matter is that some people just seem to be ashamed of who they are, and think that somehow they will do better in this world if they hide it. This seems a stark contrast to the attitudes of people at home, who are almost invariably proud to be who they are. As ever, I don't have a sensible ending to this, but just a thought: take some more of this pride abroad, and remember you don't normally get many points for being a pretender.

Your mother's south slavic tongue

There is a short but fascinating book called Your Mother's Tongue, by Stephen Burgen. I don't remember everything about it - I borrowed a copy and read it about eight years ago - but it was very interesting. This was mostly because he charted the trends in swears, and how the tendency to swear and the nature of them varies geographically around Europe. Norwegians, I recall, are wimpy at it - I think the worst that can be done is to call somebody a Devil; latin people from the south are much more prone to the worst, or at least most insulting & sexual forms of swearing. The British were a strange exception, being north Europeans who swore more than the others of a similar latitude, and English and Spanish speakers in the Americas hardly swear at all compared to their European counterparts. And so on.

In Germany, where I live, the swears are essentially only scatological and any attempt to insult or affectionately cajole somebody about the sexual habits of his mother will either not be understood, or just laughed at (Waaait a minute, you think my mother is a what? What does this have to do with what we are talking about?). I understand this perspective when I think about the Spanish insult cabron (cuckold) which is very complicated , particularly when applied out of context (let's see, I just accidentally spilled your beer, and now you are saying that, though you don't know her, or indeed if she exists at all, that my significant other is having relations with some other man also unknown to you). And of course in English, it is all about the F-word, unless you come from some minority that has imported the concept of insulting another's mother from elsewhere (i.e. MoFo among African Americans).

I should say that I swear - and I swear too much. It's a bad habit, I know, but as with everybody, I try to avoid doing it in polite company. I firmly believe that a well-placed swear is about the most effective literary tool there is. For a great, great example, see the Martin Amis Autobiography Experience where he talks about his father's - Kingsley Amis - best ever instance of the F-word as said by an angry dog. But through my own overuse I think I ruin my chances of any kind of suitable emphasis.

But it's fair to say that my foul-mouthed behavior comes nowhere close to that of the men I know from the former Yugoslavia. Get a couple of men from Serbia going and - whether they are closest friends or casual business colleagues - and the invective invects. And man oh man, are they dirty.

As anybody who isn't a monoglot knows: swearing in another language is a tricky business. Frankly, you should almost never do it unless you are fully, Joseph Conrad-like, fluent. You'll always offend, and never get the use of it right. But undeterred, or just seeking some additional insights into the place/language that I had found myself increasingly associated with, I asked a few years ago how one swore (psovati incidentally) in Serbian or Croatian. G. was no good, wouldn't tell me anything: don't swear, you savage, it's primitive. But every now and then, when something fell on her toe, or she dropped something, very very occasionally an utterance would come: P--- M---! What was that, I would ask, never to be told. Nothing, nothing.

Eventually, I worked out that this was absolutely the darkest of all swears that exist. When I realised, what it was (my mother's WHAT?), I started spotting it all over the place. Two people speaking in a cafe dropping it into an otherwise ordinary conversation. Elsewhere, there is the more standard fornicator type of invective, that I think is more common in Croatia (at least the Croatians I know use it more often). Related to this verb, some of early attempts to conjugate the similar sounding verb to eat (jesti or ja jedem) led, after some forgivable mix-ups with ds and bs to some interesting looks (We f--- dinner now?). Indeed, people sometimes warn you about this mix-up if they have ever previously dealt with anybody learning this martian language.

If I had to draw a parallel it would be to the way that I remember the English speech of working class Quebecois, that I would sometimes encounter during my student days in Ontario. The F-word came typically once or twice a sentence. And I think it is similar in the sense that nobody means anything by it. Obviously no insult is intended: it has just become a useful adjective/adverb/interjection. It might as well be OK or like or more suitably Ovaj or Važi.

I don't have a sensible ending to this, but one word of warning: to the prudish West, swearing is often frowned upon, even by hipocrits who swear constantly, and given the (often unjustified) reputation of people from the former Yugoslavia, perhaps it is wise either to cut down on it, or at the very least, never translate what you are saying about your friend's mother's anatomy to some curious outsider.

And of course, I know, I can go f--- myself. Oh, and f--- you too.

But your parents must come from Srem, zar ne?

When I first flew to Belgrade in 2002 it was quite an experience. I had the feeling that there were no other foreigners on the plane - judged by the appearance of the people, and the fact that I heard no English or German spoken. It was quite a surprise, then, to see the queue for "foreign nationals" at passport control in Belgrade nearly as full as that for the locals. The official rather mercilessly (like all officials, in all countries) asked me in rapid-fire Serbian what I was doing there, and when I said I didn't speak any Serbian (I hadn't even bought my first language book yet), she rolled her eyes and had to get somebody else who spoke English to ask me the normal immigration questions about whether I was a terrorist, a smuggler, infectious or whatever. [As an aside, today things are very different, and one even regularly hears English on the streets of Novi Sad in February].

I asked G. about this afterwards, and she told me that most of the "foreigners" where just people who had dual nationalities who had probably temporarily without a Serbian passport, or children of far-flung diaspora from Canada, the US, Australia, Germany, etc. Now that I sort of speak the language, I'm often reminded of the diaspora when I simply say something. Unless they presume I'm Hungarian or Romanian (in Novi Sad this is pretty common), people normally ask where I'm from and when I say "Canada", they then almost always say, "ali roditelji?" ("but your parents?"), whereupon I'm supposed to say that they are from Zrenjenin or Niš or Bjelovar or something. When I deny any true genetic links, people are always rather sweetly surprised. In fact, I once had a waiter in Novi Sad disbelieve me, perhaps thinking I was pretending to be something I was not.

For me, its deeply encouraging. For all of us who are sometimes frustrated with learning these moon-man, mega-complex Eastern European languages, it is good not to get the reaction that one gets (say) in Paris when speaking bad Canadian french to snobby French waiters who would rather speak appalling English than suffer your accent.

Having said that, people could be just a tad better at speaking to foreigners: as for all languages where few foreigners attempt them, people in Serbia or Croatia are a bit merciless when you show signs of speaking it - 1000km/h with all the complexities put in. Polako, polako. Gs mother is extremely good to me, speaking slowly and even having the patience to tell her mother to show a bit more understanding. Gs grandmother has little patience for me, thinking that people who don't speak properly are some kind of alien species, but on the telephone she now speaks to me like a tape-player and quarter speed: "Oooonnaaaa jeeeeeee uuuuuuuuu graduuuuuuuuuu. Daaaaaa liiiii razuuuuumiš?" (Shheeeeeeee's innnnnn theeeeeee towwwwwnnn. Doooooo yoooooouuuuu unnnnnderrrrrrstaaaaaand?"). Then she says, as ever, "Robert, trebaš da uceš" (you need to study) and continues at 1000km/h about some further details of which I understand about 50%, but growing steadily.

On refugees and house restoration in Croatia

Refugees are still very much part of the scenery in the former Yugoslavia. As I've mentioned before, many of those with the most energy today are those who have lost everything in the past, and who now want more than anything to live life to the full: Croatian Serbs, Serbian Croats, Bosnian everythings, etc.

Many of my first encounters with refugees were during our searches for a suitable property to buy in Istria or Kvarner (i.e. the North Croatian coastal area). For example, we looked at one run down property in a place called Kunj in Istria, that was in a tiny terrace of four houses. Some friendly people came out and introduced themselves, and it turned out that they were from near Novi Sad. Serbian Croat refugees obviously. They said they missed Vojvodina, but had to flee, as did so many others during the various exoduses of the early 1990s. In the then common house-swap process, they ended up with a tiny ruin of a house in the middle of nowhere in a region that they didn't know at all, having lived for generations in northern Serbia. Anyway, they were very friendly and gave us pointers about how much it cost to put in a bathroom, and how we shouldn't trust Nekretine (Estate Agents - as if we needed to be told - I always thought the kretin part of the word was fitting).

We met several other displaced people during our search for a house, and I suspect that some of the circa 1989 renovated empty properties were probably once vikendici (i.e. little weekend houses) of owners who were no longer nationals of the country in which we were searching. But the parade of refugees didn't stop after our eventual purchase. We are pretty sure that the person who was actually living in the condemnable wreck of a house that we eventually purchased was a refugee. And strangely, or perhaps fittingly, as we started to do things on the house, we encountered ever more of them. For example, one summer Sunday two years ago, Gs father telephoned some guy who called some other guy with a truck to remove the gigantic heap of rubbish we extracted from the property after first aquiring it. The talkative Croatian landlord who was hosting us in an apartman asked quizzically, upon hearing this: Tko rade njedelje?!? (Who works on Sunday?!?) And everybody laughed when they heard: neki Bosanac. Of course it was some Bosnian Croat, keen as ever, so some stereotype apparently dictates, to work any day of the week to make money.







Before









The trio of builders we eventually hired to renovate and build was like some kind of homage to the former Yugoslavia: all originally from Bosnia, but one Croat, one Serb, one Muslim, all living happily in the stable that they lovingly converted into temporary and seemingly comfortable lodgings. Our attempts to rent them more suitable accommodation failed when one of our neighbors in the village who hosts the only rentable apartmani refused to rent to a bunch of dirty builders. And did I mention that the neighbor, herself, is a member of the most perplexing variety of refugees I've ever encountered? She is a Croatian Orthodox. Gs father has no patience for this, insisting that she is a Serb, but somehow she feels ethnically Croat and spiritually closer to Constaninople than Rome.






During










Perhaps the greatest house-building related refugee story comes from the people who are actually the greatest help to us of all: R & S from Slatina, in Eastern Croatia. They are second or third generation Serbian Croats, and great friends of Gs parents. At the moment, for legal reasons, they actually own a small piece of what is technically farming property behind our house as foreigners cannot easily buy agricultural land in Croatia. In other words, we bought a piece of land for them. When I was, at first, anxious about this - "I mean, who the %^&* are these people?" I said in some obnoxious North American tone - G told me the story of how they came to be so utterly enthusiastic about helping us, and why we should utterly trust them.

Up until 1991, this couple lived with their family in Novi Sad, and ran a successful rubber business. I'm not sure how they came to be such good friends with Gs father, but I suspect that business connections kept them close. They are great people: I like them a lot. She is a tough machine who seems capable of organising anything, and he is the strong and silent type, and they are both warm and affectionate people. Anyway, they and Gs parents get along like a house on fire. Perhaps house on fire is the right metaphor here, as around the time of the massacres in Vukovar and elsewhere, ethnic hatred rose to the boiling point even in the normally peaceful city of Novi Sad. Other Croats (in other parts of the country) had had their houses burned to the ground, and they perhaps sensibly decided that they had little choice but to flee to Croatia. In a turn of events that I don't know precisely - but which was repeated thousands of times on both sides of the war - they lost their business and were left with nothing but an apparently unfair house trade with some Croatian Serb refugees in Slatina. Gs father gave them 8000 DM - which was then a considerable sum in Yugoslavia - and told them to go and start a new life. The story ends happily as they now live in Croatia with another successful business and grown up children now successful in their own right, probably profiting from that refugee initiative that I've so often commented on in the past.

Anyway, Gs father, being the last of a breed of Yugoslav gentleman, naturally refused to take the money back when they offered a repayment. R & S decided that instead they could offer their considerable experience - at no cost - to help us build our house; if not to repay a debt of all debts, then to help out some dear friends. This is the kind of friendship loyalty that I've never experienced, and I think it goes without saying that I'll trust them - and for that matter their children and grandchildren - unconditionally.

An Eerie Sense of Homecoming

Those who look at this blog could be forgiven for wrongly thinking that I dislike the former Yugoslavia, or tolerate it out of necessity owing to my relationship. This tale, however, should convince people otherwise.

In early 1993 I was just flying back to the UK after a visit to Canada. It was one of those strange times in a young mans life (I was 24): love life just recently in tatters, no job prospects in the then depressed economy, an unfinished PhD and only six months left to deal with it. I didn't feel I had a lot to smile about. As I woke from my typical 20 minutes of sleep on the night crossing, I noticed the sun shining out in from the blinds and opened mine to see the countryside over England and experienced a strange feeling of thank goodness I'm home at last. I remember remarking to myself how strange this was at the time: I mean I'd just lived in this country a three years, and wasn't Canada still my home? Anyway, seven years later I left the UK somewhat reluctantly for Germany, and still consider it to be home. Formative years, you might say, define the man, perhaps in some ways more so than where one actually grows up.

Last week, we were in Opatija for a) a break, and b) a survey of the ever improving house on Krk. We lucked out, I must say, with the weather: it was mostly glorious, and being March, refreshingly empty, which proved ideal and just what we needed: quiet walks by the sea, some sunshine, and I even ate Lignje na zaru and enjoyed it for the first time in ages (I had, as readers of this blog might remember, an overdose on this some time ago).

Anyway, in thie middle of this break, I had to drive from Opatija to Genoa for a conference. It was a nuisance driving 700km there and back on two successive days, but easier, I reckoned, than any train or plane combination odyssey. The conference was in a lovely venue in the centre of the old city, we had fabulous food, the people were very nice, I had a great walk around the old port, the drive back was long but mostly painless, and when I got into Slovenia I felt for only the second time in my life: thank goodness I'm home at last.

What on earth? I mean Slovenia isn't even a place where I've spent much time. Two nights in Ljubliana on separate occasions and perhaps two meals in and around Bled. Upon self-inspection I realised that it was a kind of better the devil you know feeling than anything else. I mean I like Italy, but it drives me bonkers. The drive was mostly painless, but perhaps 10% of the time I had the crazy gesticulating Italian 50cm from my bumper at speed. I stayed in a lovely hotel room, had a fantastic view and the internet and phone didn't bloody work (as ever). The language frustrates me (I speak some Spanish and French, but as these are seemingly both muddled with Serbian now, Italian is like some kind of strange puzzle in my befuddled brain), and I don't really understand how Italians think. That's not to say that I couldn't one day figure the country and the people out, but certainly at the moment, it isn't home. At least in the former Yugoslavia I understand the crazy drivers (e.g.: Rule 17: in Istria/Kvarner, if you see "RI" on the license plate, it is best to get out of the way. Rule 18: do not drive in Belgrade, etc.). When stuff doesn't work, at least it is consistent (usually a bad view goes together with not working, and if you pay for stuff it work, unlike at least my most recent Italian episode). The people might not be my people, but I'm beginning to understand the way they think, and for the most part, I like them, warts and all. And I suppose even if they laugh/gawk at my Serbocroation or my wimpy foreign manners, they do, for the most part, accept me.

The nail in the coffin, if that is the appropriate metaphor here, is that I have never, not in nearly nine years of living and working in Germany, felt the same thing upon landing in Frankfurt or crossing the border by car. The devil I know better is definitely that of the south Slavic variety.

Communist relics everywhere

If you want to go swimming in Novi Sad there is a quaint but daft ritual you have to go through. You might, being logically minded, think that going to the swimming pool, paying something and then swimming might be a sensible plan. But oh no, you silly outsider. Of course you can't just go to the swimming pool, you need to buy a ticket at another little office about 200 metres away first. This office has (or at least had) opening hours that differ from the pool itself. One person issues the tickets, the other takes the money. Make sure, you dimwit, that you specify precisely when you are going to swim. There is 10-13, or 13-15, and naturally tickets for one time period won't work for the other, though they cost the same. Oh, and don't be surprised if the ticket office isn't open when the pool is open. What, are you new here?

Ok, Ok, so I don't remember the exact details I'm quoting above, and I'm exaggerating, but not very much. Anyway, I do this in order to introduce one of the most interesting and persistent themes in the former Yugoslavia: namely signs of communist lunacy lingering on.

Another one of my favorites is in the Rijeka airport. There are of course signs of modernisation everywhere - modern rent-a-car firms and travel companies - but if you want to eat or drink something before you get on the plane, you get exposed to one of these strange relics. The cafe (at least as it was circa 2007) consists of a long counter in large tiled atrium with tables and chairs. Behind the counter are four or five staff, all women, all angry. They're angry because nobody seemingly understands that they (or at least three out of four of them) are not there to serve customers or answer questions. One is there to take orders only without knowledge of the menu, one prepares things, another cleans, and still another seems to be employed only angrily tell-off customers who get the system wrong. Foreigners from five countries stumble around bewildered trying to spend the last of their money and often failing to do so in frustration.

JAT airways is (or was) another reminder of the communist past. Until a few years ago it was not possible to buy tickets online or indeed through any travel agency. One had, naturally, to buy the ticket at he airport before the flight or travel in person to the airline's central office. This used to drive me bonkers as I always had the feeling that I would a) not get on the plane or b) have to pay more, which was at least for me was always the case. Prices varied pretty wildly and at least in Novi Sad, one got a better price by flattering the ego of the woman in charge of tickets. One had to buy her a little flower or at the very least say nice things about her to get her (pretty please) to give you a ticket on a flight that would eventually be revealed to be empty. G said that as late as 1999 she still had to travel from Cambridge to London just to speak to somebody about the possibility of buying a ticket to Belgrade. Like many of these other relics of the communist past, people just simply refuse to work by telephone - and amazingly had the power to do so. In all of these things there is just a sniff of the corruption inherent in the system. Always the system assumed that people would serve their comrades, and always people found some way to abuse it, if not exactly for money or favors, then just for personal satisfaction.

The pool, the cafe and the airline are charming reminders of a system that once strove for full employment rather than customer care, being very literally run entirely for the convenience of the staff. And of course this makes them rather unpleasant on the receiving end. But mind you, there are good relics as well. We once spent a very pleasant three days at a hotel on Brijuni, Tito's one-time summer residence off the coast of Istria. There one is/was exposed to the very best of old communism - the service then afforded to visiting dignitaries. The hotel is/was like a time-warp to mid-sixties chic: Bakelite ashtrays, gigantic (but then high-end) radio/television console, funny looking phone and furniture from some sixties science fiction film. In the restaurant is the kind of service that one almost never gets in the former Yugoslavia anymore. Professionally trained waiters, complete with uniforms out of an Agatha Christie adaptation and bleached white towel over one arm, and charming manners.

I think it would be a shame to lose these things entirely. Clearly the swimming pool, the restaurant, JAT and the thousands of things like them are already disintegrating. Some clever clogs at JAT obviously realised they might even turn a profit if they just stopped people from little power-trips that were sending customers to the competition - never mind sacking them (i.e. now you can buy JAT flights via Opodo). But I would like to see some of this preserved. It would break my heart to find out (as is probably already the case) that the old communist hotel was purchased by Sheraton and morphed into some vanilla flavored Starbuck's latte type of establishment. Far better to preserve this time warp to show people what it was really like: kitch and all. I mean afterall it is still a great and unique hotel.

Perhaps too there might be some mechanism to preserve the screwy traditions of over-staffed, inefficient, customer-defocused cafe/restaurant. Maybe some ride in a theme park or an entire theme park (Tito's world?) would do the trick. Upon arrival you would stand in a queue for a long time before being tutted at, and told you were in the wrong one. You would then be forced to figure out a bewildering system of tickets and queues to get a coffee, and need to negotiate with some bored official smoking behind a desk to use the toilet.

Hmm. Maybe not, eh?

On studying forever

One of my favorite subjects in Germany is just how long people seem to study without anybody else seeming to notice or care. One institute, which shall remain nameless, describes a ten semester (i.e. five year) programme on its web site, and then announces that the average time for students to finish is fifteen semesters (i.e. seven and a half years). And of course an average means a tail to the long end, since few students will finish in less than five years, so that means there must be a good number that take 8 or 9 years.

Precisely the same thing often happens in Serbia and probably Croatia and many other places in the region and around the world. I've been repeatedly astonished to hear that many of Gs friends are still studying for their first degree. This is something G herself finished in 1999 and something which is a dim and distant memory for me. At first I would ask if the person were very young, but now it is more or less established that many people just drift along for 8, 9, 10 even 11 years without anybody really commenting. Perhaps a dozen times we've tried to meet up with one or other of her old friends, only to be told (for example by parents) that they musn't be disturbed because they have an important exam and need to study. This at the age of (say) 32 when they've already been studying for 9 years, they live at home and almost invariably have a couple of older female relations cooking and cleaning for them.

What, I ask, is going on? I guess the truth is that when people have little to look forward to in the job market, they prefer to linger as a student rather than get on with their lives. Having all the home comforts around probably isn't the best thing either. I'd be willing to bet that students in (say) Novi Sad that come from (say) Srenjenin and thus pay more for lodging and experience all the usual pizza-boxes, rat-infestations and the like that student housing offers will finish quicker.

I think as well that the weaker the University in terms of international standing, the less inclined the faculty are to get people finished. I don't know if this is because the staff have something to prove (i.e. our course is too difficult to finish in the specified time), or if they want students to stay on as cheap labour when grants are non-existent or difficult to get, or for some other reason.

In the AngloSaxon Universities, at least as I remember mine from the eighties, a four year degree is nearly always done in four years. You can take longer (say five) if you can afford it but normally you would need to have a good reason (e.g. illness, family problems, etc.). The conventional wisdom is that if people can't handle it, they drop out and do something else.

Anyway, I don't have much to offer in terms of advice apart from obviously finish quicker. And perhaps be critical about advice from either your family (who probably wrongly think you can't handle the stress and why don't you take this exam next year) and academic staff who might have some hidden agenda to stop you from getting through too quickly.

Naming a baby Balkan

For only the obvious reasons I've been thinking about names in Serbian/Croatian. What kind of name can you give to a baby girl with a mixed heritage? Amidst all the Jelenas, Tanjas, Mirjanas, Tijanas & Bojanas, there are some real gems. Some beautiful, and some, well, even if they are not ugly, they are, well, difficult.

I think that SerboCroatian produced some of the funniest names in history. For example, quaint, charming, and out-of-the-question for us is Traktorka, probably given to many peasant farmers' daughters in the newly industrialised Yugoslavia as a tribute to the biggest equipment purchase of his life. It would be like an American calling his daughter Fixedtermilina or something. Right up there with Hitlerina is Staljinka, derived from the short-lived friendship with the Soviet Union. Equally frightening is Mašinka , which I read is a direct tribute not (as you might think from the sound) to machine, but to a Tommy Gun (machine gun). It does, however, have a cute diminuitve: Maša which you might never associated with an implement of war. Admittedly these are all names G's grandmother's generation, and I doubt many people kept them to the present day.

Elsewhere there are relatively common names that would stymie easy friendships with the English speaking world only owing to unpronouncability. For example, Ksena and Tihana both require you essentially to gob while saying them. Other names look like somebody forgot a letter, like Smiljka which I have simply never been able to say correctly quickly, or the male name Grgur (Gregory or Gregor) that would at least require some coaching for the non-Serbian family members to pronounce. To this day my family members have to do a little jump when they pronounce the island Krk and even then they don't say it right.

I think, on balance, we can't be too creative here. Two syllables max, and no messing about with R-as-a-vowel, or sounds that hurt the mouth of a non-native speaker. Ana, Marija, Mila, Ema?

Blowing hot and cold about Serbia and this blog

It's been a while since I blogged anything here, and perhaps the reason why is worthy itself of an entry. Being honest: we've had a few rather bad experiences in or about Serbia over the past few months. Nothing that serious, but just enough to dampen my enthusiasm to the point where I haven't felt inspired to write anything for a while.

I remember in Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island (his tribute to life in Britain), he said that a smile from a pub owner, or a pleasant sunset in the English countryside would be enough to make him think that he should never leave the country. Something of the opposite has happened recently to me regarding Serbia. As I said, nothing that serious, but just an accumulation of things that have dampened my enthusiasm.

Its a funny ole relationship that one has with these countries sometimes. A real mix of hope and despondency. Meeting an enthusiastic young person in the workplace can make you believe that there is great hope, and some ape-like, un-intelligent staunch nationalist on the street can tear it away. Grace, charm and courtesy shown by some stranger in a restaurant is ruined by some pushy Balkan stereotype in a swimming pool threatening to punch a pregnant woman (I kid you not). A deep sense of family can make you think that other countries have a thing or two to learn from the ex-Yugoslavia, but then the ass-backwards logic that one has to adhere to in order participate makes you think that they actually have it wrong. Pleasant scenery in the countryside is offset by the mud and pollution of Novi Sad in February. Et cetera.

As ever, other countries are similar, and having been an ex-pat basically all my adult life, I know well that one often simultaneously loves and hates where one lives or visits. I guess its the extremes in Serbia or Croatia that are the difference. As much as I whinge about Germany or the Germans, I don't ever really feel afraid or worried like I can do in Serbia. English people can be rude, but never on a par with what can sometimes happen in Serbia. It's as if there's this precarious control mechanism that can both pleasantly surprise or deeply terrify without warning.

Anyway, it will blow hot again, and when it does, I'll be back at it.