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?