My sister Yugoslavia

I used to listen to the Smiths when I considered myself to be a disaffected youth (in fact, I was an over-privileged student).  I was reminiscing a few months ago and looked up "How Soon is Now?" - the bands anthem for lonely teenagers - and was surprised to see that it had been covered by a Russian band called t.a.T.u.  Johnny Marr, the Smiths' guitarist, apparently thought it silly, but Morrissey, the singer, liked it and when he heard that the band were "a pair of teenage Russian lesbians" he apparently said "aren't we all?"

Anyway, I looked the band up and was surprised to see that one of the pair, Lena, had actually performed a song called "Yugoslavia", that according to what I read was related to a concert that was planned in Moscow to protest against the Nato bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.  The song and a translation can be found here.  

At the time, I don't think I considered the bombing to be anything but the right thing to do.  And I don't remember a lot of protests against the bombing in the west, though Google suggests that they did seemingly happen.  At any rate, I don't think it was on the scale (at least in the UK where I was living) of the anti-Gulf war protests of the early 1990s.

It is a fairly touching song somehow.  I guess I'm touched as somebody who, a long time after the fact, and for reasons that have nothing to do with the war per se, has some sympathy towards Serbia, or at the very least knows a bit more about it than most Westerners.  It's also interesting as it touches on one of the very ancient relationships (Russia/Serbia) that nothing seems to diminish.   Somehow I think it is probably for the best that Russia didn't start World War III over Serbia, but it is reassuring to know that there were some people who didn't like the bombing, probably for the right reasons.

The medical establishment endorsing old wives' tales

I've ranted before about how there are many old-fashioned beliefs in the former Yugoslavia. For instance that not wearing slippers inside causes female infertility.   Periodically my mother-in-law will back one of these up by saying that a doctor said it, which usually turns out to be some friend's son's girlfriend's uncle's colleague who is actually the Doctor, so third, fourth or fifth hand.  Nevertheless, getting strange advice from doctors isn't a new thing to me.

I'm not one to believe blindly a doctor's advice as I think a lot of it is not really medically based, and I certainly don't subscribe to the idea that all doctors are necessarily super intelligent (though of course many are). We have a pediatrician in Germany who pushed homeopathic drugs on our kids until I told him that I don't want to hear about them anymore (any chemist knows they are snake-oil).  He understood my objections because of my background (PhD in Biochemistry), and stopped, but his colleague get's rather annoyed with me when I don't want the various homeopathic concoctions that she wants me and my insurance company to buy.

Anyway, back to the Balkans, my son has what looks like a throat infection, and was prescribed some antibiotics. The Croatian doctor warned me that under no circumstances should he go swimming for the eight days that he needs to take them. I asked why and was then subjected to a rather teacher-like interrogation as if I should know better.  I had no idea and stared rather stupidly.  Rather annoyed, she said: "Pneumonia, of course".  She astonished me by also saying that he must not have any cold drinks for the next eight days either for the same reason.

Ah, right, Pneumonia.  The disease that you get by getting your hair wet, going outside after you've washed your hair, or by putting your feet in a swimming pool (but curiously not a bath).  And drinking cold drinks won't just give you a sore throat, it will actually increase your chances of getting Pneumonia.   I was stunned enough, and naturally worried enough about my son, to look things up again on the Internet, and surprisingly or reassuringly there is virtually nothing in English about avoiding swimming when taking antibiotics as it can cause pneumonia, with most hits that appear being related to ear infections treated with topical antibiotics (creams) whereby one obviously shouldn't swim.   Pneumonia, as everybody should know, is caused by an infection - most often bacterial - that leads to specific problems in your lungs.  The best way to avoid it is to avoid people who are infected and stay otherwise healthy as cold viruses or other infections can lead to pneumonia.  Water, wind, rain and cold don't cause Pneumonia, though probably if you get super cold (i.e. hypothermia) you would be more likely to get it if the bacteria/virus were present, but that's not the same thing as wet hair in 34 degree summer weather or dangling your feet in a 29 degree pool.

So  this is seemingly a bit of Balkan folklore making it into medical officialdom.  I think the advice was even written down in her book of drugs, but I didn't get a close look.  Anyway, she gave us the prescription and I went to pay at the cashier.  I noticed that the Kasa was air-conditioned (it was separated from the waiting room), and I joked that they were lucky as even the Doktorica didn't have air-conditioning (the examination room had been pretty hot).  The woman at the desk looked at me and said, with a faint hint of annoyance: "she has it, but doesn't turn it on because she says it will give her a sore neck".  I rest my case.

More on Turkish in Serbian/Croatian

I wrote a few years ago about Turkish in Serbian.  Since this time I've certainly encountered a lot more of the Turkish feeling in Serbian and in Serbia, and indeed I've even got a feeling for just what words are Turkish.  Typically, words ending in "ir" or "uk" or other untypical endings give things away, and also a slight feeling that the word is also more Serbian than Croatian.   For example, šešir (hat) certainly feels like it ought to be Turkish, and I have the feeling that it is more common in Serbia, but I can't trace this to Turkish (but I haven't tried very hard).  Elsewhere, I have a Croatian colleague that I joke with in Serbian, and he once pointed out that Croats don't say čebe for blanket, but the quite clearly German-derived word deke.

Anyway, I compiled a list:

English	Croatian	Serbian	Turkish
garden	vrt	bašta	bahçe
money	novac	pare	para
sock	sokne	čarape	çorap
duvet	poplun	jorgan	yorgan
towel	ručnik	peškir	pîşgîr (old Turkish)
blanket	deke	čebe	kebe (old Turkish)
spoon	žlica	kašika	kaşık
sponge	spužva	sunđer	sünger
pillow	jastuk	jastuk	yastik
come on / let's go	hajde	hajde	hadi
colour	boja	boja	boya
boot	čizma	čizma	çizme
slippers	papuče	papuče	pâbûc (old Turkish)
soap	sapun	sapun	sabun
paint/dye/colour	boja	boja	boya
cotton	pamuk	pamuk	pamuk

I don't pretend that this is complete, nor that these are what all Croats/Serbs/Turks use exclusively today. As  I mentioned before, a lot of the words seem to be down to comforts that possibly didn't exist in pre-conquest Serbia (pillows?) and note that a lot of the words are still used in Croatian (those not in bold).  

I was particularly intrigued by hajde which one hears absolutely all the time in the former Yugoslavia.  It isn't completely clear, but this word probably comes from Turkish via Arabic (or possibly the other way around) as Arabs also say something similar for the same purpose (if you Google it you eventually find various discussions about the etymology).  Oddly, this word was the very first word my daughter said.  We used to shout it all the time to our dog, and she picked it up when she was about nine months old.  Fitting, somehow, that she picked this pan-Jugo word with an ancient eastern origin.

Various nutty things

I've talked before about odd traditions in the former Yugoslavia. I thought I might update on this subject as I have made various discoveries.

The main difference now is that I've spent a lot more time with my in-laws since we've had two children, and we've also spent a lot more time in Croatia, meaning a lot of exposure to various friends and visitors to our summer home. The thing that emerges out of all of this is just a number of crazy things that people do, for example:

1. Apparently children shouldn't drink before they eat. Even in during a 40 degree weather.  Apparently water or liquids fill up the stomach and this isn't good for digestion.

2. Speaking of drinking.  Did you know that carbonated drinks cause sore throats?  The odd thing here is that we used to drink carbonated drinks to soothe sore throats when I was a kid.  I doubt either has any effect at all.

3. Water, or more specifically, being wet, ranges from not-recommended to extremely bad.  G. was about 200 months pregnant with our son one August on Krk and it was very hot.  We were visiting some Croatian friends and in the middle of our lunch Goga got up and showered using the outside hose, returning rather damp to the table.  Our hosts kept reminding her that her hair was wet and that she shouldn't sit in the wind or in the car with it's air conditioning on.  I only twigged somewhat later that they were worried (as ever) about the dangers of the Promaja.  Even G. herself was a bit worried once when our 3 month old daughter was a bit over-heated and I (instinctively using my life-guard first-aid training of 25 years ago) wet her with a cloth and started fanning her.  All of these fears (wind, water, etc.) probably stem from the ancient believe in Miasma: before the germ theory was established, people generally believed that diseases were caused by bad air coming from ill winds, swamps, etc.

4. Walking in bare feet is dangerous for everybody (brain fever as a commentator noted in an earlier blog post), but it is especially dangerous for young women as apparently it damages the ovaries (jajnici).  I've actually heard relatives saying this to my daughter when she accidentally gets to the floor without covering on her feet.

So just for the record, none of this stuff is true. Look it up.  And of course I'm not saying everybody believes in all of this, but many do.  It never ceases to amaze me how these old beliefs persist in the 21st century, and not just in the former Yugoslavia.  We watch a lot of British childrens' television, and I was rather shocked to see an episode of Peppa Pig where they taught pigs/children the danger of going outside without a coat by describing how Peppa's brother George had 'caught a cold' by doing just that.  For the record, again, you don't get a cold by being either cold or wet, it is caused by a virus and we get more colds in the winter because we spend more time indoors with other humans who carry the virus.  And I know what you're thinking, "yes, but the virus has a better chance if you aren't wrapped up extra warm and dry" - true enough, if you get hypothermia you'll be more likely to get sick to be sure, but this is a far cry from the minor chills that people seem to think make you sick, and as far as I'm aware, all attempts to study this systematically have found nothing.  So there.  Yeah?  Same to you.