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.

How the other half travel

We are spending a lot of time in Novi Sad at the moment, for reasons that I won't get into here.  As a consequence, I sometimes need to travel from Novi Sad to conferences, as I had to do yesterday when I traveled to Trieste.    This is one of those funny distances (600km) that probably would be best to drive, but as I need to fly from Trieste to Germany, I couldn't take my own car; renting was impossible - no company seemed able to offer a pick-up in Serbia / drop-off in Italy option; the train options were insane: 19 hours and five changes; flying options were similarly crazy: 16 hours and two changes.  The only thing left was the bus.  We checked and yes, indeed, there are buses from Novi Sad to Trieste (every other day) and the journey is between 9 and 10 hours normally.  How hard could it be?  Coaches, at the best of times, are uncomfortable things, and they are worse when you are over 2 meters tall. The company said that the buses are pretty empty this time of year, so comfort wouldn't be a problem.  Great, I thought.  For a mere 50 Euros I got a ticket and arrived at the bus station in Novi Sad at 16.30; bottle of Knjaz Miloš and a couple of Viršle in pastry from the Pekara, I felt the right little Yugoslav Gastarbeiter.

Despite assurances to the contrary, the bus was stuffed to the gunnels - not one spare seat.  Mixture of people of all ages, though no children at all.   Everybody, and I do mean everybody smoked at every possible instant, though mercifully not on the bus.  I'm not exaggerating either.  Everybody.  At one point I thought some older ladies who had, like me, sat on the bus to avoid the weather during one of the numerous pauza cigareta, were also not smoking, but in fact they too soon went outside for a fix.   It's not that this surprises me particularly as most everybody smokes in Serbia, just not those in our circles, and I'm used to at least somebody not smoking in a crowd of nearly 50 people.  

Anyway, the haze of smoke aside, the journey wasn't too bad. Bit uncomfortable, but endurable.  It was very interesting to see the transition of people from the typical Balkan personalities to those of the subdued foreigners.  In Serbia everybody was on their mobile phones and talking rather loudly, but by the time we did our first border crossings everybody got a whole lot quieter. Maybe it was just getting late, but I was pretty certain a timidness was creeping in to everybody's demeanor.  

When we drive with a German car and EU passports across these borders we are very often just waved through without any check at all.  The crossings yesterday, by stark contrast, were the longest I have every experienced.  In a rather bizarre twist of Yugoslav fate, the only crossings needed are in the former Yugoslavia: first to Croatia and then from Croatia into Slovenia (and thus into the EU so none more required).  Each crossing involved everybody getting off the bus twice (once to leave the old country and again to enter the new country), and twice we had to go with our luggage.   We didn't stop at all in Croatia (not even to pee) which a fellow passenger told me was to help the border crossing out of Croatia being easier (i.e. to avoid questions).  The border into Slovenia involved each bag being checked quite thoroughly and even a frisking of each person (or at least looking inside the coats).  Nobody made any comments or complaints and I could see in peoples' faces as we waited this kind of nervousness and hope that everybody gets through lest we all have to wait for hours for one person to go through some kind of official rigmarole.   The Slovenian woman doing the checks was ruder or at least brusquer than anybody I have had search me before, and I couldn't help but feel sorry for these people who are at the mercy of their former comrades for entry into a part of the world that essentially cannot exclude me.  Not since I was travelling around eastern Europe in the mid 1980s did I experience border crossings like this.  The journey time should have been six hours, but for these crossings it was nearly eleven hours.

My mother-in-law has made this journey (or at least one similar: Novi Sad to Heidelberg) about a dozen times to help us look after the kids.  If anything, she prefers it to flying as at least she is in control of the ticket buying process (being savvy with neither internet bookings nor credit cards).  Since yesterday I have a whole lot more respect for what she goes through each time.

Various thoughts on films about the last Balkan wars

Recently I finally managed to watch all of the 1998 film Savior. I say "finally" as I've tried a few times to watch it previously and always give up after the first twenty minutes as it is overall too disturbing (it is the part where Goran and Guy are in the house with the Grandmother). But in the end I think it's worth sticking to it. The film doesn't get any less grim, but perhaps more human after that. Anyway, I liked the film as it is on the whole very evenly balanced on which side were the bad guys (answer: all of them), and ends on a high note. Essentially it is the story of a US military man turned, owing to the murder of his wife and son by Islamic terrorists, stoic and embittered Foreign Legionnaire fighting eventually as a mercenary for the Yugoslav army during the Bosnia war. He meets a Serbian woman pregnant after being raped by Bosnian soldiers and the story is about their attempts to get from Bosnia to Split.

I've seen a few other films about the period. I liked Welcome to Sarajevo a lot, but I have some sympathy with those who say it carries the Western anti-Serb bias; though perhaps bias in these films always stems from perspective (here it being Bosnian Muslims in Sarajevo being targeted by Serbs).

Probably my favorite film, however, about the war in general is Grbavica - the story of a Bosnian muslim woman living with her 15-year old daughter who, unbeknownst to the daughter, is also the product of a rape (by a Serbian Chetnik in a prison camp). I like this film not just as a well-done film, but also for aspects such as the lead role (Emma) being played by a Serbian actress (Mirjana Karanović) who I think did a good thing in taking the part.

The above are all serious films, and G. says that nobody in the former Yugoslavia ever takes them seriously. Somehow telling, I guess, that seemingly the most popular home-grown films about the wars are comedies. We very much liked Sivi kamion crvene boje (The GreyTruck of Red Color), which is a humorous story about a Serbian woman and a Bosniak travelling from Belgrade to the Croatian coast during the early stages of the war. Some of the humor is (to my eyes) a bit dubious, and watching people laugh at scenes where the lead actor jokes his way out of being murdered can be unsettling, but I guess I've married into this culture.

P.S. I'm sorry for never writing - I'll try to do more. I think I've just run out of ideas, or am not always inspired, but I'll work on it.

Proof from Google translate that Croatian and Serbian are not that different...