Last beer in Belgrade

Last beer in Belgrade
Originally uploaded by mylittlepony3.

And then... I came home. My last morning my roommate and I ran around the streets searching for good mesa to bring home as presents, and lots of big Milka chocolate bars.

I spent my last dinars at the airport on bad serbian candy and magazines. I don't have any pictures of the airport; I was too tired to feel nostalgic about a gray Serbian day, stale airport kiflice and a crno pivo headache.

I came home with three bags full off books, many megabytes of homemade music and too many memories to capture in a belated blog.

So I'd like to say thank you to all the wonderful people who fed me, gave me directions and humoured my bad Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian. The girls in the Theological dorms who sat up late eating ajvar and bread and teaching me ruzni reci (bad words). Sasho's friends in Macedonia. Mirijana, Kojo, Ana and Mladen. Natacha and her mom, Cristina and her family. I love you all, and hope to see you again.

Romani kids

Ana&amp_Tina 055
Originally uploaded by mylittlepony3.

Spomenik

Spomenik
Originally uploaded by mylittlepony3.

At the end of my street... this guy is still watching for a Turk invasion...

View from the Dorms

View from the Dorms
Originally uploaded by mylittlepony3.

Women in Black

Since my teaching job seemed to be going nowhere, I decided to find somewhere to volunteer. A few years back I met a girl who had worked at Women in Black Belgrade for a while, and I decided to give them a try. I found their address from the web site and tracked down the office. The door wasn't difficult to locate-- completely plastered with colorful stickers for various causes. By the end of the day I was translating some material for the 2005 agenda.

Zabljak, Crna Gora

By the beginning of November I was expecting the weather to start turning cold in Belgrade, but it was still t-shirt weather. So I took advantage of the opportunity to visit Durmitor National Park in Crna Gora. I went with my Serbian professor Natacha, who is friends with a guy that used to be the head forester at the park.

The first day we hiked around Crno Jezero, and were lucky enough to still have sunny weather. The second day we went on a more ambitious hike, but had so much fog that we never actually saw the lake we were hiking to. On the way back we met a shepherd who told us that it sounded like we’d made it all the way to the lake. Amusingly enough, while we were talking to him, his cell phone rang. Even toothless old shepherds in Serbia have cell phones.

That night we got half a meter of snow, and it kept on falling for the next 48 hours. I walked back to Crna Jezera to see it in the snow. Unfortunately there’s no skiing there until New Years, but it was at least breathtakingly beautiful.

On Wednesday I got to experience village life in the raw when Misa killed a pig. The next day was devoted to processing pig parts in the kitchen—mostly rendering fat. During breakfast I tried to distract myself from the smell by pretending I was in anatomy class (hmm... those look like kidneys)... At that point I decided it was time to go back to civilization.

Misa and Milka

Misa and Milka
Originally uploaded by mylittlepony3.

Crna Jezera, Day 3

Crna Jezera, Day 3
Originally uploaded by mylittlepony3.

Crna Jezera, Day 1

Crna Jezera, Day 1
Originally uploaded by mylittlepony3.

US Elections

If I had a palecinka for every time a Serb told me to vote for Bush... then... I'd be pretty darn fat. As CNN said of the elections, "all the world watched". And all the world had an opinion. Especially the Serbs. People had no qualms aobut coming right out and asking me, "so who did you vote for?" Then they would lecture me about the wrongs done to Serbia by the Democratic party. Invariably, they would also throw in a conspiracy theory or two about why they thought America hates Serbs. No. 1: Madeline Albright, of course, who lived in Serbia as a child when her father was a diplomat (I'm still not clear on why that would make her hate Serbs). Then there's the fact that Kerry dated a Serbian princess (chick from Dynasty). When she broke up with him he apparently held a grudge against the whole country. No one seems to think that Bush will necessarily be pro-Serbia, especially in terms of the Kosovo situation. People tell me they think he will be less harmful than Kerry and the Democrats.

On election night, Jessica and I went to a party sponsored by the US embassy, which went from 10 pm to 7 am. Mostly obnoxious businessmen and bureaucrats, so we left around 11, after having our fair share of drinks and kiflice.