Student Q&A

I have more new classes starting soon, and in preparation I’ve been meeting a lot of Serbian college kids.  Here are a few of the questions they’ve asked me – this should give you some sense of what first interests them when they meet me.  I’m going to bypass some of the basics like “Why did you come here?” because I’ve dealt with them elsewhere, and move on to:

Have you been to any bars or clubs?

Yes, I’ve been to a few places.  I went to one bar that’s in the basement of a shopping mall, and a place called Caffe Club Casino that has a loud, dark, glittery, Jagermeistery Eurotrash feel to it, and a club called Vremeplov, or “Time Machine,” where they play techno versions of Serbian folk music and college kids get trashed.  My favorite kind of place, though, is a kafana or konoba with live music, good wine, and maybe a fireplace.  Meaghan wrote about one such place we visited in Novi Sad, and last week Andreja took us to Pevac, which is a few minutes’ drive out of Kragujevac.  I had a great time, drank about a whole bottle of wine, and pooped out at 2 AM while the rest of our party was still going strong.  I was in class at 8:30 the next morning, wondering if my students could guess why my voice sounded a little weak.

What do you think of our buses?

When I get this question, the asker usually looks as if they’re flinching in advance of violent criticism.  They’re inevitably surprised to hear that I find the buses comfortable and convenient.  I can get to Belgrade in two hours, the first buses run before 7 AM, and there are about twenty every day, so I just catch a ride to the station and buy a ticket on the spot.  A one-way ticket is about 400 dinars, or $6 US, very cheap by American standards.  (I don’t know if this is affordable for average Serbs, but I’m thinking of the four-hour ride from Boston to New York, which costs anywhere from $20 on the Fung Wah Chinatown express to $100 on Amtrak at peak times.  That’s 7000 dinars.)

My only problem on the bus is that a lot of the drivers play those techno versions of Serbian folk songs for everyone to hear over the radio.  This style of music, which is called “turbo-folk,” has a strong association to the Milosevic era: its lyrics deal exclusively with cheesy love stories, and the dictator supported it because it was so Serbian and so non-political.  Apparently, he didn’t mind that it sucks.  The techno beats are so intense that I’ll start unconsciously nodding my head in time to the music, and not realize it for ten minutes or more.

Have you traveled around the country at all?  What city do you prefer?

Yes, I’ve traveled out of Kragujevac to Belgrade and Novi Sad.  I thought Novi Sad was a great place to relax.  It has a long, wide pedestrian street with beautiful old buildings, where I could happily spend a day sitting and drinking coffee.  Belgrade is exciting, so busy and full of people.  Kragujevac, on the other hand, is where I live and where I can see the people I know, and my experiences with Serbian people have been great.  When I get to know people here, I feel that they really care about me.

(I was very proud of this most diplomatic answer.  Don’t worry – it’s all true.  It would be too hard to choose one city as my favorite.)

This has been a test of the emergency broadcast system

On Sunday morning, we were awakened by a guy driving around the neighborhood announcing something over a loudspeaker. Obviously, we had no idea what it was, although the thought occurred to us that it might be someone running for office. We assumed that we would have heard from the US Embassy if it was anything dangerous, so we rolled over and went back to sleep. Sunday was also the end of daylight saving time in Serbia, as in the US. We didn't know if it would change on the same day, but when we got up we checked our clocks against the TV, and they were off by one hour. Our guess is that the loudspeaker was a public service announcement to remind everyone to set their clocks back. I wonder who offers such a service. Given that we're living in a former Communist country, it's almost certain to be a government employee, but that doesn't stop us speculating. My favorite theory is that there's some guy in the neighborhood who always forgets to change his clock, and that the man with the loudspeaker was his boss. "Please be aware that daylight saving time is over, and you should set your clocks back an hour. Boris Jovanovic, this means you."

Football match, I mean soccer game

I know I promised to write all about the Bosnia-Serbia qualifier, but Meaghan did it first, and much better. I'll just say two things: A lot of the time, when I learn about something new in a foreign culture, I try to compare it to something I know already. The "Serbian very special Serbian style beans" that our landlady made us? They're just like Mexican refried beans (tasty though). Serbians sitting in a konoba listening to sad songs and getting emotional? Just like Country & Western. But what I saw on Wednesday night was totally new. The emotion that European fans give to every soccer match is beyond anything I've seen in the states, and the fact that you're cheering for your country, not just your team, seems to add depth to the fans' commitment. Also, in typical language nerd fashion, I really enjoyed cheering in a language where "R" can be the nucleus of a syllable. Imagine 60,000 people all yelling "Srrrrrrr-bija!"

Beginning to get started?

Things are taking forever to start up. We've been here three weeks now, and everyone in my department has been completely swamped with exams from last year. (I don't yet understand how the exam system works.) It's one of those situations where, the more work there is for everyone else, the less there is for me. So Meaghan and I spent most of last week killing time. You know you need a change when you start running your life around when Mythbusters is on. To break out of this funk (and to celebrate our second wedding anniversary), we spent the weekend in Novi Sad, a town in northern Serbia. It's a very different place from Kragujevac, geographically and architecturally closer to Hungary. Where the buildings of Kragujevac look geometric and industrial, Novi Sad's city center features a broad pedestrian avenue that leads you from the Orthodox bishop's house with its well-tended gardens, past shops, cafes, and popcorn vendors, and leaves you facing the grand Classical facade of the town hall. We explored, shopped, visited friends, and listened to music. Back in K. on Tuesday, we spent the morning hanging out, and Meaghan baked some chocolate chip cookies. The ingredients here are a little different - vanilla extract and chocolate chips are not available - but we found passable substitutes, and the final product was almost, but not quite, a taste of home. That afternoon, we had the first official event of my fellowship: an English conversation practice hour at the American Corner. We hadn't done a lot of publicity, so we were surprised and encouraged to see twenty people show up for it! The session went very well, and it was really energizing to do something. We met more young people later in the evening, as our landlady's son, visiting from Belgrade, took us out for drinks with some of his friends. He somehow got us tickets for tonight's World Cup qualifier match between Serbia and Bosnia, in the standing room (i.e. "crazy fans") section of the stadium. I'll be sure to tell you how that goes ..

A universal sentiment

The Serbian national basketball team recently disappointed the country with their poor showing in the European basketball championship, being eliminated before the quarterfinals. It was sad for me to watch how poorly they played in the elimination game, but then I remembered - haven't they won this championship the last three times running? Maybe this is how it feels, I thought, to be a Yankees fan .. At any rate, we saw this huge poster in Republic Square in Belgrade. "Sutra je novi dan" means "Tomorrow is a new day," or as I would put it, "Wait 'til next year."