FOREVER is a long time.

The day of my return, I received three text messages: ‘Welcome back!’ ‘Welcome! Do you want to go out tonight?’ and ‘Welcome to Serbia(home)!’ Later that week, one person kept referring to the town as being my ‘Europe home’.
Coming back was a good feeling, as good as it always feels to return to the ‘known’ – I experienced a similar sensation when changing trains in Basel and stopping in Zurich last year. If anything, the welcoming response to my return exceeded the enthusiasm that first greeted and so surprised me – especially coming on the even of the 15,000 person protests at Karadzic’s impending extradition. (Of course, as one person had earlier said, ‘We may not like America, but we love people.’)
None of that, though, compared to the response of one woman, who I knew only slightly and who welcomed me back, asked when I would be going back to the U.S., and then asked, ‘Do you want to leave? You don’t have to. You’re one of us now. If you want, I can find you a nice man, with money… who looks good… maybe who doesn’t speak much English so that you can talk and he’ll listen and not talk. Then you will never have to leave and can stay here forever!’
This idea of meeting someone and never leaving is a recurring theme of conversations here. In my country, these questions would seem prying, especially when asked by a casual acquaintance. As it is, my relationship status has never generated so much interest or so many questions. Most people ask, ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ When I say, ‘No,’ they usually respond, ‘Why not?’ or ‘Do you want one?’
Even after nearly two months, I still have not figured out a good answer. In my country, it would be quite simple to answer them in an evasive way designed to dissuade inquiries. Here, though, even when someone laughs when asking a question, and you laugh politely upon hearing it, you refrain from answering at the risk of looking like an uptight and uncomfortable foreigner, so that even when two Serbian women said that they often also are asked such questions, and they hate it, and they respond, ‘It’s none of your business,’ such a response would have a much different tone coming from a foreigner.
Nothing quite tops the woman who I was interviewing in Bar, with my colleague R. acting as a translator if necessary, who while waiting for our coffees asked, from nowhere, ‘What about your boyfriend?’
I stared; even more than usual, the question was a non sequitor. ‘What about him?’
‘Do you have one?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘That is a long story.’
(pause) ‘Do you like Montenegro?’
‘Yes, it is beautiful here. The coast is very nice.’
‘What do you think about Montenegrin men?’
‘I haven’t met many. Montenegrin people are very friendly...’
‘Have you ever thought that you might meet someone here? What if you got married and never left?’
‘I have to go back to finish graduate school.’
‘But there is distance education! You can study from anywhere on the internet, you don’t have to go back! You could stay here on the coast forever!’
When shaking hands at the end of the interview, she leaned in and whispered that I should open my eyes and look in front of me, and that my colleague was a great guy.
I am not even sure if he was single.
By far the most awkward moment came when one girl decided to set me up with a Serbian guy, not realizing that his girlfriend was sitting next to him.
The girlfriend, who spoke English and understood what was going on, was not pleased.

Of Nationalism

‘So, tell us,’ they chortled, ‘Where is Mladic?’
I flew back to Serbia from Podgorica (the capital of Montenegro) on Monday morning, and waited at the airport for the bus to the city, steadfastly refusing the offers of cabdrivers to bring me to the center of Belgrade for only 20 Euros. (The bus ticket was only 200 dinari, which is about 3 Euros. In every city around the world, it is in general a good idea to avoid the eager cabdrivers who flock to airports and bus and train stations and offer to cut one a deal. One visitor to Skopje from Holland told the story of arriving at the bus station for the first time, and getting into a cab. The driver took him five minutes away and then stopped the cab and demanded 40 Euros, which he had to pay because his backpack was locked in the trunk of the car – it is also a good idea, whenever possible, to keep one’s possessions close at hand.) Every newspaper at the Belgrade bus station kiosks had front-page photographs of Radovan Karadzic. Upon arriving in K., I noticed a kiosk hawking several black t-shirts with silk-screened prints of Karadzic. That night, a protest over his impending extradition would be held in Belgrade.
On Tuesday evening, I ventured out to find dinner, with vague thoughts of enjoying a quiet, solitary meal and getting caught up on penning some of my Montenegro impressions. This in mind, I left my room without putting on any makeup; the pizzeria around the corner had been recommended to me. I had never been there but noticed that it was devoid of customers – a perfect place for my intentions. The door had no sooner opened than my name was called and a young woman advanced, smiling. I recognized her but could not remember her name or the context in which we had met, and it was a slightly awkward moment as I smiled and greeted her and asked how she was before finally placing her as the younger cousin of one of my friends. She asked what I was doing there and said that her father owned the restaurant, so she was working there during the summer. (This is unlike the majority of young people in the region; for the most part, seasonal employment exists only on the coasts, and those seeking part-time or summer jobs must contend with large numbers of people who are unemployed and seeking permanent work. Jobs were once guaranteed for workers upon the completion of their studies, and this created a culture in which most wait until after university to seek employment.) While she was explaining the menu to me (when she did not know how to translate one word, she disappeared into the kitchen and re-emerged with a large mushroom), two men in their twenties came in and sat at a table near me. They listened to the conversation and then said, ‘We would like coffee, please. Why are we speaking English?’
Upon learning that I was American, they asked where in the United States I was from, and grew excited to hear that it was New Jersey. (Many Serbians have heard of New Jersey, because there is a Serbian basketball player who plays for the Nets, and his name has been enthusiastically uttered many times in our conversations.) Then, they asked, ‘What are you doing here?’ and began making jokes to one another in Serbian about how I must be in the CIA, because so few Americans come there, and started asking questions about Karadzic and Mladic. One related a story about his brother, who was holidaying in Greece when he met his future wife; she spoke only English, no Serbian. The Serbian word for ‘brother’s wife’ is something like ‘snaika’, and at some point when she was visiting for the first time after the wedding, someone said loudly ‘Snaika!’ and she screamed, thinking there was a snake.
We laughed. The man said, ‘I told a joke! In English! My first joke in English!’
A bit later he said something else about Mladic and followed it by, ‘I did it again! My second joke in English!’
They asked how I liked K. and Serbia, and what I was writing. 'You should start a blog,' one said. 'I would be very interested in hearing your impressions of Serbia.'
I had been quite unsettled by their rapid raising of the subject of war criminals, particularly given that it is something that has simply not been spoken of in the time I have spent in Serbia. I knew that there were some people who felt very strongly about the issue, but as I had not been in Serbia since the arrest, I had no idea about the general pulse of people in the town.
There were riots in Belgrade on Monday night, in front of federal and municipal buildings – apparently not in front of foreign embassies or the McDonald’s, though. [When I was in Belgrade with one colleague a few weeks ago, we drove past the American Embassy and I commented that the windows were boarded up/shuttered. He said, ‘Oh yes, that is from the riots a few months ago.’ Thinking of the McDonald’s in the center of town, which had only recently been reopened after renovations made necessary by the destruction wreaked by rioters (I wonder how much money McDonald’s has to pay to repair its restaurants when there are anti-American riots in various towns and countries throughout the world, since it seems to be a regular target), I asked if the building had been damaged. ‘Oh, no, my dear,’ he said. ‘Nothing too bad. They just broke some windows and lit a small fire, it was not anything much.’ The February riots had also been described as ‘nothing’ by another expat who had described his presence in Banja Luka, Bosnia, when NATO had begun bombing Serbia a few years ago; he had walked down a street and noticed a crowd dismantling the American Consulate, and had stood there and watched them for a few minutes before continuing on his way to meet some friends for a beer. Considering the emphasis placed on the riots, and particularly the destruction in the Embassy, by the New York Times and other Western media, and my consequent initial concern over coming to Serbia as an American, it was surprising and impressive to hear it described so dismissively.] The organizers of the riots bused in supporters from villages; apparently there was also a football match ending and some drunk fans also joined in, not because they cared strongly about Karadzic but because they were intoxicated and it was an opportunity to break some things. The New York Times and BBC accounts that I read about the riots had several quotations from very nationalist Serbians, but the other side – the non-nationalist Serbians, who either support Karadzic’s extradition or do not oppose it vehemently or who see it as necessary to advance a broader goal – has not been represented much.
My colleague sighs over this extreme nationalist wing, and describes them as crazy.
My friend, S., after asking me if I had heard about the riots and describing how ‘stupid’ she found them, launched into a tirade:
‘Does the government think we are stupid? They say in the papers, on the television, on the radio, that they just caught him at a bus station. Do they think that we don’t know that they knew where he was all of this time? Does the government think that we are stupid?
‘I don’t care about Karadzic. If you commit a crime or if you are accused, then you have to stand trial. It is the law. You saw the news about Belgrade last night? When I saw in February that they attacked the American Embassy, it made me so sad and ashamed. I don’t care about Karadzic. I just want to hold my passport in one hand and my credit card in the other, and to go all over, anywhere, in the world. When I go to America, I don’t want to have to fill out forms saying that no, I don’t want to take an American child and no, I’m not a terrorist, in order to go to America. I want to be able to take my passport and my credit card and go.’
This is a very widely held view. Many people comment on the freedom of having an American passport, of not needing visas to travel, and very many have spoken nostalgically of the former Yugoslavia, not because of jobs or pensions or education or status, but because they ‘could take that red passport and go anywhere,’ in the words of a Bosnian acquaintance.
But this is the perspective that never gets reported in articles about Serbia; instead, journalists quote militant nationalists and portray Serbians as extremely polarized. It is not that people here are thrilled with the idea of international recognition of Kosovo – hardly – or of Karadzic’s extradition, specifically, but there are many who want to have the freedom to travel the world, to see places outside of Serbia, and who recognize the importance of good relations with the international community. Demands and pressure are placed on Serbia – privatization, the recognition of Kosovo – and simultaneously, visa requirements and quotas make it more difficult for the Serbian people to see other countries and other cultures and other ways of life, and then the international media gawks at the levels of nationalist feeling, when there is a very real possibility that this could be tempered or moderated by facilitating the interaction of citizens with people from other places. At the very least, it makes it hard for those Serbians who are not particularly nationalist and who are actively curious about the world outside of Serbia to experience and learn and bring back and share ideas and impressions.

Bar: Coast

My last night in Bar, I took a walk along the coast to watch the sun setting over the sea one more time.

The beaches were all free, but there were many that had wooden recliners and these umbrellas, which cost a couple of euros to use.

Ulcinj

One of the many beaches at Ulcinj.

Lunch-- Caprese, with delightful tomatoes and the first mozzarella I've had in six weeks.

A sign marking more beaches. There was also a women's beach in Ulcinj, with a natural spring with what smelled like sulfur and other minerals, that is supposed to have beneficial effects for fertility.

A lamp in Ulcinj's Old Town. This neighborhood was also affected severely by the earthquakes in the 1970s, but the inhabitants wanted to remain and so rebuilt it.

A cafe in the Old Town, which had both the typical chairs and tables, and these rather interesting floor pillows.

A view of one small corner of Ulcinj.

Seafood

I wrote shortly after my arrival in Serbia in June that I had developed a craving for seafood, and that craving has finally been sated in one of the most delightful and memorable ways possible. We had two ‘lunch’ work events this week (as mentioned on my birthday, ‘lunch’ here seems to mean any meal in the afternoon, in these cases beginning at around 4pm). At the one yesterday, where menus were in Serbian and Italian but not English, I ordered grilled calamari; a plate of slightly blackened tiny squid and a bit of spinach arrived. The texture was nice and it was tasty enough, although not a meal I wished to repeat. I wanted to have at least one inarguably good seafood meal before going back inland, but it was not clear where this would happen; the thought hovered at the back of my mind as I walked around the city and the ruins of Stari Bar.

Then, at Friday’s event, platters of seafood were borne to our table such that I had never dreamed of and was not a little awed by. The centerpiece of each platter was half of a loaf of bread, from the end of which protruded metal skewers of shrimp – two kinds, one small, the other whole – and from the sides of which were fastened tiny grilled squids; the bread was surrounded by black risotto, which served as a bed for another kind of squid, stuffed with tuna; sliced octopus tentacles; grilled white calamari rings; mussels on the half-shell. The risotto had been cooked in some sort of olive oil and squid ink combination. It was a stunning presentation, and an even more stunning meal.

I had never eaten octopus before, and although the suction of the tentacle on my tongue in the first bite was rather disconcerting, it tasted so delicious that I was amazed at how easy it was to overcome my initial revulsion. (I suspect that I will seldom, if ever, be able to find it prepared as well again.) Thanks to my parents, who did not countenance picky eating and also made efforts to provide a wide variety of different foods for their children to experience, it is very unusual now for me to find any food that I have never previously tried, and an especial treat for me to try something truly new and to enjoy it so much.

I already sense that this meal is something that I will remember for years to come.

Olive Tree of Mirovica

After our trip to Stari Bar, we stopped at the Olive Tree-- another of Bar's 'turistic' sights.

The tourist authorities are very helpful, and Montenegro has been 'discovered' by foreign tourists, but the country is still not easily navigable and the signs not as easy to comprehend as in Western Europe or the U.S.

By some accounts, the oldest tree in Europe.

Beautiful, interestingly gnarled trunk.

Visit to Stari Bar

The entrance to Stari Bar -- Bar's old town, which was destroyed by foreign invasions/an earthquake and today bears some resemblance to the excavated Roman ruins that I saw in Bitola.

There is some discussion of rebuilding the old town, of bringing back artisans and the culture.

Bar's old town is somewhat unusual due to its location in the mountains.

View of the city -- the center is along the coast, to the right, but is obscured by the hills.

Mountains and olive trees.

I had never seen a pomegranate bush/tree(?) before, and was very excited to see this wild one, even though they are apparently common sights in Montenegro.

Old icons, which have not been entirely destroyed.

A memorial to four Partisan fighters who were killed by the Italian fascist forces during the Second World War. The stone says that they were beaten and starved, and then dropped into the well of the old town, where they drowned.

A mosque; there is a sheep farm behind it.