Adventuring Abroad: History is Everpresent

Ok so I missed yesterday and I hope everyone back home had a great 4^th of July, Happy Birthday America! But in my defense yesterday was pretty busy and I didn't feel like a quick entry could really do it justice. So today I’m writing from breakfast in the hotel. Before we get to today, let’s start with yesterday. Luckily we had one of our latest call times of the trip, didn't have to meet until after 10:30 am which gave us all plenty of time to catch up on our sleep, take long showers, and generally have a fairly leisurely morning. Continental breakfast here implies pretty much the same thing as home but with a twist, a couple dry cereals, rolls, eggs, and like always here, meat. Everything did have its own ‘Belgrade twist’ on it though so I have a feeling we’ll be venturing out to the bakery across the square before our 2 weeks here is up. After breakfast, the entire group set off up the street to the Church of Sava, the largest Serbian Orthodox church in the world. Although the inside of the building is unfinished, the structures sheer size on the inside and the décor that is completed is breathtaking. The location of the building itself is significant. It was built on the site where Saint Sava’s bones were burned by the Ottomans in response to a nationalist uprising by the Serbs. Although the temple has been in the planning and partial building stages for many years, it has never been completed.

After leaving the church, we began to meander our way through Belgrade to Fort Kalamegeda. As we were walking, what struck me about the city is its architecture and variety, the way it has been rebuilt, for a multitude of reasons, right on top of itself. Walking down a single street it possible to see a pre or post World War 2 building ornately and classically decorated next to a plain concrete building obviously built during the socialist/communist era here, and then right down the street there will be a glass shop or office building in the modern style. All these styles seem to flow seamlessly together in a way that is distinctly theirs, another way I’ve realize how big a role history plays here. At home history is something learned in school, to teach us the lessons of the past and how to move forward from them into the future, a new history. Here, the past is everywhere and not just the recent past, events that happened anywhere from 1389 to yesterday have a lasting impact on how people view events and the world around them. On our walk we saw many of the important government buildings here, including the seats of power for the old and new governments, the old and new department of defense and the foreign affairs building. I’ll be going back another day to take pictures since it was too hard to with our group of 25 but it was definitely a site to see. Many of the new buildings are right next to their counterparts that were bombed out by NATO, buildings that have not been repaired or torn down. Our walk was full of these sort of seeming historical contradictions. We saw a few statues on our walk but two really demonstrate this point. In one part of the city, there was a statue to ‘George’ one of the leaders of the first Serbian resistance movement, however this movement failed and he fled the country. Later, we saw the statue of his right hand man, dressed in Turkish attire, who led the second, more successful movement. When George returned after the success, this man ordered the beheading of the first and his head was sent to the Turks as a symbol of loyalty, in order to keep the autonomy gained during the resistance. Yet they are both honored with statues in the city of Belgrade.

The view from the fort was amazing. Located right on the meeting of the Danube and Sava rivers, it has served as the first line of defense for the capital city for many years. It’s uncommon for capitals to be that close to their borders, Austria-Hungary used to be right across the river! After the fort we had traditional Serbian food for lunch which was definitely interesting. A typical meal consists of salad, meats, and bread all eaten together, unlike in the US. Salad is apparently really a mix of tomatoes and cucumbers and I ended up swapping a tablemate my cucumbers for his tomatoes but it was really nice to get some fruits and veggies in me. Then there were the meats, of all kinds, just grilled and definitely heavy. There was chicken/bird, Canadian bacon, sausage and what we think were sausage patties. I tried everything except for the Canadian bacon because I was feeling proud of myself for trying the sausage already, I’m doing my best to experience all the traditional foods here but I still think it’s going to be a challenge. One of the more exciting things about lunch was learning Serbian words from our TA. By the end of the meal we could ask for water (voda), say please/you’re welcome (molino) and thank you (vale). I’ve never been so proud of myself for asking water please! Our plan for the ‘afternoon’ because it was past 2 at this point, was to meet with the Roman Catholic Archbishop here in Belgrade.

We had a bit of a break first though, to walk around and get a coffee and just generally wake up since a lot of us had gotten nice and relaxed sitting down and filling our stomachs. Apparently I was serious about this drinking coffee thing, or at least more serious than I thought. Us non-coffee drinkers tried every mocha drink on the menu at our shop, one a piece so we could figure out what things were. Mine ended up being a ‘moka flata’ some sort of hot coffee drink that was actually pretty good but it couldn’t top the ‘moka hladma’ which seemed to be the slightly sweeter frozen version, very refreshing after a hot day of walking. On our walk through Belgrade we’d passed through many pedestrian only shopping areas that I want to go back and explore more and during this break we explored another one.

Finally it was time to meet the Archbishop, something I found myself quite excited to do. The building he works in is new and beautiful. There is a historical significance as well. The first victim, after Franz Ferdinand, of World War 1 was killed on its steps. It was the Russian set to help prevent the war but he was too late and the time on the ultimatum expired and the First World War was off. The theme of the Archbishop’s talk was the meeting of East and West and this is reflected in the design of the building. The door handles, shaped like lungs, say peace in Cyrillic characters on one and Latin on the other, representing the need for the Church to ‘breathe with both lungs’ and emphasizing the similarities rather than the differences. In the chapel and the room we had our discussion in, there were beautiful murals depicting scenes reflecting the meeting of East and West. The Archbishop talked about the history of the Balkans from a Roman Catholic perspective. This is one type of learning I definitely will enjoy, hearing the same history from different perspectives and being able to draw my own conclusions from it. He also spoke on how Catholics in Serbia are essentially a double minority, both by ethnicity and religious standards so the focus is on dialoguing with other faiths. The idea is to focus on the similarities between peoples and religions and not the differences. Although he acknowledged there have been not a ton of successes, the simple recognition of the problem is in itself a success. Another point was that the rise of agnosticism is not good in general, it means people aren’t questioning things or exploring and are just being content with the status quo. It is only through this questioning that people can come to a common history and move forward. According to the Archbishop, young people will be key to this because of their naturally inquisitive nature and because they are less affected by the histories of their parents.

Done with our schedule for the day, we spent the night relaxing. We got pizza, Serbian style aka they don’t make cheese pizza you have to order it special. Still getting over how cheap some of the food is here. Then just relaxed the classmates for the night had a great time getting to know everyone. Not much going on for the 4^th here just because well…. There might be some leftover animosity about NATO bombings…. But we pretended the tennis celebrations were for us and still had a good time. Now, after the same breakfast as yesterday, it’s time for another packed day. Today we’ll be meeting with someone from a TV station and have lecture in the afternoon. Not sure if I can get on the internet to post this now but you’ll hear from me soon! So far the internet is too sketchy to do pictures easily but I’ll add them soon.