September/Septembar: Collusion and Cohesion

I have had to include 2 blog posts simultaneously. The first is from my first week in Serbia, and the second is from this week as I prepare to go to Kosovo.

ABeCeDa and Azbuka

The past week has been an exciting, yet very introspective time. I have been pulled to my limitations in terms of testing my language skills. Serbian in nature is very similar to Bosnian with only minor differences separating the two, nothing drastic. The languages in Serbia used to be called Serbo-Croatian until 20 years ago with the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the 1990s; in fact, Serbo-Croatian was the main language used in former Yugoslavia across 6 modern countries today – Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro and 1 still contested territory Kosovo. The countries of Slovenia and Macedonia had their own languages alongside this main language, called Slovene, and Macedonian (respectively). The Serbo-Croatian language had utilized both the Cyrillic and Latin scripts, while Croatian tends to use more of the Latin script, Serbian utilizes more of the Cyrillic (with Bosnian utilizing both).
With the language, I have taken the time to reaffirm the culture. I reaffirmed the culture in the sense that I was raised under similar familial conditions, both within the household and out. Still I could compare the way I was raised with the way the culture is within the country; doing so I realized that most aspects were very similar, and that ,thus far, after a brief look into the culture it does not seem all too different. I hope that within the next few weeks, I get the chance to get a more in-depth look into the subtleties and see if I can still relate to the culture or that it is indeed more different than I previously thought.

Fortifying a City

The last few weeks have been astonishing in many ways. A major landmark , both physically and metaphorically, in the trip was visiting the fortress of Kalemegdan, it oversees the confluence of the rivers Sava and Danube. It is an ancient fort dating back to the 11th century, surviving many battles from both the offensive of the Ottomans and the Hungarians throughout the centuries. It stands not just at the confluence of the Sava and Danube, but also on the confluence of East and West (With the Ottoman empire always on the East and the austro-hungarian empire on the West). The fort has basketball courts on a few sides of it, and on the basketball courts, as well as, in the lower part of the fort are held concerts from time to time.
I also had the pleasure of attending a local play, which took place at Mikserhouse (a gathering point for many locals). The play was called “What the F%#@ are we doing here?”, and it was a play about the current problem of brain drain in Serbia. Statistically 500.000 people have left Serbia in the past 15 years in search of life elsewhere, and this is becoming more and more problematic because with no young workforce Serbia would start crumbling away slowly. The problem of brain drain is a problem not just in Serbia, but neighboring countries as well, with only a few solutions suggested to the problem it keeps continuing on and on, until eventually there simply will not be enough young people left to sustain the country.