Non-aligned in Mostar

For me, however, most important was the mile walk through the neighborhoods to get to the Partisan Memorial Cemetery.

On the way John bought a few books on Tito and we talked about WWII and the Yugoslav war effort.

I don’t know much about the Cemetery, but here is a photograph

of the memorial from before the war.

Its design is quite different from traditional cemeteries. The stones don’t stand upright and are identical in form. They were laid in straight lines on a terraced expanse of ground with low white walls separating the lines of stones. The memorial had a big fountain and a stately walkway approaching it.

What we found on Saturday was a walkway strewn with broken glass. The stones were in piles as though somebody had thrown them around. The walls were trashed and all you could see of the fountain was the round structure that held the pool. The fountain itself was gone.

Standing there at twilight, I thought a lot about this. The stones are remarkable. Each represents somebody who thought he was fighting against fascism. These were 22-24 year old Christian, Muslim, Jewish, atheist, Serb, Bosnian, Croat, and Montenegrins. While they obviously had played no role in the recent war, as they had been dead 50 years, they nonetheless received their punishment.

Mostar

A sweet 2 ½ hour bus ride through the spectacular mountains gets you from the polluted air of Sarajevo to sweet Mostar. John, Melinda, and I walked across the Carina Bridge stopping to be properly awestruck by how high over the Neretva river we were. This has to be an awesome river to ride in the spring time.

The river has separated the town into a Muslim and Catholic side for centuries, but since the war this is especially pronounced. We walked through the Catholic side until we got to the Stari Most, the most famous bridge in Bosnia, and crossed over to the Muslim side. This bridge was built in the 16th century by the Turks, demolished during the 1992-95 war, and rebuilt in 2002. The Muslims of Mostar were caught in the middle of two nationalist fights—between the Serbs and Croats, and the destruction of so much of Mostar is a sorry testament of that.

Stari Most

One highlight of the day was a visit and Bosnian narrated tour of the Koski Mehmed-Pasha Mosque which has a minaret with an incredible spiral staircase. Climbing the stairs reminded me of those castles in England which Chris and I visited when he was 6 years old with the winding staircase that gave advantage to the right handed defenders at the top. We had the minaret to ourselves, and the view from the top was spectacular.

Juvenile Thoughts

Book reports…I loved every part of them including getting them in two days early. Teacher's pet stuff. I'm reading Harry Potter in Bosnian and writing one page chapter summaries in Bosnian. What an express train back to fourth grade.

But so was my visit to the public library. Today Ema took me to to get my library card. That she thinks I’m ready for adult books pumps me up. But it was hot and crowded in there and I was bundled up and nervous because Ema was going to overhear/oversee my incompetent request for a card.

The librarian brought out the big cloth-covered ledger book to add my name. I gave her my passport so she could get the spelling of my name right. I was proud that I could answer in clear Bosnian where I lived although Ema had to tell her my phone number. After that she took out her pen and wrote my name on my new card, stamped it, and gave it to me. The book of short stories that I was taking out had a slip of paper in the front pocket. I wrote down my library card number, 213, on the paper, signed my name, and gave that to the librarian. She filed it under “J” for Jankovic.

The big book, the wooden box to store the book receipts, the promise of your signature that the book will come back. The officialness of it that makes you humble and triumphant simultaneously.

All Economists Drink Beer

And Shirley is an economist...

Now Andi and I are properly installed in Sarajevo. John and Melinda led the way to Pivnica. It’s got to be the classiest saloon in the Balkans. The architecture and woodwork are pure art. The commercial brewery is attached to the restaurant, so the beer just keeps coming.

Vermont Pub & Brewery, Great Lakes Brewing, Upland, and Alcatraz…you’re just upstarts.

Oh yes, we talked tax reform, constitutional law, bankruptcy policies, and Bosnian accession to the EU

Getting the Idea

January 23, 2008

It has been hard to sit at the internet café and concentrate, so I’m writing this in my room and carrying it over to the café via my new memory stick. I’m a bit torn about pressing my landlords to get me direct cable in my apartment. If I get it, I know I’ll revert to my old habits of obsessing over reading email every 2 hours and spending way too much time thinking in English. I am actually making friends with the three people who staff the internet café, and I am looking into trading English for Bosnian conversation. Today, while I was working I was offered a tray of Turkish coffee and a traditional Turkish sweet treat. I’ve been smiling at everyone, and it’s pretty nice that people here are responding.

Today I had my Bosnian lesson with Ema in a restaurant. Next time we are going shopping, and I am going to practice my (well rehearsed) lines to buy stuff at the green market. If I can deliver a semi-literate request asking whether anybody can replace my watch battery, I’ll be doing well. After that I’m going to interview Ema (again, well-rehearsed, written questions) about her time in Oregon. So far, if I give myself a chance to look up some of the verbs I don’t know and compose my thoughts, I can kind of have a conversation. Watching TV is really helping.

Last night I walked the 3 blocks to the National Theater and saw a play called Crying Game. It had just 3 actors in it, and they were caught in a top floor flat during the bombing of Sarajevo (or it could be in a communist-era flat or …) and they’re dealing with distress, anxiety, and dismay. For $8 I got 3rd row seats and I surprised myself with how much I understood. I guess angst translates well. The acting was terrific. I would love to see them in another play. That was my first stab at just showing up and seeing what the theater is like, and so tonight I’m going to see The Wedding, a play by Gogol. I’m so illiterate that I don’t know the story line in English, but maybe that’s the way. Anyway, it beats watching reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond with Bosnian subtitles on TV.

There are a bunch of Americans here, and I’ve got about 5 numbers in speed dial now. John and Melinda are my most frequent friends. They are in their mid 20’s and have been here since September. John told me that the football playoffs are on live TV and he helps me with getting SIM cards for the phone and stuff like that. I watched the Patriots play on Sunday, and it was a riot listening to the plays in Bosnian. “Novi Prvi Down!!” Melinda and I can blow a few hours going shopping at Mercator, their equivalent of Walmart/Target. We eat well. Andi just arrived and we’re starting to hang out, too. She is between undergrad and grad school and is interning at the US embassy for 3 months. And Jean is my age and an economics professor who does a lot of consulting for the US Treasury dept. She has lived in Sarajevo for 10 years and is installed here, in every sense of the word.

I’m quite content not doing anything but language acquisition. I buy the Bosnian newspaper every other day and listen to the economics news on Bosnian TV, but I don’t feel driven to start my sabbatical research yet. It doesn’t feel exactly like a vacation, but more like a self-directed learning opportunity, where a 5 mile walk to explore another part of town is as valid an activity as reading Harry Potter in Croatian (I am now on Ch. 7 of Vol I!!) or buying 2 kilos of carrots at the peasant market. I saw an interview with Fazla, a pop singer and liked his music so I went out and bought his CD. Could this be the first pop music I’ve purchased in 40 years? Probably. Anyway, I’m translating his lyrics and just singing to it in Bosnian. Ema was amused, but also clued me into the politics of Fazla, the singer. Everything here has edge, context, complexity. It’s all constructive, or at least it seems that way to me. I have to say that I really, really like getting up and framing my day any way I feel like.

I’m playing (note, not practicing) my violin about every other day and for some reason dragging my feet about calling Boris, a violin teacher who has been recommended. I’m still trying to deal with my inhibition of playing my violin in an apartment building where I think other people are listening to me and my general aversion (of the moment) of doing anything that is compulsory work. Anyway, I’ll work through that. I’m painfully aware of what the crawl back to finger fluency is like, so I won’t let myself get rusty.

So far what I am finding out about myself is that I really, really like urban, and it can be so urban that I don’t use a car but rather the tramway or walk. I don’t miss any convenience of having a car, and in fact, I really like getting out in public. It feels good to me to be out walking on crowded streets. But what this means is that it has to be an urban environment that is viable. Downtown Cleveland doesn’t fit this bill, and the suburban marketplaces don’t either. True pedestrian cities like New York, Boston, Paris, Washington are more like it. I like buying what I need for the next two days and then going out again, and I really like having lots of short conversations with all sorts of people.

It’s 8 a.m. here and I’m due for a wake-up walk. Not to worry, I’m doing economics, just observational economics at the moment. So far this has been a really good decision to come here.

More later,

Love, Shirley

My idea of an Economics Faculty

I always thought that economics/economists get more interesting with beer. They have the right idea here. This bar is five steps away from the entrance to the Economics Department.

Sarajevsko pivo--Sarajevo beer

More scenes from the Bascarsija. It is commercially vibrant and the destination for anyone in town on a walk or stroll.

The Bascarsija - 16th Century Center of Sarajevo

This gives you a good idea of how mountainous it is here. People have built (and rebuilt) houses in the hills that encircle the city. Mosques are in every neighborhood, and this one is very active.

Walk Around Town

Ferhadija is a pedestrian street that has a more Austrian-Hungarian feel to it.  It joins the main avenue, Marshall Tito Street, to the Bascarsija and is the major strolling area in town.  The buildings are 17 - 19th century.  At the branch where it joins Tito Street is the famous eternal flame.  This view shows the Iranian cultural center across the street from the flame.  If you were to have your back to the cultural center, you would see United Colors of Benetton across the street.  The irony is worth a doctoral dissertation

Welcome to Simplicity

Here is home...all mine.  My all purpose dining room table which, of course, has all my textbooks on it.  Bed, with computer that doesn't connect, but looks pretty.  A kitchen that does the job, and my living room with cable.  It's everything I could hope for.  I love it.