Part B 2-19-07

I forgot to mention since we were staying out of town about five miles and had no groceries we asked the driver if we could get a bite to eat before going to the apartment on Sunday night. Not much was open but he took us to a ‘fast food’ place. It was a hole in the wall place and had a chalkboard menu with about ten items. You could have anything on the menu as long as it was the first thing on the menu-hamburgers. Ron and I stopped eating beef in the early 1990’s and average beef about for-five times a year. We almost never eat hamburgers, averaging one about every 8-10 years. We had a hamburger last night but it was good. It cost about $1.50 and was huge. You got to pick your toppings: shredded cabbage, lettuce, mayo, mustard, and ketchup, and a concoction of minced onions and chilies and pickles.

So on Monday I rode into town with Ron and I got let out in the heart of Vranje, a town that has a distinct village feel to it. Easy to get around on foot, filled with small shops and many street vendors with a small cot or trap on the ground, selling socks and underwear mostly. I can’t imagine how they survive.

First thing I did was find a bank that took my ATM card and gave me dinars, about 72 or 73 to a dollar. Yippeeeeee! It was a big relief. Then I just walked around the area. I found the taxi stand, bakery, a place to buy a card so my SL cell phone would work here and a grocery store. I found a café as I needed a bladder break and ordered a coffee. They have fabulous strong coffee here. I got an espresso and had him add some hot water, an Americano if you were at Starbucks, which is not to be found in Vranje. I had been given directions to an Internet café that I never found but stumbled across an Internet sign that pointed down a stub alley. It turned out to be a small shop that sold computer stuff and the shopkeeper had a laptop on his desk and let me use it. He stood around while I checked email, and then took a smoke break outside after offering me coffee and cigarettes. When I finished about 30 minutes later, he asked me to come back anytime I wanted to use the Internet and then told me he wouldn’t take any money. My word, I was floored. Folks are not well off here yet he was being very generous. I was touched. I finished my shopping and came home. I made a light lunch of scrambled eggs using a saucepan, as there is no frying pan, but heck it works. I also had some dried salami to season the eggs as I discovered there wasn’t any salt or pepper here and some bread that Vibeke had given us. Yum. I read and tried to nap unsuccessfully.

Now for a very brief history lesson. My book on Serbia dedicates 18 pages to history. Yikes. This will be sketchy so bare with me. The oldest Neolithic site in Europe is in Serbia near the Romanian border. It dates to the 7th millennium BC. From what remains it appears to be a reasonably developed civilization and strange life-size stone sculptures that appear to represent fish-headed men. No doubt the early settlers took advantage of the river’s plentiful fish supply and so the figures may represent some form of fish divinity totem.

As the Roman Empire disintegrated in the 5th century AD, Barbarian raiders started to appear-Huns, Goths and Avars from the central Asia steppe. It is also at this time that the Serbs started to arrive. By the time they started to colonized the Balkans, they could be recognized as two distinct groups according to the routes of their migration. The Slavs who would later become the Croats had migrated from Poland and the proto-Serbs had moved from the region now known as the Czech Republic. These became quarrelsome cousins who spoke an almost identical language and who displaced or absorbed the ethnic groups who had been here.

The Serbs came under the influence of the Orthodox missionaries from Constantinople in the same way Rome proselytized to the Croats. The first three centuries of Serb presence was characterized by conflict, with constant power struggles taking places between competing princes. The first Serbian kingdom took place in the present day Montenegro in the 11th century. This first king renounced his allegiance to Constantinople and pronounced himself in favor of Rome. The state expanded to include Serbian tribes in Herzegovina, and Albania. Next comes the Nemanjic dynasty for two centuries with lots of killing of kin for power. I told you this would be sketchy. During this period Serbs shared a common identity, a national spirit and sense of destiny. This is also an era when Serbia’s close association with the Orthodox Church was at its peak. After some big battles, (I’m taking a lot of liberties here) large scale Serb migration to the north (Hungary) and the west took place. Fear of the Ottomans was tangible and as the Ottoman Empire was a strict Islamic theocracy, religious persecution was rife. Some Serbs converted to avoid persecution. Tens of thousands of Serbians who did not convert were taken into slavery. Children were forcibly taken from their families, converted to Islam and trained to be elite troops of the Ottomans. These Janissaries became in time a self-determining elite that protected its own power and influence with spectacular savagery and cruelty.

In 1521 Belgrade was burnt down by Suleiman the Magnificent.and remained in Turkish hands until 1717. By the turn of the 19th century the Ottoman leadership was corrupt and in decline. The Janissaries had become unruly and self-perpetuating elite that were a law unto themselves. The First National Uprising against the Turks took place in 1804. This was followed by the Second National Uprising in 1815. From the 1830s onward Serbia started to develop an identity more akin to central Europe than to that of a peripheral province of a flagging empire.

A coup d’etat in 1903 brought King Petar l to the throne. He introduced a democratic constitution and initiated a period of parliamentary government that encouraged political freedom. The whole of the Balkans region underwent rapid change as new Balkan states were created in the vacuum left by the Turks. With backing from Petar l, the League for Liberation of the Balkans from Turkey was set up in which Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia and Montenegro all cooperated to drive the Turks from the region. The First Balkan War of 1912 forced the Turks to concede Macedonia and Kosovo to Serbia. However the new allies soon fell out over Macedonia and Bulgaria attacked Greece and Serbia in an attempt to claim sole possession. This led to the Second Balkan War in 1913. Serbia acquired western Macedonia as part of the settlement to this conflict.

By the end of World War l Serbia had lost 28% of its pre-war population and 58% of its total male population. As the war ended and Eastern Europe reshaped itself, Serbia became incorporated as just one component in a greater South Slav nation. On December 1, 1918 The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes came into existence, which unitied the territories of three republics along with Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia. This short-lived federation would become the blueprint for the future Yugoslavia.

In the intervening years between WWl and WWll the Communist Party was emerging in Yugoslavia. In 1939 Josip Broz, who became known as Tito, was elected chairman of the party. He played a crucial role in uniting resistance against Nazi occupation. During the war Croatia adopted an extreme policy of racial purification and created extermination camps. They killed 750,000 Serbs, Roma and Jews over a three-year period. By the end of the war, one tenth of the population (1.7 million) of Yugoslavia had perished either in combat, reprisals or concentration camps. By the end of 1945, the Communist Party was in power and socialist Yugoslavia was established as a federal state made up of six republics-Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Slovenia and Montenegro-together with two autonomous regions within Serbia-Vojvodina and Kosovo-Metohija. Tito had his own vision of socialism and gave each of the constituent republics individual autonomy for its internal affairs.

Tito died in 1980 and by 1991 the tensions between the republics had grown to a crisis point. By 1992 only two of the republics remained, Serbia and Montenegro and they formed the new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. By 1995, 200,000 Serbs had left Croatia as racial tensions grew. In 1998 The Kosovo Liberation Army came out in open rebellion against Serbian rule. NATO launched air strikes against Serbia in March of 1999 when they boycotted the peace talks in Paris. Last night at dinner when we were talking about how much we disliked Present Bush, one of the diners stated that Serbians liked Bush better because at least he didn’t bomb Serbia like Clinton.

One more interesting note here is on inflation under the Milosevic rule. In Dec 1993 inflation was so acute the central bank was printing a 500 billion-dinar banknote. It was worth about $6.US. By that evening it was worth half that much. We complain if inflation is 3%. Here it was going up at the rate of 3% an hour and topped out at the highest ever recorded: 600,000%. That is today’s brief history lesson of this area. As Ron likes to say ‘That’s the blurbia from Serbia.’ Oy!