August 15, 2003
LIVING THE GOOD
LIFE IN SERBIA
by Srdja Trifkovic
An English romantic poet has said that we
should not revisit the haunts of our youth, and that we should be especially
careful in avoiding those that elicit sweet memories. Being close to fifty I
realize how wrong he was: nearing the end we increasingly cherish the sights,
smells, sounds, and other memories of many decades ago. Our passions are never
more genuine than we are young, our taste buds never more responsive, our hearts
never more tender. The minds grow presumably wiser, but the wise know that the
mind is the least reliable part of who we are.
The setting of all that
early turmoil marks us for life, and I was fortunate that mine was provided by
an ancient city at the confluence of the Sava and the Danube that refuses to
succumb to its rulers and defies its destroyers. Belgrade was ruled by Josip
Broz Tito—an inveterate Comintern agent of uncertain Hapsburg parentage—for five
long decades, and bombed by the Turks in 1867, by Austria-Hungary in 1914, by
the Luftwaffe in 1941, by the USAF in 1944 and again in 1999. Its ability to
remain itself is miraculous, and heartening to all upholders of real communities
and real traditions. I long for it ever more acutely with each passing year,
even as I realize that I can never come back to it.
Its charm eludes
depiction. It is not the architecture: Prague is more stunning, Budapest more
Panonian, Istanbul more oriental, and Athens more ancient. Some travel writers
plunge into platitudes, describing Belgrade as being on the border between
counterpoised worlds, Eastern and Western, Northern and Southern, Orthodox and
Catholic, Christian and Muslim, Balkan and Central European, etcetera… but they
miss the point of the city’s focus on good life, rather than stones, bricks, or
self-definition. They seek to untangle the “meanings” and they miss the
substance of the last metropolis in Europe that refuses to be multiculturalized
and Americanized.
A few perceptive outsiders get it perfectly. They grasp
that Belgrade is not about architecture, or imagined cultural contexts, but
about some good people and about very good living. Belgrade’s skyline is
underwhelming but its cuisine is heavenly. Its cars are rickety but its girls
are divine. Rebecca West, writing almost seven decades ago, remembered “too
large a lunch as is apt to be one’s habit in Belgrade, if one is man enough to
stand up to peasant food made luxurious by urban lavishness of supply and a
Turkish tradition of subtle and positive flavor.” Three generations later the
soups, stews, and meats are just as good. Here’s Eve-Ann Prentice, the former
Times of London Belgrade correspondent, musing poetically in last
Sunday’s Observer (August 10):
Most people grimace or laugh scornfully when I suggest that Serbia is great for a holiday. Surely it is still full of war criminals, a place of dark deeds, mafiosi and communist-style backwardness? Sitting in the Dacha restaurant in Belgrade, surrounded by Serbian folklore icons and wall-hangings, eating and drinking some of the purest organically produced food and drink available on the planet, it is tempting to believe I am having the last laugh. Especially when the bill for a hungry gathering of 12 comes to less than £70 [$100], including tip. No GM or processed food here; economic necessity means that almost everything is home-grown—and it tastes that way. With a penchant for locally smoked ham, grilled meat, stuffed vegetables, specialist breads, salads, pickles and soft Kajmak cheese, most Serbs eat enormous amounts and yet stay enviably slender.
It is past midnight, and if you are weary
of after-hours jazz, or in no mood for a dose of home-grown Chieftains
sound-alikes (and these “Orthodox Celts” will instantly transport you to
Dublin), you are old—or you may be just jet-lagged and ready to follow my wife
and me on a tour of the Old City starting at 3 a.m. It is perfectly safe: there
have been over a hundred unresolved murders here over the past decade, but only
a few victims have been innocent bystanders to the many mafia hits. Random
muggings are unheard-of, which may change if and when Serbia joins the European
Union and is forced to adopt its immigration and asylum laws. In the meantime
you are safe to venture out at any time of day and night.
The early-dawn
life consists of courteous, apparently sober young people drinking espressos and
beer in street cafes near the Cathedral, or next to the Prince Michael Street.
There’s the obligatory cigarette smoke and quiet conversation everywhere, people
having a good time without having an attitude. These are the veterans of the
night before, the insomniac remnant of the routine which—regardless of whether
it’s weekend or not—entails going out, meeting friends, and having “a good
time.” Here this simply means being alive, explains Ms. Prentice:
Spectacularly beautiful young women who look as if they have stepped from the fashion pages of Cosmopolitan, students, young men in sports clothes, musicians and writers link arms in camaraderie as they wander the cobbled streets of the nineteenth-century Skadarlija Bohemian quarter, the pedestrianised Knez Mihailova Street teeming with luxury shops or Republic Square with its dozens of pavement cafes. Most Serbs go out for the evening after 10 pm and most nightspots are open until at least 2 am—yet there is rarely any sign of drunkenness or offensive behaviour… Last winter I slipped on ice in an unlit back street in Belgrade at gone two in the morning. Most Serbs can spot a foreigner a mile off (and know we are Croesus-rich by comparison), so I was unnerved when several huge, crew-cut young men emerged from the shadows and rushed towards me. I needn't have worried—they were solicitude personified, lifting me to my feet and ensuring I was not hurt. Far from snatching my handbag, they carefully picked the bag and its scattered contents from the pavement and handed it back to me.
Don’t tell any of this to anyone: we don’t
want the cat out of the bag. Belgrade is the ideal destination for those keen on
adventure that is safe yet challenging, for those who love meeting the real
locals who stubbornly refuse to be multiculturalized, rather than the gaudy paid
performers; but it will cease to be so if the word gets out.
To stop the
squeamish, here are the negatives. There are very few fast-food joints as
Americans know them. The four remaining McDonalds restaurants—one of them
obscenely situated in a 19th century stately home—are going quietly bankrupt,
and their local real-meat, real-taste competitors are flourishing. Imported
wine, Scotch whisky, bourbon and cognac are prohibitively expensive. You have to
settle for the Montenegrin red and the Fruska Gora white, coarse and earthy as
they are. As for the spirits, you’re stuck with the plum brandy,
sliwowitz. It is the obligatory Serbian eye-opener with your morning
Turkish coffee, strong—50% by volume—and rough to the uninitiated. It gives you
a bad hangover if you are careless. It gives you a good one, curable with a
double shot first thing in the morning, if you are not.
No, Belgrade is
not for a Yuppie seeking a Western-standard “city break.” Many hotels—such as
the centrally positioned Palace—have seen better days, what with a decade
of sanctions and six decades of communism. They are nevertheless scrupulously
clean, comfortable and friendly. The horror of similarly priced but dubious
Italian or French establishments is unknown here. “It is a bit like going on a
hen or stag party weekend to Dublin with an extra dash of zaniness thrown in,”
says Ms. Prentice, and she seems to know both cities. For the young there’s also
the shopping that defies belief.
My eldest daughter Aleksandra (23) and
her next sibling Natalija (18) love Serbia for all kinds of reasons, but in
Belgrade a highlight of their stay was the enthusiastic purchase of top-quality,
recent release CDs and DVDs at $1.50 apiece. Their makers may have been in
violation of copyright laws of some foreign countries—that we’ll never know—but
we’ve been assured otherwise. You can also have a genuine Versaci tank-top for
$25, a pair of Blahnik shoes for $59, or a Cartier watch for $99: no lay person
will ever tell the difference, they say.
Yes, life is good in
Belgrade—unless you belong to one of its many inhabitants eking out a living on
a pension or salary of three hundred dollars a month or less, and with many
prices not much below those at your local WalMart (with the notable exception of
housing). Even poverty is tolerable in good company, however. On a steamy summer
night you may decide to stay at home but you are likely to end up hosting an
impromptu party for unannounced friends and family. Such nocturnal happenings,
with dzezva-fulls of strong coffee, with dozens of burning Lucky Strike
cigarettes, and a bottle or two of home-made booze, are commonplace at all
social levels.
Go to Serbia’s heartland, and you are in for more
surprises. Gucÿa (Goocha) is a small, neat market town of three thousand in
central Serbia, situated amidst the rolling hills, pastures and orchards. The
landscape is reminiscent of central Pennsylvania or the Lower Austrian
foothills. It has a main street with cafes, shops, a bank and a municipal
office. It has a neo-Baroque church with two marble plaques bearing the names of
hundreds of local boys and men killed in the Great War. It also has a farmers’
market, a comfortable small hotel—and the central square dominated by the
larger-than-life bronze figure of a man in traditional Serbian peasant attire
blowing a trumpet.
The trumpet makes Gucÿa different from every other
place in Serbia, or anywhere in the world. Once a year, in the first weekend in
August, this sedate but apparently boring place undergoes a massive
transformation. Its church yard and playing fields are invaded by huge catering
tents, its sidewalks are taken over by beer and barbequed meat vendors, and
every remaining square foot of its space is taken over by up to three hundred
thousand celebrants of Serbia’s traditional brass band music. As a New York
Times reporter put it two years ago, “If you thought ‘wild celebration’ and
‘brass band music’ sounded like a contradiction in terms, think again. Brass
band music, Serbian style, is often a trumpet-driven high-energy explosion,
prompting frenzied dancing on tables.”
Most visitors are here only for a
day, mercifully, or else the movement would be impossible. The standard routine
is to go from one tent to another and listen to different bands, to eat the
famed Wedding Feast Cabbage (sauerkraut, smoked pork and lamb slow-cooked on
charcoals in massive earthen pots), and to have a couple—or a dozen—steiners of
fresh, unpasteurized beer along the way. Unlike the best performances at normal
music festivals, here they take place offstage, as bands work the crowd. Several
dozen-men brass orchestras play different tunes simultaneously, within twenty
yards from each other, competing for attention and tips. Banknotes are stuffed
into their instruments, and some ostentatious revelers will part with a few
coveted hundred-euro bills to be musically accompanied to their cars or hotel
rooms.
The feast of eating, drinking and dancing is crowned each night
with a massive kolo of youngsters in the central square, around the
statue. Returning from such events in the early-morning hours my Western-born
and educated daughters enthused that this is better than Woodstock: traditional,
not created; rooted, not globalized. The trumpets have understated patriotic
credentials: they were introduced to Serbia in 1804, during Black George
(Karadjordje) Petrovic’s uprising against the Turks, and have taken root as a
defiantly domestic instrument in time of adversity and joy alike. “Where else
can you see sex bombs, punk-rockers, shepherds and politicians dancing hand in
hand as if they had known each other for ages?” asked a French diplomat who made
the three-hour drive from Belgrade for the weekend.
Go and rent Emir
Kusturica’s “Underground,” or “Time of the Gypsies,” available at your local
Blockbusters and in many public libraries. Listen to that haunting, frantic,
sublime sound of horns and trumpets, and you’ll understand. Listen and imagine
two-dozen such bands competing for the coveted “Golden Trumpet” award, or
playing simultaneously in adjoining impromptu restaurants. It is insane,
intoxicating, defiant, and wonderful.
Copyright 2003, www.ChroniclesMagazine.org
