Tuesday, October 30, 2007

The question you have all been wondering: Where does he get his shoes?

As some of you know, I'm kind of a big guy. I'm two meters tall and my weight is about 0,11 tonns. Which also, not surprisingly gives me pretty big feet, size 49/50 to be precise. It turnes out that the shoes I brought is not good enough for the Serbian winter. I brought sandals, sneakers and some light footwear. Not anything suitable for the wet, wild, chilly Balkan conditions. So join me in my Serbian adventure: The hunt for the new winter shoes.

After discussing with some of my Serbian friends, we came to the conclusion that the most likely place to find a pair of shoes for me was the Chinese marked. Which conveniently enough is located in the wonderful city of Pančevo. The Chinese marked is a huge "flee marked" mostly consisting of new products imported from China. You can get practically anything here, everything from exclusive female stockings to huge drills and saws, sizes most men only can dream about.
So I went to the marked together with Danijel to get some shoes, among other things. We started walking around the area looking for different stuff. Danijels brother have actually got his own little store at the marked, and Danijel knows a lot of the people working there, so he's a great guide. When we met some of his acquaints, and I started taking pictures with my big camera, Danijel started telling them about how I worked in Interpol and that they would all go to jail for selling bad stuff. It was pretty funny, some of them started being a little bit scared

This guy was among other things selling a lot of pirate movies.

Finally we started searching for some good shoes...


No shoes here...

not here either...

No shoes here ....

Hmm, this looks like big winter shoes...

Still no shoes...

Finally, we found some places selling shoes, but when we told the size they started laughing and screaming.We found a lot of shoes but nobody had the right size. Finally we asked one Chinese guy if he had any winter boots in size 50, after some surprised looks at my feet he started speaking Chinese with some people, making some phone calls, and then he walked a way. When these people speak Chinese it sounds pretty much like when they speak Serbian, they have an very strong accent which is really funny to listen to. After some minutes the Chinese guy came back, and after some more minutes another Chinese showed up and they started screaming and yelling loudly to each other. He had brought with him a box containing a nice pair of shoes in size 50, but it turned out that these where a little bit to big. But we followed after the guy with the box and finally ... I was wearing a nice pair of boots in size 49. I bought them for the convenient price of 2000 dinars, equal to about 200 NOK. Happy and warm I was now ready for my trip to the south of Serbia; to Niš and Leskovac (a place which is supposed to host the best Hamburgers in all of Serbia)! More about the trip in a future post...

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Everyday life in Serbia

On my first day in Serbia, I started thinking: I'm gonna spend six months here, how can I possibly manage this. There were a lot of new surroundings to relate to and I was feeling pretty skeptical and wondering about what I was doing here. As days went on things have just gotten better. To begin with I was feeling very tired. You're going around listening to another language all day which can be fairly exhausting sometimes. But somehow one adapt to that as well and I'm feeling more fit recently.

People here are more direct then what I'm used to from Norway. They don't beat around the bush, but they go straight for the point. Here people say what they think most often. Another thing which is even more obvious is the fact that people have a very aggressive way of talking. They wave their arms and speak loudly which makes it hard to judge the mood of a person when you don't understand what they are saying. But my biggest challenge for now has to be the doors on public places (shops, banks, schools, etc). In Norway almost all public doors have this mechanical arm which closes the door behind you. Here I'm guessing only 10% of public doors has this luxury. The result is that I usually forget to close the door behind me, something that here is a grave sign of disrespect. So I'm hoping to change fast so that I don't offend too many people.

One of the things that is pretty different from Serbia and the other countries Hald is sending people to is the fact that Serbians don't look that much different from Norwegians. If I make sure to keep my mouth shut (not trying to speak Serbian or English) I can actually pass for an unusual looking Serbian guy. This gives us the unique opportunity of watching the local population more passively than I could in for instance Uganda.

In weekdays I usually try to take the train at nine or ten in the morning. If I have an appointment in Beograd at 1200 for instance I would usually take the train at 1103 and be in Beograd 1135. The problem is that for the last month the trains has been exceptionally late.

This is the place where I spend most of my mornings.
Also Danijel spends a lot of time on the train

There is something wrong with the electronics controlling the signals and track switching, so at the present time there is one person sitting next to the track at every track switch there is. The job is done mechanically by hand. Rumor has it that a guy stole 5 km of the wire connecting this system and thats the reason for all this trouble now. So that leaves me to the solution of arriving at the train station in the morning and then wait for the train which is usually at least 30 min late. Then I have to take the train, which takes around 50 minutes instead of 30. All in all this makes me spend around 3-4 hours every day on public transportation. To look on the bright side this leaves me with a lot of time to read my curriculum.
Vukov Spomenik - The Train station I usually get of at in Belgrade Center


In Beograd one of the obligations we have is language classes. We have more or less three classes every week. The event takes place in a nice coffee shop downtown together with our language teacher Desa (The sister of the general secretary's wife). We learn a lot here even though it can be a bit heavy sometimes.

We meet Samuil (general secretary) a couple of times during the week for different assignments and meetings. Ranging from bible study to meetings with some people he knows. We also try to meet students for social activities (cafe, cinema, concerts, etc.). And there is also the student meeting at every Monday. From this week or next week I will start working one day in a kinder garden as well.
We are doing all kinds of social activities, lately I've been attending a lot of blues concerts. The guy on the picture is no other than D.Z. Rooster, keeping the blues alive.
Coffee shop visits are pretty common. Also a part of our social work.

I want to tell you about one special event. Most average people here don't speak English too well, except students, business and young people. It was a Saturday around one o'clock and I was going to Belgrade for language class. I was sitting on the train station, waiting, reading some book, when an old man (probably above 80) walked up to me and asked me something in Serbian. I tried as good as I could and said something like:
-Ja priču malu srbski, which means I speak little Serbian. And then he replied with an impressive accent:
- So you speak English then! Where are you from?A little confused I answered:
- I'm from Norway
- Så du snakker norsk da (Norwegian: So you speak Norwegian), he said in almost fluent Norwegian while sitting down beside me on my bench. I didn't know quite what to say for a start. Rarely any old people here speak english at all and here I'm sitting next to an old man speaking Norwegian! It turns out the guy used to work in the danish embassy for 10 years, he had travelled a lot and almost visited every country on the planet. He had also worked in India, Sri Lanka, Germany, Canada and so on. We ended up talking for nearly one and a half hour both on the station and on the train. This is a good example of how Serbians start speaking to each other without knowing each other in advance. He had a lot of interesting views on both Serbian and world politics. And an amount of knowledge which only 80 years of experience can give you. We talked about world situation, poverty, rich countries exploiting poor countries, Kosovo, Serbia situation and on and on. It was a very interesting one and a half hour and I learned a lot. This guy should have been interviewed in Åsne Seierstads "Med ryggen mot verden". But anyway, it was a great experience!

A common sight in Knez Mihailova, the walking street in Belgrade.
Evening in Kalemegdon an old fortress in Belgrade Center. The statue is holding up a peace contract towards the enemy, in the other hand he has his sword.We saw this guy recently. He was nice and made a couple of jokes. He actually used to live in Serbia for 10 years when his father Torvald was Ambassador here. For those of you who don't recognize him, you should get to know Norway better.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Home sweet home

I think it's about time I start writing something about me as well. I'm living in a city called Pančevo. It's about 15 km north-east of Belgrade and has around 120 000 inhabitants.
It would be natural to compare this city to Stavanger, my hometown in Norway which has almost the same population. The city center here is a lot smaller then Stavanger, I'm guessing it's mostly because it's so close to the million city of Belgrade. Industry is the major thing here, and the city is rated as the most polluted one in Serbia. A famous Chinese flee marked can also be found here. I have not been there yet, but I think I will go there soon, to find some cheap clothing for the winter. Clothes here is actually supposed to be more expensive than in Norway.


I live in a part of town called Misa. It's build pretty recently and the population there is pretty young. There are grocery stores on almost every corner and a lot of other specialist shops. There is also a pretty big sports park in this area, with a basketball pitch, soccer field, jogging area, tennis courts and a lot more.

I'm living in a flat together with Bojan. He is also 24 years like me and he studies business and tourism. As one should when one studies tourism, Bojan speaks English really well. Bojan has traveled around a lot and is used to foreigners. There has been a lot of other international people living here before. And speaking of former guests...


This is Bojan and some of his many gadgets.On the far right of the picture you can see my house.

After living here a couple of days I noticed there were a lot of fancy technical gadgets here. All over Serbia is a couple of years behind Norway in technology. You can't find the most recent products but what was new in Norway two years ago. But still Bojan had all this stuff laying around. Laptop, bluetooth-USB-adapter, bluetooth-headset, air conditioner and a lot more. I started asking where he got this stuff and he told me about the guests. This guest left a laptop, this guy left the air conditioner, and so it went on. As it turned out every guest has left something. And then he laughed and looked at me and said:
Every guest leaves something.
So for now I have left a wireless ADSL router, and more there will be. So this has become the first really internal joke in the house.

I'm having a great time here and I enjoy living in Pancevo.So this is my room. I decided to go for a honest picture and shoot the room in a typical condition. This is our hall. The living room is the door in front . Front right is the kitchen and bottom left is the door to my place. The bathroom is front left. The entrance is middle left and behind the camera is Bojan's office/room.This is our kitchen. We make food here.

This is our living room.
Our bathroom.Some guests for dinner in our apartment.A pile of garbage next to the sports park. All the garbage was gone next day.My local train station. I spend a lot of time here every day. Something that I will tell more about in a later post.Visiting the place of my friend Danijel.From a service in the methodist church. We were five people in the benches. Me and Danijel joined the preacher for another service afterwards, and then we were invited for dinner at his place.A picture from the pentecostal church of Bojan were I also have been attending some services.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Some thoughts about conflict, war, peace and justice

This is what everyone connects with Serbia. A land of war, conflicts and trouble. I have to admit that I used to think the same thing. So is this the Serbia I have met. There are some strange things here, like the fact that I don't recall seeing any Africans at all during my time in Serbia. People here also have a pretty negative view of NATO.

I will try to give a short summary of my impression of the Kosovo conflict. I want to emphasize the fact that this is my version, I'm not saying that this is what happened. Also I think my point of view is a little Serbian given the fact that I live in Serbia. Some time back Albanians (a Muslim people) started immigrating into the Kosovo region. This was originally a part of Serbia. They started getting a lot of kids and after some time they went from being a minority to a majority. Reasonably enough they felt like having more control of there own area in stead of Serbia deciding everything. During the rule of President Tito, Kosovo was given strong autonomy (they were given a lot of power to control them self) along with Vojvodina (the region I live in). Some years after Tito died a new President called Slobodan Milosevič started ruling the nation and he canceled the autonomy that Kosovo had been given earlier. This was the point were things started to turn around. The Kosovo-Albanians became angry and started killing Serbians. Then Serbia sends armed forces into Kosovo and starts killing Kosovo-Albanians. NATO tells Slobodan to retreat from Kosovo something he will not do. To stop the killing NATO starts bombing Serbia to ruin the economy of Serbia, and after a while they send peace keeping troops in to Kosovo.
During Tito's rule there were communism in Yugoslavia. A good communism as some of the people here have told me. People where happy and they had more than enough money to survive. They even had money for recreation like skiing, traveling and similar activities. They had a standard of living that could be compared to what we had in Norway. Communism made everyone equal, something that kind of put a lid on the different conflicts that were boiling under the surface. When Tito died the lid fell of and things started boiling. After a while NATO bombed Serbia and destroyed most of the industry of Serbia, leaving half the population unemployed. They succeeded with there goal which was to destroy the economy. NATO ruins the country and leave them to manage them selves, no wonder they don't like NATO here. People who used to have what they needed and more barely have enough resources to provide food for their children. A nurse with 3 years of education earns around 1500 NOK every month. That's 50 NOK every day. Less than a tenth of the salary a nurse would get in Norway. The prices in Belgrade is around 1/3 of what they are in Norway. How are people supposed to manage to survive? Is this fair? Is this justice? As I said earlier there are many sides to this story. You will get a different version from each person you ask.
This is what's left of a TV station after NATO bombed it. This is what we leave behind.

Please give comments and reactions to this, there are probably some inaccurate facts and I would like very much to get others opinions.

Saturday, October 6, 2007

First impressions of Serbia

Tomorrow I have been here for a week. So how much can one actually understand during one week? During the first day I figured out that traffic in Belgrade is a little bit different from traffic in Norway. Cars are almost constantly driving 20 km/h above the speed limit, the horn is used pretty frequently and all the drivers I've been riding with has spent half the time talking on the phone (and just in case you wonder: no hands free here...). And since this is not enough people are usually driving, seemingly unaware of how the signs, lines and rules tell you to drive. In other words: Traffic is crazy.

But traffic is still only traffic. The real question is still; What are the Serbian people like? Let me start with a little example. My second day in Serbia Danijel was showing me around in Belgrade. We were sitting having lunch on one of the walls of Kalemegdan (the fortress of Belgrade) when Danijel received a phone call from a friend. It was a guy he had met in a concert who wanted to hang out, and as the social guy I am I agreed immediately. After waiting some longer than planned the guy showed up and we drove down to Dunav (Donau). The guy pulled out a guitar from his car, we found a bench along the river and he started to play. As it turnes out this guy was a real blues freak or genius (a question of definition). I don't think I ever have seen anybody play like this. I'm not a big blues fan but this was just really cool. It went on with playing blues and talking about blues. After maybe 15 minutes a random old man passing by on a bicycle stopped and started listening and joined in on the conversation. He stayed for approximately one hour. The conversation was all in Serbian, and as you can guess I was mostly a passive part of this gathering, but never the less I was there and it was a nice experience.

There are multiple elements which I want to discuss in this story. For a start its the way things started, there was no planning. It was all just an almost impulsive act which developed as it passed. The next point is the fact that he arrived later than planned, there was a delay. And than the old man, they had never seen each other before but ended up talking together for an hour. They say that all you need to start a conversation here is for the eyes to meet. And the last point, they were talking Serbian. Unless they are talking to you Serbians will speak in Serbian.
The National Parlament of Serbia. A lot of very important history has happened here.
I live in the building to the left on the 2th floor. The window on the upper left of the picture is mine. That's where I'm sitting and writing this now. The wicked car in front is my friend Bilijana's. She's in the drivers seat.
Some of you have seen this guy before. He is considered highly dangerous and is probably armed with one or more weapons. If you happen to see a mountain of bottles or a pig head be alert and proceed with caution!