Markets, Plays, and Festivals in Belgrade
As I sit down to write this blog, it’s still difficult to wrap my head around the fact that my two months here have come and gone. My time here has worked wonders for my language development. On my first day of class, I was having trouble with the most basic communication with my teacher Marija. More recently, however, while working on an exercise or worksheet given to me, she can ask a question on an unrelated topic and we can have a conversation about it. She is learning English as she is teaching me Serbian, so it is an opportunity for her to learn as well; she’s often asked for clarification on certain words or phrases in the American vernacular and how they differ from British English. What started out as a slow and frustrating process of constant repetition and clarification has turned into a fun and engaging experience which I look forward to everyday.
Out of class, my first three weeks proved to be much more exciting than the past four, but that allowed me to observe more of the day-to-day life of the people here. Coincidentally, a friend from church in America arrived during the fourth week for another language program here in Belgrade. She and her family frequently come here on vacation, so she knew a lot of local spots to frequent. We met up to walk down Knez Mihailova, through Kalamegdan, and to a restaurant for dinner. The next day, we took a trip to a local pijac, or a traditional farmer’s market, to buy some of the freshest fruits and vegetables I have ever tasted. The following Saturday, we went to Ada Ciganlija, a small river island where many waterfront activities are offered, and rented a paddleboat for a couple hours. Later that evening, we met up with the other students in the program to celebrate Brett’s, one of the students, birthday at Aleksandar Klub, a bar and restaurant that doubles as a ski lodge in the winter.
The next day, all the students met in Zemun, a part of the city on the coast of New Belgrade, to rent bikes to go on a guided tour of the architecture of New Belgrade. On Monday, I went to the Nikola Tesla Museum with Zorana, my conversation partner through the program. Unfortunately, she had to return to Montenegro to be with her family, so I was assigned a new partner named Gala. Our first outing together was the following week was a visit to the National Museum of Serbia. We stayed a few hours until the museum closed, then got dinner at Manufaktura, a well-known restaurant just off Knez Mihailova covered by an iconic layer of red umbrellas. The following week, Gala took me to a play in Zemun. It was difficult to follow what exactly was going on, but Gala explained it to me after. She said it was about a couple looking to get divorced until their mothers, one chic and modern, the other old-fashioned and traditional, show up unannounced and eventually push them into getting back together, almost like a reversal of Parent Trap. Though most of the jokes were impossible to understand at my level of comprehension, it was still very amusing to watch the actresses satirize and juxtapose their roles as caricatures of city life and village life in Serbia.
That Saturday was the anniversary the Apollo 11, and the US Embassy set up an event for us and our host families to watch a film about the mission. I brought my host mother Vesna, and after the film we stayed a while to listen to a live interview of David Vujic. Mr. Vujic was one of the “Serbian Seven”, a group of scientists and engineers who had worked on the Apollo program and shared their Serbian heritage. The film also paid tribute to Milojko Vucelic, another member of the seven who was a primary point of contact during the Apollo 13 disaster and ended up receiving a Presidential Medal of Freedom. This past Friday was a festival at another local pijac, where they had a DJ, food, drink, and merchandise booths, and people milling about and socializing. It was reminiscent of a festival my church holds annually, but in a much smaller venue like this market, the event had a much more distinct atmosphere, which was slightly chaotic but loud and lively. This trip has been just incredible, and I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to come and experience the life and language of this beautiful country.
