Back in the good ole USA!

After we got back from Novi Sad we only had a few days left in Belgrade and then it was time to head home.  The last few days were bitter sweet and we tried to fit in all of our last souvenir shopping, museum visits and one last group outing on a boat curse. 

 First we visited the Museum of Yugoslavia that exemplified the growth of technology in Yugoslavia.  There were many graphs that showed the growth of the use of radios, televisions and vehicles over the years.  The second part of the museum displayed Olympic history and articles from the 1984 Olympics that took place in Sarajevo, BiH which was then Sarajevo, Yugoslavia.  

The outside of the Museum of Yugoslavia. 





Time line of the Olympics!



Tito's Grave!

Tesla Museum.  Nikola Tesla was a Serbian inventor mostly in the areas of electricity.  He is best know for his contribution to modern alternating current (AC).  Tesla also lived in the United States for a while where he invented the first remote controlled boat! 

The remote controlled boat.

Electricity!

Lastly we went to the Belgrade Military Museum, which was located at the Fortress!

The white T-shirt team at the museum! 

A Serbian Toilet!



USA Army Uniform in the Serbian Military Museum! 

Before the boat cruise we said farewell to our Serbian friends at the Mexican Restaurant that we frequently visited.



Our final night on the boat cruise was a great way to wrap up our trip!

Novi Sad

For our last weekend in Serbia we took a trip to Novi Sad.  Novi Sad is the second largest city in Serbia, however, it still maintains the feeling of a quaint small European city.  Many of the streets in downtown Novi Sad are pedestrian only streets, which makes the city feel more relaxed and old fashioned.  Novi Sad is also home to the Petrovaradin Fortress that looks over Danube River. On Sunday we took a walking tour around Novi Sad and to the Fortress! 

The square in Novi Sad. 

The window in the center is built out because women were not allowed to leave their houses so they would sit by the window and look at the men and throw their handkerchiefs out the window at men that they liked.  The men would then go home and give the handkerchief to their father and the father of the young man and woman would set up a date for their children.  

We happened to walk by the filming of a Greek movie!  Novi Sad is very picturesque and has many pedestrian roads making it perfect to film movies so there is virtually always something being filmed in Novi Sad.  

On our way to Novi Sad we stopped at a small community that still practices religious traditions from Serb communities in Southern Croatia.  These unique Serb communities were forced to flee their homes in Croatia during the 1991-1995 Croatian war.  The community from Croatia has now nearly permanently settled in a town about 45 minutes outside of Belgrade where they still continue practices of their old traditions, which include these outfits, that one of our group member got to test out…

Below is Matt (one of the other students in my group) dressed in the traditional clothes along with is new family! :) 

                                             

Professor lovely testing out one of the rifle. 

Matt and I

 When the Serbs moved to Serbia from Croatia they could really only bring what they could each carry.  These outfits are so important to them that over a dozen people brought their traditional clothes with them. 

 The gate to the church and community center.

A cute little building... not sure what it is for. 

Inside the church... It was so colorful!

There was a baptism going on when we were there!

Matt's new family by the church!

Then there was a surprise wedding!

                                                 And a Band!

   

Busy. Busy. Belgrade.

On Friday we had an extremely busy day!  In the morning we went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs where we spent time looking at their new exhibit on Serbian history and the history of Serbian Foreign Affairs.  After we went to the Institute of International Politics and Economics where we discussed Serbia’s main Foreign Policies objectives and the controversial issue of the recognition of Kosovo.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 

Typical Belgrade street.  

I thought this was interesting... instead of gargoyles there is a man in a stance ready to behead a man. (see the statues on the left side of the building)

Our meeting with the Institute of International Politics and Economics

After our political meetings we met with a fun organization called e8.  E8 works to improve gender equality, civil engagement and health awareness among youth in Serbia.  The organization is made up of fun and young employees that use creative tactics to improve key issues in Serbia.  It was really great to see an organization that is incredibly inspired and enthusiastic about creating a better social environment in Serbia.   

Our last meeting on Friday was with our energetic professor, Professor Lovely!  It was the second lecture on state building and tactics used for successful state building.  Professor Lovely is an incredibly enthusiastic lecture and I am really looking forward to taking his class next semester!

The President is leaving the Building.

This past week we have met with an array of organization and political leaders in Belgrade.  We met with Praxis, a refugee assistance organization in Serbia.  They have mainly been working with the Roma population in Serbia, who were displaced from their homes in Kosovo, as part of the Kosovo-Serbian dispute.  Many Roma people in Serbia are now currently living in conditions that are considered under the “minimal standard of living” and Praxis is working to help improve their standard of living and gain legal documents in order to attain health insurance and property rights.  A couple of students from our group who are interest in pursuing a career with refugees were able to visit one of the Roma refugee camps.  


Marie, one of the students who went to visit the Roma Refugees was kind enough to share the photos with me so that you can gain a better understanding of why there is an organization focusing on helping the Roma people.  Thank you Marie! 

They literally live in these 'containers.'

                                      

Just as we had done in BiH we were able to visit with the President’s Foreign Affairs advisor.  However, unlike last time we were not able to meet with the President of Serbia.  He was in the building when we were there but left soon after we arrived (I promise we did not smell).  The Foreign Affair’s advisor was surprisingly really young!  After our meeting our TA told us that the new government in Serbia (only elected into office 2 months ago) has had difficulty with having educated officials. The current President went from having his high school education to his Ph.D in 3 years... and he was taped making speeches when he was supposed to be in class… 

The fancy room in the Presidents Building that our meeting was in. 

The flag on the left is the EU flag (they are not a member yet but applying for membership, the center flag is the Serbian flag, and the flag on the right is the Presidents flag (specific to this president).

The Foreign Affairs advisor on the right and his and his assistant, left.

Allie and I!

We also met with the Belgrade Center for Security Policy, a think tank that focuses on different aspects of Security in and outside of Serbia.  Different employees had different areas of study ranging from gender roles in Security to the role of NATO.  They also act as a check system to corruption in Serbia’s security forces.  However, it was disappointing to find out that they have no real pull other than letting the public know when there is corruption within the government’s security forces.  After the meeting we were able to get lunch with the Serbian interns at the organization, which led to some really engaging conversations about what they were researching themselves.  

A church near the BCSP.

The hotel that we are staying in Belgrade was kind enough to give us a discount price on laundry services.  Each room was allowed one bag of laundry for $5!  My roommate Allie and I put together a bag and I brought it down to the front desk.  I told her our room number and handed her the bag and she said “Just a wash right?” and I made a funny face and she noticed and said “of course a dry too” and I was like “okay good!” and be both had a little chuckle.  The next afternoon I came home to Allie hanging up every single item that we had asked them to wash.  They were all wet.  She found them neatly folded in a pile on a bag on the floor.  So strange.  We then asked our Serbian TA if this was normal and asked around if other people got their clothes back wet and nope. They all had dry clothes when they got them back.  We are still dumbfounded as to why this happened!  Luckily, I bought camping "laundry line" rope before I left for when I had to hand wash clothes. 

End product of our solution to wet clothes... 

Our friend Ian stopped in later to see what we were up to... He was a little shocked. 

CANVAS

First off, I am sorry if you read my last post yesterday or this morning... I meant to save it as a draft but it accidentally posted and there were so many mistakes because I was still working on it... Sorry!  It is all fixed now!

In the beginning of the week we visited with the Zoran Dindic Foundation.  The Zoran Dindic Foundation is a foundation dedicated to Zoran Dindic who started the Democratic Party in Serbia was the Prime Minister from 2001 until 2003 when he was assassinated.  He was a pretty astounding person and virtually gave up his life to create a more democratic Serbia.  The foundation promotes greater economic advancements through international internship programs for college graduates.  During the meeting with the Zoran Dindic Foundation the woman asked if we had hear for Zoran prior to arriving in Serbia and sadly most of us had not.  Then she asked if we had heard of Slobadon Milosevic (I explain him below if you do not know who he is but in short he is a dictator) and many of us had.  She then made the point… It is sad to see how much emphasis is put on the “bad guys” yet the good guys are not recognized nearly as much, which is true and really disappointing.

After the meeting with the Zoran Dindic Foundation a group of us took a trip to Ada Lake to go swimming!   The lake was fun and it was nice to swim after being in extremely hot weather for the last 3 weeks!

'Pura Vida' in Serbia?!?! ... Costa Rica keeps popping back up! 

For the last 3 days we have had 7 hour days training with a organization called CANVAS.  Canvas formed out of the OTPOR (the word for resistance in Serbian) student group.  OTPOR was a non-violent group that successfully over threw Slobadon Milosevic’s regime.  Milosevic was the President of Serbia from 1989-1997 and had a large role in the fall of Yugoslavia because of his Serbian nationalistic polities… that is the short story.  Canvas now trains other groups around the world to help them form their own non-violent movements against their government.  It is pretty inspiring to see how influential a small group of people can be and how they can make a small idea to grow.  Training our group was a little different than what the trainers were used.  Usually they train people with a strong desire to over throw their dictator and the people usually do not have beyond a high school education.  This made the training easier yet harder for them because we did not need to go over terms or concepts like they do when they train other groups.  However, when it came to finding something that we wanted to change in our government we thought of, healthcare system, college tuition, policies on illegal immigrants (in favor of immigrants) and policies on the war on drugs, which turned into the legalization of marijuana… none of which were very compelling movements.  It is not like Obama is a dictator and we were all passionate about over throwing him.  This made it harder to complete some of the parts of the training, especially because we are not experts on the types of changes that we come up with.  But over all it was a really great experience! 

Dinner at the Mexican Restaurant! ... I can't stay away from rice and beans ... and the margaritas! 

                 Stephanie and I at the Mexican Restaurant

My 'Artsy' picture of the city and our Margaritas! 

On to Belgrade, Serbia!

We made the long hall from Mostar to Sarajevo, to get our suitcases, then from Sarajevo to Belgrade, Serbia!  The whole trip took us about 11 hours via bus with a few stops along the way.  We even got a bigger bus from Sarajevo to Belgrade so that we each had our own seat… It was a pretty big deal after occupying every single seat in the bus from Mostar to Sarajevo (3 plus hour bus ride).  We did not get into Belgrade until around 11pm at night but we could already tell that it was a much bigger city than Sarajevo or Mostar.  The next day we took a 3-hour walking tour of Belgrade that ended at the old fortress from World War I!

Differing from Bosnians, Serbians do not credit the US with ending the war in 1995 and actually have a great amount of animosity towards Americans especially after the 1999 NATO bombings.  We were told that we would not be liked as much in Belgrade as we were in Sarajevo but it was nothing to be concerned about.  However, early last week a few of us experienced something that shocked us but at the same time we thought it could happen every once in a while...  A group of us were walking back to our hotel from dinner, which passes through a small park.  When we entered the park there was a group of people hanging out by a bench, they looked about our age and did not look threatening.  One of the girls in the group started to talk to us in Serbian.  We didn’t understand them so I turned to them and said “English?”… that was all I said.  Then the girl and a few others pitched in saying, “Fuck you all” etc.  We were a bit taken back by what had happened because we were simply walking back from dinner and had not even been talking really so we didn’t know how they could have known that we were Americans or why they were even saying such things.  It did not really bug us other than being confused.  The next day at breakfast we approached our TA and explained what happened… he was shocked.  He couldn’t believe that had happened to us and apologized to us (clearly it was his fault).  He said that that does not usually happen and it was probably just some punks. 

Cathedral of Saint Sava "the largest Orthodox church in Europe." They began construction in May of 1935, however, construction was halted under the communist regime in Serbia and was not resumed until 1985.  

The inside of the Cathedral.  There was still a lot of construction and work to be done. 

Damaged Building from the 1999 NATO Bombings. 

Costa Rica? What are you doing here!