beograd 2

I have spent the past several days in belgrade with an eclectic crew from ceu: volodia, nash pravoslavni sveshenik, marton, our lost hungarian intellectual, balazs the genius, vlado the serbian stallion/balkanski spion and of course masha. it was really good to see these guys again. it has been over a year, which is a long time
We spent alot of time on department things: meeting members of various feuding serbian institutes such as the institute for modern history and the institute for modern serbian history, two separate institutes which co-exist on the same floor of the same building but do not work together or share a coffee maker! The ultimate sign of balkan non cooperation! So we met people from both institutes, just on different days. The routine is always the same: you come in , the welcome you and some girl wearing the seemingly same outfit in every company disappears only to emerge again a few minutes later with a kitschy tray of serbian coffee and sugar. So then you are compelled to drink the coffee and just have to sit and pray that rakija will not follow, since they are a lethal combination when together. Each talk lasted several hours. Some were somewhat useful, but alot of the would be intellectuals seemed closer to jader apparachiks than to scholars. Many seemed happy to sit in their unchallenging jobs, getting small but livable saleries and not asking any questions. Endless meetings with provincial lords ruling over unremonted fiefdoms.
masha and i also made the obligatory inspection of all belgrade bookshops. fortunately they are all located along the one main shopping street. i think this is the 3 or 4 th time we have made these rounds together in belgrade over the last 4 years, so it has become something of a tradition. even thought i had/ have no money whatsoever, i still ended up buying a whole pile of books. there is a new one out buy a serbian writer who was living in moscow. the book is called deca putina and it looks really interesting, as it is about our generation... so of course i bought it even though it is in no way connected to my research...then i spent more money buying books which are in fact connected....and so on...the usual story.
belgrade looks the same as always, but they are opening some new shops and things seem better than when they were at their absolute worst a few years ago...so we can hope that those times are gone for good.
vlados flat is amazing and we spent some good times hanging out and gossiping (and having psuedo intellectual conversations as well i suppose) his baka is amazing and does all the cooking. she lives in a flat just accross the yard, and she calls every morning to see what vlado wants to eat for dinner. then she brings it over at the exact time he specifies. she kept trying to overfeed me and masha. she told me that 'izgladas kao da imas 16 a ne 20 godine" i didnt bother to tell her that i am well over 20 years old....i didnt want to shock her too much (at that moment she was still reeling in horror from my confession that i do not eat meat!) but now i feel like i have eaten so much over the past few days that i have a stock for one month...which is just as well...