abqtoadam: Serbia

The hosts of the Serbian Psychology Association’s 2013 conference decided to add an interdisciplinary element to their program, and they identified evolution and biology as pieces of that interdisciplinary framework. After a few others (including my department chair) declined invitations to give a plenary lecture at the conference (this basically refers to a long, honorary, invited lecture), the organizers sent me an invitation in March. I accepted, partially because I’ve never been to the Balkans, and I was curious to see the nature, meet the people, try the food, etc.

After a departure that was early enough to require a taxi to get to the train station (the metros do not start running until a little after 6:00am) – the 5:00am wakeup was a little rough after I’d been at a Neko Case concert the previous night – and a layover in Warsaw, I arrived in Belgrade around 1:00pm on a Wednesday. The conference organizer told me that a man named Dag would be waiting for me at the airport. After deboarding, I looked around the terminal for a man matching the picture that the organizer had sent – a man that I’d commented to looked like an older, slightly larger jawed version of me (meaning that he was white and had a shaved head and glasses). Dag and I found each other after a few minutes, and the two of us were escorted to the parking lot by an airport security agent. Dag told me that he is an instructor in criminology at a Serbian police academy, and he knows former students who now work as detectives all over the country. The agent who escorted us through the airport was one of these former students.

Before beginning our drive to the conference venue, which was about 120 miles east of Belgrade, Dag took me and the two others we'd be sharing a car with to what he described as a traditional Serbian restaurant - one that in a traditional style, and was run by traditional men. The menu was written in Serbian and in English, but the descriptions were somewhat lacking. I was able to identify things that I did not want to try (mostly organ meats), but many of the dishes had ambiguous names with vague descriptions like "traditional meat dish." So I blindly ordered one dish that I guessed was either chick or pork, since it was described as "white steak." You wouldn't know what it was based on how it looked, and I'm still not sure what it was after eating it. It was indeed some white meat, but, after being stuffed with cheese, it had been wrapped in approximately 10 slices of bacon. This was an introduction to what is the norm in Serbian dining - more meat in one meal than I eat in a week.

The other Serbian restaurants I went to described all their meat dishes in weight. I ordered the fish one night, and it was described as 1500 grams. For lunch the next day, I ordered the lightest dish available - kebabs that were 350 grams and slathered in some kind of off-white meat sauce. In total, I think I ate about six weeks worth of meat in my Wednesday through Saturday stay in Serbia.

Apart from meat, there were three things that struck me as particularly interesting during my stay. They include:

1) The people. Apart from Dag, I mostly interacted with students during my stay. The ones I talked with did not seem much different from students in Amsterdam. They were internationally minded and exposed to the same (mostly U.S. based) global media culture. They spoke excellent English. They were liberal and open minded and wanted to travel and to meet new people. Belgrade is not a hub for international travel and business like Amsterdam is, and it is not a rich country like the Netherlands is. Others noted that Serbia suffers from a bit of a brain drain, where many of the best and brightest young people are eager to move to other countries like Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, and the U.S. This made sense to me after I interacted with the small group of students and learned a bit more about the history of the country and its current condition.

2) The history. I brushed up a bit on the ancient (well, at least pre-20th century) history of the country using Wikipedia, and I read about how the area was on the line between Muslim influences in Europe largely coming from the Ottoman Empire and Catholic and Orthodox influences coming from the Roman Empire, Austrian Empire, and Holy Roman Empire.

This combination of religious and ethnic backgrounds was relevant to the 1990s conflicts within the recently dissolved Yugoslavia, which now consists of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. My superficial understanding of the conflict that involved the U.S. and NATO is as follows: Serbia claimed an area with an ethnic minority (Muslim, I think) as its own; the ethnic minority was not happy about this and engaged in some domestic terrorism; the Serbian government responded in a heavy handed manner, with martial law and eventual deportation/relocation of the area based on ethnic lines; this lead to more aggression from the minority; Serbian troops engaged in further bad behavior (including, though the use of the term is debated, genocide); NATO told all parties to chill out and disengage so that an international presence could establish order; Serbia declined to do this despite NATO threats; and, finally, NATO bombed Serbia (and specifically Belgrade) in response.

I'm guessing I got some detail(s) incorrect there, but I believe the gist is correct. The last part is definitely true. When Dag drove me through Belgrade, he pointed out buildings that were still in ruin from U.S. missiles and bombs from 15 years ago, and I was told, "This is what you did." I wasn't quite sure how to respond to that.

3) Related to the first two: the ambivalence toward the U.S. The wall of the largest room in the first restaurant I went to displayed framed photographs of Vladamir Putin, Hugo Chavez, and Fidel Castro. As far as I can tell, their strongest commonality is that they are all (or were) perceived as adversaries of the U.S. government. Remnants from the NATO bombing campaign are salient in downtown Belgrade, and the U.S. is perceived as the commander of NATO. At the same time, people I spoke with mentioned the amazing nature in the U.S., the American dream, and (interestingly, to me) the free speech and relative lack of corruption in the U.S. as virtuous qualities.

And, with these thoughts, I'll provide some pictures. Unfortunately, I was not able to take any of Belgrade. But I do have some of the conference, the people I was with, and the areas surrounding Donji Milanovac.