The Blue Monkey Review

First of all, Belgrade is a real city. Its population of at least two million makes it almost four times as big as all of Montenegro (though I have heard more than once that there are more Montenegrins living in Belgrade than in Montenegro). And it is a fine old European city, with majestic buildings, hotels, public squares, pedestrian streets. It won’t remind you of Berlin—the decades of Communism and the subsequent troubles with the breakup of the country have left Belgrade a little rough, a little gray. It gave me the impression of an Eastern European city like Budapest at the end of the Communist era. Fascinating, busy, and quickly opening to the world. But not too quickly.

Our hotel, Xasima, had a good location in the older section of Beograd. We only had a short walk to Knez Mihaila, a pedestrian street lined with shops and cafes. We were never far from the next book store or the next cappuccino. Knez Mihaila runs from Trg Republika to Kalemegdan Park that overlooks the convergence of the Danube and the Sava rivers. “Ever since there were men in this region this promontory must have meant life to those that held it, death to those that lost it,” wrote Rebecca West. “Its prow juts out between the two great rivers and looks eastward over the Pannonian Plain….” She then offers a paragraph long history of competition for this site that begins with the Illyrians and extended into the 20th century. Monuments commemorate some of the grief seen on this bluff, but today these stand in tree lined walks and are surrounded by flowers. The park and fortress with its spectacular views is understandably popular with people in Belgrade. There are restaurants here, and a zoo, plus nightlife for the younger crowd. Ruth and I enjoyed the views from the walls of the fortress and we visited the military museum. (Click here for a photo essay that features Knez Mihaila and Kalemegdan.)

Even though I’m not overly fond of museums, the military museum was well worth the 100 dinars we each paid. It has authentic weapons from all of the periods of western Balkan history and it exhibits them with thoughtful and useful interpretive materials. Unfortunately, the museum makes no concession to foreign visitors since the language of the exhibits is entirely in Serbian. And the historical narrative ends at World War I, with only one room given over to the NATO intervention in Kosovo. That subtracts from the history of the region WW II, the Communist period, and the civil war. From the point of view of the museum, Serbs go from being victimized by the Turks to being victimized by the Austrians to being victimized by the western alliance.

Our explorations took us into other parts of the city. We went to Sv. Marko’s church, a Serbian Orthodox church built over several decades in the early 20th century. Orthodox churches seemed to share a quieting severity. Interiors lack decoration, except for the abundant icons. Yet the icons, even with all their gold and color, also seem severe. At Sv. Marko we stood in the entryway as faithful bought candles to kiss and light and set into sand in one of the several stands around the church. Four huge pillars dominate the interior, and a circular steel candle frame hangs from the dome. Smoke hung heavy in the air and rose slowly into the dark above. I couldn’t tell if the scent that pervaded the room was from incense or candles.

We also visited the largest Serbian church in the world, Sv. Sava’s Temple. It is massive and impressive with its white marble exterior. At the moment it is undergoing restoration, so we could not go inside. Yet even church buildings hold a place in the practice of religion here. Worshipers walk backward before leaving an orthodox church, and cross themselves before turning to walk out. At Sv. Sava we saw people stop, turn toward one of the entrances, and cross themselves. (I’ve occasionally seen people on the bus cross themselves when we pass the monastery of Ostrog which is barely visible from the bus.) (Both churches and other points of interests in Belgrade are here.)

I could hardly resist visiting a different kind of shrine, the grave of Marshal Tito. “It was better under Tito,” one of our Taxi drivers told us. He couldn’t have been more than 35, so only a small child when Tito died. But Serbia and the rest of former Yugoslavia has suffered bitterly since Tito’s death. Nostalgia for Yugoslavia crops up in Serbia and Montenegro. Even Goran remembers the period of Tito’s rule as one of harmony among the various nationalities. Tito’s grave gives some sense of what an atheist shrine should look like. The entrance to the building looks like the entrance to a funeral home from the 1960s, but inside there are large ceiling to floor windows on all sides to give ample natural light. You walk down a short marble walkway to a white rectangular marble box. Tito’s name and dates appear in gold on the grave.

And that’s all. No imagery, no pictures, no statues. Certainly nothing religious. In a separate building you can take a tour of gifts given to Tito during his rule. All kinds of things line the walls, from ornamental weapons to handmade lace from grateful peasants to dolls and costumes. My favorite piece was the costume of a Bolivian shaman, given by the Yugoslavs of Bolivia.

Our motivation for going to Belgrade was to attend a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Senator J. William Fulbright who established the Fulbright scholarships. The event was sponsored by the Fulbright Alumni Association of Serbia and Montenegro. Our first night in Belgrade we attended the opening session. Something of this nature in the United States, at Seton Hill, for instance, or Rutgers, would have taken place in a restaurant ballroom or a university auditorium. Here we met in the showroom of a computer store. Traffic noise from the open windows at the back distracted a bit from the seriousness of the event, and we had just enough space for the seated alumnae who attended and the choir that provided the opening part of the program. It quickly became clear that the session would be conducted entirely in Serbian. Entirely. So the discussion given by two alumnae of Senator Fulbright’s book, Arrogance of Power, lost some of its impact for us. Senator Fulbright was a man of great vision, said the one, and then blah blah blah. The second speaker did more to place Fulbright into his historical and cultural context. Even so, it was mainly Serbian words I understood in a river of Serbian unknowns. We did not attend any more of the sessions.

But, we did attend two social events connected to the conference, including a reception at the ambassador’s residence. This allowed me to become acquainted with a few of the Fulbright scholars from Serbia and Montenegro. I had discussions differing in length from minutes up to most of an hour on a variety of topics.

“Is there adequate transparency in the stock offerings?” I asked the president of the struggling new Montenegrin stock exchange, who had studied at Columbia during his Fulbright term.

“Not enough,” he told me. “There is such corruption. Montenegro is a lake, and the lake is full of crocodiles.”

On the bus back to the hotel I sat next to a young woman I took for a graduate student. No, Ana Đurđevic is a physician who had taken her Fulbright term at Johns Hopkins, studying substance abuse. We talked about the myth of marijuana as a gateway drug and the horrible record of U.S. drug policy.

And I spoke with several people about Serbian identity and the recent past. The 90s hang over this country in a way that would be perfectly easy to anticipate but difficult to appreciate without visiting here. Radmilo Pešić, professor of economics at the University of Belgrade, had studied at Texas A&M before the troubles began. We lost so much time, he told me. And many educated Serbians left the country. “We lost 300,000 or our best men and women. We are missing them badly.”

Of course, the showstopper for everyone came when I said that we lived in Nikšić. “How unfortunate,” said Radmilo in his measured way, referring to my inability to meet many colleagues from the university. But most responses betrayed more surprise, if not shock. I can’t swear that the former Yugolsavian ambassador to Cyprus actually stepped back when I told him, but he did say, “You’re living in Nikšić?”

But of course, these were academics, people with the best educations available in Serbia and Montenegro, and with the advantage of having lived abroad. So naturally they expressed themselves with some reserve. We had different responses from some of our cab drivers. I managed to exchange a bit of cab chat in Serbian with one, but when he learned that Ruth and I are living in Crna Gora he asked, in English, “So do you like living in Montenegro? No” he immediately answered for us. “It’s horrible!” Another cabbie had even better English skills. The topic turned to the referendum that will be held in Montenegro to determine if they will remain in a union with Serbia. “No one is holding referendum if we want them to stay with us. If they do, the answer is ‘no!’”