I went downstairs this morning and had my first real, full-fledged conversation with my host grandmom today.
Was it about six, seven sentences long? Yes. Were two of those sentences "Hello"? Yep. Did it end in bread? Of course it did. But I'll be damned if it didn't have verbs, nouns, question marks--looks like somebody just graduated Serbian first grade.
Also, and I want you to read this to yourself in the most world-weary, stereotypical Eastern European accent you can think of: Winter has come to Beograd. I looked through the window this morning and saw it coming down (indeed, a key cornerstone of my eloquent verbal repartee with host-grandmom was "I like snow"). There's something about snow in this city that just clicks. The texture of the flakes mixes with the buildings, acts like a translucent curtain and gives these wide-open expanses like Knez Mihailova and Trg Republike a mirage-like quality. Snow sucks in some places. Beograd is not one of them.
That said, our cab ride to the Political Science Faculty (ФПН) was like a tour through a winter wonderland. And I mean the term "tour" in the sense that one says "two tours in Vietnam". Our cab driver was a laconic captain helming the Good Ship Skoda, a battle-scarred vessel that, but for the distinct lack of the faculty of speech, would most likely sputter profanity amidst consistent screams, its nerves long since shot from decades of near-flight through the streets of Beograd. The only thing more impressive than the new lanes we invented, the Ronin-esque passes we initated, and the nigh-contemptuous disregard for anything approaching traffic laws was that our driver--who I'm almost certain didn't blink the entire trip--could only see a vague outline of the road through the slowly-defrosting windshield. Chalk one up to echolocation.
The reward of this trip was a much-needed crash course in the Serbian political scene, followed by a fascinating education on the nightlife of Beograd. Turns out I'm right at home on the club scene--everybody dances as awkwardly as I do! Score.
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| Pictured: Awwwwwwwwwwwwww yeah. |
Also, and I want you to read this to yourself in the most world-weary, stereotypical Eastern European accent you can think of: Winter has come to Beograd. I looked through the window this morning and saw it coming down (indeed, a key cornerstone of my eloquent verbal repartee with host-grandmom was "I like snow"). There's something about snow in this city that just clicks. The texture of the flakes mixes with the buildings, acts like a translucent curtain and gives these wide-open expanses like Knez Mihailova and Trg Republike a mirage-like quality. Snow sucks in some places. Beograd is not one of them.
That said, our cab ride to the Political Science Faculty (ФПН) was like a tour through a winter wonderland. And I mean the term "tour" in the sense that one says "two tours in Vietnam". Our cab driver was a laconic captain helming the Good Ship Skoda, a battle-scarred vessel that, but for the distinct lack of the faculty of speech, would most likely sputter profanity amidst consistent screams, its nerves long since shot from decades of near-flight through the streets of Beograd. The only thing more impressive than the new lanes we invented, the Ronin-esque passes we initated, and the nigh-contemptuous disregard for anything approaching traffic laws was that our driver--who I'm almost certain didn't blink the entire trip--could only see a vague outline of the road through the slowly-defrosting windshield. Chalk one up to echolocation.
The reward of this trip was a much-needed crash course in the Serbian political scene, followed by a fascinating education on the nightlife of Beograd. Turns out I'm right at home on the club scene--everybody dances as awkwardly as I do! Score.
- Slavija Square is a circle. Which isn't news, it's just been bugging me for a little while.
- It really just hit me that I'm headed to Kosovo in under two weeks. I'm not too sure what to expect, although the abundant anti-Kosovo sentiment from just about every non-SIT-affiliated person on this trip makes it seem much worse than I think it will really be.
- I'm starting to really piece things together on Serbian jeopardy (called, awesomely, Slagilnitsa). It has six stages, and as far as I can tell they go something like this:
- Piece together the biggest word possible with ten random letters
- Try to reach a random number by mathematically manipulating other random numbers
- Try to figure out a word based on provided clues
- Try to guess a 4-character sequence of card suits
- Trivia questions
- Word association. The overall winner gets a dictionary. Which is kind of like a cash prize.
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