You know, when you have to write a thesis composed of a novella, attend classes which require the reading of novels, and travel back and forth from town to city, all while being infinitely confused as to how to find a job, writing in a blog is not so much a priority. But, being that right now I am stalling from writing my novella, I will spare some time for anyone who still actually reads this. Hi, Mom!
On my way home from class this morning, I passed by a man selling books on the street by the Miljacka. I had been eyeing a book I want to buy for Sajo and only today did I stop to ask his prices. It vwas obvious that the man himself was not a reader. When I asked the price of the particular book I wanted after he asked me to specify, he said that the one I wanted was 12 KM, and that he couldn’t go any lower on it (not that I thought 12 KM was too much). He then insisted on another, completely unrelated, and cheaper book which reeked of romance novel, as if any book will do. I declined and told him I’d be back later.
On a related note, it is very hard to learn about the modern English novel from a man who has a hard time pronouncing certain English words and grasping the ideas of the Christian world, despite the fact that he has a Phd. Yesterday, during a discussion on Joyce’s Portait of an Artist, I had to explain to him that the reason Simon Dedalus, Mr. Casey, and Dante are arguing about Roman Catholic priests in Ireland is because they influence the vote of the people and therefore a man like Parnell, who may have been a good politician, loses his credibility and stature because he commited adultery. The professor seemed to have thought that Dedalus and Casey were against the priests because the priests supported Parnell despite his sin. I had to explain the idea behind seperation of church and state and how a man’s personal life should not account into his public life. In the Muslim community, at least that in Turkey, this is not the case as was pointed out by the other students. Bosnia, perhaps thanks to our socialist background, also seems to sway the way of the Christian world, though at times it seems to be at a dangerous lean the other way. In any case, I felt a little dumb afterwards, as a classmate pointed out to me that I shouldn’t correct the professor because I might hurt his feelings, so I don’t know what to do anymore.
I’m just thankful he’s the only one I’m having a hard time of grasping.
deserves a new layout.
Well, it isn’t so much a beginning. It’s more like a renewed interest. Plus, now I have internet at home, horrible distracting internet.
I am currently in Sarajevo, supposedly studying. My school is attended by Turkish girls and boys studying in English. There are a few Bosnians as well, but mostly it seems to be overflowing with Turks. It’s weird not to be taught by primarily Christian/Jewish professors, especially when not one is Anglo-Saxon either. I have one Bosnian, one Turk, and one Pakistani. The Pakistani professor really knows his Bosnian history and despite the fact that I am studying 20th Century Poetry and Prose with him, he seems to focus more on his various tangents. Yesterday, we got his views on religion and I actually enjoyed it much, as long as he doesn’t ask me to convert. However, he does believe that a man has got to stick to his convictions…as long as he has some.
Sarajevo is interesting. Growing. It has potential because there are a lot of foreign investors. If only the same could be said for the rest of Bosnia, especially the smaller towns and villages. But, hey, maybe that whole trickle down theory works.
It was more like lasagna. I’d like to think the waiter made a mistake, but I think my Oriental Tortilla was made to come with cheese and tomatoes, two decidedly non-Oriental ingredients.
But, before I go on, let me apologize for not being able to write sooner. This won’t even be posted on the day it’s written because I am writing it on Word, with hope it will be transferred eventually to the blog. There are many reasons for my absence, one of the most important being that my father was here for a short while. I’m back now, even if some posts might be postdated.
Two days ago, I officially moved to Sarajevo. I technically live here since September since I paid rent for that month, but I kinda liked it in Olovo more (sorry, sis).
Even now I’m a little bored since school, which I originally thought was going to begin yesterday, begins on Monday. However, I’m staying until tomorrow when I will go to Olovo again for the weekend.
So, what does that have to do with tortillas, oriental or not?
Today, dying of boredom, I decided to take a walk to meet my roomie who works in a hostel in Bascarsija. Along the way is a restaurant called Metropolis, the only place in Bosnia that I know which serves actual salads, like, Western salads. I had always wanted to eat there but Sajo and I could never find a chance, so I decided to ask Emina if she’d go with me there so I could eat on our return. And so we did.
The menu was incredible. There were things on it (some of them rather badly misspelled: Cop Salad, Cheesy Salad) that I haven’t seen in months. I originally wanted to get a Spanish tortilla which sounded a lot like my old friend burrito, but on glancing the word soy (as in soy sauce, tofu) I was tickled and persuaded to go Oriental, and with the addition of green tea I expected a full blown tofu party. But the waiter brought me something in a casserole dish looking and smelling like lasagna. I was too hungry to question my meal and the bill her brought actually said Oriental Tortilla, so I went along with it. It wasn’t so bad, except for the cheese since Bosnians use anything but mozzarella to top their various borrowed dishes.
I’d still go back, at least to test my theory on whether or not I got the wrong meal.
Yesterday, after a somewhat film-wise failed expedition to the Sarajevo Film Festival (thank you HT-Eronet and not living in Sarajevo), I was surprised to find in my friend Dzenan’s apartment a wok. A wok containing some delicious, though probably day if not several day old stir fry. It made me realize how sick I am of cevape. Yes, I said it. I’m sick of cevape and all other forms of grilled meat. It becomes clearer each moment that a vegetarian diet or at least one centered more around the veg is far more rewarding gastronomically. Of course, I could just be spoiled by the years I have spent in New York among restaurants and my sister’s most awesome cooking. It seems to me that each meatish product around here stems from the same meat–spice and all. A hamburger tastes like and is pretty much a pljeskavica which itself tastes much like a cevap. And then there’s the sausage and the salami and the badly packed cold cuts that oze nasty juice every time you open a package. I’m stuck with these various meats and their by products. What’s more is the cheeses all taste the same. For example, there’s a certain type of cheese marketed under the name of Tost and looks like good ole American Kraft Singles, nauseaous orange color included, but it tastes exactly like Laughing Cow or what would be Zdenka here. It doesn’t even have the same texture as its American cousin and is on the edge of being spreadable.
All of the blame can be put on the awful economy and political chaos that’s reigning in Olovo. The stores are lacking in a myriad of products which might just enrich not only people’s lives but their diets as well. Other places are totally fine in regards to foodstuffs and other products. We passed through Zenica recently on the way to a mountaineering thing and we stopped at one of the country’s leading supermarkets, Konzum. Yes, Bosnia has supermarkets, and they’re not just your run-of-the-mill supermarkets, they’re mega shopping centers where along with your, say, Konzum, comes a pretty technologically advanced mini-mall. I know, I know, I’m supposed to be against these things, but in this case it seems like they’re a sign and a road to progress. Where else am I going to find soy sauce (I speculate on this) and tortilla chips? Not in Olovo. The problem could be fixed if someone actually cared to do their job around here, but until then, or at least until I move to Sarajevo, I have to settle for my Tost, my shady salami, and the all-powerful cevap.
Side note: I may have a food problem. I should have been a critic, methinks.
…and I have yet to go.
I haven’t been since last year.
The old textile (?) factory where my mother used to work has been torn down, and in its place every Friday morning, a market sprouts up. You can find almost anything you need from cast-iron pots to shoes for Friday night to smoked meat that is probably best bought earliest in the morning or you’d risk yourself a case of food poisioning. What I’ve learned about the market, or pijaca, is that the clothes sold there can be of a surprisingly good quality. What I can buy here for about 15-20 KM, I could easily find in a New York boutique for a $100. So, yes, I’m not ashamed to say that I would actually “stoop so low” as to buy my clothes there.
Another phenomenon that is synonymous with market day is the saturation of the town with people of the neighboring villages. Today, I finally found a parallel between the typical American small town and Olovo: when Friday comes, all kinds of people come-and that’s how you know you’re a town and not some rinky-dink village. The villagers aren’t hard to spot. When they’re older, their faces are tanned and leathery and they often, well, smell. The younger ones try to hide, but are often overdressed and thus stick out. They gather at the local “disco”, Caffe Dalma (not a misspelling), where a fight inevitably breaks out almost every time. If you have any sanity, you avoid Dalma weekend nights. There have been times I’ve been in there just before a fight breaks out, when the first bottle smashes to the ground. The place is so crowded that when people start pushing, the entire crowd feels it. Sitting outside seems to be the only option and it’s very nicely set up, but the seats are generally taken up. Needless to say, I only go there if the people I’m with absolutely insist on going…or just to eat some really good cake.
And now, I must go and rest so I can enjoy the rest of my market day.
I am thoroughly convinvced that a mushroom I ate raw yesterday is poisonous, despite vehement insistance that it isn’t. I don’t know how else to explain why I felt so strange yesterday. It could just be a minor case of hypochondria or psycho-somatic disorder. The mushroom is from the Lactarius family it seems. They call it rujnica here. To me, it’s something of an incredibly acquired taste because, while it tastes slightly cabbage-y at first, the aftertaste is akin to the smell of a doll. What’s more, the taste lingers on for too long in the same intensity. There exists another mushroom, a greenish one, which I prefer more because it retains the cabbage-like flavor in the beginning and its aftertaste is much gentler.
Speaking of cabbage flavored things, I’ve also eaten some clover. It seems that I am truly on my way to becoming a gnome, if not a leprechaun.
These things are in a long list of things I have eaten so far that I probably wouldn’t have back in the States. I have tried all sorts of fruits that have grown without any pesticides or hormones. There were cherries, regular and what I guess we would call maraschino; there were wild strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries; there were some unnamable things I don’t remember the names of and thus cannot translate; and there were apples where I had to watch each bite in case I came across a worm, which happened every time. Then, I had honey, straight from the comb–including the comb, in fact, despite the fact that beeswax is quite probably inedible. It creeped me out, the chewiness, but the honey was delicious despite the fact. I had unripe hazelnuts as well, for learning purposes. There are other things as well, I think, but they escape me right now. The only thing I haven’t been able to have at all, however, is lamb, that God-given meat–wow I don’t even know if that’s a pun. There is a disease running about the lamb population around here. They call it bruceloza and it seems to be something like Mad Sheep disease. It is the one thing I’ve been wanting to eat here and I can’t.
But…I guess I’ll just have to stick to the chicken.
It’s hard to get used to the idea of seasons, as in “seasonal vegetables”. What the hell is that? I want my banana any damn time of the year and my tomato and my cucumber and my juicy, juicy watermelon. Having been spoiled by my neighborhood bodegas back in Brooklyn, I’ve been craving for things that I can’t even find around here. Thankfully, corn has begun its season. Now, any time I feel the need to devour some indigestible kernels, I can walk down to the kafana some corn is being cooked outside in a giant pot and sold for 0,50 KM. It’s actually not very good corn, or at least not the kind I like, but I eat it nonetheless. There is a myriad of other vegetables to choose from still and more and more things come into their time. Summertime is good for the veg. However, what worries me most about this “seasonal” thing is the fact that in the winter alls I gots to eat is cabbage. Boiled cabbage. And pickled things of various sorts. But then again, I may be living in Sarajevo at that point where the supermarkets are a little better stocked.
Yes, it’s hard to get used to, but all sarcasm aside, I really do feel much better about the fact that I’m not eating something that at some point came out of a test tube. Yes, my grapes and my watermelons have tons of seeds. Yes, my tomatoes and cucumbers aren’t obscenely large. Yes, sometimes at the fruit stand there are bees collecting on overly ripe fruits, and yes, the chances of finding a worm in my apple are much greater, but I probably have less preservatives floating around in my body.
And boiled cabbage really isn’t all that bad.
I hope. An attempt will be made at least.
Monday last week, being that Sajo is president of what can only be translated as “the mountaineering club” (Planinarsko Drustvo) I got the chance to climb up to the dom (base camp?) with him, a slew of high school kids, and two teachers from the Planinarski Savez Bosne i Hercegovine. The kids and teachers were participating in a school of sorts where the kids learn how to navigate, recognize various plants and animals, and walk a whole heck of a lot uphill. Sajo and I were both anticipating that we would fall behind because last time we did this alone a few weeks ago, I managed to stop a total of five times (he says) before we even got up there. I managed to surprise the both of us, although, thanks to one of the teachers’ stopping the group to show markings on how to get back and a pause for scenic appreciation, we probably would have stopped because of me at least once.
When we got near the camp, the two of us slowed down so I could recognize the difference between a blackberry and a raspberry, something which haunts me from earlier days as some of you may know. This time, however, the problem wasn’t the taste, but rather the shape of the leaves and the color of the stalks. My head is now full of names of various plants and trees which I am tested on on a daily basis. I’ve even gone as far as to look up their English names in my dictionary.
The dom is rather crudely built and it suits the atmosphere. Here, there is no expensive equipment and gadgetry. Everything is in some way handmade, except for the tents, which were bought recently though the same can’t be said for Sajo’s–we set those up as soon as we got there and then chilled out. One of the teachers insists that there is no need for all of that because most of the things a mountaineer needs, he can create himself. Before we had even started going uphill to the dom he had showed us some shin rain protectors (I’m soo assuming) made from an old jacket. He also had some pants which were adjusted Ben Franklin style so he could rock some knee high socks. To fruther show this do-it-yourself attitude, we were graced by the presence of a black barrel on stilts which served as our outdoor shower. The principle behind this is that the black paint would warm the water during the day. Alongside the shower is a sink in the shape of a triangular trough which sieved water to the ground. Considering all this, do I have to mention the outhouse?
Foodwise, the organizers had brought up a woman from Olovo to cook for the week. She, it seems to me, had never been up there because in a conversation I had with her, she explained that she had brought a chef’s coat and an apron, neither of which she used. Despite the fact that the dom has a kitchen, she cooked outside on a wood stove. For lunch, we ate cabbage and meat with a simple salad of tomatoes and cucumbers (with no oil or vinegar…or salt even), and for dinner meat and really overcooked pasta. The DIY teacher was annoyed because he wanted her to make flekice, cabbage and noodles, so she would not throw the lunch leftovers away and ended up getting a bowl of cabbage along with his food. Then he proceeded at some point to tip the large bowl of the salad into his mouth to drink all the juices. I must say, it was hard to get used to him.
Before dinner, Sajo and I had climbed up another hill or mountain…I don’t know. It was hard because there were all these slippery, dry pine needles on the ground and we were going up a steep slope. The wind was crazy as well, it sounded like a highway. We ate some chocolate along the way and kept stopping because I was pooped. Once we got to the top, we rested once more and went back down. Upon arrival, we rested quite a bit on some sleeping bags in the shade of the building–we managed to zip up two together. We played cards and went walking a little more until dinner.
After dinner, there was a bonfire and the sound of various MP3 players from various phones graced the air. It was nice, but it would have been nicer if we were with people closer to our own age who would be playing guitar and singing together. Needless to say, we didn’t stick around for too long and went to bed ridiculously early after brushing our teeth in the communal sink.
The next morning, the tent was boiling hot. The kids were running around in circles doing morning aerobics. We got up, and while everyone else has mostly finished their breakfast of bread and butter it seemed, Sajo cooked up some sausages we had brought along with us. We also drank tea made from fresh time we picked the day before. Professor DIY did not breakfast but rather had himself a glass of rakija and some rosehip tea accented with sprigs of our thyme. We ate then packed up our things and after a little bit of rest and if I recall correctly a brief period where Sajo had to make holes in the ground for some flag poles (homemade), we went on our way back home because Sajo had to work. We got caught in the rain just as we got into town, but otherwise everything else went well.
Man, blogging in Bosnia really ain’t all that easy. Not in Olovo at least, despite the fact that as of last week sometime, the internet club officially has DSL, or as they seem to call it: ADSL. I pay 1,50 KM for each hour and consequently spend only an hour. I could be going to Sajo’s and typing but even that is kinda hard. After being such an internet junkie for a while, it’s hard to get used to this rationing of it. Even if I were to have my own computer and a DSL connection, I’d have to watch how much memory I spend. But then again, the internet is the least of my problems in terms of getting used to things.
For one, Tito-era showers are a pain in the ass, despite the fact that they’re highly energy-efficient. If you need hot water, you must turn the boiler on, which in my case has to be when electricity is cheaper, otherwise my grandfather will brew up a storm. The electricty is only cheap for an hour or so, I think, in the middle of the day and supposedly Sunday all day. The second problem with the shower is the fact that you can only use one hand to wash your hair because the shower head doesn’t hang from the wall like in the States, but must be held in one hand. An added problem exists in my case since the tiles near the bathtub don’t go high enough and the water can soak the wall, leading to leaks in the apartment below.
Aside from the shower problem, there are a myriad little ones like not being able to find really simple things like the right shampoo, hair bands, and good sunscreen. Sunscreen is damn expensive, and for some reason, the higher the UV factor, the more expensive the sunscreen. I intend to buy some eventually…
Despite all of this, I’m still happy here. The problems I encounter are simply part of my withdrawal period, having gotten used to so many luxuries the States offered.
Here I am allowed different luxuries. Here I can go into the forest any time I want. I can go picking mushrooms. I can go swimming in a river and drink water from a spring. I can go hiking. I can eat fish from the river by my home without being afraid. I can pick wildflowers without being fined. I can learn about plants and trees firsthand. I can do things more involved with the planet than I ever could recycling or taking the train or some such sillyness in which people are trying to be enviromentally conscious.
