Beograd

Now that I have been here in Belgrade for a little over two weeks, I am feeling pretty comfortable. I've been learning some Serbian words, and getting up the courage to ask prices and directions. And people here are incredibly kind, patient, and eager to engage foreigners. Just today we had a number of really memorable conversations or interactions. First, we went to the market to buy some produce. In other places I have visited, people are often unhappy (and sometimes rightfully so) when strangers try to photograph them. This morning, each person I asked to photograph at the market smiled and posed for me. I had one person ask me to bring them a copy of the picture, which I am happy to do.

After our trip to the market, we went to visit our surrogate family here, the Matijevics. Though we do have a prior connection with them (they are the parents and sister of Lucy's friend Tijana, whom she met studying in Italy) they are the people who have made us feel most at home here. Not only did they meet us directly off the train, they call to make sure we are ok on a regular basis, they made us a traditional Serbian welcome dinner, they tell us how much things cost at the market so we don't get taken for a ride...and they welcome us each time we stop by. Tijana does not live in Serbia right now, but her sister Ivana lives with her parents and speaks excellent English. She has been our guide around town many times, and helped us to register with the police and navigate the bus station! Today Ivana was on her way out the door to go to work, and Lucy was on her way to Serbian language class, so I stayed and hung out with Dragana and Ljubsa, who are both retired and speak a *tiny* bit of English. But it was great to be in their house, just sitting on the couch while they read and cooked and went about their daily business. It made me feel like a little kid in a way- I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be doing, if anything, and it was almost impossible to ask, so we talked about the couple of things we could with our limited overlapping languages (their main concerns for us are: did we eat breakfast? do we have enough warm clothes? do we have food at home and do we know how to cook it?) I watched TV for awhile and then we had lunch. It is amazing to have that comfortable feeling of being taken care of from people who we have known for such a short time, and who we can only have four word conversations with. Perhaps when we go home (or maybe right in front of me, since I wouldn't know the difference!) they discuss the crazy Americans, but I don't think so.

After lunch I met Lucy at the University and we went to some sort of honey market, where beekeepers come from all over Serbia to sell every bee-related product possible: straight honey from different types of flowers, liquid pollen and powdered pollen, propolis, honeycomb, beeswax lotions and honey-based liquor. We walked around and sampled many delicious things, and ended up talking (well, Lucy mostly talked while I nodded and smiled) to a very friendly couple about the complicated apiary certification process (he showed us the lab results from an inspection he had undergone!), where were from, who our boyfriends were, what we were studying, where our ancestors were from...They spoke mostly in Serbian, throwing in a few German words from time to time, and throwing in some really complicated Serbian jokes as well.

The last great example of the day of Serbian kindness happened on our way home from the 59th Annual Book Fair, which is held in a huge hall just outside the city. There were thousands of people there looking at hundreds of thousands of books from numerous Serbian and foreign publishers. Since the books were mostly in Cyrillic, it eliminated the vast majority of them from my comprehension, and actually made it a little less overwhelming. I have to admit that the highlight of the event was a celebrity sighting: Boris Tadic, the president of Serbia! He wasn't there to have a press conference, he didn't have a line of cameras behind him or anything more than his five body guards silently flanking him. The president of the country was there to talk to publishers and look at books! It was amazing, especially since I cannot imagine George Bush going to anything vaguely intellectual without making it a press stunt.

So our way home Lucy and I were packed onto a crowded bus (all the buses here are packed, and although you are supposed to validate your ticket on the bus, it is often impossible because you simply can't move, although that also means that people checking your tickets can't get through either!) discussing how to get back to the apartment. An older woman leaned over to us and asked us in English if we needed any help. We said yes, and she told us to follow her when she got off the bus and she would show us where to go. When we got off, she proceeded to walk us ten minutes out of her way (we knew where we were at that point) to the streetcar stop we needed. We chatted along the way and she told us that her son lives in Brockton, Massachusetts. She was very pleased to hear that where we are from is not too far from Boston, and she asked us all the usual questions: why we are there, what we are studying, how do we like it so far. I was so touched by her willingness and desire to speak to us in English, which was clearly a challenge for her. It must've taken a lot of courage to reach out to us in her second language. When she left us at the streetcar stop and we told her thank you, she said, "Thank you! I am so happy to meet girl from Boston!"

It was a great day. This weekend we are headed out into the country to do some hiking, maybe biking too. Hopefully we'll also see some monasteries.

More stories when we return!