I just came back from Tunis on last Thursday and on Friday I started a trip to Sarajevo to catch the last days of Sarajevo Film Festival. I just had a time to re-pack my stuff in Zagreb and now I’m again into working on fellowship story fully. Also I’m really sick of travelling around and my energy is really at the low level at the moment. And now there is always that deadline pressure under which I usually function good. Hope it will be the same this time.

Jeremy Irons on Sarajevo Film Festival

Since I write a lot about travelling on this blog and if I continue to do that it will start to be my private blog I will just say that in my trip to Tunis I found one very interesting guy from Bosnia And Herzegovina that I will have to interview for my story. In next few days I will try to work on first draft version of my feature, finish all the other remaining interviews in Sarajevo, Belgrade and Zagreb and travel around to do all remaining stuff. The real luck of time.

So, I will be in Sarajevo for next few days and then I will move directly to Belgrade to meet with my mentor Anna and after that to Zagreb. So I keep my fingers crossed that I will have the time to finish the story in the way I like and have time to finish remaining interviews with people who came back from holidays and now are available for talks.

Take care,

Davor

During my stay in Belgrade I attempted to get in touch with someone from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia. I send e-mails while I was in Macedonia, I called them, got redirected and again and again, until someone told me I should sent an official written request about what I ask from them.   

“Is there a chance that I will get approval by the end of this week??” – I ask. 

“Oh, no, I don’t think so. It is a procedure that lasts longer” – answered the MIA official.  

I cannot say I didn’t expect that.  

Two days after my return to Macedonia I get a phone call from Belgrade, with a kind offer to come to the Ministry because my request has been approved. Murphy, huh?? 

I cannot say I wasn’t tempted to go to Belgrade again. But you never know with those people there, Beer fest is finished, but what if there is a Vine Fest?? Or worst, Rakija Fest?? I might never finish this article of mine.  

So, I will stay in hot Skopje and await for e-mail from the MIA of Serbia.

As they say, better later then never. Although in the Balkans it usually happens – first later, then – never.

I always like coming to Belgrade. The city definitely has a spirit of its own, it’s cosmopolitan, lively and open for its visitors in all its beauty. But this time, I was there for business and I meant business. I got prepared for the interviews that awaited me, took my lap top, a map and I mentally prepared for a working week…  

And I was off on a good start, met with an NGO that works on the matter of trafficking, then had a very good briefing at the Office for EU integrations with their spokeswoman Ivana Gjuric. I recommend her as a very interesting interviewee, very informal and witty. To quote one of her statements regarding visa policies “I think that when the Shengen wall falls, Serbian citizens won’t give a damn about the rest of the package we call EU integration” or in Serbian “gragjane boli ih uvo za sve ostalo…” Such a well-known truth coming from an official in such expression.  

But, pretty much at this point, I got caught up in Belgrade charm. As I was unsuccessfully trying to set up an appointment at the Ministry of internal affairs and awaited for the meeting with another NGO that works with women,  victims of trafficking, I noticed thousands of people going towards the fortress Kalemegdan. The reason – Beer Fest. All my friends instantly rushed towards the gallons of beer and excellent music, so I had no choice other than to join that festivity of beer (regardless of the fact that I don’t consume any alcohol). And there… thousands of people enjoying great rock bands. So, I investigated mobility, intercultural cooperation, economic mobility and cooperation through the sight and taste of beer.  

I tried to keep things professional in Belgrade. But, it is the city – it has corruptive influence on whoever steps foot there. Beware!

I remember how, in the thick of that hyper-medial Albanian stupidity of spring 1997 – when the population spent lifesavings in Ponzi schemes, then blamed the government on their collapse, and the government preferred to sink the country into civil war than admit responsibility – a British friend came up with the unofficial Albanian anthem: “Let’s —- (a four-letter word, the one you are thinking of- A.R.) Albania and let’s all go to Brindisi!”

I agreed and laughed, but had a tic. I did try to strike back and make him change the providential action in the third line of the Royal British national anthem along the same lines of the Albanian national anthem, but did not succeed. That year, the country kneeled down, about 80,000 Albanians would get on old ships and high-powered rubber boats for the Apulian shores.

Three-million-strong Albania probably produced the highest outflow ratio to the population in Europe the past twenty years. One in five Albos, mainly male in heat, is out of the country. More than half a million are in Greece (which has a population of about 10 million). A quarter of a million left for in Italy, at par with Romanians and Moroccans in the top of the migrant population.

In that male-in-heat group, the 16 to 25-year-olders, two-fourth of the generation of the 90s left the country.

Back home, about two in five Albanians had moved to other areas in the country, mostly to larger cities.

This was Albania’s biggest mass movement, coming after fifty years of total control of movement during Communism.

Its effects were everywhere in my own life. Only a third of my journalism class at the University of Tirana, which graduated in 1996, is in the country – About five of us are still doing journalism, but that is another story. My in-laws are living now in Italy, with no desire to return. I have a sister living in London, cousins in Switzerland or Italy.

My neighbors come and go all over the world.

One of them, when I was a kid in the early 80s, was teaching us how the Labor Party of Albania fought hard to make the country a heaven, which of course had made the Italians, Yugoslavs and Greeks didder with envy. A couple of years ago, he asked me to translate some Australian emigration papers for him with the same ordering tone of my childhood days.

Another one, half the age of that elderly gentleman, was among the first to leave the country in 1990, jumping across the fence wall of the Embassy of Germany. His life is split between Albania and Germany now, and when in Albania, he runs a small business selling used cars that are parked on the sidewalk of my apartment building. When the municipality built new roads and sidewalks, and, of course, had dented the sidewalks with space for garbage bins, he filled the one in our apartment building with cement, and threw away the garbage bin, so that he could park one more car on the sidewalk and a slightly higher contribution to the national and individual economy.

We had a park on the side of my apartment building, which is now a new block of high-rises which, in twenty year’s time, will look as ugly as any concrete housing block – it looks just ugly now. A hairdresser has set up shop there, after leaving ten years of life in Italy behind. Her aunt has taken over the opposite shop, a bakery, after leaving for Greece. They even share a generator when electricity goes off and it had done so a lot this summer. The other bar is owned by a 23-year-old kid who returned from Italy because he missed his country. His family is still in Italy. In the buildings themselves, many emigrants have bought apartments.

In my apartment building entrance, two siblings from one first floor live in Emilia. In front of that apartment, one worked as a cook in Greece for a few years and now cooks spaghetti at a main Tirana restaurant. In the second floor, five people have gone to the United States, one to Austria and another to Germany. In the third floor, the younger man in one of the apartments does seasonal work in Greece comes back and renovates his apartment – they have a new bathroom, for what I can tell. In the topmost floor, the girl in that family lives in Denmark.

Emigration brought home one billion Euros, a seventh of what the country produced in 2006. And it used to be a quarter of the GDP only ten years ago.

I guess this is the lay of the land, for now. More tomorrow…

Traveling from Prishtina to Belgrade is a story on its own. Especially, when you’re entering with an unrecognized travel document. Which is the case with me!

But that’s the least interesting part of what I want to share with you this time.

I enter the van of Mr. Bogi, one of the lucky guys whose traveling company has benefited from a reality with a lot of political overtones. He has two regular lines from Prishtina to Belgrade and back. One in dusk and one in dawn. Though his target passenger is a local Serb living in an enclave, his rides have been of great importance to many Albanians for whom Belgrade is a destination within the scope of their job description or other personal engagement.

You will not grasp the uniqueness of this mini-bus line, unless you understand or try to, for that matter, the atmosphere in which this line exists.

Serbs in Kosovo, by any estimation, are an isolated minority. Living in a (well, however controversial this might sound) perceived motherland of theirs, they feel like the earth is opening up under their feet, loosing almost completely the sense of belonging. Scattered around in enclaves, they for sure are in a dire need for a psychological relaxation. Which doesn’t seems they will get in a short period of time.

As the van comes in my direction, I cannot help but admit to myself that I need to move in as fast as I can. No danger, whatsoever! But rather, because within I feel like those people inside, collected from enclaves around, deserve a basic consideration. They have always mistrusted Kosovo Government. Not for a sec satisfied with anything around. Always complaining. That’s why in Kosovo they don’t feel at home. If they do, that’s because in Serbia they are mere guests.

I got in. A father with three children, the rest mid-aged individuals. It has always been like that, mid-age loners traveling to Belgrade…I sit down in the first row. On my left there’s this young, 14 something boy…I don’t speak a word in Serbian, but I understood his invitation to sit down. In his face I could sense his mood…alert, a sort of detachment and self-controll, which goes beyond a normal dose of shame that kids bear within. The rest of faces around show same sense of alertness, the fact that they don’t have a normal life, kind of flies above their heads. My imagination clicked right away for the dad and children…a family joining their estranged mother in Belgrade? Or joining a family feast, which they have not experienced for ages….

The van goes around and into the city, at some forgotten tiny neighborhood, there’s an old couple waiting…Bogi stops the van with such immediacy, that in a sec you see yet another person in and the van is on the move again without you noticing it.

The old woman waves at her husband (I suppose) and says “dobro jutro”, no one answers. It’s 5 in the morning.

The road opens up for us, the sky is already brighter, while I doze with my hands firmly attached to my backpack, money purse and camera bag. A clear sign of watchfulness on my side as well!

It’s border time. I wake up. A terribly long line is in sight. Vehicles coming in and out of Serbia. In a sec, with a heavy head, I think of the importance this country plays for the normal flow of life in Kosovo. Now, with a clear head, I scream “why’s that?”. 80% percent of vehicles are headed to Kosovo, buses full of Albanian emigrants, trucks with brand new cars for sale, trucks with vegetables, Bogi’s friends with their vans…there’s such a movement of people and goods across this border…In the Serbian part I see laid-back policemen checking every vehicle leisurely. One policeman per 50-vehicle queue People are nervous. It’s a huge line…and infrastructure-wise, a deplorable checkpoint.

A police official in Kosovo, some days earlier, told me how they are having problems with managing long lines of vehicles in Merdare checkpoint because of the negligence on the Serbian side, with the latter considering this as a mere checkpoint, rather than a border, which would normally require more attention and staff engagement. It distracts both officials and passengers he said.

In the next scene, I am the only one outside of the van, waiting at the police hut. Reason: I’ve got an UNMIK travel doc.

No worry, I tell myself. It’s all arranged. It really is. I’ve got no problem. But if you read the arrangement letter for the border-crossing, (for those with UNMIK travel docs), you get a reality facial. Kosovo is politely under Serbian sovreingty. And that’s nicely put. Mr. Ferizi will cross the administrative line… from the territory of Kosovo… to Serbia proper…

In the end, I don’t have time to care, but, in fact, I cannot afford to care. I need to go thru, and stop in, Serbia if I want to finish my job. The shortest and cheapest way to go to Berlin also, where from I’ll extend my research, starting next week.

Otherwise, if I wanted to avoid Serbia, I’d have to get in a bus with 100 people (travel agency craziness), stand or stretch in stairs along the entire way, as it happened to my brother who traveled back to Germany taking a route which doesn’t go thru Serbia.

In the end I arrive. I always liked the city of Belgrade. It’s got an attitude, no matter the stains history left on it. Bogi is unfazed by the 7-hour drive and more than 15 ins and outs and attending to everybody’s comfort. He will go back to Prishtina and continue his business.

However anonymous or apolitical Bogi as a person might be, he’s serving a politically over-toned human right, that is freedom of movement. The most talked-about issue of post-war Kosovo. A fundamental right that is being sanctioned for political reasons for hundreds of minorities in Kosovo.

But then I turn the mirror to myself. Bogi is serving to my freedom of movement also. He brought me to Belgrade, from where I’ll leave for Berlin. If it weren’t for Bogi’s business mind, I would hardly have a shuttle minibus to Belgrade. Let alone one which comes and picks me up in the middle of Prishtina, Grand Hotel.