The entrance of the Technological College at the University of Novi Sad, under blockade.
On the ninth of June I made some rounds with my friend as he took care of the linens and managed the checkouts in the apartments he manages in Novi Sad’s Liman before we sat for a quick coffee and he set off to finish his workday and finally take a well-deserved vacation in Greece. The day was even hotter than the daily hell of sunstroke leading up to it. I gave up on the idea of adding another travel destination to my trip that day, in part because of the heat. The idea of making split-second decisions in an unknown place while hauling my luggage around, which by then included what I feared were too many books and records, while simultaneously suffering heatstroke was unbearable to me. Zagreb, Sarajevo, Kragujevac, Novi Pazar… I’ll see you on the next go-’round.
I took a quiet few days in Novi Sad by myself before returning to Belgrade on the 11th, a Wednesday. I took the opportunity to connect with people in that metropolis one more time before resigning myself to the general thanatos/todestrieb of my home country.
Birth doesn’t end in the maternity ward. May we all one day manifest finally as human beings. Half-dead myself, I say this out of a selfish loneliness.
But that was in the rapidly-diminishing future.
I went to the bookstore and talked to the owner a little, the NIN-award nominated author of a book that has been translated into English as The Club of True Creators. I have not read my copy yet, but the title immediately brings to mind Roberto Bolano’s visceral realists from The Savage Detectives. I picked up a few books that my friend, the musician and author from previous posts, had recommended, and the bookseller recommended a few as well that I bought on the spot. We talked about what was going in with the protests in Serbia, as well as the diminution of my home country’s politics.
That evening I had dinner at the home of my friend and former instructor in a nearby suburb of Novi Sad. They have a nice new place there amid a frenzy of new construction that has been erected without visible signs of support.
Our conversations were animated, and I again came away with the impression that there is both an awareness and a will for a radical change in the government of that country. That night we were awaiting the results of local elections in the early districts at the outskirts of Serbia. We drank Zaječarsko in honor of the districts where the elections were taking place. The results were positive, with the ruling party barely losing due to massive mobilization on the part of people to counter various forms of electoral corruption and vote meddling, such as importing voters from elsewhere who had been falsely registered in the district. It was an infinitesimally narrow victory, but positive from the standpoint of morale. Despite the fact that the ruling party went on TV the next day and said that the minor lead that the opposition took didn’t count, the small victory was a positive development because it meant that something could change after 9 months of protest and student strikes. It showed that something could happen.
I don’t think Americans are as politically aware as the Serbs.
By this point the weather had taken a merciful turn back into springlike temperatures. It was a dream to be in blue jeans again. I would be deterred from shipping any of my books back to the US by high shipping rates, and all that would remain for me would be to pack and get myself back to Belgrade for a few leisurely days in that dream capital before the weekend.
Waiting for the train in Petrovaradin.