Retrospective Statement

          My first exposure to the Balkans came to me in the form of a young man in my mathematics class during my senior year of high school. Borah High was not an overly populated school, and I immediately noticed the new face sitting next to me. Vladimir was introduced to us as an exchange student and Mr. Wilde, despite his best efforts, obviously slaughtered the pronunciation of Vladimir's last name and the name of his hometown. My curiosity got of the best of me and I had soon drawn this aloof stranger into a reluctant conversation. It took me several days to gain his full confidence, as he was struggling with English and his proud bearing could not stand the embarrassment of speaking in extended phrases. I finally convinced him that I was non-judgmental and in fact willing to help him with his language skills. With his acceptance that I was sincerely interested in his background, his spiel was lengthy and involved. I understood almost nothing of what he was saying. The problem was not with his English nor with mine, rather, sadly enough, I lacked the geography and worldly frame of reference that would allow me to grasp his story. I learned that he was a refugee from Sarajevo and I had no idea where that was or what had started the war that drove him from his home. I admit that I had a vague idea of where Sarajevo was: I knew it was somewhere between Germany and Israel. I had honestly never even heard of his language; I knew of no writers or artists from his country. I simply knew who Tito was and that Yugoslavia had been somewhere in between the Soviet Block and Our Block during the Cold War. I was frustrated at every attempt to find some tidbit of information that I had in common with him. He had plenty in common with me, as culture is America's largest export. My lofty notion that I was an educated senior, one year too far away from being unleashed into the big world, was mortally wounded.

          Vladimir and I, nonetheless, became fast friends and I was true to my word: I helped him with his English. I tried to persuade him to teach me some Serbo-Croatian, but he seemed to be trying to forget Yugoslavia completely and my success was limited. Our friendship was able to weather my lack of knowledge of current events in the Balkans, but our personal experiences could not have been more vastly different. I had no means of understanding what war and flight were like. He was in a foreign country, his parents and all he had known his entire life locked up in a nasty siege thousands of miles away, and the nightly news was his only link to the disintegration of his hometown...

          It made me angry that there was a whole world east of Germany and west of Israel that I knew so little about. Over the course of our senior year, I did what I could to catch up on current events in the Balkans so that I could have an intelligent conversation with Vladimir and other refugees that ended up in my little high school, but the complexity of the situation was daunting. I knew my European history, but somehow, Europe had never included Eastern Europe. Those were the countries that had been little pawns throughout history, always on the periphery if they were mentioned at all. Later, they had all been under the kind and tender guidance of the Soviet Union, so they never became nations with their own character to me. Then I met a person from the most intriguing country among these pawns; my meeting with Vladimir was a watershed.

          I had discovered early in junior high school that I had a passion for languages and I knew that it was just a matter of selecting which language to concentrate on in college. During my senior year my mind turned to Serbo-Croatian as a possibility, and later it became a challenge that I was determined to meet. The more I learned about the Balkans and the republics of former Yugoslavia, the more questions I had. By the time I graduated high school, I was absolutely certain in my mind: I would study Serbo-Croatian and the history and culture of former Yugoslavia. I selected a university and began my studies, including Russian area studies as a secondary interest, as one must diversify these days to optimize your market value as a worker.

          The next phase of my journey seemed hopeless at first. I was in search of an interdisciplinary program that would offer me the opportunity to focus on Russia and South Slavic nations (namely those of former Yugoslavia). The Individualized Major Program came to my attention at an academic fair during my third semester at IU, and I jumped at the chance to choose my own adventure, because the other options available to me were simply unsatisfactorily narrow. I must remark on the vital importance the IMP had in my successful bid to fill my academic dreams. During my first year at Indiana University, it seemed too much to ask to approach the object of my interest in an interdisciplinary manner. I was foiled on two counts: one, I had chosen an obscure area (for an undergraduate at least) and two, I wanted to explore Yugoslavia and Russia with a "whole country" approach. To me, it seemed most effective to investigate language, history, and culture together, as these elements are inextricably interdependent and interlaced. The IMP allowed me the freedom to structure my own program, and to fulfil my own quirks and hopes. Yet it also offered me the guidance to sculpt the very best program possible, with my committee members and the faculty of the IMP bringing the voice of experience to my program. They suggested changes and pointed out shortcomings when I was too busy wearing rose-colored glasses (excited at the mere prospect of doing exactly what I wanted to do) to see them myself. I can say with full confidence that the IMP not only saved my academic career at IU, it also brightened it and brought it to new heights that I had scarcely thought possible. Here I am referring to my seven month stay in Belgrade, Serbia.

          Once it had occurred to me that the sky was the limit with the IMP, as long as my aspirations were logically connected to my course of study and in good taste, the dream of studying in Serbia became a reality. I formulated a plan to go to Serbia to do research for my final IMP project. Rima Merriman was my savior throughout the grueling process of making arrangements for the trip. Though my desire to go to Serbia never wavered, a plethora of tiny crises and several large, lumbering crises threatened my success. I would appear unannounced, weary and discouraged, in Rima's office and often she would drop her own projects and listen to my problem du jour. When I would run into something seemingly insurmountable, she would usually solve it in minutes, always with a smile and a kind word of encouragement. She was always rooting for me and she took care of every request and problem with grace. Nancy was also invaluable to me. She never complained when she had to send me a certain message repeatedly because I couldn't figure out my new electronic mail account and she followed up on each and every detail with perseverance and politeness. Ray Hedin came to the IMP toward the end of my program but I can tell you I was immediately impressed by his open, friendly manner. He hosted a luncheon at his beautiful home for all the students of the IMP the spring before I went to Belgrade and it was exciting to finally have a forum with other student like myself. He opened the lines of communication among students in the IMP and made it possible, with this and other programs, for us to feel a sense of solidarity.

          With this personable and dedicated group of people supporting me, I found funding for my trip, I meticulously planned my academic pursuits during my stay in Serbia, and I arranged to receive credit for my studies in Serbia. My sponsors, Drs. Rakic and Cooper, went that extra mile in every instance. The are most deserving of my gratefulness and my thanks for their patience as I struggled to define my academic program in Serbia and for their kind attention to every signature, letter, and conference I asked of them. Most importantly, I am grateful for the knowledge they shared with me. They are the two of the finest teachers I have ever had the pleasure studying with and I can only hope to find fraction of such quality scholarship and dedication in my graduate studies.

          Finally, with all of my little ducks in a row and most of my coursework completed, I bought my plane ticket in August 1998. I was on my way. I landed in Belgrade, Yugoslavia on September 30, 1998 in the late afternoon. I had postponed my trip due to the escalating trouble in a southern region of Serbia, due to a little flash point called Kosovo. Finally, I decided to go despite the troubles in Kosovo, my argument being that Kosovo was not Belgrade and that NATO, being the lovely collection of the most civilized, intelligent and advanced nations on earth that it is, would ever condescend to bomb Yugoslavia.

          My host family was absolutely marvelous! The were funny, thoughtful and very accepting. The mother spoke only Serbian, so my language skills quickly sharpened in conversation with her. However, the two "kids" in the family (both of them near my age) spoke perfect English so I never felt isolated as I had feared. They were a refugee family from Croatia living in Belgrade and the seven years since the war had been very hard ones for them economically, emotionally, and politically. They lived in a suburb of Belgrade, about two hours by bus from the center of the city. Their neighborhood was essentially populated by refugee families and Gypsies. It was semi-rural and many people kept animals and gardens on their small plots. The streets were not paved and huge mud bogs would develop with the rains. The plumbing was questionable and the heat was from a single wood stove in the main sitting room. One street over from ours there was a Gypsy street, a very unusual experience for a girl from Idaho. My two months in Borca were very charming and educational. Borca had character and is was indicative of the real economic and spiritual status of the country: the people were struggling to survive and they had been doing so for almost a decade. That constant struggle can tax morale and sap even the strongest. The people worked hard and had very little in return. I concede that perhaps my impressions of Borca were "charming" because I knew had the means to leave at any time. The rest of the people were there because their circumstances dictated it. When local children would talk to me, their first question was always "Is everyone in America rich?" It was sobering and it made me appreciate what I have even more. Post-Belgrade, I spend a lot less time lamenting what I do not have. In Borca, I got to see a side of Serbian life that is very real and very different from the cosmopolitan atmosphere in Belgrade itself, but I also learned something about myself.

          In late November we moved downtown. It was only after we searched for a month and a half that we found something suitable. It was during this hunt, using the over-crowded and sporadic bus system, that I realized exactly how huge Belgrade really was. We took an apartment ten minuets by foot from the center of Belgrade, Trg Republike. Despite the rent increase, it was still very cheap for me. From Borca to the center of Belgrade, the difference was like night and day. We lived on the eleventh floor of a high rise apartment complex. The view was beautiful and we were so close to everything! There was a large (by Serbian standards) grocery store on the bottom floor of the apartment building and my favorite restaurant was five minutes away. The theatre was close, the university was in our backyard, everything was at our fingertips. In the suburb, the two-hour bus ride into town was a definite deterrent if your business wasn't pressing, so I found that I didn't visit the city very often.

          My language was improving rapidly, but I still felt a lot of hesitation and reservation when I spoke. I decided to travel to the monument sites I had selected for my thesis that were out of the Belgrade in the spring, so that I would have a chance to better my language skills in the meantime. In the fall I did a lot of reading, I scoured book stores for useful sources for my final project, and I met with my language tutor, translating and practicing spoken Serbian. I also visited the sites relevant to my final project that were in Belgrade. In the end, I narrowed the scope of my IMP final project considerably because I was so overwhelmed by the sheer number of sources on the topics I first proposed to cover. I decided to focus on the Filipovic statue and Memorial Park because they illustrated my thesis best and there was a wealth of information available on those two subjects that was easily accessible and navigable. I had originally planned to include many more monuments and museums in my discussion of Serbian historical consciousness, but as my research unfolded, I realized I had bitten off more than I could chew. My original planned study would have made an excellent book, but my time and skills were more geared toward a modest research paper. I struggled with the fact that I had so many sources and so little time. I came up with several versions of my final project before I left Belgrade, none of which I was overly fond, and finally, I gave up graduation in the spring of 1999 in lieu of taking a little more time to wade through the material I had collected and to produce a thesis I was truly proud of. My plans to graduate in May 1999 were also damaged by a loss of concentration and depression brought on by some rather unpleasant developments in Serbia toward the end of my stay, but let us not pull ahead of ourselves.

          My time in Belgrade was magical. I was untouched by the desperate economic situation and I had a few special opportunities presented to me because I was American. My host sister taught English in a junior high school and she invited me several times to her classes, as did other teachers. I did little talks about Halloween in America, Ireland (my father was born in Ireland), and I answered questions and gave the children a chance to practice their English. I also spent a lot of time with Vladimir's parents. They are well off and live in a lovely neighborhood in the hills to the south of the city. Vladimir's father has a job with a film production company and one of the highlights of my time in Belgrade was my attendance of the world premier of Emir Kusturica's most recent film Black Cat, White Cat at the Sava Center on October 16, 1998. I first learned of Kusturica from Vladimir but in high school his films did not impress me to any great degree. It was at IU, in Professor Kizeria's course on Eastern European cinema, that I first fell in love with Kustirica's work. He quickly became one of my favorite directors and I was in heaven at the premier. As the film came to an end, I was speechless and stunned (it is his best to date). Then came the real treat! I almost missed the gist of my surprise because I wasn't concentrating on the Serbian around me, I was still thinking about the film. We were to attend the post-premier dinner to be held in Kusturica's honor! Kusturica was actually a personal friend of Vladimir's parents! It was only after we passed the bridge that would take us back into the city that I realized we weren't going home. I started asking questions and discovered our destination. (They had already told me about my surprise and were a little shocked when I didn't react. We all laughed about it later.) I sat in quiet awe for the rest of the forty-five minute car ride. The dinner was fabulous and I met Kusturica; I sat a few feet away from him for eight hours. It was great! The Gypsy band that preformed in his popular movie Underground played various pieces from his films all night long and everyone was singing and dancing. I only wish I had been a little less in shock so I could have said something fairly intelligent when he addressed me...

          I spent my winter break travelling through Croatia, Slovenia and Italy. It was fascinating to see how the former republics of Yugoslavia compared to each other and to hear the differences in language. Slovenian is a completely distinct language from Serbo-Croatian and hearing it tickled me. It sounded to me like a Frenchman speaking grammatically poor Serbo-Croatian. Figuring out the road signs in Slovenia was like doing a crossword puzzle and jumble at the same time, as it does have many characteristics in common with Serbo-Croatian. Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, was breathtaking. I was also delighted to see that it was decorated for the Christmas holiday and that stores were selling Christmas goods. This was not the case in Serbia, where the religious holidays are still calculated using the Julian calendar and Christmas falls in January. There is also very little, if any, commercial fuss over Christmas in Serbia. In fact, the favorite pastime of the mischievous in Belgrade during the holidays is to light firecrackers under the feet of unsuspecting poor souls waiting for the bus. A rather morbid occupation for a country that just emerged from a civil war, but I admit it drew a few good laughs from me. I thought the lack of the American commercial avalanche around Christmas in Serbia would be refreshing, and it was, but I was still touched by Zagreb's subdued and flattering decorations.

          The train deposited me in Padua, Italy at 11:25 p.m. on Christmas Eve and I was able to make my way to a church for midnight Mass in fulfillment of my promise to my father before I left. He was very excited that I would be so close to Italy during my stay in Serbia that he extracted a promise from me that I would attend midnight Mass in Rome. I called him from Slovenia and begged him to amend his wishes because I had decided I didn't want to waste three days (roundtrip) on a train. A good Catholic he is, but he is an even better father and he graciously granted my request. Italy exceeded all my expectations. It was an unforgettable experience and it only strengthened my resolve to spend a good chunk of time there before I see the end of my golden years. I did not know one word of Italian and every time I wanted to express myself, Serbian would come out. I guess that my little brain thought that if it did not know this Italian language that any old foreign language would suffice. It was in this manner that I discovered I had learned a lot more Serbian than I thought.

          On my return trip to Serbia, I stayed a few days in Vukovar, my host family's hometown. The images I saw there are burned into my memory and they affected me deeply. I felt like I had swallowed a quart of acid as I walked through the ruins of what was once a city. My stomach churned and I spent a lot of time just watching the pace of everyday life. The people were trying to move on but it seemed that their stubborn surroundings would not cooperate. One of the most poignant pictures I have ever taken was of a woman in Vukovar who had set up an extensive display of gorgeous flowers to sell on the sidewalk in front of a bombed-out, charred, wreck of a building. To balance out this grave experience, I came to a long-awaited turning point in Vukovar while playing cards with a group of elderly young ladies (one of whom was my host grandmother). I found my Serbian tongue! I was not able to speak overnight, but that afternoon of cards certainly opened a new channel in my brain. Perhaps I just found my courage, perhaps I was lulled into comfort by the fact the no one in the lovely company I was keeping that afternoon used complete, grammatical sentence. These ladies had developed a "shorthand" over the years and full sentences were not necessary. In any case, something clicked in my head, and everyone noticed a significant improvement in my Serbian when I returned to Belgrade and the trend continued until I left. I had finally found a semblance of fluency.

          There was also a darker side to my time in Belgrade and those experiences shaped me just as much as, if not more than, the academic and social pursuits I have described so far. On October 1, 1998, late in the afternoon, NATO first seriously threatened to bomb Yugoslavia. This was two days after I arrived. For about thirty hours, my life was chaos. I still couldn't understand the Serbian language on the radio at that early point (they spoke too quickly) and I got all of my news secondhand. The members of my host family were long-time veterans of political upheaval, having escaped Vukovar, Croatia a few days before the Serbian and Croatian armies laid it to waste in 1991. They explained the gravity of the situation to me. I realized with their words that the trip I had put so much energy and hope into might end before it began. They told me that I would be welcome to flee with them back to Vukovar if bombing began. It seemed bitterly ironic to me, a family making plans to return to their destroyed city, to an apartment without electricity and only occasionally running water, to be "safe" from bombs. Heavy artillery had left its ugly scars on their apartment in Vukovar. It was as if no matter where these people ran, they were in danger from one nation or another. I agreed that I would go to Croatia with them if bombing began, but I wanted so badly to stay in Serbia. My research and all my plans had been structured around my presence in Serbia. Every hour we listened to the radio news and we all spent an uneasy night.

(click to continue)