A Different Lifetime: Stepping Back in Time in the Former Yugoslavia (8 page)

So in order to secure my
place on the flight to London, I am travelling this morning by bus to Novi Sad,
the capital of Vojvodina, to make my required appearance at the offices of the
Serbian state airline. Once there, I will prove my right to leave the country
and hand over my 450 Dinara in cash to pay for my ticket. To this aim, I have
made my way to the bus station to embark on the only journey outside of the
community that I will likely get to make. It’s a cold, foggy morning, and as
the bus is travelling through the flat, bleak farm lands, I am reminded of
driving through the Fens in eastern England.

Travelling by bus, I am
able to reach Novi Sad in about an hour. I buy a return ticket on the bus, but
the conductor, who speaks no English, indicates by way of mime to me that I
must get the return portion of the ticket stamped on our arrival. This action
is in no way the simple procedure that one might imagine; I attempt to get more
information on our arrival at the city bus station, and luckily for me, the
conductor shows me the way to the booking hall which is located on the far side
of the bus station, and while I wait in the queue, he informs the woman at the
counter what I need.  Now comes the shock! There is a charge of forty-five of
the brightly coloured currency units (Dinara) for stamping my ticket. And as I
am waiting at the counter staring with amazement, a man who is being served at
the next window comments:

“I think it is tax or
something.”

It is a cold day, and
although it is now around eleven in the morning the fog has failed to clear.
Walking along the wide boulevard leading from the bus station, it feels strange
to be in a city after so long in a small community. Even so, there are the
familiar signs of economic depression everywhere, just the same as in Novaginja.
Buildings have the familiar signs of crumbling mortar, and here there are even
people begging at the side of the street. The wide boulevards appear to be
remnants from another time when the region must have been prosperous. Now the
boulevards are lined with ugly apartment blocks that tower over the city,
standing twelve floors above the street. For some reason, I do not have that
same peaceful feeling as I feel when I’m walking through Novaginja.

But I continue to walk for
around thirty minutes, turning to the left at the flea market and then to the
right at the edge of the city centre. I pass the Vojvodina Parliament building
and a large park, and then on the right, I finally come to the local airline
office. The interior of the office is, I imagine, typical of the way a
government department in a communist country was supposed to look: plain white
walls, a selection of plain, basic but functional tables and chairs arranged
behind the counter, and unsmiling though not unfriendly staff. This is a feeling
similar to the one I had experienced on my first visit to the Novaginja post
office. Collecting my ticket is, however, quite effortless after all, although
I do have to wait on some translation from the only English speaking person in
the office. And now with the cash handed over and my ticket safely placed in my
pocket, I have around two hours to kill before the bus departs for my return
journey to Novaginja.

This is good news; I have
some time to explore the city; so stepping out on to the street, I decide to
keep on walking further along the boulevard, beyond the airline office, and
finally end up on the bank of the River Danube. Everything looks bleak, and I’m
sure the fog does not help this impression. The water front is quite desolate:
no people, just a certain amount of traffic passing, but nothing on the river
save a few boats moored to the embankment. I look out over the river but the
fog prevents me from seeing across to the other side. I can just make out the
turrets, rising up out of the water, which once supported one of one of many
bridges that no longer exist. And as I walk along the river bank, I encounter
posters displaying four or five bridges in their former glory, which evidently
were destroyed by allied bombing of the city. It seems hard to imagine that not
too long ago the Yugoslav populations were involved in civil war, but I had
understood that the fighting did not actually take place in this somewhat
obscure region in the extreme north of the country. So why planes had destroyed
the Danube bridges is a mystery, but judging by the number of enormous posters
that retell the event, it is something that the city’s inhabitants are not at
all happy about.

I decided I would turn
away from the bleakness of the river front and head back towards the city
centre taking the road that follows along the far side of the park from the
airline offices. The street is lined by many once magnificent houses, each four
or five floors high and painted in a variety of colours, which like the
bridges, also exhibit signs of apparent bomb damage.

After passing the park,
the street led me into a pedestrian only shopping area at the edge of the
centre. The city centre exhibits a much brighter and cheerier atmosphere than
the area around the Danube. The shopping precinct houses a mixture of small and
medium size shops, and Christmas lights are strung across the thoroughfares,
although they are not illuminated at this time. There are only a few people
either walking or shopping today, perhaps it is because of the incredibly cold
weather. By now, I am beginning to feel hungry, and as I reach the large square
that marks the centre of the city I am relieved to see a McDonald’s sign. I
would never have believed that I would be glad to see McDonald’s; perhaps it’s being
in the city, or perhaps it’s just nice to see something familiar. A hot cup of
coffee is most inviting on such a cold day, and the food is a welcome change!
The small cardboard cup of coffee is quite strong and refreshing, and the
McRoyal (quarter pounder to those more familiar with the imperial system) is
quite different to the expected formula; slices of cucumber replace the
familiar pickle slices and the sauce seems more spicy than usual, but on the
whole, it seems like an improvement.

After eating, I determine
that I should start to make my way back toward the bus station. Leaving the
pedestrian area I have to cross the busy main traffic thoroughfare around the
centre in order to turn right on to the boulevard. The traffic signals, though
not visibly displaying lights to inform pedestrians when to cross, begin to
blare out some words in Serbian that are totally incomprehensible to me; but
people begin to move, so I assume that this is my cue and hasten across safely
in the centre of the crowd.

I make my way along the
wide boulevard in the direction of the bus station, but finding that I still
have a fair amount of time left turn into the flea market; here I discover a
maze of very narrow walkways lined with masses of fruit, vegetables, meat, and
cheap clothing. In fact this is a hive of activity; there are more people here
than I have seen at any other place all day.

The prevailing weather
conditions are now making the air bitter cold, so I decide to stop a little
further along the boulevard for another coffee, this time at a typical local
café. So after stepping inside, I make myself comfortable at one of the small
wooden tables.

“Domestic, espresso, or
Nescafé,” enquires the waiter.

“Nescafé,” I reply,
considering that this might prove to be the largest of the three.

“Hot or cold,” he adds.

“Hot,” I answer, wondering
if anyone would really want cold coffee on a day like today.

The small mug that is
deposited at my table is, however, somewhat of a disappointment. Two-thirds of
the mug contains instant coffee, while the remainder is made up of thick froth,
but worse of all, it is lukewarm. And after spending several minutes devouring
this mixture, I decide to continue my walk to the bus station.

With still forty-five
minutes to wait, I head for the warmth of the booking hall and sit on one of
the many benches, watching out of the window for a glimpse of my bus to arrive.
Around fifteen minutes before the departure time, and still not seeing my bus,
I began to make my way to the departure area, handing my stamped return ticket
to the man at the barrier. Several times I attempt to ask the man which bay
number I should wait at, but he appears to speak no English and rudely gestures
for me to keep moving.

It is true to say that in
my few hours of being in Novi Sad I have not experienced the warm hospitality
that I have found in Novaginja. Perhaps it is that same experience you find
when you are a stranger in any large city. And maybe the cold, bleak, foggy day
increases this feeling of alienation. But there is a certain abruptness, maybe
even rudeness, in the way people are responding to me that I have not
experienced before. And perhaps there is an understandable antipathy toward
westerners that stems from the destruction of the bridges.

These thoughts leave me
lost in a crowded departure area that is now getting really busy; buses are
constantly entering and leaving, while more and more passengers are filing
through the barrier. I try asking other passengers for information; I purposely
single out younger people in the hope that they will know some English.

“Do you speak English,” I
continually ask, and

“No we don’t,” is the
repeated answer.

The only people willing to
try to point me in the right direction are school children, who seem more than
happy to speak to me in English. But it is now getting dangerously close to
departure time.

 Suddenly, I happen upon a
young woman wearing a badge, who I feel sure must be something to do with the
bus station. Of course she also tells me that she doesn’t speak English, but on
hearing me mention my destination, suddenly she remembers some.  Miraculously,
she turns out to be the conductor of my bus, so luckily, I am able to make it
on board with a just a few minutes to spare; well it would be a few minutes
wait had the bus not departed two minutes early. It is completely by luck that
I have managed to be on board this bus; had it not been by a chance encounter
with the conductress I would have missed it. I would not have recognised it; it
looks nothing like the bus I had ridden on earlier: it is not the familiar blue
like all buses I have seen in Novaginja, but pink with a different company name
on the side. And of course, there is no indication on the vehicle itself or at
the bus station to signify its destination.

But the return journey
goes by smoothly and I’m soon glad to find myself back in Novaginja. As I exit
the bus, I see my student, Philmore, waiting to board.

“Have you been to Novi
Sad?” he asks. “How did you like it? Did you see the castle on the side of the
river across from the city?”

“Well actually I wasn’t
able to see very much,” I reply, “it was very cold and very foggy. I wasn’t
able to see across to the other side of the river at all.”

“That’s a pity, the castle
is where I am going to sing,” he says as he disappears into the bus.

Now that I am committed to
leaving, all that remains is for me to wait out these last couple of weeks and
hope that Arkom will pay me my salary. The classes proceed as usual; the
students seem unaware that I will be leaving. Arkom has taken over the ladies’
class as he has threatened to do. But of course, I have begun to worry that
this will be just another ruse to cut my December salary.

Just as I’m
about to leave, I’m beginning to finally feel like I’m part of the community; I
suppose that it takes time to get to know people and to become accepted, and
now I’m beginning to wish I could stay longer. Everyone now seems to know me,
even the many non-English speakers. The people who work in the shops are always
pleased to see me. When I go into the bakers’ shop, the woman who works there,
who speaks no English at all, recognises me and takes one of the types of
loaves that I buy from the shelf and begins to wrap it when she sees me coming.
Next door at the grocers’ the two women who serve there, though neither speak
English, always greet me and find some of the things that they know I buy:
often they will hold up one of the five litre bottles of drinking water that I
regularly purchase – which strangely increases in price from week to week,
although I really cannot complain about any of the prices here. I do, however,
change my brand of drinking water from time to time, but of course a week later
the new brand becomes the more expensive one (though not of course the fault of
the shop ladies). And next door at the greengrocers’ where Lenna’s cousin
works, it is usual for me as I enter the shop to hear his voice boom out:

 “Hyelloooooow
teeeacher!”

It is also at
the greengrocers’ that Andora works. She is a woman whom I met at Arkom’s
party. She speaks excellent English, even if she says she doesn’t, which she
tells me she learnt at school. In my time in Novaginja, if I have made one good
friend, it is Andora. Andora is always there to help me whenever I go into the
shop and she is most pleasing, asking me what I would like, and eagerly
translating for me. I always ask her for breakfast cereal by size:

“Will this be
enough,” she asks, scooping up the cereal and placing it into a brown paper bag.

“A little
more,” I reply.

One day when
Arkom is in the shop he feels obliged to correct me in this.

“You have to
ask for it by weight,” he says, slightly raising his voice, which causes Andora
to laugh.

“Oh I always
buy it this way,” I explain, “I know by sight how much cereal I need to last
the week.”

“It’s fine,”
Andora adds, looking over at Arkom, “we always do this.”

Unfortunately
Arkom seems a little annoyed that I haven’t followed his directions and
proceeds to the door; I hope this will not cause some other disagreement, but
he never mentions it again. 

 I have by
now, gotten to know of Andora’s enthusiasm to learn to write in English. Her
spoken English is apparently better than her ability to write. Her eagerness to
learn has inspired an exchange between us: I will teach her English and she
will teach me some Serbian.

Andora is
around five feet four inches tall; her complexion is dusky, she has a thick
mane of black hair, and she wears dark rimmed glasses. Despite her dark
appearance, she is not a native of Novaginja; she is in fact from Hungary, and
Hungarian is her first language. After a few weeks of meeting in the
greengrocer’s and discussing the mutual exchange of languages, Andora has
decided she will come to my flat at five o’ clock on Saturday, after work.              At
a few minutes after five, I heard the doorbell ring; it is Andora armed with
coffee, pretzels and biscuits.

“Why do you
lock your door?” she exclaims with amazement.

As she enters
the hallway, she begins to remove her shoes.

“It’s what we
do in our homes,” she says.

I took her
coat and assured her that the removal of her shoes was unnecessary, and we made
our way to the living room. Sitting on the sofa, she handed me the gifts,
saying: 

 “It’s our
custom, when we go to someone’s home.” 

I thanked her
appreciatively.

“Would you
like some coffee,” I enquired.

“No, I don’t
drink coffee, thank you,” she replies, “but I thought you would like it.”

“Do you often
watch that channel?” she asks as I’m turning off the TV.

“Oh, I watch
whichever channel is showing a programme in English,” which is entirely true –
I have no preference.

“I never watch
that channel,” she adds, telling me that she does not like it because of the
poor quality of the folk singing programmes and because of the costumes that
the singers wear. Later I discover that she doesn’t watch a lot of Serbian
television; she prefers instead to watch the Hungarian and Croatian programmes.
         This first meeting consists mainly of conversation about ourselves.
She tells me something of her life, how she had learnt English at school but
had not had much opportunity to use it since then. She appears to have
remembered well. She tells me where she lives and we exchange addresses and
phone numbers; that is to say her address, of course it had not been necessary
to tell her where I lived – everyone knows that.

She adds that
she had spent part of her childhood living on the street in which my apartment
is located; in fact her parents still live here, and she tells me that she has
a four year old son called Hectar. And now I proceed to tell her about life in
England and America.

“I have a
relation who lives in Canada,” she says, “but I don’t know him well.”

I’m beginning
to wonder if this could be the same person, the brother of ‘Canada’ whom I’d
met at Arkom’s party. 

“How many
people could have escaped this tiny community and wound up in Canada,” I
thought to myself. But I decided not to ask any questions.

I happened to
have a text book from one of my classes at the apartment, so after we had been
talking for a while, I invited Andora to read from it in order that I could
determine her level of English. She actually read very well and was able to
complete many of the exercises. But as her main objective is to improve her
writing ability, we continued with her writing a few test sentences and some
words that she had requested the spelling for in her notebook. It seems that
because the pronunciation of certain letters in Serbian is different to English
it is difficult for her to convert the sounds of spoken English into its
written form. But by now, an hour and a half has passed and she needs to leave
to pick up Hectar from her parents’ house. So I see her to the door, and she
tells me she would call me soon.

If there is
one good thing that I can tell you about the Novaginjians, it is that they are
friendly people. Even Arkom, with his relentless trying to reduce my salary has
on one occasion come out in the snow to help me make a phone call to my family.
And then there is the time, one Saturday evening, when Arkom showed up at my
apartment. As I opened the door, he exclaimed:

“Why are you
locking your door?”

This is now
becoming a predictable response from whoever comes to my door. I realise there
is a level of honesty here that I have previously not encountered, but even so,
I feel somewhat uneasy about being at the mercy of intruders, even if there
aren’t any! I don’t believe I ever discovered the reason for Arkom’s visit;
however, he decided to sit down and watch a live English football match on TV
and drink a couple of beers with me. Well, here is Arkom again being my friend;
of course it’s the weekend and he’s away from the responsibilities of work – no
call for haggling over money right now.

And there was
one other time in the not so distant past when Arkom had come to my door on a
Saturday morning to take me with him to a supermarket in the community across
the river from Novaginjia.

“This is a big
supermarket,” he had said.

And yes it
was, still small by western standards, but the largest I’d seen here in
Vojvodina. It sold virtually everything. It included a butcher’s at which Arkom
translated my order.

A few days
later Andora called to invite me to her house for tea one afternoon the
following week – she would give me some directions next time I went to the
greengrocer’s. I had by now, walked quite extensively within the borders of
Novaginjia and when she wrote down her address and a few directions on the back
of a till receipt and told me it was the first road that you pass when entering
the community, I instantly knew where to go. I had been walking in that area
recently, along the bank of the channel, and Andora’s street would run parallel
to the channel.

It was decided
that I should be there at five o’ clock on Saturday, so at around four-thirty I
headed out towards the river. It is a cold, foggy evening, and the fog coming
off of the river is greatly reducing visibility: perhaps not the best of
evenings to go out walking. I follow the esplanade in the direction of the
school and continue along the top of the flood bank until I reach the stadium.
This I consider is the fastest way to get there; I have a map of Novaginjia
which I printed from the school’s computer, and on studying the map have
concluded that following the river will cut quite some distance off of taking
the road through the town. I had taken this route before to the channel, and if
I follow the winding road that accesses the stadium, and then take the turning
to the left immediately after the stadium, it will take me directly to the
petrol station opposite Andora’s street.

Turning into
Andora’s street, I am confronted with a distinct smell of a farmyard and of
pigs: something I have encountered many times when walking around the
perimeters of the community.  I begin to look for the house numbers, but the
street is very dark. I’m not sure why I’m starting to feel a little uneasy
about this, but I feel I should continue. After walking half way along the
street I discover the appropriate house number on my right.  Opening the gate,
I proceed to knock at the door. An elderly couple answer; they don’t speak any
English, and when I ask for Andora they look perplexed. Luckily, I have the
piece of paper in my back pocket on which Andora has written her address. I
show them the paper and the woman says something that I don’t understand while
pointing at another door at the far end of the building. They swiftly close
their door before I can thank them: again I’m beginning to feel uneasy, but
decide I should continue.

“Maybe they
were in a hurry to close the door because of the cold,” I mused, “and maybe it’s
just being out on such a cold, dark night that makes everything seem so
forbidding.”

Indeed, on my
reaching the second door all is well; Andora answers and invites me in. She
leads me into her living room and directs me to sit on the sofa.

“Oh, should I
have taken my shoes off,” I ask, remembering her gesture when visiting my
apartment.

“No, that is
alright,” she replied.

Andora’s home
is nice and warm and comfortable. She has biscuits and crisps laid out on the
table and she has bought a packet of Indian tea: one of the products I
regularly purchase at the greengrocer’s. Andora has never used black tea
before, so she first needs to ask me how to make it.

After a few
minutes, and just in time for tea, her cousin, also from Hungary, and his wife
arrive, which contributes to an evening of interesting conversation. He tells
me that he has spent a good part of his life growing up in East Germany and
that his mother still resides there; however, now that Germany is part of the
European Union, it is very difficult for him to visit. We also talk about various
places he has travelled to; he has somehow managed to do some travelling in the
Mediterranean area. His wife, on the other hand, is not so openly talkative,
and speaks only a handful of words during the course of the evening; I presume
this is because her command of English is not as great as her husband’s. On the
other hand, Hectar is continually bringing me things, wanting to hear the name
in English, which he instantly repeats.

After a while,
Andora produced a couple of bottles of beer from the cupboard: one for me and
one for her cousin. To follow this, her cousin produced a bottle of clear
liquid: I remember this; this is the ‘fire-water’ that I had tasted when I
first arrived in the community. The conversation now turned to Hungary, and
Andora began to explain about the restrictions that were imposed on them since
Hungary was now in the E.U. They are now still able to cross the border to
visit family, but the number of days they can stay is now restricted: I had
heard similar accounts from other people who have family in Hungary and
Croatia.

It had been an
interesting evening. Andora’s cousin and his wife left around eight o’clock,
while I remained talking for a few more minutes. Andora was interested to know
why I was leaving Novaginja. I had briefly mentioned the news when I had last
called at the greengrocer’s. Of course, this meant that our idea of teaching
each other our respective languages would not materialise. But I would still
need her help with some Serbian. I intended to get my hair cut before leaving
but I would have no idea of how to ask for that or know what words to say to
describe how I wanted it cut.

“Could you
write the words down on paper for me,” I asked, “then I could show the paper to
the hairdresser.”

“No, don’t
worry about it,” she said,

“My friend is
a hairdresser, and I will call her and arrange it for you.”