8. Belgrade, Novi Sad
Since the Belgrade museums are closed on Monday we went to Novi Sad on the Danube (northern Serbia) and had a normal (in the old sense) day's touring — magnificent Roman Catholic cathedral, ornate Orthodox church, big, solemn synagogue, austere monastery on lovely grounds — led by a guide who sounded like the passionately patriotic Serb we were hoping to hear from. Sounded like. If there were complete sentences we couldn't understand them. We did learn, though, that he was Orthodox and his wife was Croatian Catholic and Novi Sad was a multicultural triumph. He was busting his buttons over everything Novi Sad. And Serbian. And we learned that he had studied "art and museum curating" in the U. S. for a number of years.
I took a short pre-breakfast walk around the hotel that did show me part of Belgrade, a pretty depressing part: a lot of grey Soviet-era buildings going to seed, old streetcars, few smiles on the faces of those going to work, ubiquitous graffiti. Also showed me, again, how easy it is to misunderstand. I see some heavy-duty barriers blocking a street, start to take a picture, and get growled at by two of the many uniformed guys standing around. I think "Soviet-era goons" and then find out when I get back to the hotel that they are dutiful policemen protecting my countrymen. It was the street to the rear of the American embassy — the only embassy that needs such a guard, or such barriers.
By the end of the day I was walking around with a feeling more appropriate to my position — as an enemy. Yes, Americans are the enemy here! Strange feeling. It came to me when our guide said that when he came back from America in 2005 he was removed from his curator job. Apparently he had been associating with the enemy, the people who had bombed his country six years before.
Then Julia, talking about the coming walking tour, said we will visit the bombed buildings the Serbs have left in ruins as memorials, and reminders, and statements: "This is what you did to us. This is what we will remember. " Keep the old resentment going. In the Balkan way. (Remember my mention of the shell-gouges with frames around them, preserved in a gallery? In Dubrovnik?)
Well tomorrow we see Belgrade up close, and the great thing, the great, typical Elderhostel thing, is that the managers of the tour have set up lunch for us with local people, one at least at every table, many of them university students. "Ask them anything you want," said Julia. We can hardly wait.
