I know an old man in Belgrade who has a zet from Austria who visits Serbia frequently, maybe as often as I have, but while he’s there he rarely leaves the city. I’ve been told that when he’s in town he lives inside his phone and his laptop, and appears to have no interest in the places and people, other than family, around him.
I am, adamantly, an atheist. So is my wife, given her socialist-Yugoslav education, but she's not militant about it the way I am. Completely convinced that there is no omnipotent creator, the stories of Jesus' miraculous birth strike me as too preposterous to merit serious consideration. Celebrating the arrival of the 'Son of God' on December 25th is lost to my Roman Catholic childhood, replaced by ski trips with Torontonian Serbs at Quebec ski resorts.
Crazy hot, weekday, summer afternoon in Belgrade, with stifling humidity and not much in the way of a breeze. I've just climbed aboard bus 56 along Ulica Kneza Miloša. It's packed with sweaty, sticky, and smelly humanity, and the air conditioning appears to be broken. Everyone wears the same worn expression, as if their brains have melted from thinking about the heat. And every single window of the bus is closed.
What a great thing it is to be a srpski zet! To be a Canadian man whose heart found a Serbian girl, to discover the culture that existed during Tito’s Yugoslavia, and to learn all about Serbia, in so many historical, contemporary, cultural, and culinary senses... and through the senses themselves: the colours, the flavours, the sounds, and the scents. I have been, and remain, completely enthralled.
I didn’t really drink coffee before I started travelling to Serbia. In the homecare clinic where I work with nurses and other health professionals, I used to be well-known for having a corner of my office reserved for brewing all sorts of tea. I would promote health and relaxation for overworked people dealing with patients who had difficult problems, and tea is an easy sell in such a milieu. Back in those days, I couldn’t understand the addiction to batch-produced and filtered coffee or the desiccated crystals of instant.
But then with my marriage to a Belgrade girl and the many trips to Serbia that followed, I came across the Ottoman contribution to the history of coffee culture...
Exploring Serbia’s past, Sale found Moesia, and the collision of Roman history with Serbia changed him. For the better!
I didn’t know what to expect when I would have before me a Serbian national park. But then it happened some time ago that my travels took me to the heart of Planina Tara. And it was there, my friends and loyal readers, that this strange mind I have was blown by such marvels as I had never imagined possible.
RAVANICA Monastery, Serbia
French-Canadian who married a girl from Belgrade, has travelled extensively throughout Serbia, makes domaća kafa in his džezva every morning, boasts an impressive cache of village rakija, and sings starogradske pesme in the shower. He’s nuts alright, but most experts believe he’s harmless and might even be beneficial… if taken in small doses.