02 January 2005
Serbia
After a very 'local' English Christmas, a trip to the ex-Yugoslavia to give a paper on Sartre (who else?) at a conference on post-Marxism in Belgrade. A strange city. We read the only tourist guide (published last year). It begins: 'Belgrade is historically the most destroyed city in Europe'. The orthodox churches have been rebuilt with modern materials, though the icons are peeling with age.
Many significant buildings still lie in NATO-bomb-shaped tatters, particularly on the entrance to the city (the ex-army headquarters, major ministries). But new money flows freely through the main pedestrianised streets, where monuments and dedications to the French glitter ostentatiously and ludicrously thin women (as style, not penury, dictates) stroll confidently from shop to shop. People smoke in bookshops.
Someone tells me the average income for a university professor is 200 Euros a month, but clothes are as expensive there as London, where incomes are ten times higher at least. Food and drink is cheap, of course: it's heavy, mostly meat and cheese. The typical wine - slatkovino - is sickly sweet, and tastes like a combination of watered down port, cheap wine and cherry brandy. It gives you an instant headache.
The conference was held at the anti-Milosevic 'Centre for Cultural Decontamination' in Belgrade (logo: two gas masks nuzzling together). Attendance: anarchists, communists, at least one spy, the intellectually wayward and post-marxists of all kinds. We make it on to Belgrade's Radio 2, and speakers get asked odd questions about the state of sociology and anti-intellectualism in the current climes. We wonder whether they're going to cut up the recordings and change the questions: 'So, what is your opinion of Milosevic?' 'Well (fuzz...pause), I...am (cut)...certain that (click) he was correct (high-pitched squeal) in his analysis of the needs of (click...buzz. Pause) Ser (whirring noise)...b...ia...'.
We go clubbing. We get there at 12.30pm, and even then it's too early (we note that Serbian nightlife runs on cheap ecstacy and chewing gum). It fills up. It gets packed. I try not to wonder where the fire exits are. People are intensely pale with angelic cheekbones, apart from the mafiosi-type men, who are gargantuan, shaven-headed, and all wear the same kind of black leather jacket. It's pretty hardcore, but they bring us lots of drinks 'cos we speak nice English and (they presume) we have lots of money. We probably do, relatively.
I get really ill on the flight back with Austrian Airlines (what's German for 'I'm sorry, I have soiled your pristine sick-bag'?). I think that Thomas Bernhard would have been proud of me, especially since I spend the hour or so at the stopover in Vienna airport scowling at the hard-faced bitchy Austrains who look at me askance (whassamatter, never seen a ill-looking English girl before?).
Incidentally, a fine quote from Bernhard: 'Of all medical practictioners, psychiatrists are the most incompetent, having a closer affinity to the sex killer than to their science.' (Wittgenstein's Nephew)
To work, what with the resolution to finish the PhD this year and all.
Many significant buildings still lie in NATO-bomb-shaped tatters, particularly on the entrance to the city (the ex-army headquarters, major ministries). But new money flows freely through the main pedestrianised streets, where monuments and dedications to the French glitter ostentatiously and ludicrously thin women (as style, not penury, dictates) stroll confidently from shop to shop. People smoke in bookshops.
Someone tells me the average income for a university professor is 200 Euros a month, but clothes are as expensive there as London, where incomes are ten times higher at least. Food and drink is cheap, of course: it's heavy, mostly meat and cheese. The typical wine - slatkovino - is sickly sweet, and tastes like a combination of watered down port, cheap wine and cherry brandy. It gives you an instant headache.
The conference was held at the anti-Milosevic 'Centre for Cultural Decontamination' in Belgrade (logo: two gas masks nuzzling together). Attendance: anarchists, communists, at least one spy, the intellectually wayward and post-marxists of all kinds. We make it on to Belgrade's Radio 2, and speakers get asked odd questions about the state of sociology and anti-intellectualism in the current climes. We wonder whether they're going to cut up the recordings and change the questions: 'So, what is your opinion of Milosevic?' 'Well (fuzz...pause), I...am (cut)...certain that (click) he was correct (high-pitched squeal) in his analysis of the needs of (click...buzz. Pause) Ser (whirring noise)...b...ia...'.
We go clubbing. We get there at 12.30pm, and even then it's too early (we note that Serbian nightlife runs on cheap ecstacy and chewing gum). It fills up. It gets packed. I try not to wonder where the fire exits are. People are intensely pale with angelic cheekbones, apart from the mafiosi-type men, who are gargantuan, shaven-headed, and all wear the same kind of black leather jacket. It's pretty hardcore, but they bring us lots of drinks 'cos we speak nice English and (they presume) we have lots of money. We probably do, relatively.
I get really ill on the flight back with Austrian Airlines (what's German for 'I'm sorry, I have soiled your pristine sick-bag'?). I think that Thomas Bernhard would have been proud of me, especially since I spend the hour or so at the stopover in Vienna airport scowling at the hard-faced bitchy Austrains who look at me askance (whassamatter, never seen a ill-looking English girl before?).
Incidentally, a fine quote from Bernhard: 'Of all medical practictioners, psychiatrists are the most incompetent, having a closer affinity to the sex killer than to their science.' (Wittgenstein's Nephew)
To work, what with the resolution to finish the PhD this year and all.
