Wisps of Air Over Belgrade

01-6-11 @ 22:48

LOT Polish Airlines, In-Flight somewhere over Belgrade

It’s funny

                . . . how small everything seems up here.

Old haunts that once loomed so large,

                fade like dreams gone by.

And ethereal wisps float into view,

                obscuring memories of days gone

                                and friends now far away.

It’s funny

                . . . how we miss that we barely knew.

Yet new horizons near as we chase the setting sun,

                New friends . . .

                                New cities . . .

                                                New fun . . .

And new opportunities in a brave new world,

                colored by the joy and love of a people

                                who have suffered more than we can ever know.

It’s funny

                . . . how sad I am to go.

Our Final Day in Belgrade, Serbia

31-5-11

Hotel Royal, Belgrade

This morning we were finally able to go visit the Cathedral of Saint Sava.  The Cathedral will be a spectacular sight once it is finished.  Even in the state it is in UNESCO has already declared it a European Cultural Heritage site.  UNESCO, and other groups, have offered to help pay many of the expenses to finish the process of building the Cathedral, but the Serbian Orthodox Church keeps refusing – and I entirely respect their reasoning.  They want the church to be the people’s church.  Not UNESCO’s.  Not some corporation’s.  The people’s church.  As such, they only accept donations from members and visitors to the church.

After the visit to Saint Sava’s, we set out to find the Mali Prinz Pekara (Small Prince Bakery).  During The Nastasijevića Code, Sam had been served some vanilla cookies she absolutely adored.  I still owed her cookies and Dijana had recommended Mali Prinz as the best in town…though she may be slightly biased, it’s her sister’s shop.

After some issues finding the bakery, came to understand that there were multiple locations – we had been getting directions to two different places!  Anyways, our struggle paid off and we found the bakery, the cookies, and we spilt some wonderfully delicious sweets – one of which I need to learn how to make.  They called “The Wheat”.  It was basically water, mashed wheat, and a bit of sugar.  A dollop of whipped cream on top and you had a quite healthy, but delicious, desert.

We then when back to the market one final time before we left.  I ended up finding a Zippo with an Eagle embossed on it.  The man originally wanted 500 Dinar, but talked himself down to 150 as I kept trying to walk away.  I’ll need to polish it and purchase a new wick, but the piece is otherwise in great condition.  A fantastic buy, if you ask me.

That evening we saw Crossing the Line at Theatre DAH before going back to the bar with most of the members of the troupe.  The owner had prepared us a wonderful homemade stew complete with homemade bread that was still warm from the oven…it was awesome!  After the meal, a bunch of us ducked out…which is a shame, but I wanted to go back to Kalemegdan to do some night photography.

We got back to the Hotel and I grabbed my camera and some beer.  A group of five or six of us went to the park, but I was left quickly behind taking photos…which I was okay with.   At one point, while I was taking photos near the church, a security guard came over and began talking to me.  His English was poor, but he mentioned something about needing papers to shoot photos…which is bullshit according to Katie because Kalemegdan is public property.  Anyways, decided to just keep moving.  When I got to the base of the fortress, I took a couple more photos before noticing another security guard honing in on me…I kept moving.  Only once did I stop to briefly pantomime setting up a photo – at which point the guard sped up in his approach – so I packed up and walked back up to the top of the Fortress and toward Hotel Royal.

Our Final Day with the DAH Workshop

30-5-11

Hotel Royal, Belgrade

On our final day of the DAH workshops, we spent our time with Sanja in what used to be her dance studio – the main space was being ready for The Nastasijevića Code performance that evening, Crossing the Line for the next evening, and their 20^th Anniversary Festival which began around the time we were leaving Serbia.

Again with Sanja we did quite a bit of Drum work…I would say she worked us harder than anyone else – we kept going and going and going….and going.  She would periodically switch us over to different pieces of music before going back to the drum.   For the second half of the session we were given a dance bar for our set and told to create a scene utilizing it.  She gave everyone a prompt, mine was “Who are you?”   After we finished our individual scenes, Sanja worked them into different montages – similar to how DAH performances are created.  It was really cool!

In the afternoon, Dijana gave her lecture entitled, “The Role of the Artists in the Dark Times” which discusses DAH’s history, mission, and why it is imperative that artists speak out when no one else will.

That evening, we returned to DAH to watch their newest work The Nastasijevića Code.  The Nastasijevića Code is a unique piece of audience immersion theatre.  Patrons of the theatre, or Guests, are invited and led into the space.  It is supposed to evoke a sort of artistic soirée evening.   The Nastasijevićs were a group of three sisters and four brothers who lived together all their lives.  Only the youngest brother ever married and for that the rest of the family practically ostracized him.  Each member of the family was creatively gifted in some form or another.  You can probably find more information on Wikipedia or something if you’re interested.

After the performance, we went out the bar that Jugi recommened nearby.  After some struggles to find it, Jugi just decided to join us and show us in.  It was a great little spot with a nice patio out back.  A little after midnight, we decided to leave – the bar technically should have closed by then, but they hadn’t (If you had walked by the front entrance, you never would have known they were open).  As we were leaving, the owner of the establishment offered us food for the next evening in exchange for us coming back and drinking more…we weren’t about to deny free food and so we quickly agreed to return after Crossing the Line.

After leaving the bar, we returned to Rif for a second time and spent a good little while there, though only drinking a beer or two.  We decided to leave about an hour or so after we arrived.  Lucas, Liz, Britt, and I chose to walk back to the hotel since the busses were no longer running.  It was a fun walk, though a little longer than I expected.  No biggie – plus, on the way back I saw a poster advertising the dance party Lucas, Keegan, and I had attended the night before…so I grabbed one for each of us to have a souvenir.