Day 134 - Sounds of Serbia

Serbia seems to be two totally different experiences, depending on whether or not your eyes are open or closed. All in all I would have to describe Belgrade as being rather industrial. Due to the fact that most Serbs still use coal for heating, winter time brings with it a very nice smoggy haze. That haze though, is a perfect partner to accompany the images of some of the more unique architecture scattered around the city: the buildings damaged by the NATO bombings in the early nineties. Although the sites are a bit eerie, the remaining presences of these buildings are almost poetic, yet I am not terribly sure of the reasoning behind it. Are they a reminder of consequences of aggression? Or the opposite, a reminder to the rest of the world of how they once victimized the Serbs. Either way, the buildings remain. And the Serbian government has no intention of rebuilding them… at least for the moment.

I was the first to wake up on our first official full day in Serbia. It is safe to say that we slept in… but I got up at the perfect time. I had just left the kitchen with a glass of water when I heard the strangest thing. It almost sounded like very loud music coming from the apartment below us. I froze trying to figure out what I was listening to and wondering how often our neighbor was going to annoy us with their music… but as my ears started to adjust I realize that I had been completely wrong in my calculations. I followed the muffed sounds to our back porch and swung open the doors. And there it was… the more glorious church bells. I couldn’t help but just stop, close my eyes and listen to my first beautiful sounds of Serbia.

Later that day, the three of us decided to take a walk and get a grasp of where we were in reference to… well… everything else around us. We ventured out a few blocks when we realized that we are living right around the corner from a soccer stadium… and quickly realized that it was game day. We didn’t figure that out by the lines of fans making their way into the stadium… or from all the street venders that had set up shop for the big day. No, we realized it was game day by the precedence of about one hundred police officers lining sidewalks out front. I had always heard about Europeans and their fanatical love for soccer/football, but I had never witnessed, first hand, something like this. We were so taken back by the police presence that I refrained from taking a picture of a restaurant called “Bart’s” that had a picture of Bart Simpson, himself, pointing the way in… a picture that I still want to get for Jeff.

We decided at that point that our time for exploration was done for the day. We were not interested in getting missed in with the soccer fans… not with Grayson. To we headed home. The game started a couple hours later as it was getting dark. It gets dark here at 4:30pm. And that was around the time the crowd began to cheer for their team. I was amazing to listen to. Imagine an entire an entire stadium cheering together… but not the kind of cheering that we know in the States. This was not the sound of random cheers… or the periodic screams that come with doing the wave… and at no time did I ever heard the word “fence”. No, the Serbian fans were singing. They were all singing together to support their team. And their voices in unison echoed through the chilly night and into our apartment. It was astonishing. I truly believe that everyone should have the great privilege of listen to European soccer fans. Then again… I have no idea what they were singing… honestly, it could have been about a fence… but I’m not going to focus on that.

-JP