I thought I had better admit it! Against prevailing wisdom and family admonitions I am now on Facebook! Surely 30(?) million people can't be wrong? As a sucker for new ideas and the digitally connected world I can't resist the urge. In a sentence, I really think that we have to move from analogue to digital wherever we can. For example, do we really have to bottle water in France and send it all the way to Novi Sad, where we have wonderful sweet water just gushing from numerous springs all along the Fruška Gora? They even send it to America. Just send the information and mix the right pure product locally, or do some advertising and persuade consumers that it is not good for the planet to transport tonnes of water all over the world. Anyway, having worked diligently on my Facebook profile I found myself being reminded that I was not entirely a free spirit. Thus, after my first Facebook message from a daughter “Dad, you've got to change that photo!” I now find myself with my wife welded onto to me; this, she argues is biblical and expedient! I was also forbidden from simply following the default profile that declared that I was “Interested in:.... women”! I could have said “men and women” but in a sexually confused world I don't want to make things more complex than they should be. I was only being honest. But, fortunately it turns out that I can skip this tricky question all together and leave the Facebook world to draw its own conclusions. We should all be on Facebook. Already I can see what happened to some of those Highland genes that went with my great-uncle MacCurrachs from Perthshire to Chicago. So please be “my friend”! I don't seem to have many.
16 November 2007 – Loved more than any man
Aaron and Sue have just returned to London. Visitors ready to share a bit of their lives with our friends here are always welcome! Someone feeling particularly depressed by the expense and time required to get a visa to the West described Serbia as a large prison! Our own young simply save up for a month or 2, find their backpack, buy a train or plane ticket, and the whole of Europe is theirs. Not so the young here. So we sent our guests off to a school to give students the chance to practice their English with native speakers. This is usually popular in a culture where teenagers and students long to travel abroad (and never to come back, too many say). So we had a taste of old Serbia and new Serbia. After a couple of days at the school an inspector saw fit to complain; “why are they here? Who gave them permission? Isn't your English good enough to teach them yourself?” Suddenly the atmosphere of openness and friendship where we have always had excellent relations has been soured and the door is closed to visits by “foreigners”, who after all could be spies or members of a dangerous sect. Such is Old Serbia. Since Aaron is an engineering consultant and Sue works for a multinational pharmaceutical company, we also found ourselves visiting a software development company. From a flat in the city some 15 programmers are working on the leading edge of digital phone applications. No time for spies and inspectors; this is a team of talented programmers that are taking on the world. This is New Serbia building intellectual capital in a fast and merciless market. They had already suffered a huge disaster that would have finished off a Western company; “but we are very agile!” said the CEO, who was a programmer only 3 months ago. Now working on “the dark side” he was writing notes as we talked. Take on a marketing manager, please, and find a patents lawyer!
We also had some medical industry encounters. Wonderful to meet volunteers from Inforak and Zelene Dame, who are bringing comfort and support to cancer patients. It is probably fair to say that most of these volunteers are motivated by their Christian love to care for those who are suffering. It is certainly striking that EHO, an ecumenical Christian organisation, has many volunteers for whom it is natural do something to help others. Sue was able to share her own story of losing her mother from breast cancer. Since her mother had a personal faith and a daily experience of walking in step with God, her illness and eventual death was a story of faith, hope and gratitude. Not a defeat, but a victory; a moving on in confidence. We also met Vesna, a volunteer who has started a pro-life movement to help young women who are considering or had experienced abortion. It is estimated that there are 200k abortions every year (and 90k births) in Serbia, out of a population of 7.5 million. No wonder there was a government campaign against the “white plague”. Our babies are missing it said. It is a complex function of economics, ethics and social norms. Faith has something to say here because essentially each one of us is uniquely loved by our Creator; which is to say that a young woman considering abortion or having lost her child already, is valued by a God who loves her more than any man or father ever can.
8 November 2007 – Sold at the Vašar
The 3rd of every month on the edge of the small town of Ruma under the Frušка Gora there is the Vašar, that is to say a country fair. We picked our way up from the main road through the mud of a gypsy settlement, and there was the world of Munnings, an early 20thC English painter who caught the vital spirit of gypsy horse fairs. His noble world was full of strong youths running with powerful horses in sunlit grassy fields, strong brown limbs, shining piebald flanks, golden hair, flowing manes. The settings must have been before the Great War in an age of hubris and optimism. But today the sun wasn't shining and the horses and cattle were mostly half starved. The field was full of carts and trucks with their “wares” tied up beside them. Stallions threw their heads up menacingly or trod the ground impatiently, but more often old hacks, all skin and bones, heads drooping in resignation, awaited their fate impassively. Cattle, even calves were emaciated. It illustrates what is noticeable everywhere, that the Roma people are not farmers. Even where their settlements have some common ground around as on the edge of Ruma, there isn't a cultivated leaf or a fruit tree to be seen. They are wired for a nomadic life attached to the settled activities of other peoples. Their hovels (I can't call them cottages) look temporary and improvised, but they have been there for decades. And so it is with stock. This is simply a trading fair where horses and stock are traded. Here the Džambas (horse trader) had his day, and there were several candidates striding around with whip and loud voice. Džambas is a Turkish word, settled deep in Serbian folk lore, also meaning thug or brute! This wasn't a market for farmers to sell their finished stock, and indeed one couldn't see a single animal that looked well cared for as if its welfare was connected to production.
Beside one truck we saw a Lipizaner stallion impatiently pawing the ground. This had to be Soko (meaning falcon), our neighbour's stallion sold at another fair a year ago for only 500 Euro to buy a piece of machinery. Apart from a muddy coat, he looked well enough. Later a boy was running him up and down in front of an admiring crowd. He looked beautiful. But as a lover of horses I couldn't help wishing that they would stop waving their whips. Surely it is obvious that the intelligent horse is better trained than intimidated? There is a bad joke that the gypsy was complaining that just when he had trained his horse so carefully not to eat it went and died! Where do our attitudes to animals come from? In our Hungarian village the horses are beautifully kept, well fed and worked hard; its a productive relationship. Gypsy nags living in settlements on the edges of towns and villages, like their owners, live a more tenuous existence. Any instinct for planning has been over-ridden by the imperative of survival.
The rest of the fair was from a world that must be slipping away into history. Amongst cheap goods of all sorts there were traditional craftsmen. Shoe makers selling the poor man's shoe, the clog; another was selling shoes crafted from tyres and leather. The kožar was selling furs of fox and marten; a women admired herself in a small wood framed mirror like a lifetime of women before her. There were lots of stalls with agricultural tools, tubs for the svinjokolje (pig killing) which is going on right now at the start of winter, saddles, halters, shanks of wool for knitting. Every fair is a time of news swapping, deal making, celebrating perhaps. Sheep turn on spits, crudely cut into hunks for diners. Folk singing in the back of a marquee. Thick black turska kafa with its delicious coffee scent caught on the chill November air. On the road home we passed horses and carts and small swaying trucks heading back to distant villages and settlements. A reluctant looking bay horse trotted behind a cart, seemingly heading off to a new “home”. Apologies for gloomy thoughts, but I couldn't help thinking that people are also traded. In the Balkans it is a major problem, but it exists for “consumers” in Western cities. “All is smeared by trade”. I wondered where poor Soko would turn up next. My sister would have bought him herself, and loved him as he deserved. Luckily she wasn't there! Do any of us deserve to be loved? Probably not quite, but loved we are, traders and survivors all, by our Maker and Lord.
1 November 2007 – Dan mrtvih
The rain just teemed from a low grey sky “as from tubs” as they say here. The black polished granite of the gravestones glistened with water, thousands of bunches of Michaelmas daisies dripped with rain, and guttering red lanterns flickered bravely. This is Dan mrtvih, also All Saints Day, when traditionally families come out to the graveyards to respect and remember their dead. Lines of old small cars parked along the road side. Family members in small groups came and went under their umbrellas, the country widows wearing black. They gather around the graves, tend flowers, light lanterns, silently pray, share private thoughts, and shuffle away again. As I passed, equally wet, on my bike, I wondered how it might feel to see one's own name etched indelibly in marble as dark as destiny awaiting my own welcome into the stony earth. When a loved one passes on, the window has her own name and year of birth etched into the gravestone while she is at it; only the end date is left for completion, and one supposes, speculation. Shapes of the Balkan family.
Another shape I almost missed as I approached the new arching bridge over the Danube under Petrovaradin Fort. He was standing, head bowed, before a small memorial and a guttering candle, traffic splashing past to and fro over the bridge. I knew the memorial, a small brass plate in a public triangle of grass. It records the death of a young man unlucky enough to find himself on the Varadinski bridge one night in Spring 1999 when NATO cruise missiles destroyed Novi Sad's bridges. This must be the boy's father I speculated. I wanted to go up to him and be with him, to say something, one human being to another, to say that I was sorry for what my country did to him and his family. But I couldn't. After a pause I went on my dripping way feeling again the sorrow of war. The Kosovo crisis at this moment broods over everything, intractable; and for what? What to say to a father who lost his son, and for the thousands whose lives were blighted, for a generation taught to be cynical.
23 October 2007 – Bishop's Blue
I had a couple of surprises when we dashed off to the gardening and craft fair for an hour or so. An acquaintance greeted me as I was admiring his stall of cheeses, honey, rakija and icons. It was Alexandar, last seen in his book shop, or at his café, a couple of years ago. He looked full of optimism for a change. And here I am acquiring more evidence for my despondence over the Serbian tax system. He gave up both businesses he told me, because he was hounded to death by tax inspectors. He is an Orthodox Christian and found it distasteful that he could not stay in business without being dishonest. So this is what it means to run a small business in Serbia, “and it is getting worse!” he said, reverting to old pessimism. “They want to destroy all of our small businesses and enslave us to a monoculture of identical retailers”. As a Tesco hater it sounded a bit familiar. This amounts to an aggressive system of “pre-emptive” taxation; take the tax up-front, which includes endless fines for minor non-compliances, and it is a battle of wits (and unofficial payments?) with the tax man and inspectors. No one could stay in business if all the tax demands where met honestly, so the system forces an environment of tax evasion. There seems to be no coherent, certainly no universal, law to adhere to for protection. Yet, the investment publicity proclaims a Corporation Tax of only 10%. There is a big gap somewhere. Big game investors are protected by high price consultants and the power of size; the small people, trying to make a go of it, are being hounded out. So it seems!
But, as normal in life's disasters, there is often redemption. Alex was delighted to be marketing and selling the domestic products of Kovilj Monastery under the name "Košnica" or Beehive. He held up a block of “cheese with fungus”; hold on! that looks like Gorgonzola. It is, but better, far better, in fact out of this world delicious! At last, someone seems to be producing a cheese that might even export. I never have been keen on that flaccid white cheese made in every mountain home. Serbs love it, but they are probably alone; even their cheese counters in the big supermarkets are full of imported cheeses or inferior copies, and this in an agricultural economy. The inspectors wouldn't dare mess with the monks of Kovilj, so please ramp up production and get a new Serbian cheese movement going; Bishop's Blue and Monks' Secret.
from simply following the default profile that declared that I was “Interested in:.... women”! I could have said “men and women” but in a sexually confused world I don't want to make things more complex than they should be. I was only being honest. But, fortunately it turns out that I can skip this tricky question all together and leave the Facebook world to draw its own conclusions. We should all be on Facebook. Already I can see what happened to some of those Highland genes that went with my great-uncle MacCurrachs from Perthshire to Chicago. So please be “my friend”! I don't seem to have many.
has been soured and the door is closed to visits by “foreigners”, who after all could be spies or members of a dangerous sect. Such is Old Serbia. Since Aaron is an engineering consultant and Sue works for a multinational pharmaceutical company, we also found ourselves visiting a software development company. From a flat in the city some 15 programmers are working on the leading edge of digital phone applications. No time for spies and inspectors; this is a team of talented programmers that are taking on the world. This is New Serbia building intellectual capital in a fast and merciless market. They had already suffered a huge disaster that would have finished off a Western company; “but we are very agile!” said the CEO, who was a programmer only 3 months ago. Now working on “the dark side” he was writing notes as we talked. Take on a marketing manager, please, and find a patents lawyer!
The 3
h
Beside one truck we saw a Lipizaner stallion impatiently pawing the ground. This had to be Soko (meaning falcon), our neighbour's stallion sold at another fair a year ago for only 500 Euro to buy a piece of machinery. Apart from a muddy coat, he looked well enough. Later a boy was running him up and down in front of an admiring crowd. He looked beautiful. But as a lover of horses I couldn't help wishing that they would stop waving their whips. Surely it is obvious that the intelligent horse is better trained than intimidated? There is a bad joke that the gypsy was complaining that just when he had trained his horse so carefully not to eat it went and died! Where do our attitudes to animals come from? In our Hungarian village the horses are beautifully kept, well fed and worked hard; its a productive relationship. Gypsy nags living in settlements on the edges of towns and villages, like their owners, live a more tenuous existence. Any instinct for planning has been over-ridden by the imperative of survival.
The rain just teemed from a low grey sky “as from tubs” as they say here. The black polished granite of the gravestones glistened with water, thousands of bunches of Michaelmas daisies dripped with rain, and guttering red lanterns flickered bravely. This is 
Another shape I almost missed as I approached the new arching bridge over the Danube under Petrovaradin Fort. He was standing, head bowed, before a small memorial and a guttering candle, traffic splashing past to and fro over the bridge. I knew the memorial, a small brass plate in a public triangle of grass. It records the death of a young man unlucky enough to find himself on the Varadinski bridge one night in Spring 1999 when NATO cruise missiles destroyed Novi Sad's bridges. This must be the boy's father I speculated. I wanted to go up to him and be with him, to say something, one human being to another, to say that I was sorry for what my country did to him and his family. But I couldn't. After a pause I went on my dripping way feeling again the sorrow of war. The Kosovo crisis at this moment broods over everything, intractable; and for what? What to say to a father who lost his son, and for the thousands whose lives were blighted, for a generation taught to be cynical. 
But, as normal in life's disasters, there is often redemption. Alex was delighted to be marketing and selling the domestic products of Kovilj Monastery under the name "Košnica" or Beehive. He held up a block of “cheese with fungus”; hold on! that looks like Gorgonzola. It is, but better, far better, in fact out of this world delicious! At last, someone seems to be producing a cheese that might even export. I never have been keen on that flaccid white cheese made in every mountain home. Serbs love it, but they are probably alone; even their cheese counters in the big supermarkets are full of imported cheeses or inferior copies, and this in an agricultural economy. The inspectors wouldn't dare mess with the monks of Kovilj, so please ramp up production and get a new Serbian cheese movement going; Bishop's Blue and Monks' Secret.