1. Techno: Loud enough to rattle your eardrums. DJ is much better (or worse, depending on your taste) than the one at the Tour of California.
2. Hair: Mechanics and racers have matching mullets or fohawks...bleached if they are uber-euro (usually the Germans).
3. Shades: Screw Oakleys. Most riders eyewear would be just as much at home on the runway in Milan.
4. Helmets: Not to be worn during warm-up or cool-down laps. Just messes up #2.
5. Kits: At least one team has a purple and pink kit with hearts on the back. But they are euro, so they can rock it.
6. Cursing in the Pack: Srpski/Hrvatski/Bosanski...Italiano...even German. It just sounds more colorful when they yell "get the @#$% over" cornering at 40 kph. (Knowing how Bosnians, Serbs, and Croats curse, pack chatter was probably much more colorful than this)
7. Spectators: The one in front of you is old enough to be the grandma of one of the racers. The one next to you needs to get on his dad's shoulders to see over the barricade.
8. Podium Girls: They actually have them.
9. Rainbow Strips: At least one rider in the pack has worn them (in this case Ivan Stevic, B World Champ).
10. Home Club: All of the riders are actually from the town where the race is taking place, and the crowd knows them all.
11. Race Director: Drives every lap in his red Mercedes 450 SL Convertible...even though this is just a crit.
I love bike racing.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Beware of evil from someone you have done good to.
This sentence is inscribed in the gate of one of the many small cemeteries in the countryside around Sanski Most, the small town in northwestern BiH where I will be spending the next month. Like all places in BiH, Sanski Most has many faces. Surrounded by rolling green foothills dotted with mosques and wildflowers, the town and nearby villages seem to be, for lack of a better comparison, a Bosnian Hobbiton straight out of Tolkein. Pedaling along the banks of the idyllic Sanica River, it is easy to forget that just over a decade ago these hills were the heavily mined front line.
Riding through the villages you begin to see signs. All of the buildings (including the mosque) are brand new, many still awaiting the final layer of plaster. At first this does not seem to be very significant. After all, the fact that so many are building new houses should be a sign of wealth and progress, no? Vahidin, the director of the Center for Peacebuilding and my host in Sanski Most tells a different story. Almost all of the villages in the region were completely destroyed in the war. In his village alone 200 residents, mostly Bosniaks, were “ethnically cleansed” by Bosnian Serb forces. They are rebuilding because there was nothing left when those who were lucky enough to escape returned.
Nowadays the ethnic cleansing committed by Bosnian Serb forces has been reversed, and Sanski Most and its surrounding villages are populated by an overwhelming Bosniak majority. Mosques by far outnumber churches, and hajab and call to prayer are simply part of everyday life. But as I have learned in my first week here, the wounds of the war are still very visible. Vahidin is still afraid to travel in the Republika Srpska, where he is called names and often threatened by the Bosnian Serbs who were once his neighbors.
I spent my first afternoon in Sanski Most having coffee (which translates to a whole morning/afternoon affair followed by lunch in BiH) with Vahidin and one of his friends from imam school who is now studying robotics in Germany (an imam doing computer science…go figure). When Vahidin’s friend went to light his cigarette I noticed that his hand was twisted and scared. I simply assumed that this was a birth defect. As Vahidin described to me later however, I couldn’t have been further from the truth. His friend had been imprisoned in a concentration camp during the war, and after his camp was liberated he joined the BiH Armija, the armed forces of the predominantly Bosniak government that opposed the Bosnian Serbs in their attempts at ethnic cleansing. His injured hand was the result of a battlefield injury. Here I was in sunny, seemingly peaceful Sanski Most being treated to coffee by a concentration camp and army survivor.
Just before we left the cafe, a group of soldiers walked by. “Chilean,” Vahidin said. “Part of the EU protection force in Bosnia. I didn’t think Chile was in the EU.” Sanski Most. Green hills. Shining minarets. Still occupied by foreign troops. Still recovering from the evil of those it once did good to.
Riding through the villages you begin to see signs. All of the buildings (including the mosque) are brand new, many still awaiting the final layer of plaster. At first this does not seem to be very significant. After all, the fact that so many are building new houses should be a sign of wealth and progress, no? Vahidin, the director of the Center for Peacebuilding and my host in Sanski Most tells a different story. Almost all of the villages in the region were completely destroyed in the war. In his village alone 200 residents, mostly Bosniaks, were “ethnically cleansed” by Bosnian Serb forces. They are rebuilding because there was nothing left when those who were lucky enough to escape returned.
Nowadays the ethnic cleansing committed by Bosnian Serb forces has been reversed, and Sanski Most and its surrounding villages are populated by an overwhelming Bosniak majority. Mosques by far outnumber churches, and hajab and call to prayer are simply part of everyday life. But as I have learned in my first week here, the wounds of the war are still very visible. Vahidin is still afraid to travel in the Republika Srpska, where he is called names and often threatened by the Bosnian Serbs who were once his neighbors.
I spent my first afternoon in Sanski Most having coffee (which translates to a whole morning/afternoon affair followed by lunch in BiH) with Vahidin and one of his friends from imam school who is now studying robotics in Germany (an imam doing computer science…go figure). When Vahidin’s friend went to light his cigarette I noticed that his hand was twisted and scared. I simply assumed that this was a birth defect. As Vahidin described to me later however, I couldn’t have been further from the truth. His friend had been imprisoned in a concentration camp during the war, and after his camp was liberated he joined the BiH Armija, the armed forces of the predominantly Bosniak government that opposed the Bosnian Serbs in their attempts at ethnic cleansing. His injured hand was the result of a battlefield injury. Here I was in sunny, seemingly peaceful Sanski Most being treated to coffee by a concentration camp and army survivor.
Just before we left the cafe, a group of soldiers walked by. “Chilean,” Vahidin said. “Part of the EU protection force in Bosnia. I didn’t think Chile was in the EU.” Sanski Most. Green hills. Shining minarets. Still occupied by foreign troops. Still recovering from the evil of those it once did good to.
Burek, the Bosnian Way
Note: Because I have not posted in almost a month, this is a very long catch-up post.
Burek. The universal constant. The one thing that I can count on in a region where my questions tend to yield more questions rather than answers. Burek: a delicious, flaky stuffed pastry that has appeared in every city (and even one lecture) that I have visited in the Balkans. As with everything in the former-Yugoslavia, there are variations. The Zagreb Pan Pek (cross between A Bon Pan and McDonalds) serves it on a greasy piece of cardboard. A small bakery near Trg Republika in Beograd only serves it with kiselo mleko. In Sarajevo (the burek capital of the Balkans) I learned that it was best with sour cream on top. Complications. Choices. More questions. Like everything that I have studied this semester, even something as seemingly simple as burek has different interpretations.
Since my last post, I have sampled burek in its many forms on street corners across Bosnia i Hercegovina (hereafter BiH), one of the most beautiful but deeply saddening countries that I have ever visited. While the term burek in Croatia and Serbia could describe a wide variety of pastries, from meat to potato to apple filled, in BiH each type of pastry had its own name, with burek being reserved only for the meat filled variety. Fitting in a country where there is no such thing as a single national identity.
In Bosnia, unlike America (or much of Serbia and Croatia for that matter), national identity and citizenship are not one in the same. Bosnia’s Constitution (part of the Dayton Accords that stopped the bullets in 1996) recognizes three national groups, Serb, Croat, and Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) as its constituent peoples. In all official matters residents of Bosnia are required to identify themselves as Serb, Croat, Bosniak, or Other. “Bosnian” is not an option. Thus, while all are effectively Bosnian citizens, few consider themselves Bosnian by nationality. The question of national identity becomes even more convoluted for children of multinational marriages, as they must choose whether they identify with their mother or father’s nationality.
The Dayton Accords also split BiH into two separate entities: the predominantly Serb (due to ethnic cleansing in the 90’s) Republika Srpska and the Bosniak and Croat Federation of Bosnia-Hercegovina. Both entities have completely separate governments and run parallel public institutions (schools, hospitals, etc.) almost completely independently from the state government, which many in BiH regard to be completely ineffective. All this as a result of peace agreement (Dayton) that the international community saw as a monumental step forward, but locals now see as a colossal mess. As one of our lecturers told us, if you are not confused at this point you have not been paying attention.
Our journey across BiH started in Banja Luka, the capital of the Republika Srpska. A beautiful Santa Barbara-size town in a pristine mountain valley, it did not fit the image of a war torn country that I had expected. I later learned that this was because, as the center of power for the Bosnian Serbs (by far the strongest side in the war), it had seen very little fighting. As soon as we crossed into the Federation however, things began to change. In Sanski Most we began to see our first memorials, the most striking of which was a plaque on the local mosque who’s predecessor had been flattened by the Bosnian Serbs to build a parking lot after the town was ethnically cleansed. It was in Sarajevo however that the magnitude of the conflict truly struck home.
It is hard to describe Sarajevo to someone who hasn’t been there. Minarets, Turkish coffee, best burek in Bosnia. Bullet scarred buildings, Sarajevo Roses (mortar scars filled in with red clay to remember those killed by their impact), massive cemeteries where most headstones list the deceased’s year of death as sometime between 1992 and 1995 (the three year siege of Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serb Army). Mosques next to Orthodox Churches next to Synagogues next to Catholic Cathedrals…seeming harmony. Sarajevo is a city of contradictions. Beautiful to the average tourist, but with a dark past (and some would say present given the current level of tension between national groups in BiH) just below the surface. As one of our lecturers told us, enjoy the burek, but remember what happened here.
From Sarajevo we continued to Mostar, home of the famous bridge that was destroyed by Bosnian Croat (every side shelled every side in the war…it just gets more confusing the more you learn about it) forces during the war. Mostar is still divided along its central boulevard into Bosniak and Croat halves. Separate schools, hospitals, banks, bars, restaurants. In the local secondary school one nationality comes to class in the morning, the other in the evening. Interestingly, it was in this deeply divided town that I saw the greatest hope for a peaceful future. We had the opportunity to visit the United World College campus in Mostar, a internationally run secondary school that brings together not only international students but students of all three national groups from across Bosnia. In talking to the students, we learned that many had been paired with roommates of another national group upon their arrival at UWC. Bosniak with Croat. Serb with Bosniak. While the situation had been tense initially (some had never interacted with members of the other nationalities), things had clearly done much more than simply thawed. The Croat girl I sat next to was now best friends with the Bosniak girl sitting to her right. Hope, but in small steps. Both still talked about “the school downstairs” (UWC occupies the top floor of Mostar’s segregated secondary school) as still deeply divided.
Throughout our travels in BiH, I become more and more familiar with the role that the international community (America in particular) chose not to play here in the 90’s. As I read the Bosnia chapter of The Problem from Hell, one of our required readings while in BiH, Samantha Powers describes how countless State Department reports were ignored as the death toll continued to climb, I became embarrassed and ashamed to be an American, especially in light of the incredible kindness that people in Bosnia showed towards me. I have to wonder if they really knew how much my country knew and yet didn’t do.
Ironically, I have chosen to return to BiH for the Independent Study portion of my program. Moving forward and going back to BiH with this feeling of guilt will be an interesting experience. I know that people there may not hold me personally responsible for my country’s inaction, but I am finding it very difficult to not feel guilty. Who am I as an American to come and study a people and place that my country clearly didn’t care to help when they really needed it? Studying the results of a conflict that my country let happen seems a bit like writing a book about a crime that you participated in. I guess the best thing that I can do is try to listen to what people in BiH have to say. It seems that all too frequently BiH has had the will of outsiders forced upon it, and no one ever really asks the individuals to share their thoughts and ideas. I know that I can’t make up for anything that America did or did not do here. As a student and a filmmaker, all I can do is listen and retell. Hopefully, by doing this, I can remind people back home that those statistics that they read in the news actually have faces behind them. And maybe, just maybe, I can convince an old baba (grandma) in Sanski Most to teach me how to make burek.
Burek. The universal constant. The one thing that I can count on in a region where my questions tend to yield more questions rather than answers. Burek: a delicious, flaky stuffed pastry that has appeared in every city (and even one lecture) that I have visited in the Balkans. As with everything in the former-Yugoslavia, there are variations. The Zagreb Pan Pek (cross between A Bon Pan and McDonalds) serves it on a greasy piece of cardboard. A small bakery near Trg Republika in Beograd only serves it with kiselo mleko. In Sarajevo (the burek capital of the Balkans) I learned that it was best with sour cream on top. Complications. Choices. More questions. Like everything that I have studied this semester, even something as seemingly simple as burek has different interpretations.
Since my last post, I have sampled burek in its many forms on street corners across Bosnia i Hercegovina (hereafter BiH), one of the most beautiful but deeply saddening countries that I have ever visited. While the term burek in Croatia and Serbia could describe a wide variety of pastries, from meat to potato to apple filled, in BiH each type of pastry had its own name, with burek being reserved only for the meat filled variety. Fitting in a country where there is no such thing as a single national identity.
In Bosnia, unlike America (or much of Serbia and Croatia for that matter), national identity and citizenship are not one in the same. Bosnia’s Constitution (part of the Dayton Accords that stopped the bullets in 1996) recognizes three national groups, Serb, Croat, and Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) as its constituent peoples. In all official matters residents of Bosnia are required to identify themselves as Serb, Croat, Bosniak, or Other. “Bosnian” is not an option. Thus, while all are effectively Bosnian citizens, few consider themselves Bosnian by nationality. The question of national identity becomes even more convoluted for children of multinational marriages, as they must choose whether they identify with their mother or father’s nationality.
The Dayton Accords also split BiH into two separate entities: the predominantly Serb (due to ethnic cleansing in the 90’s) Republika Srpska and the Bosniak and Croat Federation of Bosnia-Hercegovina. Both entities have completely separate governments and run parallel public institutions (schools, hospitals, etc.) almost completely independently from the state government, which many in BiH regard to be completely ineffective. All this as a result of peace agreement (Dayton) that the international community saw as a monumental step forward, but locals now see as a colossal mess. As one of our lecturers told us, if you are not confused at this point you have not been paying attention.
Our journey across BiH started in Banja Luka, the capital of the Republika Srpska. A beautiful Santa Barbara-size town in a pristine mountain valley, it did not fit the image of a war torn country that I had expected. I later learned that this was because, as the center of power for the Bosnian Serbs (by far the strongest side in the war), it had seen very little fighting. As soon as we crossed into the Federation however, things began to change. In Sanski Most we began to see our first memorials, the most striking of which was a plaque on the local mosque who’s predecessor had been flattened by the Bosnian Serbs to build a parking lot after the town was ethnically cleansed. It was in Sarajevo however that the magnitude of the conflict truly struck home.
It is hard to describe Sarajevo to someone who hasn’t been there. Minarets, Turkish coffee, best burek in Bosnia. Bullet scarred buildings, Sarajevo Roses (mortar scars filled in with red clay to remember those killed by their impact), massive cemeteries where most headstones list the deceased’s year of death as sometime between 1992 and 1995 (the three year siege of Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serb Army). Mosques next to Orthodox Churches next to Synagogues next to Catholic Cathedrals…seeming harmony. Sarajevo is a city of contradictions. Beautiful to the average tourist, but with a dark past (and some would say present given the current level of tension between national groups in BiH) just below the surface. As one of our lecturers told us, enjoy the burek, but remember what happened here.
From Sarajevo we continued to Mostar, home of the famous bridge that was destroyed by Bosnian Croat (every side shelled every side in the war…it just gets more confusing the more you learn about it) forces during the war. Mostar is still divided along its central boulevard into Bosniak and Croat halves. Separate schools, hospitals, banks, bars, restaurants. In the local secondary school one nationality comes to class in the morning, the other in the evening. Interestingly, it was in this deeply divided town that I saw the greatest hope for a peaceful future. We had the opportunity to visit the United World College campus in Mostar, a internationally run secondary school that brings together not only international students but students of all three national groups from across Bosnia. In talking to the students, we learned that many had been paired with roommates of another national group upon their arrival at UWC. Bosniak with Croat. Serb with Bosniak. While the situation had been tense initially (some had never interacted with members of the other nationalities), things had clearly done much more than simply thawed. The Croat girl I sat next to was now best friends with the Bosniak girl sitting to her right. Hope, but in small steps. Both still talked about “the school downstairs” (UWC occupies the top floor of Mostar’s segregated secondary school) as still deeply divided.
Throughout our travels in BiH, I become more and more familiar with the role that the international community (America in particular) chose not to play here in the 90’s. As I read the Bosnia chapter of The Problem from Hell, one of our required readings while in BiH, Samantha Powers describes how countless State Department reports were ignored as the death toll continued to climb, I became embarrassed and ashamed to be an American, especially in light of the incredible kindness that people in Bosnia showed towards me. I have to wonder if they really knew how much my country knew and yet didn’t do.
Ironically, I have chosen to return to BiH for the Independent Study portion of my program. Moving forward and going back to BiH with this feeling of guilt will be an interesting experience. I know that people there may not hold me personally responsible for my country’s inaction, but I am finding it very difficult to not feel guilty. Who am I as an American to come and study a people and place that my country clearly didn’t care to help when they really needed it? Studying the results of a conflict that my country let happen seems a bit like writing a book about a crime that you participated in. I guess the best thing that I can do is try to listen to what people in BiH have to say. It seems that all too frequently BiH has had the will of outsiders forced upon it, and no one ever really asks the individuals to share their thoughts and ideas. I know that I can’t make up for anything that America did or did not do here. As a student and a filmmaker, all I can do is listen and retell. Hopefully, by doing this, I can remind people back home that those statistics that they read in the news actually have faces behind them. And maybe, just maybe, I can convince an old baba (grandma) in Sanski Most to teach me how to make burek.
A Bosnian in Beijing: The Magic of Two Wheels
In coming to Sanski Most, I expected to see bicycles. People all over Bosnia rely on bicycles for grocery runs, trips to work, getting to the mosque for the Friday prayer. I expected the usual rusted single speeds and Costco style full suspension varieties. So when Sanjin Durmisevic rode up next to me on his full-carbon race bike decked out with top of the line Campagnolo, I was a bit surprised to say the least. Through a conversation in very broken English I learned that he had been one of BiH’s representatives to the Olympic Youth Camp in Beijing last summer. We traded crash stories. He asked why I didn’t shave my legs (which he thought was pretty funny). I asked about racing in Europe (to which he responded by mimicking shooting up with EPO). He told me about his idol, the Serbian road race champion Ivan Stevic, who I had seen at the Tour of California the previous year. I told him about collegiate mountain bike racing. Here I was pedaling through the green hills of BiH next to an 18 year old Bosnian pro cyclist. Coincidence? Maybe. But I have stopped considering the seemingly coincidental places and people that my pedal strokes have shown me. I just hold on for the ride.
Happy Pesach!
Being a predominantly Muslim town, I did not expect Sanski Most to offer much in the way of a Passover celebration. I should have known better. Funny things seem to happen here with a frequency that I can’t really attribute to chance. When Vahidin learned that I was Jewish, he got very excited. I got a “Happy Pesah” text from him on the first night of Passover, and he couldn’t wait to show me Sanski Most “matzo” when I arrived at the Center the next day. “From the Sephardic Jews who used to live here!” he said excitedly. While Bosnian matzo turned out to be a bit different than our American variety (think of a giant southern style biscuit minus the yeast…a deadly weapon if thrown accurately), it was hard to not get swept up in Vahidin’s enthusiasm. Who knew that I would spend Passover in BiH singing the Sh'ma with a Bosniak imam?
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Welcome to the Crossroads: Snapshots from the White City
Inside Kalemagdon, Belgrade’s ancient fortress, there is a tomb. Its inscription is in Arabic. The tomb is one of the last footprints of the Ottoman Empire which captured and recaptured Belgrade some 40+ times over the centuries. The tomb lies in a courtyard encircled by Austro-Hungarian towers built on Roman walls built on Celtic foundations. This is Belgrade. Welcome to the crossroads.Downtown Belgrade. Glass and steel skyscrapers. Speeding taxicabs. Upper Market Street in San Francisco with a Balkan flair. Orthodox churches, temples, even a mosque. But in the middle, a building straight out of the CNN nightly news. The former Yugoslav Ministry of the Army…with a giant hole in the middle of it. Twisted steel girders and shattered glass. You can still see the scorch marks. Reminders that less than 10 years ago the city was hit day and night by NATO bombs. Welcome Belgrade. Welcome to the crossroads.
Across the Sava River. Under the freeway overpass. Forgotten by much of Belgrade. A shanty town. Hundreds of tin and cardboard shacks. You expect this in Kigali, not one of the oldest capital cities in Europe. These are the Roma. The gypsys. The Belgrade not shown in the postcards. A young girl singing on a bus. A woman selling stockings at the bus stop. A man pushing a cart covered with cardboard. Welcome to Belgrade. Welcome to the crossroads.
Embassy District. Scrawled in green spray paint on the wall: “Kosovo is the heart of Serbia.” And in a way, it is. Hundreds of years ago, the first Serbian independent kingdom was founded in a region that is now recognized by the U.S. as a different country. Now Kosovo population is 90% ethnic Albanian. Many Albanians suffered terribly under the ruthless ethnic cleansing of Slobodan Milosovic, the democratically elected President of Serbia in the 90’s. Many Serbs still will not acknowledge that this took place, or that they are at all responsible. Kosovo’s Albanian majority now treat the small Serb minority as second class citizens. Nobody right, nobody wrong. Welcome to Belgrade. Welcome to the crossroads.
Department for Media and Communications, Signdum University. Our group listens to young Belgradian activists from the Youth Human Rights Initiative describe their work. Everything from observing elections to training the next generation. They try to erase the prejudices embodied by the green spray paint on the wall in the Embassy District. It is as simple as a bus ticket. A ticket that allows youth in Belgrade and youth in Pristina (capital of Kosovo) to visit each others’ cities. To see the reality behind their parents’ harsh stories of “them.” To see that “they” are not really that different.
Welcome to Belgrade…Beograd…the White City. Welcome to Serbia. Welcome to the Balkans. Welcome to the crossroads.
Be The Change
Our tour guide during our visit to Sabor, the Croatian Parliament, was Marija Lugaric, age 30. Given her age, most of the group thought she was a junior delegate. Ne (no in Croatian). Marija Lugaric has been in Sabor for almost 10 years. She first got involved in politics at 18 when she and her friends lobbied the local government in Zagreb to free up the city’s nightclubs and concert halls from the strict state controls of Titoist Yugoslavia. From there she worked her way up quickly through the youth branch of her party and is now one of the senior members of Sabor, much to the chagrin of some of the older, but not yet senior delegates. Her message to us was clear. It doesn’t matter what you want to get involved in, whether it be politics, civil society, or the private sector. Just get involved. Make a difference. Be the change. Obama…Lugaric…us…coincidence? Yes we can.
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