As soon as you have somebody talking about crimes committed by Serb or Bosnian Serb forces, the general public opinion will say: and what about Serbian victims? Read any comment section on any major Serbian online newspaper site, and chances are that this is the exact kind of discourse you will find there.

One could already predict the reception from the very beginning of the shooting: at the beginning, both Serbs and Bosnians protested, Serbs that they will be portrayed as the villains, and Bosnians that it’s going to be disgraceful towards the victims. After several screenings, the Bosnian side is now satisfied with what they saw. Which means the Serbian side will not be satisfied. There are already some petitions for banning the movie in Republika Srpska, I’m sure there will be some petitions in Serbia as well.

The fact that Christiane Amanpour likes the movie so much she even held a speech at the premiere will not help movie’s reputation in Serbia either.

But we will just have to wait and see until the movie comes to theaters in Belgrade. To be continued…

Apparently Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter are on the cover of Serbian biology text book for 8th grade. At first i thought it’s photoshopped, but then I looked it up, and I got two covers of the book for sale. It’s a still from “Raising Arizona”, and it’s supposed to represent a happy family, because it’s probably what kids learn about at the time. Little did the graphic designer knew that in the movie, it’s not really a happy family.

Take a look:

Click here and here for bigger versions.

Funny thing, these books are from 1998, and if I remember correctly, the books I learned from back in 1993 didn’t have Nick Cage and Holly at the cover, which means they must’ve been inserted there to make the cover more interesting. They sure did!

Other bridges have names, which is crucial if you want to get from one side to the other, you sometimes need to tell the cabbie the name of the specific bridge you want to cross. Otherwise he gets to choose and it can be costly. Also, if you are ever stuck on traffic on one of the bridges, and you want to tell someone you’re gonna be late, it’s good to know the name of the bridge to accurately point out where you’re stuck. If you are sailing by boat on Sava or Danube, it’s nice to know under which bridge you are passing and to refer to that fact by saying “Oh, look, we are passing beneath the Gazela”, or “Branko’s bridge” instead of saying something vague like “Oh, look, we are passing underneath a bridge.”

Photo by luca_ontheweb

So naming things is important. But have you noticed how naming stuff has changed? It used to be decided by an unknown group of people who came up with the idea for a new street, square, or a bridge, after what I like to imagine as a solid, lengthy brainstorming session studying the history of a place, finding symbolism between a place and a person and finally, just presenting their idea to the people after it was already decided. And no one seemed to complain.

It’s not like that anymore. Now we have the Internet, and the people were invited to add their own suggestions. And the suggestions ranged from imaginative, like “The Giraffe” (to accompany the Gazelle, of course) over boring ones, like the “Zoran Djindjic bridge” or “Patriarch Pavle bridge,” to the outright insane ones, like “Novak Djokovic bridge.” The guy is still alive, for Christ sake.

So the day came when the decision had to be made, and the new name is (drumroll) – wait for it – The Bridge over Ada! It was so obvious, yet catchy. And of course, the people were left feeling unhappy, because it was not how they imagined democracy to be in the age of the internet. But if you look at how many streets, squares and bridges actually changed name in Belgrade in past hundred years alone, it seems that this generic name is guaranteed not to upset any new government in the future so much that they would want to change it into something more “appropriate.”

But if you look closely, the whole fuss surrounding the bridge, the grand opening for the pedestrians, the naming, the debate and everything else is just artificially created so that we might never make an inquiry into following things: 1. why did the bridge cost so much to make, and 2. did we really need a bridge that expensive right now?

Take a listen for yourself, the magic starts around 00:35.

Something tells me this ain’t the last time we’ve heard of her!

The video you’re about to see is not revolutionary – the angles, direction, camerawork, narration, script… it’s all been done. But what makes it revolutionary s that when it comes to Serbian promotional tourist videos, it has never been done this good before. Unfortunately.

The accent is on food, and it’s a good one – most regions are truly famous for that special something when it comes to food. Serbian cuisine is not very sophisticated, but the secret that makes it special is that the ingredients are tasty. This video goes to great lengths to show exactly that – beauty that lies in simple, rough and tasty ingredients coming from various regions in Serbia. Anyway, enough talk, hit full screen and enjoy.

SOULFOOD Serbia 4’ 13’‘ from SENSE Production on Vimeo.

See more great photos at: robokow

The interesting thing for this article, and also for unsuspecting tourists in Belgrade, both local and foreign ones, is the plaque on the National Bank building in Kralja Petra street 12, marking the place where he was born and the inscription on it, which probably makes it one of the funniest plaques of that kind in the world. Translation below.

“I was born in an old little house, near the Belgrade’s Orthodox Cathedral. That little house was later wiped out from this Earth and instead of it, there now stands the grand building of the National bank, so the Bank’s vaults are now at the very same spot where the room I was born used to be.

Say it happens that some kind descendants came along and wanted, say, to mark the spot where I was born with a plaque. That plaque, with the inscription “In this house was born … etc” would have to be built into the wall of the National Bank, right above those basement windows with the thick iron bars, where the vaults with the Bank’s golden reserve lie…

I was also born at midnight, so that the biography couldn’t state “He first saw the light of the day on the October 8th 1864”, but

“He first saw the lights of the paraffin candle on the October 8th 1864”

signed: Kind descendants,

Belgrade, 8th of October 2004

We are a non-profit, self-organized group of web activists.

The purpose of our activity is to bring to the attention of the Serbian public dangerous influence of the writer Dobrica Cosic, who has been, again this year, proclaimed by some as a serious contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Dobrica Cosic, author and public political figure, active for decades, always close to the highest political power and those who exercise it, from the Communist Party of former SFRY, inspirators of their manifest of Serbian nationalism, infamous Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of sciences, former president of the Milosevic’s wartime SR Yugoslavia, to present alliance with reactionary and most dangerous Serbian pseudo-democratic circles in the new era.

We have registered the domain of this obviously hoax site on the 5th October 2011, as a symbolic reminder of that day eleven years ago, when Serbia missed a historic opportunity to create a different and better world. Today again, Serbia turns to war, terror and deadly kitsch of the nineties, violence towards diversity, nationalist conservatism and dishonest orthodoxy. We believe the political activity of Dobrica Cosic is still deeply intertwined with this hazardous value system, which does not cease to threaten us all.

Terrible consequences of decades of Mr. Cosic’s political, literary and public activity are felt to this day, both by his own country and throughout the region.

Dobrica Cosic is not a recipient of the Nobel Prize, although the general public in Serbia, and he himself, believed he is for 15 full minutes.

We find some solace in that fact.

Still, many media published the info without checking, including B92, RTS, Radio S, to name only the bigger ones. I must admit I didn’t exclude the possibility of Cosic getting the prize at once, and even tweeted about it prior to checking the data. Why did the prank work so well? Well, there are several reasons.

1. Being first is the most important thing today. If some other media beats you to it, you might as well stop reporting altogether. Publish first, check facts later.
2. Serbs love beating the world in something, whether it’s a big thing like the Nobel prize or a small one, like the guy who discovered that the Facebook is tracking our cookies after we log out. He is Australian with Serbian roots, but still.
3. Cosic is himself very divisive personality, kind of like Peter Handke. Great writer, but very controversial political stands and statements. It was inevitable that also the opponents will, in disbelief, share this news as real.

Did you fall for the prank?

Related articles

• Internet hoax has Serb writer as Nobel winner (seattletimes.nwsource.com)


• A crazy Nobel year: Dylan, pranks and polls (telegraph.co.uk)

photo by BART

What’s the percentage of freeloaders in Belgrade’s public transport? Nobody knows for sure, but the GSP themselves (Gradsko saobracajno preduzece – official city transportation company) believe that there are around thirty percent of those who don’t pay for rides, and my personal assumption is that the figure is closer to fifty percent. GSP tries all the time to make this number smaller by various methods which basically comes down to finding couple of huge guys to check if every passenger has a ticket. Sometimes this ends in a fight so it’s not a perfect solution, but it keeps the fare dodgers to the same percentage.

I rarely take the bus because: a) I have a car and b) I like to walk but also because taking the bus can often be a trip to the unknown, literally. It’s 2011 and the GSP website is just a static shitty page that doesn’t inform you about the stops in the city. How hard can it be to make something like this: you enter your starting point (home address) and your destination point, and the magical website gives you exact point you should take the bus, number of the fucking bus you should take, and if you have to change, and gives you a rough estimate of how long the trip is going to take.

I’ll tell you how difficult it is – not at all. Why don’t we have it yet? Beats me. Until we get this, which is by now every bus rider’s basic citizen right, I cannot really blame the fare dodgers.

See more great photos at: dddejan

If you rewind the film, last year the parade took place somehow with strong police forces virtually defending the inner circle of participants with three walls of policemen. In 2009, a parade again had to be cancelled because of the fear that someone might get killed, and in 2001, the parade participants got badly beaten by right-wing hooligans.

It’s 2011 and it feels that the progress Serbia is that of a snail on a reversed treadmill. By progress I do not mean progress in human rights or some similar empty slogan that means everything and nothing at the same time. I am talking about a complete lack of compassion between citizens. Majority of people see the ban as a good thing and can’t understand why the LGBT want to walk the streets in the first place. Again with the same rhetoric, again with the same arguments. Yada, yada, yada.

It is, quite frankly, amazing to look from a distance and see from time to time, how stubborn and how large the conservative part of Serbia is. Again, I am not talking about the ultra-right wingers, but of an average citizen who still considers homosexuality an illness.

Indeed, a sad day for Serbia. One in a row.LGBT activists did a small protest instead where they blocked the traffic in Belgrade city center shortly, and then smeared the streets with rainbow colors.