Zenica, the metal city
I visited Ta. yesterday in Zenica, a city north of Sarajevo. Before I left, I asked around about Zenica. According to all, the city was not important except that it had a large steel factory built by the Austrian government during its occupation of Bosnia. The steel employs roughly about 20,000 people out of the population of 120,000. Recently, the workers from this factory were on hunger strike against the management; something to do with their inability to buy apartments using their work credits.
I slept for the entire trip to Zenica. The bus arrived at 7 p.m. after an hour and a half drive. From afar, I saw Ta. She was difficult to miss because of her lean and tall figure, over 1.80 cm and her short, curly, black hairs.
Compared to Sarajevo, Zenica’ landscape was a mile a part with its flat level, green hills, and lack of traffic. In the middle of the city flowed the river Bosna, not amazing impressive but at least looked better than the pathetic “river” in Sarajevo.
Zenica
Ta. took me to a coffee & sweet bar, acclaimed the best of its kind in Zenica. We sat on the balcony, looking over the river, the park, the direction to her flat and downtown. Her sister Re. and Re.’ boyfriend, Se. caught up with us two hours later. Se. was of Dalmatian (the seaside in Croatia) origin, big built, tall, and spoke with a loud voice. He reminded me of a conversation I had with Ta. when she explained to me the accents in different regions, one of which was Split, a city along the Dalmatian coast. “The people from the seaside have this special airs about them which I like very much,” she said.
We headed toward the center where Ta. and her family bumped into friends after friends on the street. Even in Sarajevo, a bigger city, I always bumped into somebody I knew while strolling along the street walk in the center. Now I remember a comment made by one of my colleague, “eventually you will realize that this city is really small.” I acknowledged that fact after a few months in Sarajevo. Encountering acquaintance has become my tool to test the size of a city. Ta. and her family bumped into many people, therefore Zenica was very small. After checking the city, we arrived at a a local bar, frequently visited by Ta., Re., and Se. They liked the bar because it was off the center, thus not too noisy. Before arriving to this bar, we passed a part in downtown full of people drinking, watching the World Cup in addition to the loud Turbo folk in the background. “C., here is your favorite music,” Ta. said. I sorta chuckled.
Ta. is a 4th/5th year music major at the Music Faculty in Sarajevo. Her focus is musicology and aspires to be a music critic. She is the the type of person who has a taste in music and extremely choosy when listenning to songs. Therefore, every chance I got, I threw Turbo folk (a really sleezy kind of music) comments into her face for a few chuckes.
I ordered a dark beer brewed in Zenica. I don’t like beer at all, but it is my custom that I will try the local beer from whichever city I visit. The beer must have been strong or I ate little that day. With only 0.33 liter, I felt light headed and kept sliding down on my seat. Ni., another roommate of mine in Sarajevo, and her boyfriend coincidently entered the bar and joined us for a bit.
The Bosnian Croats
Ta. and her family are Bosnian Croats if tagging the “Croats” after the “Bosnian” is appropriate at all. I guess it is. I have to call them Bosnian Croats because they, plus another friend, are the only Catholic Croats I know in the entire time I was in Bosnia. All people I met and knew were exclusively Bosniaks. Ta. and her sister are ones of those non-nationalists who would not care less whether your name was Lejla, therefore a Bosniak or Claudia, therefore a Bosnian Croats. “After the war though, people start paying attention to that,” said Re.
I guess this is the reason why Ta., a non-political, would-not-harm-any-soul defended Tito strongly every single time I called him a dictator. Normally, she was not interested at all in the political discussions I tried to get her to participate. As a non-nationalist who cares more about economic issue than ethnic and religious difference, perhaps Tito fits her conception of a political leader. After all, under him, her parents had a good life.
I was in Zagreb for a few days, and Tito was mentioned in one of the conversations. It seemed to me that Tito was admired greatly among the young Croatian, at least the educated one. There are two possible explanations:
1. He is simply a great leader.
2. He is Croatian by birth, and the Croatians and Bosnian Croats had it better during his time.
Okay, enough for the politics. I would not matter at all even if I laid into Ta. for the differences in our political view point, not that there was any difference. She and her family are one of the kindest and earnest people I have ever met.
Music has been an important factor in my life. I think that this is why I have always favored musical people. For me, they are more sympathetic and can look at life in different perspective compared to the typica, over-represented rational, practical bulk. Ta., a music major who belongs to a female choir in Sarajevo. This choir has performed in many countries in Europe. So was her sister, a mechanical engineer, who sang in Germany during the war 19991 – 1995.
Ta., Re., and I went back to Sarajevo to catch the ballet “Swan Lake”, performed by an esemble from Russia, on Saturday night, Ta. and Re. returned to Zenica the next morning.
I am leaving Sarajevo for travelling in a few days and come back sometime in July for the remain of my luggage. Hopefully I will see Ta. a few more times before leaving Bosnia.
Tunnel museum
On Friday, the students from 2A took me to the Tunnel museum. We had to take the tram to the end of the tram line in Illija and walked to the Sarajevo suburb of Butmir, where the international aiport located.
Then I understood why people told me to take the taxi to the Tunnel when I asked for buses to get there. We walk on the earthen road passing small houses and fields under the summer heat and the relentles sun rays.
After walking for half an hour, we arrived in front of a shattered house, the Tunnel Museum of the Kolar family.
The tunnel 800 meter long, 1 meter wide, and 1.60 meter high (I circle the tunnel on the picture) was dug in 1993, a year after the war began, providing the only safe land route for humanitarian aids and escape in and out of the city. Two of the students on this trip walked through this tunnel during the siege. One had to go to her doctor, and one had to come live with her uncle on the other side. For 3 1/2 year, the city was sieged by the Bosnian Serb forces. A mixed Bosniak-Croat friend of mine told me that the reason for choosing the location of the tunnel was that people kept trying to escape through the airport runnaway and killed by snipers.
The part of the tunnel open for visitors was only 20 meter. It was a short walk underground, but I think that it was enough.
Cheapest flying option from Eastern Europe to West Coast America, anyone?
I don’t have much international traveling experiece so can’t suggest the most helpful advice. But after a month searching for a cheap airfare from Sarajevo to San Jose, California, USA, I came up with cheapest option:
From Dusseldorf, Germany to New York: $205 with LTU, booked through cheaptickets.com, through search engine from kayak.com.
From New York to San Jose: $190 booked through Jetblue Airway
In the beginning, I thought that the cheapest flight out of Europe to America were from either London, Paris, or Frankfurt and based my searches on those critieria. I came upon air deals ranging from at least 500 to 2000 dollars for just one-way tickets.
Finally I found kayak.com, a super-cool Ajax based web application which provides a super user-friendly experience. I liked kayak so much that I even suggested my boyfriend to mention this website in his master thesis about Ajax technology.
How did I come up with Dusseldorf?
All of the found cheapest airfare flying from Paris, Frankfurt, and other major neighboring cities e.g. Barcelona, Madrid, Rome changed in Dusseldorf. So I modified my departure city.
But why flying from Dusseldorf is cheapest?
Probably this is a major business city with strong tie to a major financially important New York city. This is just a guess though. If you know, please fill me in. And if you know of other cheaper options, let me know also.
Thanks.
Why I haven’t bought any strawbery?
It’s a fact known in my family that I am a strawberry sucker. People eat strawberries in term of numbers that is countable. I eat strawberries by the pounds that can render a person unconscious. Every summer, Costco, one of the largest wholesales in America, made quite a huge sum of profit from my family as we buy boxes after boxes.
So, last month I walked around an open market in in Thessaloniki, a city in Greece, and could not believe seeing big fresh strawberries for only 1.5euro per kg. It was beyond the wildest dream in the search for strawberries. I bought a euro worth of strawberries; I would have bought much more if I was not on a bus trip. Fruits are good for health, but too much will make you do unpleasant things during the trip.
I got back to Sarajevo and passed the open market every morning on my way to work. Big strawberries were every where, only that it was 3 euros per kilo. Having possess an important source of strawberry knowledge, I passed strand after stand, telling myself to wait for few day for the prices to go down, if it would ever at all, and contemplating all the possible factors that caused the higher prices in Sarajevo compared to Greece. Well, prices did went down to 2.5 euros a week later, and then 2, and then 2.25, and then 1.75, and then finally a few days ago 1.5. However, the strawberries were tiny and not as fresh compared to those I saw in Thessaloniky, and I determined to wait for a few days more. Guess what! I walked through the open market this morning and spot big fresh red strawberries for only 1.5 euros.
As | walked on, I just realized that I am my mother’s daughter.
Applied psychology
I was not always this carefully with money before as I bought in the spur of the moment. Perhaps:
1. It’s biological, “like mother, like daughter.”
2. It’s the fact that my earning follows the standard of a poor European country.
3. It’s the fact that people do change to adapt better to the new situation.
4. Or it’s just because I am dirt cheap.
How do you drink water?
When I lived in Vietnam, my family boiled water in a big pan before pour it into a pitch, officially making it drinkable. So I formed the habit of not drinking water straight from its source, which in Third-World country like Vietnam, infested with all kinds of stuffs.
I migrated to the United States of America, bringing my drinking-water habit with me to the new home, First-World country that is. Though they don’t boil water, they bought filtered water by the gallons from chain-market stores or water in bottles. Later on, to be fancy, they plugged the expensive filter around the sink faucet and filled their glasses with tap-water, now was purified. There was one time when my uncle forgot to buy water. My mom and I, being new comers to the society without any means of transportation to the store to get us some processed water, refused to drink tap water and got our alternate liquid supply from orange juice and milk. Sure we could have boiled the water and drank it, but we had this dilemma that in place like America, they did not boil their water. You see, even in a small house with two people dealing with a minor issue such as drinking water, though subtle, First-World and Third-World habits clashed. I would not boil water because it was not a First-World’s practice. I would not drink tap water because the water was deemed to be filthy under Third-World view.
Nonetheless, my habit of not drinking water directly from its source remained intact, and my belief that tap water was filthy was an infallible one.
I’m in my mid 20s when I came to Zagreb, Croatia to visit my friends. On the way home from the airport, spotting some fountain at the park, Marko told me, “Our water here is fresh, you don’t have to buy water at the store, just drink from the tap.” I was already informed about the freshness of water in the Balkans, so without a doubt, I believed him. However, a similar situation to that happened ten years ago resurfaced: I was ridiculously thirst for water. I adapted to practices of the new environment, at the same time upholding my former beliefs. I did not buy water bottles from shops as the Croatians; I did not boil my water as learnt from living in America; and I did not myself get my water from the tap unless somebody in the family poured it for me, a behavior prompted by an long-ago belief and habit I acquired in Vietnam.
I live in Sarajevo, Bosnia now. Similar to its neighbor Croatia, waster in Bosnia is fresh, and people here don’t buy water from the store. Yesterday, I filled my bottle with tap water and drank it while reading my book. I have to admit that there was split second pause before the water stream left the bottle and entered my mouth, as I was conscious that I was drinking tap water. Perhaps in a few months, I will drink tap water like a true Balkan and wsave a lot of money would-have-been-used-to-buy-water in the process.
Something in my heart
I first heard this song during my teenage years. Then I did not understand a single French word—I fare no better now—nor heed the Vietnamese lyrics much; nonetheless, “something” from the song attracted my short-pan attention. Perhaps, it was the nostalgic melody, typical of French chansons, the background sound, the young singer’s whispering narrative of a youthful, forgotten past and of a glorious yet uncertain future, or a little bit of all. Many years later, whenever I listened to this song, I paused for a few minutes constructing unclear images of my bittersweet years when I was ten.
Like the young girl in the song, I hurried through the growing-up process and longed for a glorious future; as uncertain as it might be, I would care less. Uncertainty I found indeed, but the splendor I discovered little if not any. I started wondering why. It took me more or less seven years to finally figure out the first piece of my “growing-up” dilemma: I was functioning or lack thereof in a framed and uncreative society, swamped itself with the deep-rooted, obsolete, inflexible, and foreign Confucius ideology adapted from the ancient Chinese. In most places I looked and most people I met, I saw another kind of problems in me, whether they are self-spawned from within or planted from without. Struggling to find my “place” in the world, I officially accepted my unchangeable traits which, by definition, contradicted in every sense with the aforesaid environment in which I operated. The only way, I saw, to protect my sense of identity and to survive whole was that I had to walk out of the nice-looking framed picture, albeit only on the surface, and carved for me a brand-new one.
It is not to say that I never “lived” before. The awareness of living began its shape during my college years at UC Berkeley, a school world-famous not only for its academic excellence but also for its liberal education, acceptance and honoring independence and uniqueness. One night, after finishing our class’ project, my project-partner and I walked out of the underground, air-conditioned room to sit outside on the pavement. I suddenly said, “You know, this is really life.”
As much contented by the new awareness, I was frightened at the same time realizing that until that moment, I barely “lived” or acknowledged that I was “living.”
“To live”, thus, has become one of the central life-messages I’ve strived to achieve for the past few years.
I don’t analyze my life and myself too much anymore. Why? Because I’m too busy living, I suppose.
Don’t worry about me since at the moment I am living grandly in a rented room on the second floor of a house at the feet of a mountain, looking down to the city full of star-light.
Among those starlight-watching nights, I caught a glimpse of myself; who knows? I might be the glimpse of myself in this world.
The following is the English translation of the song “Quelque chose dans mon coeur” base on the Vietnamese version translated by DH. To listen to the song, go to thanhda.com
Something in my heart
French
Vietnamese
Chut Vuong Van Trong Tim (Quelque Chose Dans Mon Coeur) – Kieu Nga
My parents still think of me as a little one,
but with friends, I grew up quickly.
Though we still hold each other’ hands,
something pulls me toward the future,
as I wander along with mellow melancholy,
in torn shoes and dirty jeans.
I crave for the clock-hands going very fast,
and wish I can let go many times.
Something in my heart,
foretells me of my destiny,
between the beginning minute of a mysterious sky
and the ending moment of a bygone innocence.
Something in my heart,
collapses an entire life.
of strange desires, of eager feelings,
and of panics I’ll soon forget myself.
I’d like to walk around the earth,
becoming another Ava Gardner,
carving my thoughts on the walls about hidden passions,
about the minutes and hours I only saw on movies.
I’d like to travel back to the past,
so in my mother’s lap, I’d cry.
Something in my heart.
When I sleep alone at nights,
alone in a city lies dormant,
there appear vanishing whispers,
telling a story of my life.
Something in my heart.
Snow
It wasn’t clear when the wish of living in a snowy city occurred to me. I lived in a tropical city called Ho Chi Minh or Sai Gon; the use of both names to be politically and diplomatically correct. Ho Chi Minh/Sai Gon was hot, giving me the habit of breathing like pigs and flapping my shirt for cool air like mad people. During such breathing and flapping frenzy, I stared at photos of foreign countries on calendars my aunt and dad took from their companies. I started liking those pictures with snowy scenery because the hot Sai Gon never snowed, and because it was hot, I was only able to spot sweat flowed.
That is the representative image I have about foreign countries: snowflakes fall, long and curvy snow-white roads drag to the horizon, and cream-like snow dunes cover small wooden houses. Perhaps this was why I developed this strange liking to Russian war movies—to show respect from one little brother to another big brother Communist country–were shown regularly on Vietnamese TV channel before the collapse of the Soviet Union. I watched those movies with the Bolsheviks wearing soft, furry winter hat and winter coats waddled in snow in places almost-seem-without civilization. And I heard adults’ comments, “it’s just the same being an exile in Siberia.”
I always thought that once I left Vietnam, I would be able to see snow fall. I thought of a winter day sitting in a small room with the lo suoi and listening to the ringing bells of Christmas. I saw snow. I sat in a room with lo suoi. And I heard the Christmas ring-a-bell. But I never experienced them at one occasion. I wish someday after opening my eyes in the morning, I looked outside the window, and there it was, the snow had fallen. After leaving Vietnam, I lived in California that was, for most Vietnamese, heaven because its weather compared to other states, closely resembles weather in Vietnam. Similar to Sai Gon, how can California pull from its bag of trick any snowball in the city.
Then, each year, as the end of December was near, I thought of myself sitting in my room and looking outside to see the falling snow.
Sarinka, meaning little Sarka, woke me up in the morning, “Cindy, it snows!” I was in the morning sleepy mood when I peeked outside. I only saw some light color of white on the roofs. “It is not so much,” I said and fell back to sleep. Half an hour later, I was woken up by the bell from a local Roman Catholic Church and looked outside. The white color on the roofs, by now, had sharpened. The green bushes in the garden were almost covered in snow. And there it was, snow flakes dropped outside my room window.
I jumped to Sarka’s room and yelp, “Sarka, it snows!”
Sarka was sitting on her bed smiling. She said, “Cindy, it’s Christmas! I am happy” I wish you a mery Christmas, I wish you a merry Christmas, I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year! So we sang for a whole minute.
I came downstairs for a bath and remembered Vietnamese lyrics from an old French song “Tomble la neige.”
Oh sadness, I cy for my lonely life. Hide the shroud on my funeral. The snow never stops falling…
Hmmm, it is strange! Who wrote such depressing lyrics? Snow is joy but not melancholy. But I’ve forgotten that this is my first snow experience in a city, in my room. Perhaps, in a few months, I would do the same and beg for the snow to stop falling.
Sarka and I asked the house owner to take a photo for us in the front yard. We, dressed completely in black from heads to toes it if weren’t for our blue and pink scarves like two black spiders in an extremely colorful-dressed city, walked hand in hand down the hill and headed toward the Old Town. Each of us carried a nylon bag of trash to drop it off in a trash bin down the street.
I left Sarka at a peraka meaning “bakery” so she could by bakery for her breakfast. I continued my walk to work, thinking of the winter shoes, the knee-high socks, and the coats thick enough to cover my and long enough to cover my behind I will have to buy in the next few weeks.
18.11.2005
Sarajevo
