Friday, September 19, 2008

More on the Balkans

I still haven’t written anything that I’m particularly happy with about my time in Belgrade and Bosnia. I think I hoped – desperately naively I know – that I would return from a week spent over there and have lovely, neat answers to all my questions about family and the conflicts of the past and present and that fire which I have seen in people’s eyes (the fire I feel I do not possess, not in the same way at any rate).

It was my mother’s first trip of any note back to Belgrade in 45 years, which turned out to be almost too long a time to bridge. We were both tourists in our own way, which had its drawbacks and its pleasures. I have just come home with many, many, many more questions than I had before I went and am struggling to order my thoughts. I was going to write about the pop corn vendors and the permeating sense of chaos and the evening we sipped beer in the bar at Kalemegdan as the sun set over the Danube (a very cinematic moment) and other such things – and I still might – but, really, right now the only solid true thing I know is that a week was not enough and I hope to go back as soon as I can (well, sometime next year at least).

Apologies, I suspect this was of interest to no-one other than myself. Next post will be more theatre-centric, honest.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

It was interesting - as are all your posts.

Seems like it will take time to process, though.

I don't know how Martha Gellhorn et al used to turn up in a foreign city and bash out a story on a typewriter there and then.