Apartments, Letters, and Politics

Last night I went to Rachel's to eat dinner. She made some excellent Indian food. I was very impressed considering her oven looks like a microwave with a stove on top. While I was there my goal was to talk to Rachel's landlord to work out details for me to move in. The last two BVS volunteers have lived in this apartment (a grand total of 4 years). The apartment is fairly small with one large bedroom, a bathroom, a small kitchen/dining area (a table crammed in the corner of the kitchen area), and a storage room with a bed in it. (The room is actually not considered part of the apartment via the lease, but has been used by past BVSers for hosting visitors.) I would say the main common living space is the small table in the kitchen area. It is a rectangular table with two booth chairs. It is actually about the same size as a four person booth at a restaurant. The other thing that should be noted in the description of this apartment is the fact that most of the landlord's belongings remain in the apartment. This takes the form of bookshelves full of her books, porcelain figurines and knickknacks, all of kitchenware and utensils (which is actually a bonus), and most cabinets filled with her random belongings. The storage room is also full of her stuff. When the landlord left to live in Arizona, she mainly took her clothes; all other belongings were left in the apartment.

The landlady, whom I will refer to as M, has been living in Arizona the last four years with her sister. She came back about a week before I arrived for a 3 month visit. Rachel was given seven hours notice about her arrival. (It actually would have been about 30 hours notice but Rachel hadn't checked her email until about seven hours before M arrived.) When she came back she told Rachel she would be staying with her for a week or two. She then planned to get a hotel or stay with friends. She said she needed that time to get some things fixed up in the apartment (the walls are cracking, there are plumbing issues, etc.). M made several comments to Rachel about how things in the apartment had deteriorated from the state she had left them in. Apparently, she thought that upon her return everything would be just as sparkling new as when she left four years ago.

Anyway, here it is three weeks later and M is still living there. She told Rachel the other night that after looking into hotels it was too expensive and she would just be staying there until she returned to the U.S. (In January!). So, I was informed a few days ago that the first few months of my stay in the apartment would be extra cozy with M joining me (She is actually been sleeping on the bed in the storage room, but shares the kitchen and bathroom with Rachel.) Her unanticipated presence for the next few months was not the greatest news in my mind, but no other alternatives were available. However, paying full rent for the months she remained did not seem reasonable to me. M also mentioned to Rachel that she planned on raising the rent. BVS had been getting a very good deal on the apartment, particularly for its location (It's in the center of town. A fifteen minute walk from the WiB office.). They got a discount (this meant the rent was not raised from the rate the previous volunteer was paying) on the rent two years ago since Rachel signed a lease agreeing to stay there for her entire two year term.

Obviously, there were several issues I planned to discuss last night with M (finding out the new rent price, discussing a fair rate for while she was staying, figuring out how to divide the electric, water, and phone bills while she remained, etc.). After sitting down with her at the table (while Rachel washed the dishes), I began the discussion by asking her how much she was planning to charge for rent. Her new rent price would be raising the previous cost by a hundred euros! She wanted to go from charging 150 euros per month to 250 euros per month. All discussions of division of bills (while she remained) flew out of my head. I knew Kristin (the BVS Europe Coordinator) would not agree to this price. I tried to wheel and deal my way into a new price by agreeing to a two year lease, playing the poor volunteer card, and telling her flat out that this price would not work. She was adamant about her new price. M stated her nephew would be moving here next month and she had been looking for an apartment for him and realized her price was way too low. The place she found him would be three hundred euros a month and was located on the outskirts of town rather than the center. She said with the raise in rent prices in Belgrade and the repairs she would need to do in the apartment she could not go any lower. I was expecting her to raise it to 200 euros and to try to get her to lower it by even a mere 10 euros to 190 euros a month.

I no longer have a plan as to where I will be living. However, I already have some leads. Several of Rachel's friends (and my new friends) have already offered to help find me a place if I have not found one before Rachel leaves. In fact, one of them knows of an apartment that is opening up next week for a reasonable price (under 200 euros). It is not located in the center of town and would require that I took a twenty minute bus ride each morning and evening, but is supposed to be a spacious, new apartment. I'm sure it will be an interesting adventure (and headache) to find somewhere to live. Several other BVSers located in the Balkans have moved numerous times during their term. One has moved so many times in her three years that she has a specific taxi company that she calls who also assists her in the moving process (carrying all of her luggage). My hope is that I will not be one of the legendary nomadic volunteers, but will only have to move once or twice during my tenure here.

In other news, I am anxious to learn the language. So far my attempts have only been met with failure. I signed up for a language course last Tuesday and was told that a new class would be starting the next day. I was the only student to show up. Class was cancelled. They said they would call everyone and we would try again on Friday. I showed up...nobody else did....class was cancelled. Round three takes place on Monday. Until then I have my sturdy Teach Yourself Serbian book and mp3 files (that I inherited from Rachel). I am still on the first lesson...trying to learn the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets and their sounds. I now have ten out of thirty letters down (or at least my version of what I believe them to be). For instance, I now know that the letter H (from the Serbian Latin alphabet) is actually written as the letter X in Cyrillic. But there is another letter in the Serbian Latin alphabet whose corresponding Cyrillic letter looks to me like a lowercase letter H. Are you confused? Well, I am. I am infinitely confused. I think I will be living in a constant state of confusion here. Or at least for a while.

Finally, I have been trying to get a feel for the political nature of Serbia especially after reading various news articles before my arrival here about the upcoming Kosovo decision in the national (U.S.) news. Unfortunately, my understanding and observations are deeply hindered by the language barrier. Although things at WiB always seem to have a political nature to them, I am curious to know more about the common people's (or the general population's) opinions and positions. Here are the few limited observations I have thus far...starting with the fact that there are many posters hanging in the pedestrian underpass which state, "It was, It is, and It will be Serbian" with a map of Kosovo on them. Interestingly, these posters are posted both in English and Serbian (Hence, the only reason I understand them.). They also do not say who put them up or is sponsoring them. There is a website listed, but no actual political party or nationalist organization listed on the poster.

The second observation comes from the limited conversations I have had with the few people I have met here since my arrival who speak English (both in and out of WiB). Several of them have mentioned that even though they hope for a change in the political situation, they don't actually believe it will happen anytime soon. They do not foresee a change in the nationalistic stance of the government anytime soon. As to whether that is their pessimistic view or a realistic view, I do not know. I'm sure only time will tell.

Another interesting observation lies in the economic situation within Belgrade (and the rest of Serbia from what I'm told). I have met several young people who are unemployed and are in a constant search for a job. I have been told that it is impossible to live in Belgrade alone; the rent cannot be paid on one salary alone. There is a volunteer at WiB who is currently living in the office due to economic restraints. There is another visiting from outside of Belgrade who is here on a mission to find a job. Her family is financially dependent upon her. Her mother is severely ill and cannot work, her father is dead, and her younger brother is still in elementary school. Therefore, it has fallen upon her to find a job. If you walk down the streets of Belgrade, you will see tons of people gathered at windows. At one point there were so many people gathered around one window that I thought for sure something exciting must be going on (an in store robbery or an amazingly insane sale), but all fourteen of the people were gathered around the one window to window shop. It is the common form of entertainment in Belgrade. Nobody can afford to buy anything, so they window shop. I must say the window displays are much more exciting than the ones back home (or at least in Indianapolis), but it is still not my preferred method of shopping. It leaves me to wonder who is actually buying the goods within the store that allow them to stay open. I have seen very few people actually walking around with shopping bags on the main thoroughfare. There is an endless array of shops, but no actual buyers. The main shopping street even has little stands set up where people can buy bags of popcorn to eat as they window shop. It is the original Belgrade form of entertainment.

The final observation is the interesting way in which the stability/instability of the Kosovo situation is related to the stability/instability of the Bosnian situation. Here is a link to an interesting article about this link if you are interested in reading more about the situation: http://www.birn.eu.com/en/110/10/5478/

Okay, that is all for now from me. I am headed to Sarajevo next week on Wednesday for a few days for the BVS Balkans Annual Regional Retreat. I'm looking forward to seeing the city and reuniting with Tory and Katie (my travel companions in Geneva and on the train until we parted in Zagreb).