So Close Yet So Far Away

Although my recent work conference was located only 340 miles away from Pristina up in Novi Sad Serbia taking under 5 hours to drive direct, because of the issues at the Kosovo/Serbia border and not having an official Serbian visa stamp to enter, I had to drive from my office to Skopje airport in Macedonia, wait for a plan that flew first south to a resort town and then double back to Belgrade, overnight in Belgrade to get picked up the next day by one of my Serbian staff to make the 1 hour scenic drive to Novi Sad. All told, way too many many hours of routine inconvenience which is ever so common in trying to get around the Balkans.

It is only within this context of (unnecessary) complexities that one can begin to understand how the business and agricultural community can be 15-20 years more advanced there than the situation we have here in Kosovo. Since I was attending the largest regional agriculture fair with 4 of my staff over a 3 day period, I was brought back to the reality of how difficult a task we face here trying to make marginal improvements on the way the Kosovars produce their local products to compete against all the imports from Serbia and beyond. I don't imagine the John Deer equipment we saw or the dairy processing plants they were selling were much different from a similar type of trade fair anywhere in the western world, but still everything was too expensive and too advanced for a majority of our clients.

What was different was the Balkanization of the fair. First off there are the famous and impossible to miss booth babes. Anyone who displays their products must hire a local girl to help hand out brochures and serve drinks during any of the business deals. Not to mention the additional girls that most the companies bring in with very skimpy, suggestive matching outfits and smiles to melt an iceberg. Of course they don't know a thing about the product but we gladly accepted every brochure they handed us on animal feed, pasteurization techniques, animal husbandry or some other agriculture type product or activity (most in Serbian and on subjects I didn't know even existed). As my Serbian colleague said, 'There is plenty of opportunity for us to rest our eyes'.

Speaking of resting, this fair covered some 30 large conference halls and then all the outdoor walkways connecting the buildings were lined with additional vendors. We must have walked 20 kilometers over several days in some pretty intense heat and certainly needed to take some breaks. Including my free 20 minute chair massage being tended to by two lovely booth babes. What massage has to do with agriculture I have no idea. Oh wait, maybe it was the fact that over 600,000 people attend the fair and I imagine a great number are older, lesser educated men that will gladly consider buying anything from these ladies. They had me sold.

If you are vegetarian, forget it. The only food to be found were open pits preparing a mixed grill of lamb, pork and beef. Along with a loaf of fresh bread and litre of beer I was ready to hit the next hall to escape from the 'turbo folk' Serbian music that was being performed at most of these rest stations. Has to be some of the most acquired taste music I have ever heard. Even a great number of local can't stand it however it continues to remain extremely popular throughout the region.

One thing I seemed to have mastered quite well through all of my business travels is to make sure to combine it with enough pleasure actives to not feel like I'm working 24/7 and able to take advantage experiencing some pretty nice and unique places. Novi Sad is certainly one of these and promoted by all Serbians as their 'crown jewel' being as much like Europe as you get (in the Balkans). I think this was stretching it a bit but is is a very modern, clean, organized and wealthy city with tons of pedestrian plazas, cafes, bars, restaurants and shopping to be had. Not to mention the beautiful women wearing revealing Serbian/European fashion to 'rest our eyes'. Meals were great and each night I went out with my colleagues to a nice relaxing dinner, ice cream and late night drink (for us that meant 10am since we were exhausted). Except on the last night of work I needed a break and took myself to McDonald's for a wonderful dinner followed by attending the local opera which was La Bohem. It was very well performed in a nice theatre for only 3 USD but since it was sung in Italian and translated into Serbian, I was pretty lost for most the show. I then took myself to a local pub playing excellent mixed lounge/hip hop and chatted with bar tender who was a local student.

The next day (Friday) was our last for work and I met my team early for some meetings before they headed off to their families or back to Pristina. However I stayed. My American friend who I traveled with to Slovenia was also attending the fair and we had made plans to connect that evening to hang out with a local friend of his and fully experience the Novi Sad nightlife. Since I couldn't handle another day at the fair I just explored the town by foot before the skies opened up and rained for the majority of the day. Fortunately I had just stepped into the most perfect cafe to sit down and watch 4 hours of tennis from the Hamburg tournament which included all the top players. The perfect European music played in the background as I had a nice lunch, dessert and coffee just to kill time till the evening activities began. My friend Hayden and I connected to head over to his American friend Phils who has lived there for 11 years and acquired an ex-wife and two kids. All this and he is still younger than myself. As we strategized for the evening we exchanged stories on the history and life in Novi Sad. And unfortunately had to commiserate on the similarities of the Balkan ways that are not so different between Kosovo and Serbia. For example after our grand dinner of local Serbian cuisine, we hit our first bar to order a draft beer from the tap in front of us. Not possible, they do not serve from the tap after 10pm on the weekends. WHAT? This is the time when most beers would be sold. Having been around here long enough we didn't even try to rationalize how they came to this decision since it most likely is just one of those things. Moving onto the next place we were joined by a 4th American journalist living there as a freelance writer (most American's I have been out with since leaving the States) and three lovely local ladies, one of which Hayden knows. We all had a great time and finished off the evening at a local dance bar where a band was playing apparently all the well know local sing-along songs that everyone shouted at the top of their voices. We must have also stepped into a different crowd since there were some pretty bad outfits straight out of the 80's music videos.

Our late night out was rewarded by a VERY lazy day of waking up late, having the most excellent 'English breakfast' with fresh OJ, and then walking along the Danube River the length of the entire city. Ironically a private acrobatic jet kept passing overhead doing all types of tricks. I thought it to first be a military operation till Phil explained it is a local millionaire who just goes up to play around in the unregulated skies. Those that have it really have it. Whereas the rest just watch and hope he doesn't come tumbling down into their apartment complex.

We finally heading to the bus stand to catch a 1 hour trip back to Belgrade where Hayden keeps a weekend apartment so he can get out of the southern Serbian town he works. With the rain keeping our activities to a minimum, we just chilled out a bit before heading to a not so settling Chinese meal where we were joined by an ever more unsettling British bloke that Hayden knew. Lets just say this guy was full of himself and was almost making such outrageous statements on the Kosovo situation and other world affairs that you had to guess he was looking for someone to argue with. Not to mention his bitching about the rice and insisting he would not pay and didn't appreciate being treated as such. We just asked for the bill, kept our responses to a minimum and made our way quickly to the US Marine House that was having a party that night. Weird collection of people but had cheap drinks, a pool table (as well as the real pool outside) and some interesting people to chat with. Unfortunately as with Kosovo, all the women (and men) seemed to smoke which is a sure way for me not to engage in very long conversations. An early night home and I was well rested to meet another friend of mine Sander who lives near me in Pristina but who is in Belgrade most weekends with his local girlfriend. They picked me up for the most perfect afternoon before he and I had to catch the shuttle bus back to Kosovo. We explored a local park and memorial just outside the city to walk around nature. I am amazed every time I do Belgrade since it really is a well-developed and green city with all the amenities of Europe.

We even went down to the river to grab a quick pizza on a floating barge to enjoy the sun, calming water and nice conversation. Much needed since the next 5 hours were spent getting tossed around the inside of the bus and the roads got worse and worse the closer with came to Kosovo. Almost like traveling through a time machine as you can see the countryside and villages take you back in time and history till we had to wait at the 'border' before crossing over, switching license plates and heading on our way past many villages without any power. So close yet so far away...