(Her : Joanna)
After seeing and hearing what had happened in Bosnia & Herzegovina,
I have to admit that I developed a certain perception of Serbian. Even though my conscious told me that a lot
of it has nothing to do with the people living but the government at that time
was behind all the terrible events, it is difficult not to become bias. Coming to Belgrade, after a long and tiring
semi-overnight bus ride and greet with blazing heat in a room with no AC, did
not help me like the city more. We saw
buildings that are on its way to fall down, which are probably caused by the
NATO bombing in 1999. However, I have
different feelings as when I saw bullet holes filled buildings in
Sarajevo.
I can resist but to think "Is this man a rapist? Did he kill civilians in Bosnia? What did he do during the war?" every time I passed by men over 35 years old. It gave me chills. As a woman, the thought of being around rapists made me very uncomfortable and unsafe. Though it was during "special" circumstances during the war that might affected the behavior uniquely. With that feeling and thought, it was hard to see and experience Serbia with an open mind and open heart.
When I heard nationalist comments from a young officer at
the tourist office about Kosovo and his advice for us as foreigners not to
visit Kosovo because Albanian are very racist and they are at war right now, I
was being very turned off. It was the
first time we’ve heard that going to Kosovo is dangerous.
We tried to “discover” Serbia to see whether there are some
country side towns we can visit but the officer at the tourist office just
shoot us down in the handful we shortlisted.
It was a pity as a pair of couples from Australia who were
originally from Serbia that we’ve met at Tito’s grave told us that there are
tons of beautiful places in Serbia that are untouched by tourism. Unfortunately, the focus for Serbia is to
rebuild the country after the war and tourism wasn’t as developed as it could
be.
