Serbia: January 12

The most important things for a traveler to report are things he did not expect, and the things he cannot readily explain.  Usually, if we have an explanation close to hand for something we just saw, it generally comes from our preconceived notions about a country, and not necessarily from the true causes.  However, a complete surprise takes us out of our prejudices, and can reveal to us an actual glimpse of another country, and the realities behind it.

In Belgrade, the one unexpected thing was the street signs.  Or rather, the lack thereof.  In the US, and in most Western European cities, every single crossroads and junction has a little signpost labeling each road.  Often, they’re found on traffic lights and stop signs, as a convenient place.  If you’ve grown up with that, you tend to think of it as a normal part of any city.  Walking in Belgrade during the evening, I couldn’t see any, which came as a complete surprise to me, and not a pleasant one either, given that I was trying to navigate by a street map.

I don’t know why they’re not there.  It’s possible, of course, that they were there and I didn’t notice.  My map was made for tourists, and all the street names are written in the Latin Alphabet.  If there were signs using Cyrillic, I may have just skipped over them visually.  If that’s so, though, the street signs here follow a different pattern and design from the ones at home.

That was just one detail I noticed out of many, but the overarching thing I’m feeling right now is a general sense of culture shock, I guess.  I’m not sure what triggered it; in Berlin I didn’t feel like I was in an alien culture, even though I was in a foreign country.  It was a metropolis of Western Culture, the same that I’ve lived my whole life in.  The language may have been different, but the norms are pretty much the same.

In Budapest, it was a little different, but nothing too shocking, or anything that would make me feel unwelcomed.  There was a touch of the exotic, the feeling that I was definitely in Central Europe, and not Western Europe, but there wasn’t anything particularly hostile about it.  Come to think of it, I don’t remember seeing many street signs there, either, but I was able to find my way around due to the frequent underground train stops that showed up at regular intervals.

In Belgrade, however, there was an entirely different atmosphere.  Most other people in my group remarked on it too; somehow it just wasn’t as welcome or accommodating as the other two cities.  We felt the absence of a native guide acutely, and were more quick to suspect hostility in the locals.  It’s hard to pin down the causes of this difference; it may have been partially due to the fact that no one was here to welcome us, unlike in Berlin and Budapest, where we had a local guide.  The presence of the Cyrillic alphabet, too, may have given us the impression of an alien culture.  Perhaps, also, might be the knowledge that as Americans, we cannot expect to be automatically liked here; not just because of the Communist history, but also of more recent military excursions against the Serbs..

I, personally, felt that at last I had entered Eastern Europe, whatever that meant. 

I’m not sure I could tell you what Eastern Europe is, but If I even get an answer to why there are no street signs in Belgrade, I think I might be able to.