Bosnia Blog

Dr. Svetlana Broz, grandaughter of Josin Broz Tito of the former Yugoslavia, will speak at San Jose State University, California. Topics include affairs in Bosnia and Herzegovina, recent developments with the European Union, as well as the future of the Balkans.

Event Details

This university is only 30 minute driving from where I used to live. Too bad I am so far away. If you happen to attend this lecture, please share your note. If you video tape the conference, please update it to Youtube and share the link. Thanks.

[Link]

“If you don’t do/behave such and such, I’ll kill you.” Your friends probably said similar statements to you all the time. “If you don’t haul your lazy as* off the couch and do the laundry, I will kill you.” So do wives who blow this sort of harmless threat to their husbands. “Kill” is an exaggerating word people use often on a daily basis, and probably are not even aware of the word choice.

But then in a more “sensitive” society:

Croatians say ’sto’ and Bosnian say ’sta,’ simple as that. One day I got confused, thus I asked my friends for verification and then joked, “I’ve better say it right or they [Croatians] will ‘kill’ me.”

Two friends whom I asked sent me this sharpest glare and quickly snapped at me. “Hey, you don’t understand us. We had problem in the past, but we live peacefully together now.”

“Uh! What have I done?” I bit my lip and pondered.

Tags: BeyondSarajevo, Bosnia

[Picture from homepage.mac.com]

One day I was walking along to the suburb of the city to see a museum with a group of teenagers. We passed a river filled with trash because of people who were two lazy to walk a bit further to garbage bins. One of the girls (Bosniak) pointed at the river and said: “You know! We are heading toward the Republika Srpska. The Serbs here have the habit of littering the river; making the city not so nice.”

Uh! Hmm! Okay!

Bogami! I swear to my boze–when I have one–that only a few weeks after, while hanging out in Travnik, I saw a woman getting out of her house. She walked down the street and headed toward a small river. (I like watching people doing trivial things.) She opened her small plastic shopping bag, dumped then entire load into the river. Then she folded the bag and walked back home. Hmm, she even saved the garbage bag.

This area is close to the Old Town, surrounded by mosques. 82% of Travnik’s population is Bosniak. Fiddle around with probability, and you tell me about this woman I saw in Travnik.

One morning two years ago at a romantic chalet on a beautiful mountain in Poland, I was woken up from my sleep by buzzing noises from outside the window and from another bunk bed in the same room. Apparently, Peter was complaining to Raquel about her annoying gossip which disturbed his sleep. Who cares about disturbing gossiper and a disturbed sleeper? I pulled the blanket over my head, trying to go back to sleep only to wake up permanently from my sleep when a surprising shouting match between the two of them broke out.

“… [I forgot what it was] I didn’t speak Croatian.” Peter firmly stated.
“Yes you did. The other day when I was sleeping, you spoke Croatian so loud with Ivana and woke me up. ” Raquel retorted.
“I said I did not speak Croatian.” Peter’s voice got louder and louder.

The argument got so serious that other friends started gathering Raquel and flocking into the room to understand what was going on.

Raquel was squeaking and speaking to fast; I couldn’t hear most of what she said. And Peter was enraged. All I made out of their quarrel was “you did…Croatian. no…didn’t…Croatian.”

“What’s up with this Croatian?” I asked myself.

Two years after that incident, somehow I figured it out.

Ivana is a Croatian living in Croatia. Peter is a Serbian living in Serbia. Ivana and Peter speak and understand each other no more or no less than Tony Blair understands Bill Clinton.

But God forbids. Croatian and Serbian are two “different” languages. Don’t ever forget that.