Niš

Niš is the hub of serbia. This is where the roads to Sofia, Thessaloniki, Skopje and Beograd meet. It is also the third city in Serbia after the capital and Novi Sad. Due to this strategic location Niš has always been a prominent settlement in the region, and for instance, is the birthplace of Constantine the Great, the very roman emperor who brought Christianity to Rome as a state religion.Niš is now a modern city of 250.000 people.

The city is home, among other historical remains, of a very curious monument. it is the Ћеле Кула, the Skull Tower of Niš. It was built by the Ottomans out of the skulls of the participants to a Serb uprising. It was like a large sign saying “Don’t fuck with the Sublime Porte!“. Unfortunately we found the place closed.

Recent history has not been gentle on the city of Niš. During WWII it has been home to a Nazi concentration camp and on a hill you can visit the Bubanj memorial, where 10.000 people from south Serbia have been shot by the Nazis.

Stage 6: Beograd – Niš

We left Beograd for the south of Serbia. Along the way the spirit of the Big Man continued to follow us.

Beograd

Beograd, the capital of Serbia and former capital of Yugoslavia is quite evidently a place where power has been, and still is, excercised. It reminded us a lot of Rome. The atmosphere here is much more relaxed than in Croatia and people enjoy staying out till late and having a drink in one of the many cafés that line the city centre streets. The city is still wounded by the NATO bombing of 1999, but you could feel it as just another layer of history laid on it. Built at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, the origins of this city date to the 6th millenium b.C. It is one of the oldest settlements in Europe.

Tito

While we were visiting Belgrade we couldn’t refrain to pay homage to the resting place of Josip Broz, better known as Tito. The ruler of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia lies in a very modest building, far removed from the grandeur of other socialist mausoleums. The Kuća cveća is a modern and simple building, a sort of mix between greenhouse and school gym. It was a sort of summer office to Tito, during his rule, and he expressed the desire to be interred here after his death. We guess this underlines the peculiarity of this man, who probably did not want to be buried in an “aligned” way. The mausoleum has been closed and left unguarded for almost ten years after the breakup of the federation but now it has been reopened to the public.

Stage 5: Zagreb – Beograd

We’re on our way to Beograd and we’ve decided to stop along the way at the

Jasenovac concentration camp

This memorial site is located in southern croatia, along the border with Eastern Bosnia’ Republika Srpska. During the second world war the Ustaše regime, in charge of the Independent State of Croatia Nazi puppet state, liquidated in this camp an unknown number of people (figures range between 50.000 and 600.000). The vast majority were Serbs, followed by Roma people, Jews, uncooperating Croatians, Bosnian Muslims and Slovenes. The camp is now stripped of its original buildings and is just a big meadow with artificial hills and a lake, the centrepiece is the Jasenovac monument by Bogdan Bogdanović.

Beograd, first impressions

Beograd is a mess, but is a real city, maybe the first we’ve met on our way, the first sight of the metropolis are the brutalist Western City Gates, followed by traffic, cyrillic signage, more traffic and more cyrillic signage. While crossing the bridge on the Sava, the city looks very layered and, this time, definitely NOT tidy or well kept. But it looks very lively. We guess this is our first real glimpse of the East.

Zagreb

We finally got to Zagreb, capital of Croatia. Zagreb is distinctively influenced by the Austro-Hungarian empire in terms of architecture and city planning (in the centre), and by Soviet good practices (in the outskirts). The result is a small historical city centre, very well kept, and a sprawling metropolis of concrete highrise buildings all around it. The latest developments are huge shopping malls and fast-food franchises. A sort of icing on the cake.

Croatian people look very proud of being, well, Croatian. Everything in Zagreb is chequered white and red, people wear chequered t-shirts, sport faces chequered in red freckles and every single car has a “HR” tag on it. Like they would not recognize each other.

Tehnički muzej Zagreb

The museum layout and collection clearly dates from the glory days of good old Yugoslavia. Stress is put on worker achievements, mine production, big greasy steam engines and a big lobby filled with areonautical and transportation specimens such as a P-47 Thunderbolt in Yugo livery and an old pocket submarine (under restoration). There’s also a space section with Apollo era scale models (a Saturn V, the ASTP and a couple Soyuz crafts) but also 1:1 scale replicas of a Lunokhod rover (pictured above) and a Mercury capsule complete with LES.

Then you turn a corner and find our engine, the very one we’ve been cooking on the previous day, in the middle of an exhibition gallery. We know where to go for spare parts now.

In the firefighting section (firefighters are held in high esteem in all of the former Yugoslav republics) we’ve found some nice Hazmat suits and equipment.

Stage 4: Celje – Zagreb

We left Šmartinsko jezero, already missing our new friends but proud to head for our next mission: Zagreb, Croatia.

Celje (and Šmartinsko jezero) #2

Velenje

We visited Velenje, a town that sports the largest marshall Tito statue in the world. Velenje is a minerary socialist dream, it has been built to house the workers for a local lignite mine. Gorenje, a manufacturer of washing machines and armored personnel carriers has its headquarters in the area.

Back to Šmartinsko jezero

We went for a nice tour of the lake on a boat that once carried Agatha Christie (on another lake). The boat has been refit with an electric engine as petrol engines are off limits on the area. Our host advised us not to dip our feet in the water, apparently there are giant carnivorous carps dwelling in the deeps. They use to eat children and small dogs.

Oh, deer!

When we came back to the house a couple hunters arrived on a brand-new SUV. In the trunk they had the fresh corpse of a young deer, which they proceeded to slaughter on the dinner table. We had our daily dose of blood, gore and deer cutlets on the grill. Most of the beast went into a really tasty Gulash that we’ve been compulsively eating for the next day or two.

Now, off to Zagreb, Croatia.

Celje (and Šmartinsko jezero) #1

Celje is home to a nice community of artists, they have worked together to get the city council to issue a residency program for foreign artists, and to grant studio space to local artists. We met most of them at a nice country house at the Šmartinsko lake, nearby Celje. This is a sort of camp which is part of the Splav Meduze event, curated by Marko Stamenkovic and produced by Zavod Celeia Celje – Center for Contemporary Art / Likovni salon.

IC Cuisine

For Splav Meduze we presented the first iteration of our IC Cuisine project, and our draft Cookbook.

We have found some nice trout that we cooked in our Renault Clio, with berry tomatoes, parsley, pepper and olive oil.

Our fellows appreciated the treat and deemed it good.

Stage 3: Ljubljana – Celje

We left our tidy squat for Celje, a former Roman, former Germanic, former Yugoslavian town in the east of Slovenia. Celje is the centre of an agricultural region and it’s full of sprawling shopping malls.

Ljubljana

Ljubljana is a very nice city and it embodies Mitteleuropa to the max, everything is tidy and everything works. Elderly people speak perfect English.We stayed in Metelkova, a very nice squat, where everything is tidy and everything works. Elderly punks, there, speak perfect English.

Above: the monumental Altar of Discord.