Belgrade.

PARTIZAN - RED STAR
Only Sanity Can Save The Serbs.


4

2

"Dude, I went to one of those last summer," Ali said. A football derby in Belgrade was reason for excitement -- I could tell by his voice. "It was crazy."

After seeing FK Sarajevo play cross-town rival Željo in October, I would have assumed as much about a match between the two biggest teams in Belgrade. This city is over four times the size of the capital of BiH, and if you've been here as long as I have, you would know that Serbians are just as Balkan as those Bosnians.

"Balkan," as in "intense."

"Just remember one thing, though," he warned.

"What's that?"

Ali suddenly put on his serious face.

"Do not wear any red, or any black."

I laughed. "Come on man, it can't be that bad."

Ali just stared at me. He didn't even crack a smile.

"I'm serious."


I've now seen two soccer games in Belgrade. Partizan played in both. Back in November, on my third day ever in this city -- and my first afternoon at the Three Black Catz -- I went with Gricko (oh, how I miss my Japanese human pet), Johannes and Ana to see that team get its ass kicked, 3-1. Admission was free. Attendance was scarce. And the scene wasn't too impressive -- not after my experience with the Sarajevo madness that had introduced me to the concept of flare-throwing as an expression of fan support.

But the Sarajevo madness had been a derby (which, for Americans who don't watch soccer, is like Yankees-Mets, White Sox-Cubs, or L.A. Rams-L.A. Raiders); the weak sauce I saw my first week in Beograd was like having the Devil Rays come to town.

Saturday was a completely different story, though.

It was akin to the difference between a "Big Village" Sarajevo atmosphere and an "On the weekends, I travel to capital city to watch a ladies make a toilet" Belgrade ambience.

For one thing, admission wasn't free this time around -- it was 800 dinars.

Secondly, there were people there -- lots of people. Forty thousand of them.

And finally, there were the riot cops.


Lord, were there riot cops.

I will just say this. Well into the long walk from the horse to the stadium with Vlada, O.G.'s "common law brother-in-law," we had already run into the beginning of their formation by the time we reached Sveti Sava. That's still a good 15 minutes or more from the Red Star stadium.

It was like "RoboCop: Srbija" meets "The Matrix Reloaded."

And trust me, these guys love their jobs.


It wasn't just Vlada who had warned me about them. It was Joca (Yoht-suh), Vlada's old army buddy, too. These two guys may differ on which team to root for -- one is all Crvena Zvezda, the other partial to Partizan -- but they are on the same page regarding one issue: Beware of Serbian riot police on a day their two teams meet.

But not everyone in Belgrade thinks on that wavelength.

Before we even got into the stadium, I saw a scuffle. It happened too fast to register what was going on in real time -- only after the dust had cleared did I find out what had happened. A Partizan fan just strolled up to a Red Star rival, who he almost surely did not even know, and jacked him right in the face -- pow! Just like that. About .00002 seconds later, a platoon full of "Gendarmie" cops -- like a pack of hunting dogs on a scent -- converged on the trouble-makers, nightsticks swinging.

"See what I mean?" Vlada asked.

I gulped. Seen.


I haven't checked Google Earth, but I think Saturday's game was visible from space. On each end of the field, Red Star Cigani and Partizan Grobari spent more time shooting off flares and lighting things on fire than watching the game.


And they love to throw them on the field.


During the game.


It really is not about the sport with these people. I'm not really sure what it is about, quite frankly. An outlet for pent up frustration? A chance to feel a part of a group? A chance to beat some ass? It is an anthropology study waiting to happen.

I mean, someone died at one of these blood matches in the late 90's, when a Partizan fan launched a fireworks rocket over the field and into the Red Star section. Vlada was at the game, sitting ten feet above the kid whose chest was ripped apart by the impact, and he watched the dude's life extinguish in the stands below.

I'm intense as can be about my teams: The Astros, Virginia basketball, Virginia baseball, the Gus Burgers, etc. But with the exception of the time when I had to watch White Sox fans celebrate a World Series championship in my own stadium, I've never once had any kind of urge to harm a fan of another team.

Physically harm, that is. I do like make fun of them. (Just ask J.J. Redick about his shoulder acne complex, and why he never started to wear a cutoff t-shirt under his jersey until just after his visit to Charlottesville his freshman season -- ESPN The Magazine ran a story in March 2004 which said the Duke players rated the "Virginia fan who dressed up like Redick, complete with fake red splotches as a dig at a 19-year-old's bacne" as the third worst opposing fan J.J. had ever had to deal with). Sticks and stones may break bones, but words will never hurt? The death stare that Golden Boy sent my way during warm-ups that day -- when I was slapping the baseline with both palms, spasming uncontrollably like a rabid dog and yelling, "I'm in your head Redick! I'M IN YOUR HEEEAAAADDD!" -- seemed to say otherwise.

So at least I had one thing in common with these Serbs shooting off flares and killing each other with rockets at a soccer game.

"Joca, look man, they're not even watching the game!" Eight hundred dinars, or about $14 (not cheap for someone making Serbian wages), and the entire Partizan section had turned its back to the field to take a verbal jab at their rivals. On the South Side, a sea of black was jumping up and down in unison, arms around each other's shoulders, catching a glimpse of each others butts -- while play was going on.

"They don't care about the game, man," Joca said, half-amused, half-embarrassed. "Do you know what they're yelling?"

"What?"

"'Whoever isn't jumping is a gypsy! YOU'RE A GYPSY!'" On the second sentence, everyone would turn around and point across the field to the sea of red.

Remember when I called the Red Star fans "Cigani"? That literally means "gypsies" in Serbian. The Crvena Zvezda supporters didn't choose that name, but they don't shy away from it when their enemies taunt them. It's some sort of reverse psychology that shows that words really don't hurt them, like Eazy-E being in a group called NWA.

But it's still funny to me.

"That is perfect," I said. And then I started to laugh for about 45 seconds, uncontrollably, as I listened to 10,000 or more drunk Serbian dudes, clad in black and white, scream across the field that 10,000 or more other drunk Serbian dudes, clad in red and white, were all gypsies because they weren't jumping up and down with their backs to the game.

Absolutely brilliant.

They love their flares, they love their taunts, and they love their violence. But they also love their whiney-baby complainer monkeys known as "professional soccer players."


Partizan had taken a 2-1 lead midway through the second half, so it was not the time for Red Star to pull one of those Euro, "Oohhh, my knee! My knee!" moments that I have come to loathe more than anything about this sport. They were losing; they needed to quit crying and start playing. (And please, don't even give me the, "It's part of the game" spiel. I would rather have a first round exit with a U.S. team that plays like men than a World Cup trophy hoisted up by Italian women). So when a Red Star forward was taken down on his offensive end of the field, he chose to lay on the ground as the opposition streaked upfield with a man advantage, writhing in pain like he had stepped on an I.E.D., praying that he would hear the blow of a whistle. He didn't.

Partizan took a shot on goal, and missed. Whiney-baby complainer monkey kept writhing. Partizan took another shot. Another miss. More screaming, and looking for a whistle. Partizan took another shot. This time, it hit the back of the net. And he was still crying, as if he had to prove that he truly was hurt, since he had pulled an Elton Brown and was now looking like a complete fool. It wasn't until the Partizan celebration was dying down that the dude got up, and whaddya know? Lazarus -- who may have prevented a goal had he gotten up 45 seconds before he did -- was miraculously healed.

But it was 3-1 by that point, and the game was pretty much sealed.

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"So," Joca had said, almost as soon as the three of us sat down on the East Side (the peaceful side, tucked in between the insane North -- Red Star -- Side, and insane South -- Partizan -- Side). "Which team are you going to root for?"

"Uhhhhhhhhh." I looked at Vlada, the one who had invited me to the game.

Joca knew by my hesitation that he had lost me already. "I see," he said. "You came with Vlada, so you're going with Red Star."

I honestly did not care who won -- I just figured I had to be a Red Star supporter since a Red Star supporter had invited me to the game. Ninety percent arbitrary, 10 percent rational. Kind of like how Stewart had come to be "die hard Partizan" in Novi Sad three weeks before.

We have now referred to the guy who made it so as "the gypsy from Novi Sad" for so long, I am beginning to convince myself that he really was a cigan. Acke was not a gypsy, but he was a Partizan fan.


I don't remember how we began to talk to the guy, exactly, but I know that we were soon following him from the pljeskavica joint to the only late-night bar in town to have late-night beers.

Acke's friend, whose name I never knew, was not a Partizan fan. He was all Red Star, all the time. And he knew no English, except for one thing, which he wrote in my "little black book" of Serbian vocab:

RED STAR FOREVER.

Acke was having none of that, and made an addendum: A penis, ejaculating onto a logo of Red Star.

Some things are just universal.

I am not the guy that can stay up all night. I am the guy that falls asleep. But before that happened that night in Novi Sad, I witnessed an event which will forever be referred to as "The Gypsy Trinket Exchange."

In Serbia -- in the Balkans, in general -- hospitality is taken very seriously. It is a foreign concept that I will for sure take back with me to the States, because all my life, my policy was, "Bitch, you're sleeping on the floor" for friends who were in town visiting. Acke, who had only met Stewart and I 15 minutes before, viewed us as his "guests," simply for the fact that we were in Serbia, his country. And as guests, it would be anathema for us to pay for a round of beers.

Stewart did that, and Acke began to feel really uncomfortable. It was almost an affront to his honor. He had to give Stewart a gift in return -- something, anything.

Gift No. 1 was a bag of peanuts that Acke found while rummaging through his bag. But that wasn't enough. Into the pockets the search continued.

That was the moment that Stewart became a real Partizan man.

"I give you this," Acke said, holding up a scratched, cracked key chain with the Partizan logo inside -- retail value, about 10 cents. "This is Partizan, best football club in all of Serbia!"

Stewart was, well, wasted by this point, and felt the need to repay Acke's generosity.

All he could find was a Bic lighter. But it was perfect for exchanging with a gypsy.

"This lighter," Stewart said, slightly slurred, but extremely excited, "is from America! I brought it alllllll the way from America, and now it is for you!"

Acke held onto it as if he had just been given a string of glass beads in return for Manhattan. "Thankyou, brother! Thankyou!"

They clasped hands, friends for life, all because of the Gypsy Trinket Exchange.

So it makes sense that Stewart would pick the black Partizan hoodie when choosing from a selection of flea market sweatshirts last night on the streets of Belgrade. He's die hard, after all.


Mathieu, my Black Cat from Quebec, gave me an early birthday gift last night: A real American football. Naturally, we had to go put on an exhibition in the Trg Republike, next to the horse, so that all of Serbia could see what it was they were missing by watching soccer instead of real football. It was cold outside, so Stewy brought his hoodie, and covered it with a heavy jacket, too.

It was visible only two times, the Partizan logo, for a combined total of about 45 seconds: Once when he removed the outer layer, and once when he put the hoodie back on after running around in the cold for an hour. And in that span, Stewart had two "incidents" with Serbian guys who didn't seem to appreciate his choice of club.

"Ehhhh, PARTIZAN!" the sneers went each time. And each time, it was a group that rolled deep.

"Ya know," Stewart said after seeing first hand that the rumors of hostility between the two teams was true, "I think this really does make me the biggest Partizan fan in all of Belgrade. Think about it. When have you ever seen someone wearing a shirt with this word printed on it?"

I thought long and hard, and couldn't come up with anything. He was right.

Only inside the walls of the stadium are people brave enough to do it. And as you can see, it is a wild world in there.

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"Kosovo is Serbia. 1389."

In Serbia, variety is not a national past time.

Thanks to Vuk Karadžić, the creator of the modern Serbian alphabet, spelling is incredibly easy in their language -- one sound equals one letter, without exception. Billy would be Били. Parsley would be Парсли. And so on and so forth.

Spelling the names of Serbian girls is even easier; not only because of Vuk, but also since there are only about seven ones to choose from: "Ja sam Jelena/Dragana/Marija/Ivana/Zoka/Ana/Tanja," every time. I serious, Gypsy.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the imaginations of Belgrade graffiti artists seem to be stuck inside of a very large, very nationalistic, Plexiglas box.

Aside from the standard "X loves X" that you would find anywhere,

Hmmm... could that have been the work of Adi, "The best neighbor in all of Belgrade" ??

and the timeless, "lone penis," that appears, without fail, on every single used high school textbook from here to Tazmania,

Memories of my childhood, my dog Corona, and Garland's stuffed Pound Puppy.

the only really cool act of street art you consistently find in Belgrade is that awesome little pig tagged on the bottom of building walls randomly around the city.

Blejanje.

What is not in short supply, though, is nationalist rhetoric. And there are less avenues for expression in that department than ways to name your daughter.

You have the ever-so-clever play on words which expresses disdain not only for the EU, but also for NATO.

The website is actually pretty legit.

Then there are the four C's, the ancient emblem of the Serbian nation which, somewhere along the way, was endowed with a supposed meaning: Samo Sloga Srbina Spasava (Only Unity Can Save the Serbs -- though I have heard this phrase was fitted to an acronym which was never truly intended to be an acronym). The four C's are ubiquitous -- throughout Serbia. It's the "when in doubt" option for a kid with a can of spray paint. Only occasionally does someone turn it into "Srpski Sinovi," which means "Serbian Sons."

("Sloboda ili Smrt," "Freedom or Death," is written below the Samo Sloga Srbina Spasava. My question: Was Alexander Hamilton originally named Aleksandar Hamiltonić?).

When provoked, these guys can get pretty funny, though.

In black, you see "Serbs on a tree" -- most likely painted by a Croat nationalist (an "Ustashe," which was the name of the fascist Croatian group, allied with the Nazis, that tried to deal its own Balkan "Final Solution" on the Serbs during WW2). In red, the response: "Ustashe on my dick!"

But it always comes back to what my British friend Pete refers to as "the 'K' word."

Kosovo.

I don't have the time, nor the energy, to elucidate in the way that I would like. Everyone back home -- unless you're younger than me, or lived with your head under a rock for the last two years of Clinton's presidency -- knows a little something about the K word. But unless you've spent a lot of time in this part of the world, or in Chicago (the second biggest Serbian city after Belgrade), that little something is most likely limited to images of Albanian refugees, bombs and menacing Serbs.

It goes a bit deeper than that. Here is the best crash course I can give.

Kosovo, the region that comprises the southern most tip of this country, is the heart of what is known as "Old Serbia." It is essentially the soul of the ancient Serbian nation. Before the Turks came and set up shop, Stephen Dušan and his boys were the big dogs on the Balkan Peninsula. That was in the 14th century. As is the case in all nations that used to have empires -- Austria, Turkey and Hungary have all given similar vibes -- its people have not forgotten the good old days.

Hence, Kocobo je Srbija. Kosovo is Serbia. Not "was." Is.

And the year 1389? Well, let's just say that, in Serbia, every single person knows what happened in 1389. And some people -- the ones who like to spray paint, for example -- just can't get over it.

The Serbian army which was led into battle that day at Kosovo Polje was commanded by the tragic figure Knez Lazar, whose legacy was cemented on the Field of the Blackbirds. Some say the fight was a draw; some say the Serbs were routed -- what is a guarantee is that a ton of people died, and life was never again the same for the Christians living in this part of Europe. A nearly 500-year long Turkish occupation came afterwards -- and Muslims (albeit Albanian, not Turkish) are holding down the fort in Kosovo today.

Lazar died in that battle, and the "Legend of Kosovo" slowly crept into the crevices of the Serbian psyche, like the roots of a tree that, centimeter by centimeter, become one with the soil. Years went by, and Lazar was transformed by Serbian folklore from an inept military leader into a saintly figure. After all, his defeat on the battlefield was the natural outcome of the decision he made that day: To opt for a "Heavenly Kingdom" over an earthly one.

But it's like what Bob Marley was saying in "Get Up, Stand Up": The prospect of a Heavenly Kingdom is of little solace to someone with a crappy life on earth.

And so, the obsession with the K word lives on, over 600 years later.

And it's not going away just because the rest of the world suddenly says that possession is 9/10 of the law.

"We won't give Kosovo." 1389.org (which is not operational).

No significant politician in Serbia will give Kosovo. That's the problem -- just as it was the problem in the run-up to the Iraq War, and in the 2004 campaign. Once again, it's like Marley said: Politricks.

Serbs don't like to be pushed. No one does I suppose, but especially these people. Maybe that's why I feel so at home here -- my personality is very Balkan, I have realized. It's a generalization, this stubbornness, but one that I have heard verbalized by Serbians. Many times, from many different people. Knowing about this sort of national character trait comes in handy when you're scratching your head and wondering to yourself, "Why does every single street corner want me to know that they're not giving up 'Kocobo'?"

Of course, just as not all Texans "drink oil," as my Dutch friend Joris complimented me on, not all Serbians protest that Kosovo is Serbia.

"Kosovo is Bulgaria."

Some are just smart asses.

No wonder I feel so at home here.

"I heard that Serbian women are very beautifull, how about some pictures of them (instead of The face)"

"Beautifull" Belgrade women -- I tell everyone back home about them, yet I don't provide any proof. I put pictures of "The Face," of old Serbian men, of hamsters, of my pants, and even of my bare booty on nude beaches. But no pictures of Serbian ribe. People must think that I'm beautifull of it.

That's what "anonymous" was complaining about, at least, when he/she made that comment on my blog the other day. (Coincidentally, The Bob sent me an email around the same time it was posted, griping about the same issue. So we'll just go with "when he made that comment on my blog the other day.")

For my dad, for my homies, and for anyone else who has been wondering what gives, it's time to clear up the confusion.

Prijatno!

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"Did you see that?"

"See what?"

"That girl just walked by."

"Can you be a little more descriptive?"

"The one that was only wearing her underwear!"

Little did we know she was only dressed for work.

"Oh, that one. Her father must be so proud."

Very nice!

Adi's birthday was, in a word, insane. And the truckload full of "fish," as Serbian guys say in reference to hot girls, was just icing on that birthday cake.



I was so fixated on our underwear dancer friend that it took me about 30 minutes to realize that we had other friends on the bar just above my head.


Matt was a little quicker on the uptake.

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The main reason why I never provided my father with proof of my assertions is simple. It's not like I walk around taking pictures of ribe that I see on the street.

Which is why I'm glad The Bob challenged my integrity/manhood. It forced me to snap away.

"All right, Kara, we're gonna go out to the Knez Mihailova, and we're gonna get pictures of hot Serbian women, okay?"

"Cool."

"Great. Just stand there and act like I'm taking pictures of you, okay?"

"Cool."


Job well done, Kara.


But we no longer need your services.

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I don't just stalk girls and stare at lingerie dancer models, though. I swear, I actually know some of these people.

Original Gangsta (O.G.) Zoka.

New Zoka.

And the newest one, Ana, who I met at a reggae party the other night -- that's bonus points, right off the bat.

Is that good enough, Dad?