echoes

Ciao, Eddy here. While you might think my first blog entry about Summer in Sombor and our other Serbian performances would be about music, composition, or other artistic matters, I’m rather going to touch on matters more humanitarian. Throughout my two weeks here I have, almost daily, been given minute anecdotes about the wars of the 90’s and the NATO bombings that were in a way the culmination of a decade of horror. The echoes of times past are faint, but when I stop to contemplate and put myself in their place for just a moment or two the horror becomes all too real.

Here are some examples and I encourage you to contemplate each for moment as I did and imagine yourself in their shoes.

• Phobia of thunderstorms because they remind you too much of the bombings
• 8 years and counting and your municipal airport, destroyed by NATO bombs, is still waiting to be rebuilt.
• Driving on the highway and a building is pointed out to you. It’s in ruins and in a spirit of irony and dark humor, you’re told: “That used to be our local TV station. You did this to us.”
• Imagine commuting across the Danube in Novi Sad on a daily basis using improvised “ferries” that were little better than rafts because all the bridges that the city depended on were destroyed. Only recently have they all been reconstructed.
• Not knowing from day to day how much your money is worth because you’re stuck in the worst hyperinflation on record. In 24 hours you can go, literally, from riches to rags.
• Being in a night club that’s being raided by the army to “draft” more soldiers. Men were shipped off into the army with no notice and little more than a single phone call to their families to tell them where they are.
• Imagine being a liberal American in a country where Clinton is vilified as much as Bush—and for good reason. Are there any good guys left?

This list isn’t meant to be an historical record, but rather an attempt to capture the lightning quick and informal conversational moments–moments that are only faint echoes of a terrible time, but worth remembering so that maybe, just maybe, history might not repeat itself.

I promise I’ll write more about music (and lighter things) soon. Zdravo!