In the spirit of “time travel” this week at the blog (here, here, and here), I’ve been imagining what it would be like dropping someone from half a century ago into our modern multi-ethnic Toronto.

I’d like to walk alongside them, monitoring their reactions observing their facial reactions as I take them on a spirited tour across town, visiting the still-existing familiar landmarks which were once their daily stomping grounds. The newly gentrified neighborhoods, the overpriced living quarters, the fast cars, and the hustle and the bustle.

I’d like to go into bars where they used to drink, travel on our modern transportation networks, and then have them conduct business with entrepreneurs staffed by business owners resembling people they only used to read about in Robinson Crusoe adventure books or in smoky war-era theater newsreels.

I’m talking about the folks who have now taken over their old neighborhoods. New Canadians who dictate the score and call the shots and pull the strings. They’re not some backroom help in a greasy spoon. They’re not the hired help you shunt away towards the back when distinguished company drops in for an afternoon julep and a crumpet. They’re not the members of your numerous staff, your rickshaw drivers, or your dockside coolies, your butlers, your house captains. And they’re certainly not your “boys and girls.”

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(the Ruskies are comin’, the Ruskies are comin’~)

It’s no secret I’ve been wanting to learn the Cyrillic character set for a while.

So I recently found the right occasion to do so right here in Belgrade on the twice-good Tuesday the 6th, and now I can read it. Just like that. The charset is no longer a mystery.

Thirty-three pesky little letters.

An hour to nail the entire alphabet, with about three more required for practice reading (1000 Russian words) with a diligent emphasis on improving my accent (I’ll make a video of me reading Russian so you can hear for yourselves).

Since I’m not bad in Czech for a non-local – especially compared to several dumbfuck American or British expats I know in Prague who still can’t string two proper Czech sentences together after living there for nearly a decade! – and since I’m formally trained in Czech grammar, I’ll succeed in Russian handily.

Incidentally, all Slavic languages find their roots in the tongue and alphabet bequeathed to them by the good Greek monks Cyril and Methodius. For that reason, mastering Russian grammar won’t be nearly as challenging (thank G.od!) as honing the Czech one was.

I’ve already gotten over my Slavic lumps (wink, wink), so to speak…

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(“civilized” Europeans fighting off the invading Ottoman Turks)

Belgrade, Serbia, Former Yugo, baby!
Captain’s Log: 13h
The fun never ends around here. Any night of the week is partytime.

Plenty of scholarly theories have attempted to demystify the reason why Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks behaved the way they did during the rash of Balkan wars in the Former Yugoslavia. Experts have been asking this question for the better part of a decade and a half, and such speculation will likely rage forever onward until they simply exhaust the discussion.

I remember a great conversation I’d had with a visiting expat bud from Budapest in the Prague metro. He told me something about the Balkans which somehow gave the entire conflict, genetically-speaking and certainly from an evolutionary perspective, such instant clarity in a way I’ll not soon forget. Within the span of a single sentence, I finally grasped why the war raged on as violently and as long as it had, in the absence of European and US/UK interventions.

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