Thursday, April 23, 2009

Pain in the Neck

I feel like Anne Shirley- I hopefully built up such a beautiful dinner party, carefully planning to eke out my meagre resources and stretch my £1.50 budget to the max. And in the end I have a mouse in my pudding and Diana Barry puking in the bushes. Or, in my version, an Anthropologist gagging on a fishbone and a grand tour of Sarajevo hospitals at midnight.

The day started proudly enough- I accomplished my market shopping without freezing with fear whenever the stall holder said ‘izvolite’ but actually spoke Bosnian to ask for my ridiculously small quantities. Somehow I managed to get carrots, mushrooms, onions and cooking cream with change to spare. I also had the fish that Nermina bestowed upon me while it was still flipping about in a bucket. So, thus armed, I was able to test a couple of the recipes I’ve been gathering from people at school- tarhana soup with pre-prepared dough rubble, and a dubious mushroom recipe that involved spices, cream, soya sauce and honey but turned out impressively successful I think. And I managed to do it all and still make it in time for my first class.

I booked my place to Albania- about 50 quid for a 5-day trip with friends, including transport, food and board is really and offer too good to refuse. I also bought my ticket back to Manchester for 16th May. It’s not been long enough for you to notice my absence particularly perhaps but it feels like forever to me (though I wouldn’t mind forever lasting a little longer)

My final ‘lesson’ with my tall Physicist friend was a trip to the house of Sevda, a place that has gone through many metamorphoses in its time- from storehouse for medieval caravans, to WW2-era restaurant, and has recently evolved into a museum and cafe dedicated to classic Bosnian music.

Bosnian class today was a trip to the annual book fair, which was set up as an publishing house convention, like the Twisted Thread show for books, rather than the flea markety haphazard piles that I was picturing. I managed to get Death and the Dervish in Bosnian and in English for which I’ve been unsuccessfully hunting for weeks, plus a book of lyrics to lots of Bosnian nasheeds that I actually have on mp3 somewhere. Suada my Otokan linguist buddy is an expert on this story and promises to be my literary guide, which is great- something to look forward to during my idle weeks here- and maybe my fellow Bosnian classmates will want to join in so it’d be like those book clubs you hear about.

So the dinner guests were collected at various points round town – Juliana at the fair, the Anthropologist at the eternal flame, and we came across the Otokan outside Merkur. Suada just started wearing a scarf last week but the fact that she was suddenly hijabi didn’t register for a good 10 minutes, not until I noticed that she was wearing it in an uncommon style. We talked about it plenty though while sitting around in hospital waiting rooms as doctors peered down the anthropologist’s poor throat.

My lord it was a farcical process getting her seen by anyone. We went from one hospital to another with our fishbone emergency- but without personal contacts more powerful than a med student friend and a doctor relative in Mostar it didn’t seem like she’d be deboned anytime soon. We had already tried olive oil, plain rice, bread at the flat and we’re currently holding out hope that a good night’s sleep will magically disappear it.

Before dinner they were all predicting that I’d end up poisoning them and considering how to handle an emergency situation- sometimes I think Fate has a very dark sense of humour...

3 Comments:

Anonymous Mad cow said...

LOOOL! What a story!

What happened in the end then?

'It’s not been long enough for you to notice my absence particularly perhaps but it feels like forever to me (though I wouldn’t mind forever lasting a little longer)' - whatever, matey, it's almost been 3 months! The house is pin-drop silent :-(

I thought you were back on the 10th? What's with the 6 day delay?

x

5:24 pm  
Anonymous sleepy said...

wow you've been on a commenting spree- it's always nice to be acknowledged by your audience :p

the ticket was just cheaper for the 16th cause i delayed booking too long- to be honest I don't have much to do these days so i might as well have come home earlier.. I'm hanging out with germans mostly who all speak much better bosnian than me let alone english so i feel very inadequate. I just introduced Laura Marling to them so they can hear what I hear in my head as i walk down the street..

10:52 pm  
Anonymous Mad Cow said...

Lol!

What do they think of it?

You should try picking up as much Deutsch as possible while you're there!

1:00 pm  

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