Seven Serbian bastards

Why can you go to jail for charred peppers, and how to wear a tracksuit if enemies around

Recently, one Canadian citizen was going to judge for the creation of a fire hazardous situation - he burned peppers over the open fire right in the courtyard of a residential building. Now he faces a rather large fine or up to a year of prison. "Crazy!" “You will think and will be wrong.” The accused turned out to be a US immigrant, who, like all self-respecting Serbs in early autumn, was engaged in the harvesting of Aivar-snacks of sweet pepper.

Screening first: homemade

To prepare aeivar, fleshy peppers of a special variety must be burned on the slab of a wood stove or on the open fire of the barbecue. No, living in an apartment building in the city center is not an obstacle. Mangals are taken to the balcony, parking or in the courtyard, and the caustic smell of a foul pepper peel covers the district. Try to somehow carve pepper on a home stove-and you will immediately understand everything about the smell. With stubbornness worthy of better use, residents of high -rise buildings buy, burn and clean these peppers to get Aivar, similar to a store (very high -quality and tasty, like all products in Serbia), but only one and a half times more. But without pesticides, GMOs, preservatives and what else they put in it there. And most importantly - your own. Mir is always better, and this applies to any conservation, baking, feta cheese, wine and Rakia - especially in the private sector.

Screening second: enemies around

And who came up with all this muck in our native Aivar to shove? Enemies of course. They are around, so even to the Bosnian and Kosovo Serbs of Serbs from Serbia a contemptuous attitude. Hence the hostility to everything foreign, especially for food. Here are unpopular restaurants of other national kitchens, except for pizzerias. And in order to feed the Serbs with dumplings, I had to dance: “Yes, it's just minced meat in pasta! Honestly, I knocked it myself, galloped myself and sculpted it myself. Yes, they eat everything with us and even give children. ”

The Yugoslav wars in the nineties began because the Serbs saw enemies in the Croats and Bosnians - their fellow citizens and people of the same language with them, but the other faith. No, not all the Serbs thought so, of course, but there were real violents who became leaders - and this was enough for everything to blame.

"Priority of humary transport" Photo: From a personal archive

Now the world of the world of the average Serb is more likely this: on the black and black map of Europe, one-single coat is in a white coat, and no one, a orphan, leaning on her. And a strip of enemy eastern Europe is separated from Russia, where, as they say on TV - wealth, gas, oil, women, vodka and Putin, who does not sleep and thinks, as if to help an orphan.

But, despite the enemies, the same average Serb boldly dives into the bottomless blackness of the European Union in order to emerge in a couple of years in his homeland a European (and sometimes an American) on BMW used and with a pack of enemy currency in his pocket - and roll back almost immediately. After all, if you can find work in Serbia, then the salary is not like BMW, you can’t buy a branded tracksuit.

Frighting Third: Sports

The more provincial the Serbian city, the more people in tracksuits. In the villages in the "Coaches" everyone goes without exception - sports chic, Normor and almost Gosha Rubchinsky. But they are worn not only because of fashion, convenience or poverty, but also because almost every Serb deep down imagines himself, if not a new Jokovic, then at least the attacker of the "Crovenen Star". Sport in thorough men's conversations on the terraces of cafes ranks second after politics. Having inflated the cheeks, they discuss derby, the games of the second division and Real Madrid, and the best gift to the student is some nonsense with the symbols of the football team for which he is undergoing. In the days of decisive matches, the streets are empty, mothers are dragging children from the swing-the match of Brazil-Holland! On every corner is a bookmaker, refuge of marginalists. Here is a bottle beer with a minimum margin, a lot of broadcast screens and trembling hands with a pencil of a ticket above the ticket: suddenly this time is lucky?

At the same time, units are engaged in something similar to sports from adults. A fitness club near my house burned out for four months, now in its place they sell leather jackets.

Screening fourth: "folk" music

If the Russian chanson is never a chanson, then the Serbian “folk” songs are not folk. This is a primitive pops about love, the charms of a native village or just about anything, but with an anguish - approximately like a Tarkan duet with a "affectionate May". There is also a turbo folk-a more expensive and commercial version of “folk” music and an analogue of the Bulgarian pop-folk “Chalgi”. But if the king of Chalgi Azis-Mrasish in Runet is well known, then his Serbian sisters-Tsez and Carleus-are niche characters for internal use.

She is also a Tsets, Svetlana Raznatovich - young with adult children, the widow of the field commander and Honored Bandit of Arkan (Zhelko Razhnatovich), killed at the end of the nineties. The stage image is a fatal brunette, supports the ruling party and traditional values.

Typical urban development photo: from personal archive

Karleusha, she is Elena Karleusha, is a girl from the Belgrade outskirts, who grew up in a requested blonde who is predictably married to a football player, advocates LGBT rights and the replacement of power. Both sing about the same bullshit. In this rivalry of Serbian Pugacheva and Rotaru, I have never met those who would like both singers - either you with all my soul, say, for the tsets, or hate both. There can be no compromise here.

Skrepa fifth: Patriarchate

- And where is the owner? - The policeman, a communalist or realtor, who called the door, asks me.

I rest my hand on my side and answer:

- I'm the master here.

And I enjoy the instant of panic in the eyes of the interlocutor - they just broke his scraping.

The main form of Serbian life is a district center where, after sunset, a woman can appear in a public place only in an emergency. In the center of a large regional city, I go to the bookmaker’s office to change the currency and each time I feel like a hero of Western, who has broken into a saloon - there is no place for strangers here. The destiny of women in Serbia: Kinder is a larger number (better than male), Kyuha - meaningless and merciless - and Kirsh, but this is already optional.

Sixth screening: Orthodoxy.

When ten years ago I moved from Russia to Montenegro (Serbia happened later, for family reasons) - I really liked the local Orthodoxy. Good-natured priests, poor old churches, naive frescoes, a democratic dress code and no hissing grandmothers polishing candlesticks. We have candles in our sand boxes somewhere in a side chapel or even on the street. But after the death of Patriarch Paul, pure soul and wise man, the SPC (the Serbian Orthodox Church), not without the influence of colleagues from the east, lost its warmth and lamps, bristled with gilding and price tags, covered herself with homosexual scandals among the black clergy (including rape of seminarians) and now examines in vain in vain. Armored glass of personal limousines.

Opp -axial graffiti photo: from personal archive

Most of the Serbs also apply to the church without piite: children are baptized not in infancy, but when their hands reach; Of the church holidays, Christmas, Easter and the holiday only for the Serbs and Montenegrins are massively celebrated - the godfather (the day of a particular saint, which is the patron saint of the family). The icons here serve to decorate the living room or a separate sideboard, and I never heard from the locals that I need to go specially to put a candle or order a prayer.

Through the glaze of Orthodoxy, the thumbnail of Slavic paganism shines through: a oak branch is brought to the Christmas Eve - a Badnyak; On St. Tryphon (February 14) - cut grapes or you can just drink wine. And on some summer holiday it is completely impossible to work so that the crop is not beaten by hail-and now the market is empty, the tents are closed, and we have to dine with delivery pizza-they are not so sick for the crop.

Screening Seventh: Cyrillic

In Serbia (and Montenegro), two alphabets are officially officially: Cyrillic, quite different from Russian, and Latin with diacritical signs. Cyrillic in the pen - it is archaic, visually absurd, inconvenient in writing and printing (limited number of fonts) and therefore is small. Even in the city library, it is difficult to find a good children's book on Cyrillic. With adults, it is even worse - all the tabloids, sports reviews and recipes so beloved by Serbs are printed by Latin. The church, school, radical nationalists and, suddenly, the Ministry of the Interior, cling to the Cyrillic alphabet. This is really scraping, as absurd and immeasurable with the mind as desire at any cost, even in Canada, to harvest a snack from charred peppers for the winter.