hope the creeper.

yes, a good reminder that we all may sometimes feel hopeless overwriting our hope.
yet we keep running into reflections of hope. hope, not just a word, but a Person.
do you see hope when you look in the mirror?
hope, still thriving behind bars. hope, continually under construction.
hope is still creeping under the nose of the most rotten destruction and collective trauma as the bombing this city experienced and the massive violence this country and its neighbors inflicted on each other. hope, still waiting for us to wake up to the violence within each one of us. hope, still standing.

hope shows up and shit gets real.

hope i pobeda za egipatsku revoluciju, victory for the Egyptian revolution!
hope i solidarnost sa grčkim radnicima i narodom egipta, solidarity with the Greek laborers and the people of Egypt!
hope in money? oh dear God no... that'll send us all down the drainpipes real fast...
hope for Srbija... hope winning out over nationalism... hope living even in the consumer center of this capital city...

hope in my hood.

i found hope in my own neighborhood! woohoo!

i was thrown off of my normal route home because of some water main that broke down, that stopped the trolleybuses from going the way i usually went to work and back. so, i haven't been able to see those particular bits of hope for a while now. they were getting to be familiar, comforting, soothing. and then they were suddenly taken away from me. i miss them.

but one day, after getting off the tram which makes me walk a different way to my apartment, i saw something that stopped me in my tracks and made me get out my camera to try to capture it. although, hope can't really be captured.

hope and love often live in the same places.
sometimes hope goes in a different direction than you expect.
hope.zone?hope likes to travel... hope can give you wings to fly...

may hope be in, over, and around your home.

hope hike.

sometimes all you get is a glimpse of hope as you ride by on the bus of life, and that can sustain you for a while.

but sometimes you just gotta get out from behind those glass and metal cages, and take a trek.

take a hope hike.

even if it's drizzling or pouring rain. hope is worth it.

sometimes to get a good shot at hope, you have to risk being splashed with the dirty rainwater of life.

sometimes when you can't find your own hope, you can try to follow in the footsteps of someone who has held hope inside them and somehow managed to shine it out into the world. if you seek out those bits of hope-light, you will find them.

i noticed on my hike that hope isn't usually found around the walls of fancy, rich, established businesses or banks. those places have already chosen their path, their goal, their reward. hope knows it's not welcome there.

i also noticed that hope doesn't usually share space with expressions of hate or territorialism, either. there are exceptions to this, though...hope is sneaky and defiant sometimes...

although, sometimes hope is so faded or so tiny that it's easy to miss.

and then sometimes hope stands on the street corner, in the busiest traffic circles of the biggest cities, and stares out, inviting anyone who will look and listen to soak up its encouragement...but too often just gets ignored.

hope can go even where it's not allowed, when someone dares to bring it there...

(photos taken on the route of trolleybuses 19/21/22/29 between škola vojislava ilića, crveni krst, trg slavija, terazije, and trg republike)

hope for the very first time.

hopes shows up in some of the most surprising places.

it's often when you're pressed against a wall that you finally find hope.
sometimes hope has wings and a halo and you can just see it so clearly.
sometimes hope is a little grittier and harder to make out.

hope doesn't always have the prettiest background...sometimes you can see it best when everything else is crumbling around it.

it's kind of funny how the same thing can spell hope for some people and mean nothing to others. (nada means 'hope' in Serbian, and 'nothing' in Spanish)

hope might be hiding just around the corner from you...

hope is everywhere...

(photos by Amy Wood, Peder Wiegner, and me)

earthquakes and everest

well, the drama princess piece of me wants to say something about how my time here so far has shaken me up like an earthquake, and presented me with challenges to climb like mount everest. which is true in some ways.

but of course there are more physically real earthquakes affecting a lot more people right now in China and New Zealand and Japan and everywhere else the resulting tsunamis have touched...bringing me flashbacks of December 2004, my senior year of high school in India...coastal villages submerged...homes washed away...fishing boats washed up, fishing nets ripped apart, unusable...families ripped apart, grieving, surviving...

actually even before these recent catastrophes i was just remembering how there have been a number of real earthquakes in this region over the past several months, including one in November that struck about 80 miles south of here, in the city of Kraljevo, at magnitude 5.4, killing two people and injuring between 50 and 100 others, and displacing some families whose homes were damaged. i remember at about 2 a.m. that morning, waking up because my feet were doing that thing where they involuntarily rise up from the bed a little and wiggle around...but then they kept doing it for a few seconds longer than my sleep-slugged muscles would normally twitch for...and then i heard about the earthquake when i checked the news that morning.

of course, this incident totally slipped most people's memory, including mine, pretty soon afterwards. but the families of those in Kraljevo who were killed, and those who were injured or displaced, are most certainly still dealing with the effects.

and this reminds me of the world's memory-loss about this whole region of southeast Europe, the former Yugoslavia, which was rocked by inter-ethnic war, mass killings, sieges, bombings, and all the fall-out of these traumatic experiences and political separations. not so long ago...certainly within living memory of anyone over the age of 10 here. several former government buildings in downtown Beograd still stand in their bombed-out state, and all over the region, sitting there like scars on the beautiful countryside, houses can be seen like the one below - whether it was a Bosnian Muslim home gutted by Serbs in some part of Bosnia or Serbia, or a Serb home stripped by Albanians in Kosovo/Kosova, or a Kosovo Albanian home there, or a Croatian home somewhere in Bosnia or Serbia or Croatia, or whichever way the violence went at a particular point in time in that particular town or village - much more complex than these few examples can convey.

but everyday life has since returned to a 'new normal' for most people here, and the biggest crises in the news since i've been here were the hooligan protesters' reaction to the gay pride parade in October (no worries, I was living across the river in Zemun at the time), and the milk shortage (which didn't affect me too much because i'm slightly lactose intolerant, so i don't drink straight milk), and the eerily Egyptian-echoing gathering of between 50,000 and 70,000 opposition demonstrators to call for early elections in February (and unfortunately I was in Sarajevo that weekend and missed the excitement!)

so those are some of the 'earthquakes' that have caused some tremors since i've been here, and i hope to stay more in tune with regional and world developments, and hopefully share them here a bit more often...

and now for the 'everest' part - this has been a great source of excitement for me in the past few months, as i have found...dare i say...my favorite cafe in the world...?!?!!! oh, don't worry, i still love you, Treehouse. but i have gone way past the infatuation stage, and dived into a seriously delightful relationship with the Everest Kafe-Knjižara (cafe-bookstore) just a block from my apartment! a joyously orange-accented place, always playing the most soothing, meditative music, and serving a delicious vegetarian menu including (if you come on the right day) DAL!!! and a fascinating selection of teas, and friendly guys behind the counter who recognize me and are happy to see me every time i come in...

pumpkin-ginger soup with their homemade spiced bread
so happy to share the loveliness of Everest with my lovely Amy
and with the freedom sexy birds...

these are a few of my favorite things...

so that everyone who usually likes to check on me to make sure that i don't starve can be reassured :) from the day i arrived in Southeast Europe, i have been quite well-fed, whether by my MCC supervisors, or by the kindergarten's beloved cook, or by my own fortunate finds at the mini-markets near my apartment, or the big outdoor pijaca with all the fresh produce stands, or various kafići ili pekare (cafes or bakeries) or other places. and i have found a lot of things to love... okay, get ready, you should really do some Google image searching to get an idea of what these things are like:

burek. pita zeljanica. pita krompiruša. pita sirnica.

čevapi/čevapčići.

kobasica. and other types of grilled mešano meso, mixed meats, on the roštilj.

ajvar. pavlaka. kajmak. any combination of these with bread ... mmm

pljeskavica. wow. American hamburgers never held too much appeal for me, but now i have another real reason to avoid them: this Serbian version is SO GOOD!!!

kukuruz pečeni. kesten pečeni.

pasulj prebranac. (my language teacher insisted that i take some of her homemade bean stew home with me one day, and it was incredible! such good flavor, and such a great comfort food as the temperatures drop and leaves turn colors :)

paradajz. krastavac. paprike.

kruška. jabuka. šljiva. breskva. kajsija. grožđe. mandarina. banana. (i have now made 3 successful - i think??? - loaves of banana bread :)

palačinke. (pogotovo sa eurokremom ili nutelom...especially with eurokrem or nutella... ojojoj)

pita sa jabukama. pita sa višnjama. pita od bundeva.

TURSKA KAFA. this really deserves its own whole post. or at least a new paragraph:

the kindergarten teachers were telling me that i have now become a 'Srpkinja domaćica', something like a Serbian homemaker, since i have learned to make turska kafa...so now, if you come visit me, i will put water on to boil in the džezva, and then stir in some heaping spoonfuls of the fine grounds, heat it again until the foam rises up, a thick, rich layer which i will skim off a bit for the bottom of each of our mugs, and let the grounds settle down before pouring it out for each of us, and we will sit and sip this divinely dark drink. oh turska kafa...my daily bread. ;)

or if you go out somewhere with me and we order turska kafa, it might look like this, served with a cute little cube of ratluk/rahatlokum/turkish delight:

mmm...