Castle Hunting: Smederevo

Smederevo Fortress was the end of the line.  When the Ottomans captured it, in 1459, after decades of trying, it marked the fall of the medieval Sebian state – the country wouldn’t exist again for four and a half centuries, the region would remain tightly within the grip of Istanbul.
After the Battle of Blackbird's Field in 1389, Serbs began a slow drift to the north.  Uprooted from their historic homeland by the Ottomans, they pushed into unfamiliar territory, creeping right to the edge of the great Mittel-European plains.
In the year 1428, after thirty years of instability, the Serb leader Đurađ Branković began work on a new capital and stronghold on the northern edge of what had ever been considered Serbian land, right up against the Danube.  The fortress was his country’s last hope.

Visiting Smederevo is a terrific experience.  Not because there’s much to see – there are no narrow passages or elaborate gatehouses, nothing remains of the residences, the castle grounds are filled with sycamores and a bumper-car tent.  It’s interesting only because of how solid and massive it is.  Through years of bitter siege by the Ottomans, the fortress was hardly dented.  It survived entirely intact until 1941, when a German ammunition store blew up near the south wall – the adjoining town was almost completely destroyed in the blast, debris traveled as far as ten kilometers away.  Amazingly, the castle wasn’t damaged much – there’s a big hole in the wall, but that’s about it.
The Ottomans certainly knew how strong these walls are.  It took them four attempts, huge batteries of canons, hundreds of thousands of men and years to take Smederevo.

Sitting at the crux of two rivers – the Danube and the Jezava – the walls form a rough triangle.  The third side was also once protected by water, after a moat was dug along the walls there, and the inner keep has a separate moat.  The walls – they’re about a mile long, altogether – enclosed a small city and palace, and were anchored by large defense towers.  Because the land here is flat, the fortifications had to be very tall to create any kind of height advantage.  Because they were built specifically to defend against the Turkish gunpowder weapons, they needed to be extremely sturdy; the walls themselves are about ten feet thick.
The crenelations have begun to shift in some places, and some of the towers have adopted a drunken lean.  The land underneath the foundations isn’t very firm, and the walls relied more on breadth than depth to “float” in the riverside earth, but inevitably some tipping has begun.

The Danube was both a border for the Serbs and a last resort.  Đurađ Branković was afraid that the Ottoman army would gain control of the waterway and be able to push their way up and around his diminishing territories (which eventually happened).  Hoping to retain a connection with central Europe and the Black Sea, and to hold the gateway westward, he decided to build his new capital where the sultans would have to either capture it or travel overland to the north.  Also, the position made it more difficult for the Hungarians to travel eastward, which made the Ottomans happy and probably held off an attack for some time.
Amazingly, the entire fortress was built in just over two years.  Branković and (in particular) his wife gained a tyrannical reputation, working and taxing their remaining subjects mercilessly to complete the project.

A tenuous calm began in 1434, just after the castle was completed and before it had been tested.  Branković agreed to marry his eldest daughter to Sultan Murad II to guarantee that the Ottomans wouldn’t invade – but the peace lasted only five years.  In 1429, Murad led 130,000 troops up along the Danube, determined to wipe out the Serbs and reopen direct confrontation with the Hungarians.
Smederevo withstood the initial assault, but three months of siege and starvation eventually made the defenders give in – a period of complicated negotiations involving the Hungarians returned the castle to Branković a year later, though.  Mehmed II himself, fresh off his conquering of Istanbul, tried to recapture the fortress in 1453 and 1456, but was repelled both times, even though he had many more men than the Serbs.
Though the Sultan couldn't topple Branković's castle, the rest of Serbia was devastated by the raids, with over fifty thousand people killed or taken prisoner. At this point, Smederevo sat almost completely alone – all the other castles and fortresses of Serbia had fallen and the country existed only symbolically, reduced to nothing more than a tiny force in a big fort.

The modern town of Smederevo has encroached right up to the walls – there’s a railway station on one side, the Jezava has been redirected and only a concrete inlet borders the castle on the east.  Men and boys fish here, or sit with their girlfriends to kiss. A huge crane stands sentinel off the southwestern tip, part of a barge loading station.  Like most castles, it wasn’t until recently that the citizens of town began to appreciate what they have.  Renovation work has begun, hoping to shore up the more damaged walls and prop up some of the towers, but (in contrast with the two year long construction) it’s going slowly. There’s not much money for projects like this in Serbia.

We stayed in a little pension not far from the walls and were able to walk around the castle both at dusk and dawn.  Barges pass by all day, cutting smoothly and silently through the brown water.  There’s a rough track around the inner perimeter, and joggers and walkers circle slowly.  It gave some sense of scale – even the swiftest runners took a long time to make the loop.  Wandering, we could feel somewhat alone.  The leaves and branches thickened away from the center, it felt almost wild.  The walls are high and wide enough to block out the sounds of town.

The twenty-five towers are probably the most impressive part about the castle.  Each stands about seventy feet tall, though up close that figure is hard to believe.  So heavyset and broad, their bigness actually makes them seem shorter until given some perspective.  Climbing up the stairs of the keep takes a long time, the view out over the river and the town is surprising – we felt very high up all of a sudden.

Reduced to a few thousand men, the Serb forces huddled in their stronghold until 1459, when the Ottomans finally captured it for good.  When Smederevo finally fell, there was nowhere else to go.  Serbia became only a vague region within the empire.  Mehmed II fixed up the walls a little and the sultans kept the fortress operational for a while, but the frontier had pushed eastward rapidly and the castle didn’t remain important for long.  It sat unused for centuries, but didn’t deteriorate much – it was too well built, too thick to collapse.

Gypsy Kitchens: Serbian Tomato Paprika Kačamak

A woman in a small Belgrade market overheard us talking about “kačamak” and interrupted with her own recipe.  “Put corn in water on fire and then…”  She trailed off and made a motion with her hand like she was shooing us away.  “Kačamak,” she said, and shrugged.
The woman is right.  It’s one of the simplest dishes in the Serbian repertoire, but it isn’t and doesn’t need to be boring.  Essentially the same thing as grits or polenta, Serbs usually eat it as a sweetened porridge for breakfast. Other varieties turn the cornmeal into a firm cake or a kind of hardened, simple bread.  Some recipes use milk or yogurt instead of water, and a lot of cooks add cheese, lard, ham or bacon to the mixture.  The most common addition, though, is potato – it’s what separates Serbian kačamak from other polenta-like dishes.
We wanted a cake that was flavorful, vegetarian, savory and distinctly Serbian.  This is a non-traditional dish that mixes ingredients and elements from a handful of traditional varieties: tomatos from the greenhouse, coarse paprika, leeks, parsley, sheep cheese.  Also, beautiful, pink-skinned fingerling potatoes.

Kačamak begins with cornmeal (the genitive element), but the cooking process begins with everything else.  At the market, we bought dark, shiny dried peppers in a bundle.  They were mild and tasted of the Hungarian plains to the north – the kind of low-intensity, woody peppers that have given this region its primary flavor.  Chopped small, they added flavor more than heat, and a pleasant sweetness.  To give our cake a little more spice, we also used a more fiery type of paprika, already ground into flakes and sold to us in a loosely-tied bag.  In America, one could use a combination of paprika and ancho-chili powder, or something similar.  Or, of course, the recipe could forgo spice altogether.

We found a wonderful Serbian cheese called “zlatarski sir” to add to our cake.  It’s a semi-soft, sharp, sheepy cheese that releases salty liquid from its holes and smells strongly of the barn.  Substitute feta as a poor approximation, or any other strong, soft sheep cheese.  A blue sheep type like Roquefort would be interesting.
The main divisional line between types of kačamak is drawn by comparing the fineness of the cornmeal.  Finer, white meals are typically used to make more-breadlike versions or very uniform mush.  Coarse, yellow corn is used for gruels and cakes.  It cooks easily.  It's a tactile process. You can tell when it's done by the movement of your spoon.

The potatoes we found were yellow-fleshed, bright pink and deeply flavorful.  About half the market vendors were selling them, piled up in glistening heaps on their tables.  The sellers kept them fresh and damp by sprinkling water on them from dirty plastic bottles.  They had already been cleaned and de-eyed when we bought them, their ruddy-cheeked skins scrubbed and ready to eat.

Before you can cook the potatoes, though, immerse yourself in the more vibrant flavors and smells of cooking alliums and spices.  Begin with a little olive oil (or butter!) and one big, chopped leek.  Sautee until beyond fragrant, adding the spices along the way and working them into the oil – how much you used depends, as always, on how spicy you want the meal to be and how powerful your ingredients are.  When the onion is satisfyingly softened and on the verge of browning, add in two medium tomatoes (chopped casually into whatever size chunks) and a few cloves of diced garlic.

Cook the mixture however you’d begin a favorite tomato sauce – we kept it very simple, softening and bleeding the nightshades, letting the mixing sugars of leek and tomato caramelize a little, waiting until we could smell the cooking garlic.  Towards the end of this process, add in about a half cup or a cup of fresh parsley.  Things don’t have to be cooked well – they’ll have plenty of time.  But it’s a good thing if the ingredients seem irresistible right then.  That’s the best part about cooking – it’s also a process of building the appetite.
The next step is to ruin everything by dumping in a quart and a half of water (color diluted, heady scent diminished, bits of pepper and parsley floating palely).  With the water, add two cups of loosely cubed potatoes (skin on or off, it’s up to you).  Bring to a boil and then simmer rapidly for half an hour or so until the potatoes are very tender when pricked with a fork – they should be cooked, in other words.

When the potatoes are done, add two and a half cups of cornmeal to the water and keep boiling.  Make sure to stir the liquid well as it cooks and take the opportunity to smush the bits of potato as much as you can in the process.  The Serbs use a special tool called a "kačamalo" for this mashing and stirring – it’s a four pronged, wooden implement that’s something between a crusher and scraper.  The point is to loosely break up the potato and assimilate the two starches into one mixture without letting it stick on the bottom of the pot.
The cornmeal should soften and begin to congeal within a few minutes, the whole pot should be orange with tomato and spice, the bubbles should become bigger and more purposeful (volcanic, maybe) as everything thickens.  If there’s not enough water, add a little.  If, after about twenty minutes of stirring, the mixture seems nowhere near thick enough, add a quarter cup more cornmeal (and more if that’s not enough).  When you sense that it’s done enough, add in your cheese.

The density of this batter is difficult to describe, and it might be hard to get it right without guessing.  Basically, it should be difficult to stir and seem almost ready to hold it’s shape.
Pour or scoop everything into a greased, pre-head pan and cook over high heat for a few minutes until it seems the underside might be about to begin actually frying.  Then, remove from the heat altogether and let cool for an hour.  Carefully flip the kačamak cake out onto a plate when you think it’s hardened enough.  If it’s too soft, it’s not really a problem – it’s still good if it’s broken up or a little loose.
Here’s the recipe:

Tomato-Paprika Kačamak Cake
Ingredients:
3 cups coarse, yellow cornmeal
2 cups chopped fingerling potatoes
2 medium tomatoes, cubed
1 leek, cut up
4 cloves garlic, diced
¼ pound semi-soft sheep cheese
1 cup de-stemmed fresh parsley
Spices derived from peppers
Olive oil or butter
Salt
1 ½ quarts water


Method:
-In a large pot, sauté leeks in oil for a few minutes with the spice.  Add tomatoes and garlic when onions are cooked.  Cook at a nice simmer for a while until everything is sweet, thick and delicious.  Add the parsley.
-Add potatoes and water.  Bring to a boil and then cook at a rapid simmer for about half an hour, or until potatoes are very fork-tender.
-Stir in cornmeal.  Break up potatoes with a wooden or slotted spoon, or lightly with a masher.  Keep stirring as meal breaks down and thickens, making sure to keep the bottom of the pot clean and un-stuck.  If the mash thickens too quickly, add a little water.  After about twenty minutes, begin adding cornmeal until the mixture becomes very thick and seems about to become cake-batter like.  Use good judgment and trust yourself to guess.  Stir in the cheese.
- Serve the kačamak as is, as a hot polenta, or pour into a greased saucepan and cook over high heat for a minute or two, until it seems the bottom might be about to begin frying.  Remove from heat and let cool for about an hour, or until firm enough to slice or plate.

Before we found kačamak, it seemed impossible to cook Serbian vegetarian dishes.  Serbs themselves might dismiss it as peasant food, but we were in love - it's both decadent and light, flavorful and versatile.  The cake reminded us of a savory, moist corn muffin made large, something you could use for a hearty sandwich or a starch alongside a meat, fish or salad.

Check out all of our recipes.

Museum Night in Belgrade

On the main pedestrian boulevard, this young girl waits for her turn at the telescope.  She has probably walked along Knez Mihailova Street more times than she could count.  Just yesterday, her patience may have been tried in almost the same spot, waiting on line for ice-cream or at the check-out of Gap Kids.  But in a moment, she'll look up at the sky and feel like her feet are planted someplace entirely different.  This is Museum Night in Belgrade, an evening when things that are always there - that gallery next to Zara, that museum you maybe visited on a school trip years ago, the stars - take center stage.

This is the 9th Annual Museum Night in Serbia and it's gotten bigger each year.  In the capital, 70 museums and galleries open their doors to the public from 6pm until 2am and at least 100 exhibitions, performances, events happen in and around them.  It's not just a Belgrade thing - about 65 different cities in the country take part in the one-night-only event.  The idea is to promote culture and get people in the doors of museums.  In this part of the world, the best way to get anyone to do anything is to make it an all night party, of course!  It's kind of like the visual equivalent of a music festival (which Serbia also happens to know how to do very well).  

I wish they had something like this in New York.  How many times did a visitor see more of the city's museums in one trip than I had in my lifetime?  My sorry excuse: "When it's always there, it's hard to get yourself to go out and do it" a.k.a. I took opportunities for granted.  That's what I loved most about this event in Belgrade.  That night, everyone had a little "tourist" in them.  People walked around in groups, clutching leaflets and consulting maps.  This was especially nice for us - foreigners in a big, exciting city on Saturday night.  We not only knew what was 'happening,' we felt like we fit right in.

We bought our tickets from the Cultural Center that afternoon and spent a long time staring at the guide that came with it - a little worried about being able to find Museum Night.  But when we stepped out our door, Museum Night found us.  Even though my mom told me never to do this, I got in the back of a stranger's van.  This was outside of Radio Belgrade, which had set up a mobile recording studio (said van) for the festivities.  Where there weren't traditional "museums," other things popped up.  Happenings occurred.  

The theme, this year, was "Neon Lights," so we could only assume that these dancers were part of the festivities.  There really was this blending, oozing of exhibition into the streets between museums.  Instead of the sort of scavenger hunt I was expecting, the whole Old Town was attending "Museum Night" whether they chose to or not. And this was hardly your average required museum tour.

Gallery windows hung on darkened buildings like a painting on a wall.  Streetlamp display lighting and a windowsill frame.  Looking in at a woman looking on at a framed poster, I felt part of this strange  continuum.   Sort of like Norman Rockwell's Triple Self Portrait, except with a viewer instead of an artist.  While I wondered what was happening inside the grand museums all over the city - of which there are many - I preferred this sort of window shopping-gallery hopping.  You really could make the evening whatever you wanted it to be - which isn't usually something you associate with "going to a museum."

All night long, people stood on line outside of the Princess Ljubica house for their turn to get in.  One large man in a suit checked tickets at the gate, another manned the entrance allowing a handful at a time to cross the threshold before abruptly closing the door once more.  It was like the konak was transformed into a club.  Something about the scene just felt so.... Belgrade.  I mean, one of the most famous alternative clubs here is located in the basement of the university's Electrical Engineering Faculty building.  It's a certain, unique brand of cool.

As the evening turned to night into late night into early morning and businesses on Knez Mihailova turned off their lights, the galleries between them looked bigger.  Unmissable.  I can't say I noticed this art museum any of the dozen times we walked right past it.  They became a lot like those stars everyone was taking a turn to look at.  Bright, white reminders of what is always there and always worth exploring.

Author's Note:  In case you were wondering, we'd already titled another post Night at the Museum.

A Soggy Holiday

Three days of rain.  We traveled to Sokobanja from Nis, a choice that was applauded by the couple who ran our hostel.  The wife sucked on her cigarette with a contemplative pull and exhaled the name with pleasure.  Sokobanja.  "It is nice, Sokobanja, very nice," the husband nodded as he rolled his own smoke.  "I will drive you to the bus.  It is raining."  A large, dust-covered framed portrait of Tito was removed from the trunk of their car so that our backpacks could fit.  Little did we know - though the clouds were desperately trying to tell us - that our time in the resort town would mostly be spent in this hotel.

Rain leaked into the lobby and ricocheted off the already full plastic tubs meant to catch it.  A tv buzzed overhead.  The place felt immediately familiar.  These are the sort of hotels that I like to dub a CommuNest.  As functional and inviting as a mall parking garage, they are sprawling, grid-like structures.  With their enormous spaces, high ceiling, dim lighting and little-to-no soft notes, they remind me of high school after school hours.  This institutional feel is only emphasized by the enormous, uniformed staff and the many pieces of rubber-stamped paperwork they produce.  Even our breakfast card was certified.   It harkened back to our time in Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova.  Tito's portrait all of a sudden felt like a premonition.  Then, things took an unexpected turn.  We were not alone.

At least 400 children occupied the hotel - some sort of rained out Summer Camp, I assume.  Everything looked even more enormous and faded as the backdrop to its tiny, energetic clientele.  It was like a Roald Dahl novel about a hotel just for children.   At breakfast, we were offered a choice between hot milk and hot chocolate.  The cleaning lady unlocked our door each morning at 8:30am.  Above the age of 12, it was like we were invisible.  By the second day, my clothes were beginning to smell less like smoke and more like hot dog.  The hair salon spent their days braiding fine, blonde hair into cornrows.  These "vacation hairstyles," that are usually meant to signify a trip to an island somewhere, only made the lack of natural light in the hotel more noticeable.

There were 540 beds, two pools, therapeutic and cosmetic spas, gym facilities, a bowling alley, a nightly magician show, a bar area that strongly resembled those smoker's cubes in airports, a 200+ person conference room, etc etc etc.   The pools are the main draw, filled with thermal water.  The springs are what have brought people to Sokobanja for centuries.  It began with the Romans, who bathed in the warm waters here and breathed in the fresh, mountain air.  By 1837 these things were officially seen as restorative, therapeutic and Prince Miloš Obrenović turned the site into a destination. The Turkish slant on it was, of course, to build hamams, which the Serbians transformed afterwards into wellness centers. 

The hotel swimming pool and complex surrounding it are just the newest incarnation of 'spa town.'  This also means carnival rides and pizza places, a pedestrian boulevard that was lively even as the tiny dug-out canoe on display in the public park filled up with rain water.  It's always amazing to see carnival games when they're not in use.  With no crowds and music and lights, you notice that there are half naked women painted on the side of the "Shut Gun" trailer.  You notice just how rickety that ferris wheel looks.  But you also can't help imagine it turning on, lighting up and spinning itself dry.

The bumper cars got a little use while we were in town, on account of their having a roof.  Whenever the rain stopped, everyone hurried outside.  We scrambled up to the ruins of Sokograd, breathing in fresh air and getting our muscles moving.  It was glorious.  The rain began again shortly after and we trailed mud back into the hotel.  The poor kids had been cooped up all day and now had to exhaust all of their pent up energy at a pajama dance party.  A sea of tiny people, in tiny clothing, dancing around to Shakira - I thought of something I'd read earlier that day.  “Sokobanja, Soko Grad, come here old and leave young."  Maybe they've all just been here too long...?  A Roald Dahl book indeed.

A veritable cityscape of luggage filled reception on our last morning in Sokobanja.  Children ran around the roller-bag skyscrapers.  The elevator door opened and behind it was not the usual bather in white robe, but a cartful of suitcases about to topple.  As we sat with coffee, more bags came from every direction.  It was like that final moment of Tetris, when the blocks just start descending too quickly. Game Over.  Finally, it dawned on us that this wasn't just the baggage of the kids leaving, there were new ones arriving!  Like the thermal pool water the day before, a drain and refill was occurring.

 

The new children were destined to be less cooped up and less stir crazy.  The weather was changing.  The girls smacked around a volleyball and the boys pushed each other on skateboards as they waited for their turn to check-in.  They'd undoubtedly take full advantage of everything this pretty resort town has to offer.  They'll kick soccer balls over tennis nets and miss foul shots on the basketball court.  They'll drink limunada at the cafe tables and buy their moms porcelain teddy bears that say "I <3 Sokobanja"  They'll stow a few pieces of bread and cheese away in a napkin during breakfast and eat it for lunch at a picnic table set up along the hiking trail to Sokograd. At least, I would if I were them.

The Crveni Krst Nazi Camp

Crveni Krst is a misleading name.  In Serbian, it means "Red Cross."  So "Cverni Krst concentration camp" might sound strange.  As our guide explained, this wasn't some collaboration between the Nazis and the humanitarian organization - this bloody transport camp took its ironic name from a nearby railroad station.
A young historian-in-training named Ivan walked us around Crveni Krst on a wet, cold day in Niš, meeting us roughly where the barbed wire started and leaving us at the door of the main block.  He explained how the Nazis had painted the windows so that nobody could see outside.  He pointed out a crib that had been used for a baby born in captivity, showed us the solitary cells where men had to lie down on spiked wires, told us about prisoners who would write messages on the walls in blood - anyone caught with a pen was shot immediately.  Cverni Krst wasn't that bad by Nazi camp standards, but it was still horrific.  It's also a place that the citizens of Niš are strangely attached to.

Nazi camps almost never survived.  They were freighted with too much tragedy and shame to last – often they were destroyed, sometimes they were left to rot, rarely were they preserved.  People didn’t want to remember or accept what had happened in these places.
In Yugoslavia, though, this wasn’t the case.  Crveni Krst was opened to the public all the way back in 1967, and has been a museum (in various ways) ever since.  Why?  Because the vast majority of the prisoners who were processed or killed here weren’t Jews or Roma, they were communists – and the communist government under Tito wanted people to remember.  The camp was (and in a lot of ways, still is) a symbol of the struggle.  Hanging on the wall of a nearby café, shrieking above beer-heavied heads and plates of sausage, an icon of “the party” gives his life, fist raised, body wrapped in barbed wire.  The people who died in town are seen more as heros than victims.

As Ivan walked us around, he spoke in a reverent whisper, his voice sometimes seeming to stray close to tears.  He explained to us how the different buildings worked, which cells housed which groups of prisoners.
Highlighted in the tour was a story about an escape, when about a hundred men made it out of the camp - leaving almost fifty comrades dead on the walls or mowed down by the guards.  Even though most of the escapees were eventually caught, the event seems to capture the hearts of Serbs.  In the imagery of the camp and to the citizens of Niš, it is the men dying as they ran that are important - there is a kind of valor given to them, a legacy of courage and action.  Instead of submitting to their fate, they died helping others go free.  They're given almost as much space as the thousands of other prisoners the Nazis killed in the city and surrounding area.

One of the most astounding things about the holocaust is just how large and far reaching the infrastructure was.  In a few short years, the Nazis set up scores of camps over most of Europe, in regional hubs and along transport routes.  Examples like the one in Niš weren’t extermination camps, per se, but taxonomy isn’t really important – the holocaust didn’t just happen in one or two places, it was an all-encompassing network.  Officially, these peripheral stations were waypoints and gathering places that served to funnel prisoners toward the larger bases in Poland and Germany, or towards work camps in other parts of the world.  Most of the 30,000 prisoners processed through Crveni Krst were sent to Sajmište – the Belgrade camp - before ending up in Auschwitz, Dachau or Buchenwald, but a sizable number were also shipped to labor depots in Norway.  Almost a third, though, never made it anywhere.

According to Ivan, “not many” of the prisoners at Crveni Krst were killed on site.  Several hundred people were shot or beaten to death at the camp, but in terms of scale the numbers are almost insignificant.
Almost 10,000 people were killed nearby, shot on a deserted hilltop called Bubanj.  They were chosen at random – in the grim mechanization of the holocaust, people became numbers to be added, subtracted or grouped into shipping orders.
One cell of the camp is plastered with children's pictures showing various scenes of violence - figures hanging lifeless on barbed wire, families lying on the ground, men being beaten.  The work was very good in a lot of cases - when we complimented their skill, Ivan said that the children were mostly ten years old, as if that automatically made them better artists.
It was fascinating to see the works and to think of the local children drawing them - it's interesting because the town seems to really own the camp, in a way that other holocaust towns don't.

The sad, often ignored fact of genocide is that the groups that are targeted aren't usually around afterwards to remember.  In places like Germany or Poland, the people who remained had the stain of guilt - where Nazi camps survive, they exist as badges of shame.  In Niš, though, the persecuted became the population.  Soon after their occupiers left, Yugoslavia became communist and the victims of Crveni Krst became a part of the local identity.  To them, it's a painful memory but not one they feel responsible for.

Crveni Krst is an eery place to walk around, and the stories are horrific, but we felt ready for the experience in a way.  This is our fourth Nazi compound of the trip (after Auschwitz, Dachau and a smaller one in Leipzig that we never wrote about), and the stories and spaces have become more familiar.  A better way to say it, maybe, is that we've become better able to steel ourselves for what we'll find.
But still, the experience is somewhat unique.  It serves as a reminder of how far-reaching the holocaust was.  Just because other peripheral camps have been destroyed or aren't open to the public doesn't mean that they didn't once exist.  It's hard to remember that, almost everywhere you go in western, central or eastern Europe there were concentration camps.  Traveling here is to always follow in the footsteps of Nazis, which is a chilling thought.

Repurposing Turkish Leftovers

Welcome to Skull Tower.  This is not a ride at Six Flags Great Adventure, it is a very important Serbian monument located in the city of Niš.  Its name gives it a spooky, Halloween feel - its actual presence is a lot more unsettling.  Around 50 decaying skulls, implanted in the remains of a tower.  The tower used to be bigger, the skulls used to number 952.  The structure used to stand in the open air and poems recount the sound of the wind whistling through the cavities, the bones shining under the moon like marble.  In 1809, at the Battle of Čegar Hill, Stevan Sinđelić ignited his gun powder stock, killing himself, his remaining troops and 10,000 Turks that were about to defeat them.  The Serbians honored him as a hero for not raising the white flag.  The Turks, still in power, collected the Serbian skulls from the battlefield and raised this. 

There are heroes and villains throughout history, with the roles often reversing depending on which side is telling you the tale.  For Serbs, Skull Tower is not just a perfect, engrossing tribute to fallen heroes, it is also so strangely gruesome that the other side seems downright sadistic.  Nowadays, the directions to Skull Tower (Ćele Kula) are pretty specific - walk out of town this way, turn here, go over a small walking bridge, find a simple white chapel, go inside.  The street that passes in front, though, used to run from Istanbul to Belgrade to Sofia.  You were going to see this thing whether you wanted to or not. The message of the tower: Don't try to oppose the Ottoman Empire.  At night, families of the fallen soldiers would come to remove the skulls for proper burial.  It was probably pretty successful at spooking and scaring people traveling through Niš, but the locals embraced it as a monument - a tribute.  Which is why it still stands today.

Skull Tower isn't the only leftover from Turkish rule in Niš that's been redefined as a celebration of Serbian history and culture.  Niš Fortress, large and restored, sits on the river Nišava.  We could see through the arched Istanbul Gate, that it wasn't your average historical monument inside.  All the tell-tale signs of summer weekend fun could be spotted.  Umbrellas sporting ice cream brand logos were propped up over popcorn carts.  Kids held balloons affixed to thin, plastic sticks and couples canoodled in fancy leisure wear.  A man told us repeatedly not to take a picture of him and his pony-for-hire.  We'd exhibited no interest in doing so.

The oldest Turkish building in the city is right inside.  Predictably, it's a hamam, which has been turned into a traditional Serbian restaurant.  Even more predictably, the restaurant's name is Hamam.  We never got a good look at the inside, but all traces of the bath - which dates back to the 15th century - have been washed away.  I can see why people would be saddened by the loss of the historic interior, but I can also see why preserving a symbol of Turkish culture may not be on the top of Serbian Niš's priority list.  As we ate, a quartet of waiters began to play instruments and sing.  They talked to each other as much as they sang, seeming to improvise most of what they were playing.  A nervous teenage couple came in for a date, loosening up only when they both began to laugh at a recorder-playing drunk outside the patio entrance.

Niš was finally liberated from Ottoman rule sixty-eight years after that Battle of Čegar Hill.  In 1878, it was officially part of a Serbian state once more - after about 400 years under the Turks.  The city's history after that was no less bloody or turbulent.  It's a little difficult to visit these landmarks that tell the tale of a time when Serbs were the little guy, the oppressed, and not have thoughts of much more recent history.  In a lot of ways, Skull Tower is the perfect tourist attraction for this vibrant, pleasant city in this polarizing country: historic, dramatic, violent, important.  

Rottweilers And Serbs in Niš

I first saw “f--k Serbia” written on a bathroom wall at a Brooklyn gas station.  It struck me, then, as an odd thing to write, but in Europe it’s a pretty popular bit of scrawl.  I’ve seen it a lot lately, in Croatia and Slovenia and on walls in Macedonia and Albania.  The point is, Serbia isn’t well liked by its neighbors.
In the gathering darkness of a warm evening in Niš we came across a strange, violent dog competition.  Men and women sat in lawn chairs, smoking and talking.  We spent some time marveling at the strange things we happen across.  Traveling – at its best – brings you completely unexpected rituals and cultural spectacles - like this circle in the trees, where people calmly watched Rottweilers attack a man over and over and over.

We aren't in Serbia to judge or rehash history, but 1992 wasn't that long ago.  It's difficult to come to a place like this without questions.  What are Serbs really like?  In general, they've been either incredibly friendly or quite brusque.  They aren't especially crazy about America.  People our age have been wonderfully open and friendly.  In general, they're a lot like most Slavic people.
The dog show was a ritualized display.  One could sense the anticipation of tensed muscles, the quickened panting before the leap, the sharp whines imploring the trainer to loosen the leash.  Attack dogs are strange things, and it takes a particular type of person to want to train them - someone who wants to both control and commit violence.

A young, thin man stood behind a kind of blind with a baton in one hand and a protective tube over the other arm.  When he jumped out and began looking threatening, a dog was supposed to run up to him, bite the arm tube and shake it while being beaten by the baton.  Sometimes, the dogs weren’t quite sure they wanted to attack.  Sometimes they were over-eager, and wouldn’t stop mauling the tube when they were supposed to.  It was frightening the first few times, but we got used to the gnashing teeth and brutish behavior.

Even to uninformed watchers like us, it was obvious which animals were better trained.  They were generally the calmest, and the quickest to loosen their bite when told to.  All of the dogs, though, were admirably non-threatening and well-behaved when they weren't about to attack.  There weren't any fights between the animals, and there was almost no barking.  We felt very safe wandering amongst the wagging tails and lolling tongues.
We feel safe wandering around Serbia, too.  Serbs are good people.  I wish, more than anything, that I wasn't suspicious of them. They don't deserve it.

Apparently, Niš is a Rottweiler hotspot.  Some ten kennels in town are devoted to the breed, and their owners wore t-shirts advertising their services.  Affection between Serbs and Germans hasn’t historically been strong, but the breeders and trainers have names like “Vom Haus Engle” and “Vom Hasen Haus.”  (Also, the hilarious “Rott-Angels from IceBerg.”)  The Deutch bent seemed strange, but there was a clear militaristic, close-cropped-hair aesthetic that isn’t exactly German but emulates a popular idea about Germany. We wondered, watching the show, if some Serbs feel a connection between their country and other old antagonists - a wounded pride, maybe.  Perhaps a desire to be understood for what they are today, rather than what they were.

This kind of dog show happens in other countries, of course.  It's not a specifically Serbian thing, but it resonated with us here in a way that it may not have elsewhere.  It brought to the foreground something that we'd been thinking without wanting to, a question that doesn't quite seem fair - not "who are Serbs?" but "are Serbs the same people that they used to be?"  Rottweilers are very friendly dogs, generally - but they can also be frighteningly vicious.