Foreign language school. "ŠKOLA STRANIH JEZIKA" is actually Croatian. In Serbian, it would be "школа страних језика." The great philologist Vuk Karadžić (1787-1864) categorized Serbian and Croatian as basically one language, so Croatians were just Catholic Serbs. The Croatians vehemently disagreed.
A month ago in Busan, I went to a Vietnamese restaurant and couldn't quite follow the conversation at the next table, because all twelve men there were from Ha Tinh Province. There is a range in any language.
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2 comments:
Hello, Linh!
Kind of sad to see you finally leave Pusan, but I guess it was time to go. Any final thoughts on South Korea and your time there?
Belgrade looks kind of seedy compared to S.K. cities. Are the people friendly? My mother visited Yugoslavia on her return to the States after working for Children's Medical Relief International in Saigon in 1974 and she recalls it as a beautiful city.
Looking forward to your further adventures!
(•‿•)
Hi Wanda,
All former Eastern Bloc cities are filled with ugly apartment blocks, with most of the older, more beautiful buildings still in bad shape and not restored, but you probably know this already. Even at its height, Belgrade was not anything like Prague or Budapest, but it has its charms, and the Serbs are friendly, though there is an edge here. Just now, I walked by a bulldog of a guy with a T-shirt that said, "MONDAY YOU BASTARD."
I'm catching on that many of the graffiti are political, with many crossed out or written over by rival factions. One said, "SERBIA = SPARTA."
There were riots here just two weeks ago, and there's a lot of political nastiness right now in Montenegro.
Where are you in the States, Wanda?
I'm sitting in the Hunters next to the stuffed head of a mountain goat. My beer costs $2. Dire Straits' Sultans of Swing is playing. It's a peaceful Sunday.
Just four days ago, I wasn't even sure I could make it here.
Linh
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