muslim holiday Kourban

micky s on work..huh.

tomorrow s muslim holiday Kourban bairam - the day they eat lamp and go to mosque.
Our boss (there are 4 of them) - who are muslims already are in a good mood and planning tomorrow to have a family-food-tradition day.

one of them brought a goose to work (i mean the cooked one) , we ate the nicely cooked gooze - cut in small pieces with bread, and i was talking with girls who are from villages and they told the way and upbring small gooze-kids the whole winter and taking care of them during early spring.
its really true - tradition is so strong in the rural area of tatarstan - and actually the whole russia.
i just compare how people live now and how lived 100 years ago..


miooo

Micky in Serbia

I don’t know, as far my internet connection is out of order, at least I can write something small about here.

It s a bit cold in the room, and I m sitting under the blanket and writing small letter.

Last days my life order is extremely childish. I get up very early, around 6:30 I can t sleep any more - so I get up, and the same in the evening, around 8-9 I m falling into sleep. It feels like a childish timetable…)

It were 5 days in Balkans, and 2 more days still in here, but it feels a bit boring, so I m waiting to go back to kazan. Maybe it s actually my problem, that I can’t find any activity in here.

1 st day - was the Mostar - old city on the border of Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina - so much destroyed in the 1993-war, so still many buildings keep the scars of war - and footprints of bulletshots. It looks quite sorrowful - when you see Muslim women walking in between brand new shops and concrete skeletons.

2^nd day - The Sarajevo. That s as well the place, which was in the hot point of war, and the traces of explosions are stuffed with red rubber - so it s called - the roses of war, and you can see them everywhere. But really beautiful ancient Muslim city - the narrow streets of old town full of sun and local food smells. Feels like our last year Bursa.

But the thing, Hippo, those people - I mean all over Balkans - they are so tall. Incredible. It seems that I look here like I m 15-16 year old child, and its unusual that I m not smoking. Because they smoke everywhere and everybody. You come to a hotel - the whole room has a terrible musty smell. And the same in the cafes - where your hair get spoiled in 3 minutes of being in that smoke.

3 rd day. The valley from Sarajevo to Srbija (they pronounce it in this way - with no vowels). Seems that roads don’t exist yet in this land - because there s just one between Sarajevo and Belgrade, and all the local villages are connected with each other with mountain roads, sometimes with mountain tunnels, with single-direction running.

After you pass the Sarajevo municipality district - Muslim villages with Mosques absolutely disappear and change to Orthodox-churches places. As I talked with a guy on the gaz-station, he told, that since 13 th century in Balkans people live with a taboo - hatred in between on local Muslims and orthodox-Christians and Croatian catholic Christians, with no possibility to get married with a person of the other confession.

Of course I spoke about those questions in very smooth way, not to hurt, or not to get stupid or aggressive attitude to my interrogation, but I haven’t felt that people really hate and kill each other,………. or this current situation is the result of delicate policy.?

When you pass the Border between Bosnia and Serbia (nice that they don’t ask anything on the border - just look your passport - no visas, or additional payments, no stamps in the passport - yes, so after that you get to the village Mokra Gora (Wet mountain - Serbian language is quite close to Russian - so I generally understand and can even have a small conversation) - that s our main destination - the small railway station ‘ Mokra Gora’ - with the narrow-gage railway in the mountains - with the wagons from 1923. Oh, damn, they are so cute!

One of my favorite films - “ Life as a miracle” - by Emir Kusturica - was done exactly on this part of railway, and it s so cool to recognize the places and views.

Yes, and the evening. We had to stay at night in any city nearby, and there was just the town on Uzice (well, there are just 85 thousands of people, but it already perceived to be a large city) - so we asked one man on the car service how to get to any place of interest, or to old city, or at least to eat in any nice local restaurant - and it started. The guy took us to the castle , made the excursion inside, then took to the restaurant (hoh! It was already too much!!) - they he came with us, ordered all the hugest plates (the portions are incredibly large in all the cafes), brought the alcohol, was sitting with us in there more than an hour (its tough to speak with a person, for such a long time on not common language, when you don’t really understand ) - and then at least payed for us. We tried to say him, that he shouldn t do like that, and we can pay ourselves (it was quite an expensive place) - but he said it was normal…

Faithfully it doesn’t feel comfortable, because all the time you feel, that you are somehow ought to that person, and this really spoils the whole feeling.

Night 3-4 th day. Hippo, there was the earthquake at night.

Very scary. I awaked after my bed started to shake crazily. The wardrobe was really shaking with a loud noise.

It was around 15-20 seconds, but I already started to think where to jump in case of more serious earth tremors.

In the morning - it founded out that the earthquake focus was in 100 km from us, and destroyed several buildings in Kralevo. Seems that nobody got hurt, despite on 5,5 point on the scale of Richer ….

So micky is alive and kicking)))