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Interview With an 'X'

The 'X' is definitely one of the most important letters in the alphabet. Not only that it is the most valuable variable in all math equations and scientific chase for the unknown, but in the entire history of human riddles, and I mean not always related to math, it always marks the most interesting spot. Sometimes the one with the treasure. It was no coincidence that the old Romans used it for the most important number of them all. 10. The very base of our widely used numeric system. But we are not here to talk about mathematics or treasure hunting per se. It will be more about age. Of ten. My son Viktor is turning this magic number on this year Earth Day (April 22nd), and I decided, in addition to our previous topic and post Interview With an Expert, to fire another set of questions for him to answer. This time more general and within various realms of life and... well, stuff...



So let's start with favorites. I guess they say a lot about personality. And they don't require a polygraph to confirm the truthfulness of the given answers. For some reason, I believe everybody, or most of us, will answer these honestly. Probably because of their benevolentness (if this is even a word). Even we adults will not curve the truth with these ones. And yet, answers to these questions probably reveal a lot about a person. In the modern world, it is comparable to the browser history; if you want to learn about your friend's likes and dislikes, just have a glimpse or two of his or her bookmarks and history.

So, let's start the interview in that fashion. Here it goes:

 What are your favorite subjects in school?
Physical education, Sports, Music and Math - Because they are so much fun, and I like numbers and to solve puzzles.

 What sport do you like the most, and why?
Basketball: It is the best sport and great for body practice. It makes you stronger and faster.

 What are your favorite regular and comic books? And why?
The best book I read so far was '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea' because it was so mysterious and adventurous. The greatest comic book is definitely 'Il Grande Blek' - he and all his friends are very interesting and super funny.

 What are your favorite board and video games? Why these?
Battleship and Connect 4—they are interesting and tense. The best video game is definitely Minecraft, because I can build things and make my own worlds.

What about your favorite movie and TV show? How so?
Avengers for the movies—great fight and smart play. The Flash for TV shows—because they are funny and mysterious. Also Discovery Channel's Mythbusters—they do amazing myth testing, especially what they find on YouTube.

 What's your favorite food?
Rolls, pie, and pastry. Also Milka chocolate and marshmallows.

 What about favorite color(s)?
Something between green and black.

Well, that was easy and nice to warm up the interviewer and interviewee. No big surprise there. To be honest, if I exclude color and food, it could be the same answers I would offer. Then again, back then, when I was around 10 years old, maybe even the food and colors would be the same. Perhaps only the movie would be different, but I have to say he nailed the book. Ok, let's move to more interesting questions and see what happens next. But not to the boring ones yet. Serious questions should be at the bottom of the pit for now... Or never asked. So, let's continue with just a couple of those from the realm of movies and games. And fantasy.

What superpower would you like to possess? Don't say to be rich.
Jedi force mastering and telekinesis.

 What do you think about the greatest mystery of the universe, women?
Well, I think that... wait what?

 Sorry, it was the line from the Back to the Future... But seriously, what do you think is the greatest mystery of the universe?
How did it all start in the first place?

 What part of the world would you like to visit some day?
America and Germany. I would like to visit their museums.

 You like museums? What kind?
Natural museums and museums about fighting machines of all kinds. Old and new.

 Would you rather live at the North Pole or in the desert?
Definitely desert. (I like warm weather better).

 If you could be any animal, which one would you be and why?
Fox (they are fast and smart) or snake (because they are careful and cautious).

Okidoki, now we are getting warmer. With the exception of the snake, I would easily predict all the answers. However, even though the snake looks odd, when I think about it, there's wisdom in there. Ever since the book of Genesis, we are taking snakes for granted and always in the realm of evil, and children's thinking is definitely not weighted with stereotypes and dogma. Museums look nice too. Ok, let's go into a more personal area now and see how the 'X' will describe himself by answering these generic questions (I found them online and changed a little to better fit the age).

 What is one of your greatest talents? What do you do best?
I remember things for a long time.

 What makes you nervous, and what makes you happy?
I am nervous when I don't know what to say or how to answer questions and happy when I do things properly.

 What is your happiest memory so far? 
When I bought Darth Vader Pig plushy from the Angry Birds franchise when I was 4... I couldn't believe when I saw it on the shelf in the store when we were on vacation in Greece.

I have to admit, as it seemed, these questions gave Viktor the hard time. He did think a lot before answering, and I had to help him a little with offering answers in the form of A, B, C... It looks like with him and probably lots of children his age, happiness is not the same as with us adults. It's more about moments and great times they enjoy the most. I guess they live in present time more than we do. Ok, that indeed was something interesting, so what is next? Oh yes, if those questions up to now were describing a young boy to the detail, the following ones will go even further. Like they say... To the bone... Time is now for hard questions.

 What age do you look forward to—and why?
22

 Really? Can you be more precise than that?
Because I was born on 22nd...

Ok, I give up. What do you want to be when you grow up?
Game designer and software developer in general.

 What do you think you will be doing 10 years from now? 
Programming. And making more successful YouTube videos.

 How do you think Earth will look when you grow up?
I am not sure. Not so different than today. Maybe there will be lots of robots?

 What is god? 
There are many gods—the sea god, heaven god, hell god (I like the sea god the most)—and I saw in Greece lots of sculptures and monuments. People say they lived long ago and they created animals.

 Who created people?
Monkeys. Over time, they rose up, lost their fur and hair, and became humans.

Ok, thanks for all the answers. Do you have anything to ask me?
Not really.. Maybe on your birthday.

 For the end, what advice would you give to your parents?
To play with me more often.

 So there you go. I know I could have been more thorough with this interview and created more serious questions for the last section, but I thought that this post should stay in the entertaining thread on the blog and represent just one short and funny conversation between a father and son and a small generation gap in between. For the very end and to get back to the post opening, Viktor's birthday and Earth Day (unofficial Earth's birthday) are celebrated on the same day every year, and for this special occasion, I want to give them both the same message:

 

Stone Age of Iron Gates

There were lots of breakthroughs in human history until this date. Some were instant and recognisable events or technological inventions and some were slow evolutionary processes in history of our species. Whatever they were, the outcome was always reshaped course of mankind entirely. In our own time one of those is no doubt learning how to split the atom and very invention of nuclear bomb. We are still living in the post-turbulence time of that latest breakthrough that has potential to rise us from the Earth toward the stars. Some would say that it is still unknown whether this one is more of a civilization killer event or true entrance into another phase of humanity. We will wait and see. Either way, it is breakthrough, nevertheless. In early human history there was one similar invention that had the same uncertainty. It was called "Neolithic Revolution" and it happened in the middle of the Stone Age. And yes, even though we are still here, consequences of this invention are still very much all around us.

"Lepenski Vir" by Giovanni Caselli

Yes, the invention is of course, the agriculture along with domesticating wild animals. In this part of the world it happened around the year of 5300BC and along with Vinča culture, it was invented by the one of the oldest civilization that occupied Iron Gates, the great gorge of mighty Danube at the spot called Lepenski Vir (Lepen Whirlpool) near the Koršo hills at the right bank of the river. The gorge had everything for the rise of one medium sized settlement for our Mesolithic predecessors. Large river with lots of fish, hills and valleys very near the bank with lots of small animals, deer and especially easily hunted herds of aurochs (now extinct specious of wild cows) and lots of water birds.

Many things happened in human minds with agricultural way of life. If you ask me, it was the point when humans abandoned the 'natural' way of life or to better say it was the time when natural equilibrium with humans being just a part of the biodiversity micro-cosmos of the inhabited area changed inevitably. We became the ultimate and the only player. Growing our own food and enslaving wild animals had risen us toward the god like creatures and we left our prehistorical ways for good. Just like with nuclear power, we made one great step in human evolution. And just like with nuclear bomb we invented all the side-effects we are suffering to this day.


With agriculture we didn't just invented unlimited food supplies. We got ourselves envy and jealousy toward our own neighbor and cousin for simple things as him having more food or land. We started to hunt for pleasure and not just for food. We started to steal and hate. We invented divine beings and prayers for them to spare our crops from natural hazards between planting and harvesting seasons. Let me just not repeating myself too much on the topic. Please read more about it in my last year post Supermarket Religion with review of one very interesting book and another civilization who lived in old settlement of 'Göbekli Tepe' in nowadays Turkey.

Anyway, yesterday I took my family to the Lepenski Vir and it's wonderful museum to learn more of this great people and how and why, on Earth, they managed to survive several millenniums in tent based settlements and lasted for maybe the longest period of time in human history. As for why, unfortunately I can't explain with words. You would have to visit Iron Gates and see it for yourself. In short - it is beautiful site. The river is magnificent and the gorge is one of the kind. The forests are still there and the feeling is, well, if I was one of the Mesolithic explorers on foot, finding this place would be the same as finding the heaven. Migrating it out would be, from one hunter and fishermen group point of view, well, stupid.


Perhaps the only thing this place doesn't have is lots of room for large agriculture fields and eventually these people left it as soon as they became too dependable by the Neolithic Revolution and from that point in time in fifth millennium before Christ we have no idea where they went and spread. Probably upstream Danube in search for large plains for their crops is currently most valuable scientific explanation. Maybe something more happened in addition to agricultural reasons to force them to leave but we don't know. Today, one of the large dams in the world, named 'Iron Gates I', created significant landscape change in form of a long river lake and flooded entire gorge and all the ancient settlements preventing further exploration in search for more clues.

Perhaps, for me, these guys in pre-agricultural times were extremely interesting for many reasons. Anthropologically speaking, they were large comparing to other humans in Europe at the time and lived longer and healthier life. Thanks to their diet with most of the fish dishes on their stone tables some of the prominent members of the society lived more than 60 years and some of them were tall enough to play in NBA with ease. Well, of course, most lived about 40-50 years old, but with their average height of 165 for women and 172 for men they might have origins in old Cro-Magnon species from Paleolithic. Fascinating story about all the skeletons in tombs were that no traces of violent deaths were found. Apparently, they were extremely peaceful people and also interesting fact that all excavated skeletons (more than 150 in total) miss only two teeth gives a clue that their amazing diet with almost 70% fish and rest of the meat and berries was a fact that they literally lived in some sort of the Mesolithic paradise.


At the end, all the main exploration and excavations of this site was made by professor Dragoslav Srejović of the University of Belgrade. 136 buildings, settlements and altars were found in the initial excavations in 1965-1970. I read somewhere that Dragoslav Srejović was a giant in a Newton way of definition and I couldn't agree more. This short film above is the same one they played for us in the museum. I am sorry I couldn't find the one with English subtitles but it was great learn and amazing documentary considering it was filmed in the same time lapse as the exploration. And as my wife noticed it has even a romantic tale in the background that gives a special touch and feel of one typical archaeological life in mid sixties.

Refs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepenski_Vir
http://www.donsmaps.com/lepenski.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs
 

Flat Sausage Fair

Approximately 15 years ago I was working as a lab assistant in the programming department of microassembly and object-oriented languages within the College of Applied Technical Sciences in Niš, Serbia. I was engaged with all five semesters and was teaching students from their freshman year to graduation, and every now and again, along with the board of professors, I was asked to attend their final exams, followed by a sort of social celebration in the form of a small festivity with a table full of food and drinks.


On one such occasion, a student who came from Pirot, one of the biggest cities of eastern Serbia, asked us if we had ever tried before a sausage called "vitamin bomb", which, he said, was one of the oldest delicacies from the region he came from. I spotted that one of the professors, who was actually known to have tried almost everything when it came to food and drinks, started nodding his head, but it was clear that the rest of us heard it for the first time. The student looked at the professor and said, "I am sure you never tasted this one," and pulled out from the bag a ... well ... something that looked exactly like a "horseshoe" in both shape and color. I glanced toward the professor who claimed that he tasted it before and saw that even he was surprised with the strange-looking sausage in the student's hands. The student glimpsed the same, warmly smiled, and explained to us what it is and how it's made. Today, almost two decades later, the "vitamin bomb" sausage is a recognized brand, and the simple translation from Serbian "Peglana Kobasica" is "Ironed" or "Flat" Sausage. Last year, the town of Pirot and its tourist organization created the first "Flat Sausage Fair", and yesterday, despite poor weather, we decided to visit the second fair made in honor of this great Serbian soul food, which is the mutual name for all those old recipes that survived centuries in their original forms.

But what is so special about this sausage that it earned its own fair?

The recipe is not the secret, although this is not a meal you can make in a couple of hours in your home; with a little enthusiasm, it is doable, and results could be extraordinary. From what I can find online, you need a great selection of various quality meats (cleaned and stripped of all fats and unwanted parts), ultra-finely chopped or minced and mixed with spices (up to 2% of different chilies, 2% salt, 1% garlic, and 1% pepper, followed by other suitable spices according to your taste). No water or any other liquids are welcome in the mixture. Now comes the interesting part. After filling is ready and wrapped into eatable natural sausage casing, sausage should be formed in the "U" shape and left for drying on the draft. The drying "chamber" must be very cold, with an optimal temperature around zero degrees or colder, with as low humidity as possible, and in the presence of great frost, keeping outside water from vaporizing in great scales. Usually with a bottle, sausages are pressed and ironed two or three times a week, after which they take the form of a horseshoe. Ironing is necessary for most of the unnecessary air and water to be ejected from the sausage, which ensures longevity. Needless to say, they are purely organic with no preservation of any kind, no additives or artificial colors, no heat treatment, and no exposure to smoke.


Since there is no strict recipe when it comes to ingredients, it is clear that with different mixtures of various meats and spices, they come in a wide variety of different tastes, and given the fact that they are made of and the nature of the preparation that has not changed from the times dating a couple of centuries before, in my humble opinion, I have to say that I haven't tried better sausage yet. And believe me, I have tried many. Even those advertised on large scales, like the white sausages of Bavaria or great Danish delicacies you can buy outdoors, are simply not worthy rivals. Furthermore, the energy value of the sausage is very high, and it is usually served in small dosages and sliced into tiny, a couple of millimeters chopped pieces. Best of all, due to the fact they contain almost no water inside, you can store them in a deep freezer, where they keep their original taste and shape even after a couple of months. Yesterday's fair was, like the year before, organized very nicely and with thousands of people browsing and tasting the specimens. We bought a couple of kilos of different varieties with different meat mixtures and spice ratios, and the winner for me was a hot, whitish, extra tasty brand. It was moderately hot, made out of four different kinds of meat (besides beef, they used the best parts of goat, horse, and donkey meat), and with a great mixture of spices. The casing is giving this particular one a whitish color, which is also pretty cool and unique.

Unfortunately, because of yesterday's weather and half a meter of snow outside our weekend house, we couldn't get to the fair earlier and see its social side, so I am including the video I made last year. Somehow and also to my taste, the jazz band playing last winter fits greatly to this particular fair and the advertising product.


Serbian Flat Sausage*
http://www.rostiljanje.com/gastronomske-manifestacije/peglana-kobasica/

Image Refs:
http://www.pirotskevesti.rs/lokalna-samouprava/na-hiljade-turista-dolazi-na-sajam-peglane/
http://www.pirotskevesti.rs/gradska-hronika/pocinje-prijava-za-sajam-peglane-kobasice/
http://www.pirotskevesti.rs/lokalna-samouprava/ogromno-interesovanje

Refs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NjN4KZ1zdo
http://www.peglana.com/english/index.htm
http://www.pirotskevesti.rs/zivot-drustvo/praznik-peglane-u-hali-kej/
http://fondazioneslowfood.it/ark/details/1707/pirot-ironed-sausage
http://www.tanjug.rs/news/113206/pirot-hosts-flat-sausage-fair.htm
 

Πάργα

In our part of the world summer vacation is the most important one for most people. There are several reasons for this, and probably the major one is that during July and August in this part of the western Balkans, where we live, temperatures can go as high as 45°C (113°F), and the obvious solution is to pack your bags, jump into the car, and go to one of four nearby seas for a couple of weeks to cool off and enjoy (and also to change the everyday scenery and recharge your inner batteries, which are always seriously depleted when summers come).


Due to the shortest distance and good roads, Greece is probably the best destination for a car trip to the seaside that takes less than 10 hours of driving. Unfortunately this is one of few routes for all those "gastarbeiter" people who mainly work in Germany and other western countries and during summers form very long rivers of vehicles toward their home destinations in Turkey and other countries. When they hit borders along the way, this is a nightmare you want to avoid. Once we had bad luck and got stuck in one of 7 lanes between the Serbian and Macedonian (FYROM) borders and waited 4 hours to pass through. This is why we always travel halfway during the night and cross the borders around dawn or so to avoid crossing peaks and giant waiting times. The return way is always smoother, and we mainly use borders for rest and shopping. Like I already wrote in the post Aegean Sea before, short car destinations in Greece are all connected to the Aegean Sea, but this time we chose to check out the Ionian basin and try the relatively new motorway the Greeks built not so long ago. Only once I spent vacation in this part of Greece, and I remember it was a hard job for my father, as the curvy road from the Aegean to the Ionian Sea included one mountain after another, and driving through them required full concentration all the way with frequent resting points. Today, this is a different story with the new modern freeway, and the same destination is now reachable within 3 hours or so. Believe it or not, this new route includes about 60 tunnels almost 50 km long combined, and during summer heat, driving through all the tunnels comes extra handy and relaxing.

Since this was the first time for me driving this road, I decided to use a little help from modern GPS navigation. It was only needed for the last hour of the trip, where we needed to leave the motorway and find our way to the final destination in Parga, a small and old town located some 40 km south of Igoumenitsa port across the Corfu island. I didn't have any specialized GPS car devices before, and I decided to risk it a little and use the smartphone instead. I bought cheap navigation software called "Navi Ninasus" despite not so many recommendations online. To my surprise, it handled all the situations extremely well and pointed us exactly to the front gate of our villa without any problems. Rerouting was perfect and fast, and it proves very well on the ship and on foot as well. You can see it in action in the photos below, and if you want to save some serious money in the big GPS market, this one is a very good solution.


When we visited our travel agency (Big Star Niš) and told them that we decided to go to Parga this year, Stefan, one of the agency owners, while describing the house we wanted to hire, said something about a nearby olive forest that looks exactly like the scenery from "The Lord of the Rings", a fantasy trilogy based on J. R. R. Tolkien's famous book. Of course, I was a little skeptical about this but at the same time very curious to explore. The moment of our arrival, when I first saw the large olive tree just above our villa, I was eager to go to the forest as soon as possible. So we did the very next day, and if you look at the next couple of photos from the woods when we made a shortcut our way to the Lichnos beach, I am sure that, like me, you will agree that old olive trees are something special to see, and to tell you the truth, if Bilbo Baggins or Gandalf jumped out of some tree, I wouldn't be surprised at all. My only regret is that we didn't hit the time when olives are being collected with large nets villagers are using for this purpose. I am sure this would be something worthwhile to see. Needless to say, our landlady on our last day gave us a bottle of olive oil as a present, made exactly from the olives collected right from the woods we saw and photographed, and with this blog post I thank her for all her hospitality and kindness. The same level of gratitude goes to Stefan and "Big Star", which is one of the best travel agencies in Niš.


Perhaps to better feel and, in this case, hear the forest, I took a couple of seconds-long video clip showing all the beauty of old olives:


According to a couple of wikis I read, I learned that Pargians are descendants from the old Greek tribe called Thesprotians. Perhaps the best-known resident in ancient times was Odysseus himself, who married Thesprotia's queen of the time by the name Kallidike and spent many years in this area leading the tribe and fighting many wars as their king. Unfortunately, if we leave mythology aside, real history for Pargians was not so cheerful, especially much later in the Dark Ages when these people shared violent times with the active neighborhood. They survived different rulers and occupations starting with Normans, Venetians, French, British, and Ottomans, not to mention constant attacks from various pirates from the sea. Today, the monumental fortress built for their defense is the sour witness of the old times, standing above the small town for centuries. In the town below, old narrow stone streets, similar to those of Corfu, are now wonderful tourist attractions, along with four beaches, all very different in nature and appearance. Surrounded by large hills and dense forests, Parga today is one of the few real tourist paradises during summer, filled with voices of dozens of different languages, especially at night when it is not easy to find an empty chair in local tavernas. In addition to Parga's social life, to me, Greek vacations are always more about reading books and enjoying peaceful moments. This time I brought "The Lost Symbol" and swallowed it in just a couple of days. If you want to learn something more about worldwide Freemasonry, this is the book for you, especially if you are, like me, a big fan of Robert Langdon's adventures. We had a large garden in front of the house with a big stone table where, below the shadows of lemon leaves, reading Dan Brown's book got additional pleasure. On the other hand, for Viktor no summer vacation can pass without his tablet and a couple of video games (picture to the right).


Just 20 km offshore, there are two small islands called Paxos and Antipaxos. According to the legend, Poseidon himself used his mighty trident and sliced the southern part of Corfu, making this small archipelago paradise just for him and his wife, Amphitrite, to enjoy some peace and quiet. Compared to nowadays worldwide religions, I really love Greek mythology and their amazing stories. I mean, come on, if you are creating a mass of fairy tales, using wild imagination is a must, and ancient Greeks did it very well. Of all religions in existence today and those extinguished in the past, Greek former beliefs are probably the best in the history of mankind. Anyway, there are many boats sailing to the Paxoi Islands every morning, providing a one-of-a-kind experience of swimming in the same waters where Poseidon enjoyed his time with his wife alone on the beach. A small boat even entered one of the sea caves, providing a unique feeling for us, but the best was the moment when one of the boats turned loudspeakers toward the cave and played James Brown's famous song "I Feel Good". The echo from the cave provided a sound effect I had never heard before. Don't miss this trip if you are spending vacation in Parga or Gaios, the main town of Paxos Island, where we enjoyed "Τσιπούρα" delicious Mediterranean fish with teeth.


The second boat trip was a ship cruise to Corfu and the island of Vido (Greek: Βίδο), a special place for Serbian history where more than 5000 Serbian soldiers were buried at sea. At the beginning of World War I, the whole Serbian army was forced to retreat by the major offensive by Austrian and Bulgarian armies. In just two years of war, the Serbian army declined from 420,000 to the number of 150,000, ending on the island of Corfu with the help of Allied forces' ships. Those who didn't survive harsh wintertime during the long walk over Albania's mountains were buried on the island of Vido, and those who couldn't find empty burial space on the island were just buried in the sea near the island. This very spot where they are buried is called Blue Sea Tomb, and there is now an almost hundred-year-old poem, "Ode to a Blue Sea Tomb", describing the pain and suffering of the Serbian people and soldiers during WWI. I simply wrote "History is sometimes painful" in the book in the memorial. And I meant not only Serbian history. For more about our trip to Corfu, please read the post Streets of Corfu, where I experienced a a unique kind of déjà vu that I tried to describe there. Following are photos from Corfu and Vido, and the second image is of the Serbian House at 19 Moustoxidou Street, which is one great museum dedicated to the WWI events.


But life is always going on, and history is there to remind us of our failures and our brightest moments. We should use it to learn from it, but honestly speaking, I have that feeling that humans have a long way to go in order to start avoiding mistakes and stop repeating violent behavior from the past.


Well, this post is also a photo collection from the vacation, and now is the time to choose the best photo taken. Of course this is subjective business, but if you ask me, the honor goes to my wife, who took the opening photo of this post. I am sure for some of you this would be just a bunch of rocks on the shore, but for me this is the perfect example of accidental photography and Pareidolia. My wife actually just wanted to take a photo of the rocky formation from the taxi boat when we were returning from the beach to Parga, but after we saw it on the big screen, from this angle, it looked amazingly like a giant prehistoric fish or sea dinosaur with a large fin or flapper on its back.

Needless to say, we all fully recommend Parga and the Ionian Sea for summer vacation. I am sure we will be returning here in the future, maybe next time to northern Corfu or one of the southern Ionian islands.
 

Serbian Chevapchichi

"Gently, he took her by the shoulders and turned her around, facing her back into the house. - Let's go have dinner. Vincent said he made us that Serbian cevapcici." - Eureka, TV Show.

 The very last decade of the very last century of the previous millennium was very exciting in many ways. It won't be remembered by all the meaningless Balkan wars flaming down here for many years, nor by the final end of the communist era in this part of Europe, nor even by the birth of the European Union idea or the rise of the new world order we are all living in today. No, to me, it was the birth of the internet, email, the World Wide Web, social networks, instant messaging, blogging, and everything we are using in our homes on a daily basis the same way we do with television or radio or... the kitchen and all its appliances. Although the internet network and its services were invented many years before, it was the nineties when all started to go real worldwide and accepted by the majority of people everywhere.

Serbian Chevapchichi

By now you are probably wondering what the connecting point is with "Serbian Chevapchichi" and the internet, right? Well, it's simple. Let's get back to the mid-90s—I vividly remember those years simply because, with the commercializing of the network, computers started to be interesting by adding a completely new perspective to the whole idea. The potential was so great that anything we could think of could be possible and easily transferred to the web. I remember my first web page was about Jupiter's four moons, their images, and short stories about Galileo and the history of telescopes. Sadly, this was not what was popular in those days. If we exclude all the educational content, IT, and science stuff, the whole internet, besides email service, was all about two things. Cooking and pornography. Even today I am making jokes about how half the internet in those days was about amazing worldwide recipes while the other half was filled with naked women. Regarding the latter, I remember earlier this year I was watching "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson", where Craig tried to analyze a couple of astronomy images made by Hubble and other space telescopes with blogger Phil Plait. If you didn't see it before, try not to miss it on the net, and you will find out how Phil commented on Craig's astronomy knowledge in regard to the other half of the internet. The same is true with food; with tons of websites, forums, social media, and blogs, the internet successfully replaced cooking and recipe books. The only problem now is how to cope with tons of different variations of the same recipe. There are no secret ingredients today. Everything's online.

With that said, I am done with the long introduction, and now I am ready to go with the main topic. The food itself. Let's start with the post title. Initially I wanted to name the post with one of the Serbian specialties, and for me it was easy. It was the meal of my childhood; I remember all the visits to different restaurants with my parents on a weekly dinner, and "Serbian Chevapchichi" (ćevapčići) was always there. Here in Serbia and all neighboring countries, they are extremely popular. There are also variations of the same meal in Croatia, Bulgaria, and especially Bosnia, but they are all descendants of the "kebab", the meat dish that, like "shawarma," originates in the Middle East. Unfortunately, the history of this part of the world was pretty violent compared to, for example, northern Europe, where big conflicts somehow avoided their people on a great scale. Here, ever since the Middle Ages, back in the 14th century, the Balkan Peninsula was more or less under constant occupation, first by the Ottoman Empire, which lasted for more than 400 years, followed by several Balkan wars, followed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, followed by two worldwide wars giving birth to 50+ years of dictatorship by communism and post-communism turbulence.


The history of the area is important to understand many things, but in this particular case, its imminent influence on Serbian cuisine. I am not saying that the Serbian national dish doesn't exist, just that the majority of the recipes suffered irretrievable change under the foreign influence over so many years. Like "Chevapchichi" sausages, many other recipes have Turkish and Middle Eastern flavors; others, on the other hand, 'suffered' changes, especially by German, Greek, Hungarian, and other influences. All the great recipes and flavors of all the foreign influences combined with all our Serbian heritage also gave the people here a very special culture related to food, preparation, consummation, and restaurant service. There is a story (and even a fork-shaped monument you can see above) wherein in the city of Niš, in southern Serbia (Roman Naissus), back in the 12th century, during the royal dinner in honor of Frederick Barbarossa, who was on a 'holy' crusade with his army, his host Stefan Nemanja, Serbian Grand Prince of the time, used forks, knives, and other kitchen aids, while Barbarossa, in a 'Robin Hood' style, enjoyed all the royal meal with his hands and fingers. Of course it is hard to tell if this was true, but this is what is mentioned in some old tales and stories, and supposedly the monument itself is shaped like the fork based on those old unwritten narratives.

To be only fair, historically relevant is that the meeting did happen and some treaty was signed, but Nemanja didn't join the German army to Constantinople and the crusade itself after that point, and Barbarossa never consummated this alliance as well. After all, it all happened in the well-known, dark, and religiously divided Middle Ages, which is very hard to understand. Nevertheless, and just because of the illiteracy of the time and not so much historically proven facts and texts, and especially because each nation writes its own truth in their own history books, I do like these times because of this hint of mystery, speculations, and old fairy tales. The old church where this meeting supposedly happened and where Barbarossa's army made a camp still stands, and its own history is full of mysterious stories as well. If you'd like to know more about it, hop to the story Fairies of Naissus with more old tales about the local neighborhood.

Meeting with Barbarossa in 1189*

But to get back to the worldwide dishes—as a Serbian, I can't be too objective when it comes to judging or comparing different cuisines to Serbian, but I know one thing—eating just one same food every day is not much fun at all. I am also far away from being some food fanatic, but every now and again, and again, and... again I really want to try something new. To satisfy this need, I do two things. I cook, and I order various different meals from the menus of domestic and international restaurants here and during my travels. To be honest, I am not a great cook simply because I always foolishly think that I can do better and never follow recipes to the word, and often my masterpieces end in the trash bin, but from time to time I get something extraordinary out of the oven, making me proud of myself, especially when the meal is a product of my own experiments. In addition, Viktor and I in recent years started one special thread for this blog and YouTube channel with our selection of food we liked and prepared.

Chevapchichi is one of the Serbian BBQ dishes we simply couldn't avoid, and finally, and in contrast to later commercial presentations of all Serbian food I embedded, what follows is our own small video with our own recipe and step-by-step instructions on how to make chevapchichi sausages in the shortest possible way and with our way to try and preserve all the Balkan's touch and taste. It's not little effort, I know, but the result is definitely worthwhile.


Besides five different meats, it's not that obvious what exactly goes into the mixture, so here is our own recipe that originated from Jana's Chilli Pepper Travels blog but with our twist. Minced meat includes beef, lamb, pork, turkey, and bacon. Combined, there was around 1 kg of the mixture, and for spices, we used 1 onion, 3 cloves of garlic, and 1 tbs of all of these: oregano, cornstarch, turmeric, paprika, salt, black pepper, and brown sugar. The quote from the beginning was from the sci-fi TV show "Eureka", which aired 2006-2012, and the central gathering in many episodes was in the town's great diner called "Café Diem", and its chef Vincent once selected "Serbian cevapcici" as a daily special. He made it from lamb patty, paprika, and garlic and literally described it as "a little hunk of Balkan heaven". However, and in a nutshell, for a dish so widely prepared, there is not just one recipe out there. Instead, different people and restaurants use their own (secret) ingredients, and little sausages can be very different from one place to another.

My blog is really not a promotional piece of any kind. This is not what I am doing here. It's just a public journal of mine, and I never intended to use it for some commercial purpose. However, this is my chance to break this principle with Serbian food. I have to admit that if I wanted to do research about all the Serbian national food, that would probably go far beyond this blog, but luckily, the guys from the National Serbian Tourist Organization last year did a tremendous job with their promotional video they called "Soulfood Serbia". I embedded it next on the post, and even though it is rather long (about 12 minutes), I am encouraging you to find the time to watch it. Preferably with an empty stomach—it will be good for your gastronomical urges later. Besides, the video is made in great quality, and it is describing the core of Serbian food history pretty well, and also it covers only genuine Serbian food, the kind that survived all possible influences over the centuries.


Well, at the end, all I can add is that enjoying food is one of those things that's occupying almost all of human senses, and remembering all the occasions, where and when it happened, has the power of bringing back all good memories of all occasions and people we shared all those dinners with. With me, Serbian chevapchichi have been very high on the list ever since my childhood and no doubt will be here and around for many years ahead.

*
Kosta Mandrović - http://staresrpskeslike.com/
Stefan Nemanja - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Nemanja