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After the Second World War, another tide of the arms race slowly but surely began to develop in the world. With the first nuclear power plant built in Obninsk back in 1954 in the former Soviet Union, it became clear that atomic weapons and the nuclear industry overall would mark the second half of the twentieth century. Today, about 80 years after the first nuclear reactor ever built, "Chicago Pile-1", the current numbers for the commercial use of nuclear power indicate that 50 countries operate about 220 research reactors, with as many more operating power plants in the majority of these countries. The military numbers are expected to be even higher, and the fact is that nuclear submarines and ships can be equipped with multiple nuclear reactors on board. Some of the aircraft carriers can have up to eight of them.

The AI representation of cyclists on the 'Uranium Bike Tour' :-)

Of course, all those nuclear reactors require nuclear fuel to operate. In most cases, it is the enriched uranium (U-235) isotope produced from the uranium concentrate powder called yellowcake, which is an intermediate step in the processing of the uranium ore and usually produced directly in the mines. During the 1960s, world demand for uranium ore skyrocketed, and many countries joined the ride. Serbia was no exception. The only deposits of uranium-oxide-rich ore in Serbia were found near the small town of Kalna, some 50 km east of my current place of residence, and in a short period of time, shrouded in secrecy, the uranium mine operated fully and produced a respectable amount of yellowcake (UO₂) and even a significant amount of metal uranium as well. **

In the beginning, even the miners believed they were digging ore for the production of copper and gold. Only three people in the mine knew the truth. After four years of production, the mine was closed, the pit buried, and the operation moved to a more profitable location. The old mine is still there, inaccessible as it is, and the old buildings are still standing but locked and sealed. The soil and aerial environment are tested regularly, and even though the radioactivity is slightly above normal and most likely deadly deep in the ground, on the surface the entire area is a safe environment to live in. However, many believe that the story of the site is not over and that more ore veins are still waiting to be found.

The 'Uranium Bike Tour' path and elevation

In the meantime, due to the expansion of tourism in the Balkan Mountains, recently the road has been rebuilt, and it is now perfect for cycling. The local cyclists, both professional and amateur, and those, like my son and me, who are considered to be enthusiasts, love the path for testing the limits, entertainment, and health. Last weekend we spent more than six hours on our wheels enjoying a pretty hard and elevated track, which is 58 km long and more than 400 meters elevated from the starting point and the highest point on the way. We call it the "Uranium Bike Tour", and it's something we started to do last year. In the image above, there are both trajectory and elevation lines. It starts from the city of Niš, passes through the small town of Svrljig, goes through several villages on the way, and crosses the phenomenal landscapes almost the entire way.

The video below is made out of a GPX file of the entire track, created by Fabien Girardin's amazing tool from his Rumbo* website. As for the track itself, and to be completely honest, we didn't go all the way this time because we rode our heavy mountain bikes with fat tires, which are not the best option for this kind of trail, but when we turned off the asphalt to get to this weekend's (family) destination, the dirt road ride was almost effortless.


The 'Uranium Bike Tour' GPX video illustration*

Geographically lying in the heart of the Balkan Peninsula, just 27 kilometers away from Niš, the small town of Svrljig, which we passed three hours after departure, is acting as the capital of a relatively small Serbian land surrounded by exactly 38 villages. The entire complex of its southern mountain range is called 'Svrljig Mountains', and the track is following the path just next to them. The highest peak, Zeleni vrh, has an elevation of 1,334 meters above sea level and was the impressive site just next to the road on the 40th kilometer of the tour.

In just half a century, the human population of the area has more than halved, with more and more villages containing more empty houses and those in which more people die than are born. Rural environments in this part of the world are more or less the same, and while cities are becoming larger and larger, the economics and agricultural fate of small villages are grimmer by the year. To me, it's far away from elementary logic, and I only hope this trend will change in the future.

The landscape from the village of Vrelo, near Svrljig

The same goes for the final destination of the tour, the once small town of Kalna, which flourished in those half a decades when the mine was active and where 800 miners lived in prosperous mining settlements. It is now almost a ghost town with nothing but memories of the good times 60 years ago. The last remaining mine worker in Kalna, who was a locksmith in the mine at the time, Hranislav Grujić, and who is now in his late 80s, remembers the good times: "When we pass the tavern, the waiters laugh: "Here are the miners; it's going to be a good day!"

But there were incidents as well; after all, working with the yellowcake is not the safest job in the world. He remembered the time he was in contact with the ore: "They bathed me with a hose in a special chamber, and they set fire to all of my clothes. I was sent on paid leave for two weeks, even though I felt fine. I just had a bit of a headache and felt faint. But it was nothing terrible, really."

At the entrance of Svrljig (Сврљиг, cyrillic) town

Anyhow, 'Uranium Bike Tour', the cycling route we lovingly named, is actually not for the faint of heart. And when I said it, I meant it literally. With a huge elevation change along the way and maybe a slightly longer route than usual, it requires endurance and strong muscles as well as professional equipment. At the end, it demands commitment and love for this kind of achievement. When we were on the path for the first time, somewhere in the middle of the journey, Viktor asked me how I felt. After all, I am not in my prime years, and he wanted to know if I was okay. It was a simple question, and I wanted to give him a good answer. So I thought about it a little longer than usual.

"I feel free", I said.

And that's the simple truth of how I feel when I get on my bike and ride into the countryside outside the city.
In pre-Christian mythologies of the western and northern tribes and their pagan beliefs, female deities were not uncommon. Take, for instance, old Gaul's Matres or Valkyries of the old Norse mythology and, of course, all the goddesses from the history of all polytheistic religions around the globe. But perhaps the most interesting of them all are, you guessed it, the fairies. They are not actually deities per se and rather belong to the spirit realm of the afterlife and dead, but still you can find them, in one form or another, in almost all religious legends and myths. The city where I was born, the valley it resides in, and the river that splits it in half are no different. The history of this area is, metaphorically speaking, very colorful and full of wonders, all the way to the beginning of the Neolithic era, and over the centuries this valley literally saw lots of different cultures and deities. One of them dates way back to the Celtic Gauls and their tribe named Scordisci, who lived in this neighborhood almost 24 centuries ago. They were the ones who named the river and the first settlement Naissa/Navissos, which pretty much means 'the river and town of fairies'. Whether or not this area in BC was flooded with fairies, or perhaps the geography of it resembled their beliefs, or even the very "Celtic Otherworld" was pictured and portrayed like our own neighborhood, the name survived for centuries, and despite numerous conquerors and different cultures, the fairies stayed in the name and the 'spirit' of the town all the way till today. Perhaps the first document that 'officially' coined Celtic's name was published in Alexandria by the famous Claudius Ptolemy in his masterpiece 'Geography' (around AD 150), in which he mentioned Ναϊςςός (Latin: Naissus) as 'first among the four largest towns in Roman Dardania'*.

Kristine Opolais in Dvořák’s 'Rusalka' - The Met Opera***

When I said the town inherited not only the 'fairy tale' name but also the spirit that it is still living in legends and myths, what I really had in mind was one particular spot on the northern hill named 'Metoh' and the outskirts of the town where, almost throughout the millennium, stands a ruin of an old temple built on that particular spot by one of the Byzantine emperors in the 11th century. The official name of the temple was 'Holy Trinity Church', but over time it earned the prefix 'Rusalija', which pretty much originated from old Serbian folklore and, no doubt, connects the church with Rusalkas, mythical water nymphs or female spirits from old pagan Slavic mythology. In some Slavic languages, Russian included, the word 'rusalka' translated to English literally means 'mermaid'. This variation of immortal creatures from the spirit world is completely opposite from the 'Tinkerbell' kind of fairies; instead, they could be very malevolent and dangerous young undead girls who died in or near a river or a lake and spent eternity haunting the waterway. With their long red hair and beautiful appearance and singing, they lure young men into the depths to their deaths. In Serbian stories, even hearing their song results in immediate deafness. They are the most deadly for an entire week, 50 days after Easter, which comes in late May or early June every year. As it seems, legends say that they are only afraid of wormwood and garlic, so try to have them with you if you are a true believer.

'Holy Trinity Rusalija' - abandoned temple from 11th century

Well, we didn't have any garlic in our pockets last November when we visited the church, and I truly hated my curiosity when I read about Rusalkas before we drove there. Sometimes it is extremely wise to read about horror myths after you visit the spot where these malicious fairies live. Firstly, the site was eerie—the church is abandoned, and to get to it, you have to drive through the old graveyard. People seem to visit the place only once a year, during 'Holy Trinity' week. Secondly, the weather was way too windy and spooky, and I had to engage all my driving skills to enter the churchyard; the car simply didn't want to enter due to the poor quality of the stone entrance and kept rolling backwards. Thirdly, it was almost sunset, part of the day usually identified with 'twilight hour'. When we finally got inside, my wife refused to get out of the car, and in a couple of minutes of intense bravery, only Viktor and I went out to take a couple of photos. Needless to say, the feeling was truly cheerless, and the only bright part of the site was the view. The location was perfect, and we glimpsed the entire city with a large orange sun on the horizon, and I finally took one of the best sunsets in our collection along with great shots of the little temple itself. Confidentially speaking, if Viktor didn't bring his plastic gun toy, we would probably stay less time listening to that spooky Rusalka's songs... or heavy wind whistles... or whatever it was. Although I would be feeling much safer with a couple of garlic cloves... Ahem ...

The sunset from the 'Holy Trinity' church (Metoh hill)

However, besides city and river names, the history of this area in BC is not very well documented, archaeologically speaking, and even though there is plenty of evidence and finds, before Ptolemy's reference, nothing is certain. But the names are always interesting, and as they survive millennia, there are many speculations of their origin. Celtic 'Navissos' is no doubt related to fairies; I mean, even the word 'fairy' was coined by ancient Gauls in what is nowadays France, and the root is in the Old French word 'faerie', which means 'enchantment' or 'under the spell'. However, even before the Celtic invasion of the Balkans in the 3rd century BC, this land was populated with various forms of societies and civilization. It lies on the crossroads between north and south and west and east, and as I described in post Constantine & Naissus, it was always under siege or some sort of raid. Due to this geographic misfortune, one tribe never managed to rule this area for, relatively speaking, long periods of time. Before the Celtic tribe of Scordisci, who stayed here after the Celts retreated from the invasion of Greece, the land was occupied by people of Dardani, who originated either from an estranged Illyrian tribe or, as some scholars suggest, directly from the ancient city of Dardania, located next to the city of Troy, as described in Homer's Illiad, who moved to the Balkans millennia before AD. Even before Dardani's rule, at some point in the 4th century this area was raided and occupied by Triballi tribes, and if you add Greeks and Romans and constant threats from Goths and Huns from the north and far east, you'd get the picture of how unwise it was to settle around here in ancient times. Anyhow, the point is that almost everybody managed to spend some time here and to contribute a little in those violent times. Or, to be precise, to contribute to everything but changing the original name that stayed the same from the very beginning.

Niš downtown by the old fortress and Nišava river

So let's try to summarize the names from all those conquerors over time: Navissos, Ναϊσσός, Naissus, Nais, Niş, and Niš, all of them related to fairies in different languages. Perhaps the most interesting connection with the name is during Greek rule, especially from the golden prosperity times of Macedonian expansion at some point centuries before Christ. In Greek mythology exists the famous mountain of Nysa, which was the traditional place where the rain nymphs (Hyades) raised the semi-god Dionysus, who was one of those bad guys from Olympus—the god of wine, ritual madness, and religious ecstasy. And to quote Wikipedia, Dionysus represents everything that is chaotic, dangerous, and unexpected, everything that escapes human reason and that can only be attributed to the unforeseeable action of the gods. I guess there is no need to add that one hypothesis of the location of Nysa (which is still unknown if it's not made up) is within ancient Tribalia or, pretty much... this neighborhood again. Tribalia and triballian tribes were located entirely in what is nowadays Eastern Serbia, which borders the Niš Valley and its northeastern mountains. By the myth, and just like their half-sisters, sea-nymphs Pleiades and rain-nymphs Hyades were transformed into a cluster of stars that was afterwards associated with rain. So if you look up on a bright starry night and see the Hyades in the constellation of Taurus, which is the nearest open star cluster to the Solar System, remember that their five brightest stars might have been living just around within my north neighboring mountains in their... fairy existence.

Ivan Kramskoi, Русалки (Rusalki), 1871

Of course, Greek mythology doesn't end this story about the origin of the name of my birth town with fairies. Even in Scandinavian mythology, there is a 'Nis', a dwarfed male fairy in Danish Jutland (Nisse god-dreng, Nisse good lad**), who offers his help to run households if, of course, he is pleased by a treat (groute) every evening. In the end, I am sure that Niš, or old Naissus, if you will, is one of the rarest cities on the planet with a real fairytale in its name origin, and I would really like to see a tribute to fairies, even to the evil Rusalkas, in the form of some sort of street art or museum or something that could show a modest traveler, tourist, or web surfer not only the history of one town's name but also a hint of how once our ancestors pictured the spirit world and their interaction with people. If this happens anytime in the future, this post will definitely get its sequel with hopefully great photos and more stories.

Inage credits and direct refs:
*** https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/03/arts...rusalka.html
http://www.poesialatina.it/_ns/greek/testi/Claudius_Ptolemaeus/Geographia_(lib._1-3).html
** http://www.celtic-twilight.com/otherworld/fairy_mythology/scandinavia3.htm
http://www.guideforthearts.com/renee-fleming-to-star-in-the-title-role-of-rusalka/
http://celticruins.blogspot.rs/2014/06/fairies-haunt-springs-wells-and-rivers.html
http://www.niscafe.com/grad-nis/

Refs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusalka
http://www.timelessmyths.com/celtic/faeries.html
http://celticruins.blogspot.rs/2014/06/fairies-haunt-springs-wells-and-rivers.html
http://celticruins.blogspot.rs/2014_06_01_archive.html
http://www.panacomp.net/serbia?mesto=srbija_sveta%20trojica%20matejevac
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scordisci
http://www.doiserbia.nb.rs/img/doi/0350-7653/2006/0350-76530637007P.pdf
http://www.historyfiles.co.uk/KingListsMiddEast/AnatoliaDardania.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nysa_(mythology)
While the short tale about the famous actor is itself a small historical record, especially for him and one little Serbian village half an hour away from my current location, I have to say that this post is a little bit mistitled even though De Niro's story has several connected points with what I want to write today. Instead, it will be about my grandfather and his war stories I listened to yesterday for the first time. Actually, my mother told me all this before, but yesterday, during our annual dinner, he was in a great mood to tell them himself, and this is my attempt to write them down while they are still fresh in my memory.


But, for a moment, let's get back to the title story. Not too long ago, I read in a newspaper article* about Robert De Niro and his European travels he did about 40 years ago, more or less in the time when I was about to be born. Back then, these kinds of tourist destinations were extremely popular among young Americans—if you were young and adventurous, you didn't need much money to visit most of Europe, traveling by foot and hitchhiking, meeting local people, living their lives for a summer, getting lots of experience, and filling your memories. In the case of a 25-year-old actor at the beginning of his career, this probably has more importance than with other people. Well, unless young De Niro was on some mission of seeking his ancestors, this is exactly what he was doing back then in the sixties when he ended up for a week or so in Čokot, the neighboring village where my mother was born and where my grandfather still lives in his nineties, enjoying life the same as when he was much younger. Yesterday he visited our house for a small celebration, and I took the chance and asked him whether this story was true and interpreted by the newspaper like it really was. To my surprise, he confirmed everything and also spiced it up with the fact that the family where De Niro stayed are actually our distant relatives living not so far away from my grandfather's house. He remembers the actor clearly, as he helped them to collect some vegetables and accompanied them to free markets where they all have been selling tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, and other food and vegetables. He said that De Niro, in his short visits, even picked up a little of the Serbian language and bonded with locals very well. Well, I am not going to spread this story any further; I just like to add that after last night I admire him even more. The other day I stumbled on a midnight projection of his masterpiece"Midnight Run" and enjoyed the movie again for the umpteenth time.

Ok, let's get to the history part and some half a century before De Niro's visits. Both of my grandfathers were about the same age when the Second World War happened. They both stumbled through this part of time in their early twenties and experienced it very differently. My father's father at the time was in the army when Germans captured his whole unit and transferred them all into a military camp in Germany. He was forced to do labor work the whole war there, and I hate myself because I didn't write down his stories, especially once, long ago, when he eagerly told us all his adventures, especially those in the days when the war was finally over and how he traveled back thousands of miles on foot along with thousands of people trying to cope and find their way home. Ironically, despite avoiding military fights during the war, my mother's father experienced it in an occupied country and was faced with imminent death a couple of times, and not only by Nazis! Obviously he managed to go through it; otherwise this blog would be just another 404 page. Following are his war stories that shaped his personality more than even he is ready to admit.

First World War**

However, in order to even try to understand his behavior, I feel like I need to add a couple of history facts first. After the First World War, Serbia was kind of a pillar of a new, fresh country where Serbians, Croats, and Slovenians joined and created the first monarchy of Yugoslavia. The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was formed in 1918 and exterminated by communism after the second war. The Serbian monarchy inherited it, and it was ruled by King Peter I and later by his son Alexander I. Despite being doomed to imminent collapse due to a vast amount of differences, the kingdom actually was pretty respectful in those days of Europe for its part in the First World War and many battles on the southern front, especially in Macedonian Greece. My great-grandfather took a big part in this war and was in the same lines with the king himself during their winter retreat at the beginning of the war. That was one of the most horrifying moments in the violent history of Serbian wars, but after many months and years of coping with the invasion of German, Austro-Hungarian, and Bulgarian armies, at the end our exiled army survived and returned to the battle by forming, to be proved later, a long-lasting alliance with French and British divisions, allowing them to finally move toward the end of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the very end of the first great war in Europe. However, even though the Serbian royal period between two wars flourished with the rise of democracy, free thought, and educational and civil rights, my grandfather didn't like it at all. When I asked him why, he told me just one story from his youth, describing maybe even better how old-fashioned tales from the 19th century were still there, opposing all the progress happening, especially in big cities. In the fall of 1935, after finishing elementary education in his village, he was so eager to move to a big city and start gymnasium—the best high school possible at the time (the same one I spent three years in during my teenage days, 50 years later). Yesterday, I swear that I saw a sparkle of a tear in his eyes when he was remembering how brutal was a man from the school who literally kicked him out of the school to the street, saying that he is not welcome simply because he came from a village with a big country estate and his place is not in the school, but rather his part in this country is only in the field doing hard labor in the cultivation of food. If you were a woman, it was even worse; there was only one school in the entire city encouraging young girls toward further education, but the quality of the education given there was questionable and not comparable to a gymnasium. My grandfather's disappointment rose even more later when he realized that living in the village had no benefits at all. All food manufacturers were at the mercy of greedy bargainers and dealers without any fair market or developed economics in the system. The villagers were simply second-class citizens.

Later, in the dawn of World War II, things were getting even worse. The rise of communist thought, brought initially from Spain and their civil war and also from the east and the first communist country established in Russia, polarized people in Serbia to the bone. The German occupation of 1941-1944 not only gave our grandfathers another wave of German and Bulgarian armies but also a full civil war between royalists and communists and their resistance movements. It was next to impossible to cope with all that if you were just a 17-year-old boy like my grandfather was.

Family photo taken in Čokot, Radovan Lazić - upper, left

I asked him what his most painful experience from that time was, and in the next half hour, he opened his heart and told us everything his young soul had to do in order to survive, and with an occasional wiping of a tear or two from his left eye, I finally learned how he eventually grew into a strong father figure and local community leader. Like today, back then Niš was one of the biggest cities in the former kingdom and as such was targeted by allies and their air force from time to time. Being just a couple of miles away from the main German command, Čokot was a natural point in air defense, so they spread heavy artillery in the fields in order to defend from allies' planes. One of them was settled in the yard where today is my grandfather's house. German soldiers slept in a nearby shack on, at the time, state-of-the-art air beds and shared local life with villagers. According to my grandfather, compared to Bulgarians that came later, they were all civilized men and paid for all the food they needed.

Also, there was one more important target in the village, and that was the national railway passing by on its way from the north toward Greece to the south, and Germans used it very often for deploying tanks and heavy vehicles and armory to the south fronts and even further to northern Africa. The local resistance was using that fact to stop the convoys and demolish the rails every now and again when they got informed of some important train passing by. In lack of people, for some tactical revenue, and to better protect it, Germans deployed young boys down the line in order to alert the army of possible attacks. During one night in 1942, my grandfather was one of them, and only by chance did he avoid death, as only a couple of hundredmeters to the north, resistance took action, and as a result, the whole train derailed that night. Germans killed on site all deployed boys along the line in retaliation. 1942 was especially cruel, as this was the year where fighting started to be more intense, the captives from the local Nazi camp performed a prison break that year, and it seemed that German command started to take resistance more seriously. Unfortunately, civil war also became more intense, and royalists, people who were basically leftovers from the dismantled Serbian army, and the communist movement started to fight each other with the same or even worse cruelty compared to all the German and Bulgarian occupations and their retaliations performed against both civilians and the resistance. Those years were the dark side of the whole Second World War in this neighborhood.

Air battle over Niš***

Faced by the fact that he almost lost his life, my grandfather chose to go low profile and continue cultivation labor with his father, going to the field, seeding crops, collecting food, and trying to live a normal life. It turned out that during the war this was not really possible. Even on the field they had that one experience where they just barely escaped and saved their lives when resistance started bombarding the German army from the neighboring hill. When they came back tomorrow, the sight was scary; blood and dead bodies were everywhere. I can only imagine how scenes like that leave a permanent mark on any witnesses, especially among young people and children. Anyway, in later years, the war started to fade out, and the winner and loser could be easily recognized. Communist resistance won their fight with royalists, and Germans started evacuating and leaving space for the chaos in the last years of the war. Like Germans before, communists saw the potential in all young boys in their early twenties and recruited them for the time that eventually came after the Germans officially withdrew. The young boys living in villages were easy targets; they were already bitter and disappointed in royal democracy before the war, and many of them saw their chance to get a more important role in the new society. Once again my grandfather was in mortal danger, and this time from upcoming communists. They were cruel. Even more than occupying armies. Especially toward those who were labeled as a threat for what they had in mind. In a moment I thought I saw fear in my grandfather's eyes when he told us what happened in the fall of 1945. In order to justify the full dismantle of the royal family and democracy, they organized a census. You can only imagine how elections were back then with no help of modern technology and no mass media to explain both sides. There were two wooden boxes, one to support royal democracy and the other to support communism for future state government. There were also rubber balls you had to put in one of those two boxes. You voted in a way that you had to put your hand in both boxes and leave the ball in one. Needless to say, official results showed all the royal boxes pretty much empty. Sadly, the truth was completely different, at least at the voting point where my grandfather was appointed as a monitoring agent. The voting day was coming to the end, and my grandfather and his peer associate started to feel some anxiety and fear of the final result. They chose to vote at the end of the day, and when they pulled the hand out of both boxes, it was more than obvious that the royal box was full of balls, while the communists scored almost nothing inside. They already received threats from the headquarters before the census, and what they did is maybe something you do only when you are faced with the most horrifying future. Instinctively, an hour before closing, they locked the door, broke the seals, and moved all the 'royal' balls into the communist's box. Then they reopened the voting again. The last remaining hour brought dozens of now balls into Royal's box, but the 'official' results were that more than 95% went to the new regime. Two things happened tomorrow. My grandfather learned that most of the other box keepers in neighboring villages were killed on site for the full royal boxes, accused of fraud, and persecuted without any trials. The second thing he realized was that he not only again kept his head on his shoulders but he was also commended and later became a mayor of his village, responsible for all big decisions, mostly by following orders from the 'above'.

The birth of communism in post-war times gave birth to the upcoming Cold War between the Soviets with their socialist allies and western countries. At the end of this war, my grandfather witnessed the air bombing of the city not only by the Germans but also by allies as well, even after the Nazis retreated. And even one real air fight that lasted pretty much about half an hour or so. In November of 1944, just about four weeks after Germans retreated from the city, over the western parts of the city of Niš and not far from the Čokot suburbia, happened perhaps one of the first US-USSR air 'encounters', and, as it seems, this one was one of the real and severe air fights with significant losses on both sides. In short, US fighters attacked a Russian convoy and killed many Soviet troops, including their general, who were progressing toward the north front. Soviet planes soon after attacked the US fleet in retaliation, and in the aftermath, Americans were forced to apologize in an official manner on the highest level. At least that is the official story. The main participants were the US Lockheed P-38 Lightning and the Soviet Yakovlev Yak-3. According to one eyewitness, and I am quoting the Wikipedia article, which you can find referenced, 'Soviet fighters flew over the old city fortress at an altitude of only 20m and attacked the Lightnings from below in a steep climb'. The final number of fallen crafts and deaths varies according to who you are asking—Americans, Russians, or Serbian witnesses from the ground—but they all agree that it ended in more than an ugly result with multiple aircraft fallen to the ground. The worst statement was that up to ten fighters ended in flames and were crushed.

Monument risen in memory to 'US-USSR Niš incident'****

The rest is the modern history of the 20th century. Communism lasted much longer than anybody anticipated, and the reason is no doubt the nuclear-based cold war with strong roots originated right there in World War Two. My grandfather was more or less satisfied with the new government. He recognized all its flaws and good sides, but from his point of view, especially thanks to those decades of prosperity back in the 60s and 70s and the fact that common villagers were treated better than in royal times, he enjoyed half a century in peace without any conflicts or wars. The only conflict he had in those times was, in fact, that he was a truly religious person, and religion of any kind was a major nemesis in all communist societies. Even though he never hid his religious personality, he managed to deal with this duality in his life during the entire communist era. Despite all the obstacles in the way, he even managed to play all the way and rebuild a small church in the village without being punished or suffering any major consequences from 'comrades in headquarters'.

We can only try to understand those violent times and how blood, animosities, war, and death can affect children, especially those who spent all their teenage years in dark shadows of our history books. Yesterday, by wiping the final tear, my grandfather finished his tales with these words: "Every night when I lie down in the bed in my dark room, there are only two of us, me and the god, and I always pray that I made good decisions before."

R.I.P. Radovan Lazić, September 21st, 2015.

Image and article references:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000134/
*http://www.politika.rs/rubrike/Drustvo/I-Robert-de-Niro
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Yugoslavia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_army's_retreat_through_Albania_(World_War_I)
**https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_Campaign_of_World_War_I
***https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_battle_over_Niš
http://zmilan.blogspot.com/2012/05/military-sidetrack.html
****http://www.juznevesti.com/Drushtvo/sovjetski-vojnici.html
"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