SEVEN years ago, Scots forester Robert MacCurrach and his wife Tricia chose to travel the road less cycled and settle in this northern Serbian province.? This travelogue documents his personal discovery of Vojvodina.
Many of us know the ?Dukedom? as the vast, flat frontier terrain which insulates Central European civility from Balkan va-va-voom.? I had not quite anticipated the extent to which Vojvodina was not really Serbian at all.? In the 17th century, the Habsburgs decided to check the advance of the Ottomans by populating this Hungarian marshland, nearly half of whose topography lies below the river level of the Danube, Sava and Tisa.? Canals were constructed and German Schwabs, amongst others, were persuaded to farm the reclaimed land, a safety blanket between empires.
The territory was only ceded to Yugoslavia following the Great War in 1918.? Hence, when motor-mouthed Belgraders wonder when a Vojvodinac will ever finish his drawling sentence or ask ?What kind of name is Karolj or Zoltan anyway?? they reveal an unsettling ignorance among Serbs who nevertheless lament the illicit amputation of Kosovo.? MacCurrah notes the aspirations of some in Vojvodina to write their own success story, which they believe might read something like ?Slovenia ? the sequel? with poster campaigns declaring ?We are not a dairy cow!?
Vojvodina?s Hungarians share the same sense of paranoia that immigrant communities in Britain feel about losing their language, folklore and customs to an overpowering domestic culture in ?desperate searching for tribal meaning?.? The Hungarian language is at least enshrined as one of Vojvodina?s six official languages, although the dictate to designate police cars ???????? rather than Policija did cause quite a commotion.
Robert and Tricia endured the reverse of the immigration experience of first generation British Serbs; in their case, the necessary imports were picnics, strong ?aj and the English country garden which, as you might imagine, invited snooty derision from the locals: ?This is a respectable neighbourhood, not a village!?? Nevertheless, Robert observes our shared sense of irony and in his own words, ?you have to like a people who take the planting of fruit trees seriously.?
On becoming a kum at the Catholic wedding of a ?okac groom and ? Hungarian bride, I was struck by many of the similarities to our own customs: the processions; kola; stealing of shoes; payment of money in exchange for dances with the bride; avoidance of speeches and consumption of rakija.? Tambura?i play instead of harmonika?i but the starogradski repertoire is the same.? The author turned up wearing his kilt, a spectacle which appears to have done the Serbian YouTube rounds.
When Robert and Tricia finally settled, I smiled to read that they chose to buy a house in perhaps the last remaining purely Hungarian village.? In such matters, estate agents were of no more use than anyone else who could read the papers; rather, things are done by veze.? Word had got out that foreigners with more money than sense wanted to buy a crumbling village house, and thus a craze to satisfy such madness began.? The couple eventually bought and renovated an old farmer?s house.
The book?s central message is an ecological one ? the unmitigated conviction that we can pull back from the brink of environmental ruin if we live as these people do, in balance with the time-honoured rhythms of nature.? Misshapen garden vegetables; ?secretive columns of piston-legged Bosnian ponies? bearing timber from deep inside otherwise inaccessible forests; thick slanina and truly free-range eggs; springtime?s first snowdrops (visibabe) offered by old women at weekend green markets; ?wizards? selling herbal teas and medicinal honey and feral pigs of forgotten Balkan breeds that patrol the fisheries.? Perhaps the couple escaped to Vojvodina to experience this good life before the inexorable incursion of Western globalism ? with its laki ke? billboard ? finally smothers it.? Or perhaps they believe that consumerism itself will be consigned to the museum and that the sustainable village economies of the region will prevail.
As a forester, Robert is delighted to report that more plant species are to be found in Vojvodina alone than in the whole of the British Isles.? At heart, however, he is a bird-watcher and this book is a twitcher?s journal.? His exhilaration when recording the first official sighting of a Horned Grebe in Serbia is palpable.? He notes the tyranny of instinct which compels cranes, the ?grey elegant sentinels of the season? to revisit lakes even after they are frozen over.? When he suggests that a kingfisher will lie as still as a museum specimen in your palm while being tagged, you believe him.
The book also visits the theme of war and recriminations, where one generation?s winners become losers in the next cycle.? During WWII, some of Vojvodina?s Hungarians and Croats fought with the incoming Usta?e whilst others risked their lives to hide Serb neighbours in their own sala?i.? The distinction was not noted by the incoming Red Army, liberators only to some.? Some fifty years later, the balance of peoples was again disturbed by miserable columns of our own people fleeing Operation Storm in Krajina.
MacCurrah even makes a decent three dimensional stab at the irrational love-hate relationship that Serbs have with Gypsies: mysterious and characterised by ?eternal otherness? living in mahala on the town?s outskirts; tragic brothers in Jasenovac and unreliable allies; true Serbs; thieves; the bogeymen of stories told to children; unsurpassed musicians and audaciously successful beggars; ?Wherever they go, wherever they stay, they have just arrived.?
The author compares the diversity of Vojvodina?s wildlife with that of its human inhabitants as the best that is European; but it depends on the peoples of this frontier region overcoming the ?fear of otherness? that would otherwise separate Serbs, Schwabes, Hungarians, Gypsies, Croats, Ruthenians, Slovaks, Gorani, Vlahs, ?okci and Bunjevci.
The observational style of this perceptive book is enhanced by Tricia?s evocative and scratchy pen-and-ink illustrations.? ?The earth is the Lord?s and everything in it?, MacCurrach concludes.? Nature, it seems, is a Psalm to the Creator.
In the Bend of the River ? Finding Vojvodina
Author: Robert MacCurrach
Publisher: Book Stream
You can see an interview with the author on 4th June, click ?here.
Robert and Tricia?s converted farmhouse is available to let, click here. The couple also import enamelware, click here for more info.
The book costs ?10 within the UK and is available:
- by sending a ?10 cheque made out to Robert MacCurrach and posted to Newburn Farm, Kington, HR5 3HD
- or send a paypal payment for ?10 to trish@maccurrach.com plus email request with address
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Source: http://www.ebritic.com/?p=35698
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