The Road Ahead

Bizarre display of department store clocks on Kralja Milana, Belgrade

 It seems astonishing, but I will be actually going home in just over five weeks. I've been on the road for almost four months now, and have still quite a bit to achieve before pointing the Panda in the direction of Blighty.

Sarajevo leaves. Damn my Sambas, I just couldn't get them out of shot.

 As opposed to the unseasonally early winter last time I was here, Sarajevo is now enjoying a golden autumn. In the city centre, big fat russet red leaves lie deep on the pavement, like cornflakes waiting for milk. It was the Muslim festival of Eid yesterday and town was pretty quiet, as many people rose early to go to the mosque, and then spend the day at home with their families. Today is also a public holiday, so, from tomorrow, I will be getting through a few meetings before the end of the week and my departure from here for Zagreb.

Old Yugoslav map of Europe in Museum of Yugoslav History

 Having spent so much time shuttling between Skopje, Belgrade and here in the last two and a bit months, it looks unlikely that I will make it to either Kosovo or Montenegro before I head home. This is no problem, however, as I will make a point of visiting these places early in the new year, and try to arrange my usual round of meetings and libraries before settling down to begin work on the great tome in earnest. I think I will need to spend a few days in Cetinje, where there are many galleries, and a day or so in Podgorica, before heading back south-eastwards through Priština and seeing if all the hype in the tourist magazines is true.

One or two younger Kosovar artists have been picked up recently by Italian curators and gallerists, and there's meant to be a lot going on in the capital at the moment. There's also the slight problem (more than slight, actually) where the Serbian border guards regard a passport stamped with Kosovo stamps as null and void, and don't allow you back into Serbia. I am hoping that this problem will be one of the early ones resolved in the current impasse between Priština and Belgrade. The situation there has been very tense for over a month now and, however impatient the international community may be for it to be resolved, months if not years of patient negotiation will be necessary, if any progress is to be made. For obvious reasons, I can't risk my passport being voided in the eyes of the Serbs, so, much as I want to go, it looks like to will be a bit difficult for now. We'll see. Maybe I can ask the guards not to stamp my passport.

More immediately, I have to get through a lot in Zagreb, not least of which is seeing the new Museum of Contemporary Art; this is a project which has been long in the making, and I have heard mixed reviews of the results. The Museum of Modern art has finally re-opened in Ljubljana, too, after a long closure and re-building; there are many other things to pick up outwith the Slovene capital, as well, particularly the OHO archives, the Černigoj museum in Lipica, and the Museum on Celje, which has been very active in advertising international residencies in recent times. The journey home will take less time than when I was on holiday in July/August; after popping in to Vienna and Brno again, I should make Calais in three or four days, crossing Germany, a bit of Belgium, and France.

Once back home, it'll be a fairly frantic round of visa application, offloading the Fiat and buying a van, getting my stuff out of storage and doing one last final drive across Europe to my new home, wherever that might be (Skopje still looks likely but there are possibilities wherever I've been, so I still have to mull everything over and probably won't decide finally until the New Year. I also have to find a flat and once there, a new (well, old but new) car. In addition to my book, I have two essays to write for publication, and will shortly be deciding on the final line up for the session I am co-chairing on Balkan art for the 2012 Association of Art Historians conference at the Open University. Then, with all that out of the way, book-writing will begin in earnest...so, plenty to keep this place chuntering on for a while yet. Phew, eh readers?

In Skopje (& Prilep)

On the road between Prilep and Veles

Just a quick update tonight- I'm now in Skopje, having driven three hours north from Bitola today. The road north was extraordinary- in between Prilep and Veles, there was a steep climb then a seemingly endless descent on a mountain A/B road; I stopped and took some photos of this extraordinarily parched landscape, with only chirruping crickets and the occasional passing heavy lorry for company. The landscape is rocky, tough, yellow and green, full of dust and stones. Away from the main road, it seems like it sees very few people indeed; over the winter, I can imagine even a main road like this being borderline impassable for days at a time.

Mountains recede northwards

The road between Veles and Skopje was remarkable. It's a main road- the equivalent of the road between Dunfermline and Edinburgh- yet it is very narrow, rutted and populated with all kinds of exotic motor species; ancient GAZ lorries still pulling a full load fifty years after first being built, at no more than 45 km/h; poisonous yellow Zastavas chugging along pulling trailers (Communist-era car colours are always vaguely suggestive of unpleasant medical remedies, or nuclear waste); even, on many occasions, horses and donkeys pulling carts chaotically laden with haphazard mounds of vegetables. Eventually, the road spiralled and corkscrewed through a ludicrously improbable series of tight turns, before giving way to a motorway, about 20 miles south of the capital. It was a beautiful drive for a visitor, but must be an extremely wearing road to have to deal with on a daily basis.

Prilep: socialist "hero city"

Skopje has changed quite a bit and seems to be in a frantic phase of re-building, since I visited here two years ago. I'm going to hold off saying too much about it here, though, until I've spent a few days in the capital. Instead, I should mention Prilep briefly. Prilep is about 25 miles east of Bitola, and couldn't be more different from either there or Krusevo. As a former "hero city" of socialist Yugoslavia, Prilep is all wide boulevards, towerblocks and Yugoslav-era public sculpture; this rectilinear order is in stark contrast to the jagged, angular, rocky mountains that surround this dusty place. Although smaller than Bitola, Prilep somehow felt more lively when I was there; the little cafes and pizzerias surrounding the old bazaar were crammed at lunchtime.

Prilep, in addition to being a "hero city", is home to the longest-established artists' colony in Macedonia. It was first designated as such in 1956-57 and is still home to many working artists and the large cultural centre <<Marko Cepenkov>>, as well as a major theatre. Unfortunately, the Marko Cepenkov seemed closed yesterday, so I had to content myself with taking some snaps of 1970s Yugoslav sculpture, and a rather puzzling gable end mural. Most remarkable of all, though, was a very strange, monumental angular sculpture, which you can see in the picture above. i was completely unable to find out anything about its purpose, although, with its globe cradled in giant steel legs, it did have more than a whiff of the Tony Montana about it; all that was missing was the legend "THE WORLD IS YOURS" in neon around the globe. Prilep's other claim to fame is that it is a major tobacco town; if you smoke Phillip Morris cigarettes, its more than likely that at least some of your tobacco originated in one of the ginat processing facilities on the outskirts of town. Although I had been frustrated in my attempts to see art, I liked Prilep a lot; it had a good feel about it, and folk were friendly.

My next updates on here, over the weekend, will say a little bit about Skopje, and the whole purpose for me being out in this part of the world in the first place. Until then...