SERBIA - National review no. 10

Prologue

GALLERY

CONTENTS

Prologue
The Book
GAMES, GATHERINGS, ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Vintage
REPORTERS OF ”NATIONAL REVIEW” AT THE VINTAGE AND WINE FESTIVITIES IN SREMSKI KARLOVCI
His Grace, the Wine
This noble drink has a long tradition here, under Fruška Gora, at the Danube. It is a sediment of experience of generations, wisdom of senses and wisdom of the heart. That is why the ”Ball of Wine” is not a bacchanalia, but a festivity. An ode to wine. A form of culture. Filling, not emptying. We are writing this the morning after, while we are having a coffee at the clean town square before departing. We will take the wine and impressions with us and share them with you

Text and photographs: Helena Granić

People and water
DANUBE FISHERMEN AND A SPECIAL LIFE PHILOSOPHY
Between white and heaven fields
Who was never an angler on Danube will never know what is going on when thick fog suddenly lay down on the big river, when on the edge of frost rope as a sword cuts the palm of the hand, when for wrong catch even those who love you the most, are ready to leave you. Moreover, who was an angler on Danube would gladly leave for it all the kings horses and all the kings’ men. That world is so special, and it is there beside us, one that is loved instantly and remembered forever

By: Karlo Kubiček

Serbia from Above
RESAVA, THE LAND OF NATURAL AND SACRAL GIFTS
Measured from the Sky
This area is an important center of Serbian religious life, one of the outlines of medieval Moravian Serbia, which was also a principality and a despotate. Manasija, Ravanica, Sisojevac, but many other churches and monasteries from the 14th and the 15th century are standing here as golden knots of a rosary. They preserve sacred relics, well-known icons and frescoes, centuries and roads above time. This spiritual and cultural heritage, as well as outstanding natural beauties and rarities of the area are the reason for which ”National Review” is beginning its series called ”Serbia from Above” right in this place

Text by: Nevena Mihajlović and National Review Press
Photos by: Dragan Bosnić

Jewels
RESAVA CAVE, FROM THE GATES OF HISTORY, THROUGH THE CORAL CANAL, TO THE CONCERT HALL
Suddenly Hit by Luck
It is truly a jewel, a natural jewel, discovered by accident in 1962, during a search for lost sheep. The visitors can access 800 meters out of the total four and a half kilometers of length in three levels. According to experts, the oldest cave ornaments are 45 million years old. And do not touch them – with only one touch, they claim, one erases what nature has been writing for a hundred years

Text and photographs: Zoran Plavšić

Explorations
KALЕ, INSUFFICIENTLY KNOWN, YET IMPORTANT ARCHEOLOGICAL SITE ON THE RUJAN MOUNTAIN, BETWEEN VRANJE AND BUJANOVAC
On the Trace of Ancient Damastion
Although discovered as early as 1965, systematic explorations were begun only in 2001. The findings up to now indicate that it is the most northern town with Greek-Mediterranean features and the most southern stronghold of the Celtic Scordisc tribe, the same tribe which founded the first Belgrade at the confluence of the Sava and the Danube. Even the Greek professor Akamatis, managing the excavations on the site of the ancient city of Pele, was surprised with the richness and quality of the findings from Kale. If some of the assumptions, with more solid grounds each day, come true, this could become a site of international significance

By: Života Marković

Recognition
SEVEN GREATEST NATURAL AND SEVEN ARCHITECTURAL LANDMARKS ELECTED BY INTERNET VOTING
The Land of Wonders and Beauties
All elections of this kind are certainly relative. They mainly exist to initiate us to turn around ourselves and think, to relearn to notice and evaluate. Tomorrow someone may perhaps make a somewhat different choice and will not be wrong. The treasure is in the abundance of choices

Text and photographs: Stanoje Radulović

Restoration
THE NEW TOWER IS RISING ON AVALA MOUNTAIN
Touching the Sky
We all recognized the tower on the mountain top and while returning from the South to Belgrade we new that we were close to home. That was the symbol which deeply fixed in our memory when we were leaving Belgrade. It marked the profile of the capital and it would return us to what we wanted to be, standing straight and tall. And then, on April 29th 1999, they bombed it and torn it down. Its rebuilding, with great effort and renouncing is the measure of our own growth, our self-respect. The formal opening is set for April 29th 2009

By: Miodrag Popović

Guest Country
JAPAN, THE CENTER ”AT THE END OF THE WORLD”
The Nation One Should Learn From
It wasn’t Japanese economy that created the Japanese spirit, culture, ethics, view of the world, Samurai tradition. It was completely the opposite. The Japanese learned from others and soon became better than them. Learn from others, remain faithful to oneself. This ancient moral led them through millennia, showing their superiority in different times and situations, until the present day. Parallely with their economic and technological successes, the Japanese began influencing the world trends in art, philosophy, sports, fashion, nutrition, way of life. Zen Buddhism, martial arts, ikebana, bonsai, origami, macrobiotic nutrition – these are only some of the numerous Japanese ”products” that conquered the world during previous decades. At this year’s International Book Fair in Belgrade, and in this issue of ”National Review”, Japan is a special guest

By: Dragan Milenković

Freedom
90 YEARS AFTER THE BREAK-THROUGH OF THE SALONIKA FRONT AND LIBERATION OF SERBIA IN WORLD WAR I
The Power of Final Victories
It cannot be explained by logics, mathematics, military sciences and skills. It was a superhuman accomplishment. In 45 days (as it will turn out) a small army destroyed three empires, several kingdoms, and passed over 1.500 kilometers under heavy battles. Only in this ”final offensive”, more than 10.000 Serbian warriors lay down their lives. ”Task accomplished, homeland is free!”

By: Dr Petar Opačić

Freedom
A disturbing FUNERAL IN BELGRADE IN 1912, FOR WHICH THE WHOLE SERBIA CRIED, WHEREVER IT EXISTS
Tell Them, My Son
Ljubomir Kovačević, the famous Serbian historian, academic, teacher of Vladimir Ćorović and father-in-law of Milan Rakić, after the Battle of Kumanovo, escorted the body of his only son to the capital city, alone, in a separate wagon. Vladeta Kovačević heroically gave his young life on October 21, 1912 for the liberation of Old and Southern Serbia. Above the open grave, while everyone was crying in the immense crowd of people, only the hero’s father did not shed a tear. He held a short immortal sermon, with which he touched the very core of the Serbian ethos and ethnos, dedicating the sacrifice, his son and his fellow soldiers in all centuries

By: Jovan Pejčić

Crowns
SERBIAN SOIL – HOMELAND OF ROMAN EMPERORS: CONSTANTINE I THE GREAT (283-337)
On the Path of God’s Signs
There are people through whose heads and hearts millennia are born. Visionaries, prophets, creators of history. This warrior and emperor was one of them. He baptized Rome with his conquest, dreamed of and built Constantinople, made Christianity official with the Edict of Milan in the up to then pagan empire. He entered his greatest victories always with a smaller army than the enemy’s, often in a strategically inferior position. He let himself be guided by the sign of the cross which never departed him, until the very end. After thirty years of reign, he was buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles, in the city of cities, the city carrying his name

By: Professor Aleksandar Jovanović (Ph. D.)

By:Vojislav Filipović

Famous Loves
DESPOT DJURDJE BRANKOVIĆ AND IRENE KANTAKOUZENOS
While the Darkness is Arriving
His fate was to be the last in the glorious row. To see everything disappear before his wise and brave eyes. To build the capital city in which he will not reign for long, to give his daughter to the harem of the one who will blind his two sons, to leave his homeland forever in a hurry, to hide his bountied old head to a foreign land. And she? Her Morean fate was he and that land with whose old glory, gentle and resolute as she was, she did not have time to gild

By: Milena Z. Bogavac

Forgotten Ones
MILAN PIROĆANAC (1837–1897), LAWYER AND POLITICIAN, ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT SERBIAN INTELLECTUALS IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE XIX CENTURY
Challenges of Modern Conservatism
He came into this world as a Nedeljković, but changed his surname during his studies. He studied law in Belgrade, Paris, Heidelberg. He was the main ideologist of the young conservatives gathered around the ”Videlo” magazine, the founder and leader of the Serbian Progressive Party, minister of foreign affairs, government premier. He was brilliant in representing Queen Natalija in the divorce proceeding and brought the king to a dead end. The seat of the Serbian Writers’ Association has been in his house in Belgrade, in Francuska Street 7 for decades

By: Vladimir Andjelković

Traces
WHY THE GREAT SERBIAN SATIRIST NEVER COMPLETELY REALIZED HIMSELF IN THE ART HE LIKED MOST
The Painting Dream of Radoje Domanović
Awakened in his gymnasium days in Kragujevac, the passion for painting hadn’t left the famous writer until the end of his life. Although prevented to study painting by his father’s decision, he never stopped painting. As a professor in Leskovac, he also held free drawing and painting classes. Even today, more than a hundred years later, his one-year scholarshiped studies in Munich, the European painting center at the time, remains a mystery

By: Dragoljub Janojlić

Fate and Commentaries
MAGA MAGAZINOVIĆ (1882-1968), ARTIST, VISIONARY, FIGHTER
The Drama of Anticipatory Roosters
Originating from Metkovići from her father’s side and from Derventa from her mother’s, she graduated philosophy in Belgrade in the class of Branislav Petronijević. She was the first female reporter in the just founded ”Politika”. She perfected ballet in Germany, attending classes of the most famous artists and theoreticians of the time Elizabeth and Isadora Duncan, Minetta Wegmann, Jacques Dalcroze, Rudolf von Laban. She took acting lessons from the great Max Reinhardt. Everything she learned, she brought to Serbia. She also brought the eminent Gerhard Gesemann (1888-1948) to Belgrade and into orthodox faith, with whom she had a son Rajko and daughter Raina. So much of what made her life was too early, until it became too late. However, her indelible trace in Serbian culture and our memory remains

By: Dragana Bukumirović

Register
THE LITTLE HERALDRY MEMENTO: SERBIAN NATIONAL SYMBOLS
The Long Flight of the White Eagle
Symbols are the ”thought of centuries”. The act even when they are invisible. They intervene the higher essence in a simplified way. They are around us and inside us. They set in motion the deep mechanisms of identification and the usually succumb the precise rules of use, especially if they are of national value. The less we know about what they mean, the more distant are our feelings from the fatherland and the fatherland is more distant from ourselves

By: Bojan Lazović

Arms
SERBIAN MEDIEVAL SWORD WAS REALLY POPULAR IN THE 14TH AND THE 15TH CENTURY
Against Sabers and Yathagans
The weapon with the characteristic shape of the letter ”C” was first produced in Serbian workshops, in the 14th century, in order to spread in Hungary and Italy some decades later. The oldest written proof is dating from 1391, and it was found in the archives of Dubrovnik. One of the greatest collectors was the famous Serbian writer Vladan Desnica

By: Srđan Protić

Treasuries
SERBIAN ORTHODOX MUSEUM IN BELGRADE, A TREASURE AWAITING BETTER SOLUTIONS
Testimonies from the Paths of Seeking God
This extraordinary institution keeps first-class artifacts about the spiritual and ecclesiastical life of the Serbian nation. Icons, ecclesiastical textile, metal objects, manuscripts and printed books for religious services, portraits of archpriests, graphics, privileges and archivalia. The oldest objects originate from the Middle Ages and are related with the most important people of Serbian history

By: Jovo Bajić

Legends
LIBERO MARKONI (1928-1990), THE UNFORGETTABLE POET AND GUARDIAN ANGEL OF HIS CITY
The Bohemian Prince of Čubura
The absolutely unavoidable place in the ”local mythology” of the Serbian capital belongs to Slobodan Marković, the one who wrote ”Seven Midnight Tales through the Keyhole”, ”Anabel Li”, ”Once in an Unknown Town”, the painter and journalist whom people used to call ”the bohemian with the bow tie” and ”the kind sorcerer”, the one who rests next to Miloš Crnjanski. ”He passed through our life, our literature, journalism and painting, leaving a trace like a giant ship that enters the port by plowing the sea.” The magnificent talent, caped in irresistible charm and dense veil of love, knew how to make a celebration out of everything

By: Branimir Stanojević

Song
FOURTH FESTIVAL OF SERBIAN FOLK MUSIC ”DRAGIŠA NEDOVIĆ” IN VRNJAČKA SPA
Verses Outlived Everything
The man whose name this festival carries wrote more than 400 songs and composed music to them. For many of them, we would incautiously swear that they are folk songs: ”U lepome starom gradu Višegradu”, ”Stani, stani, Ibar vodo”, ”Obraše se vinogradi dole kraj Topole”, ”Lepe li su, nano, Gružanke seljanke”, ”Jesen prodje, ja se ne oženih”, ”Ajd’, d’ idemo, Rado”, ”Harmoniko moja”, ”Na Moravi vodenica stara”, ”Prodjoh Bosnom kroz gradove”… Be as it may, Dragiša Nedović withdrew from this stage long ago, there are no commissaries who banned and robbed him, the country where it all took place no longer exists. Only the songs remain

Knowledge
JOB FAIR FOR STUDENTS AND GRADUATES OF TECHNICAL AND CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
There is an Acceptable Way
Connecting students with successful companies which work in Serbia, ”Job Fair 08 – Create Your Future! ” is helping to reduce the number of young professionals abroad, as well as the unemployment rate among young people in Serbia. Many companies have a unique opportunity to reach the top-quality personnel that Serbia can offer

Jubilee
RTS, THE PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING OF SERBIA, CELEBRATING ITS 50TH ANNIVERSARY
The Records Go On
The First program of RTS is watched by 4.200.000 people daily, and the Second program by 2.900.000 people. The program does not include Latin-American soaps, turbo-folk music, and reality show programs are very rare. This is just the reason for which the most watched TV programs broadcasted from 2002 until 2008, on all Serbian TV stations, even 15 of them were broadcasted on RTS

Health
EMERGENCY CENTER AT THE CLINICAL CENTER OF SERBIA, THE GIANT OF SERBIAN HEALTH CARE
Heroes from the Edge of Life
It is the first and last in the chain of medical institutions, where the most urgent and most serious cases are brought from all parts of Serbia, even from abroad. Helicopters often land at the heliodrom. During last year only, about a million examinations were performed here, 100.000 patients were hospitalized and almost 50.000 surgeries carried out! Furthermore, the standards are on a high European level

Examples
OLGICA RUDAKOVIĆ (PH.D.), THE MANAGER OF ”ŽELTURIST”, ABOUT THE NEW ACCESS IN THIS FIELD
Tourists Fascinated with Trains
Employing nearly 900 workers, managing 35 tourist and accommodation objects, serving more than 70 car restaurants and sleeping cars, this is one of the biggest tourist and accommodation companies in Serbia. With its knowledge and creativity it shows that the ”Railway” can both enrich Serbian tourist offer and be one of the main points in developing tourism in Serbia

By: Igor Davidović
Photos by: Dragan Bosnić 

Gastronomy
”KOD NEŠE” RESTAURANT, IN BELGRADE’S BELE VODE
Authentically Domestic