The view from fine leg |
The Serbian guys (and a few gals) we first met last Spring came up to Budapest to play a couple times last summer, so by now they seem like old friends rather than new friends already, even if I misplaced a few names I should have remembered. Belgrade still has a sense of unselfconscious fun - at least the parts we see - that in Budapest seems to have gotten in large measure drowned in Hungarian cynicism and insularity and post-communist consumerism. And you can still smoke in the bars there. Not that I smoke anymore. Much. I don't usually eat big chunks of red meat either, but hey, this is Serbia.
Here we have from left to right, Tim, who only revealed himself to us that morning, as we bought our train tickets, as being back from a six month visit to Oz, and then immediately realized he had forgotten his Oz passport at Adrian's hostel and had to do a taxi-borne Chinese fire drill with just minutes to spare for the train. Adrian, looking regally simian, the only leftover from last year's trip besides me. Slightly touched Stokie Kevin - the less said the better. And Dávid, smugly thinking, "I might have lost my train ticket 90 seconds after purchasing it and had to buy a new one, but at least I'm not the goat who forgot his passport." Not shown are Gareth, Kevin's long-suffering son-in-law and, for obvious reasons, Hungarian slow-bowling wunderkind Disappearing Dani who mesmerizes opposing batters out of a pre-determined number of wickets and then vanishes from the corporeal world until the next match. So, not counting second passports and Dávid's various fantasy nationalities, it's two Brits, two Aussies (a third, Andrew was already in Belgrade for his business recruiting the people of the Balkans to settle the Outback), two Hungarians and me. Typical DCC diversity, but with some typical DCC last-minute party pooping, not enough for a team, for which we'll borrow a few Serbs. Morale is high in the photo because the Hungarian border guards have just let me and Kev run across to the pub to replenish our dangerously low beer supplies before doing the passport check.
And a long trip it is as we go into single .... click..... track.... click.... mode..... click..... between Subotica and Novi Sad as we got to enjoy the unblurred beauty of every cornstalk in the Vojvodina, the same way God sees them when he's not in a rush to get anywhere. And then we get to Belgrade and find the queen of all hostels, furnished with oversize kitsch tables and chairs made from old egg cartons, shopping carts and bathtubs and with one wall full of illuminated mildly homo-provocative paper illustrations and a balcony and a bar downstairs. Just the thing for a cricket team free from the womenfolk for a few days.
Tim and Adrian show their affection for gay Balkan kitsch |
When the old cricketer leaves the crease |
Sadly no audio/video exists of this startlit serenade. And then the night dissolved into a quick tour of Kalemegdan Fortress, which first-time Belgrade visitors Gareth and Dávid pretty much ignored in favor of attempting the hopeless task (for Europeans - even Canadians get hopelessly muddled) of teasing out the metaphysical themes of the Dukes of Hazzard. Tim has a funny story: he's been to Belgrade before but his visit was restricted to a transfer on the train up from Istanbul to Budapest with a bad hangover - just like the Orient Express but with no food or water and about 36 hours longer - and scouring the streets for something to eat. Who knew the best pizza in the whole world was to be found in a Belgrade side street?
Then more pljeskavicas at the very same place on Skadarija, with the whole of Salix CC, the London-area team we'd be playing the next day joining us. Here we have smart-mouthed Andy flanked by Serbs Haris and Vlad, the main organizers of Cricket Serbia and two of the nicest guys you will ever meet. Andy and I have a bonding moment when buying smokes we get separated from our unit on the way to a Serbian wedding party on the Sava side of town (I don't think large groups of strangers (to the bride at least) get impromptu invitations to wedding parties in other countries, even if it's not the official formal dress-up party) but I get us there in a route that was about 200m longer than optimal, which wasn't good enough for Andy, who is former royal artillery and knows maps backwards and forwards. So why didn't he find the place for us instead of griping? Because Her Majesty didn't teach you Cyrillic, did she Andy?
Somehow we make it back to the hostel in the appropriate numbers and the next day it is more cricket, another loss, in which I didn't get a bat, this time against eventual champions Salix. The Serbs are very proud of their new grounds on part of a major sports complex that was slated to be a water park, but the Italian developer ran out of financing, so they got it on the cheap. A little bit of grading and a refreshment kiosk and it will be prime cricket territory. We'll be back next year to see.
Mladen, the taxi driver who has been ferrying us between city and grounds suggests a Serbian folk tune we may like:
On the night train home, herded into a common carriage without compartments, we're the group of loud guys that you hate sitting next to on the train as Kevin expounds on his severe distaste for puppies, God, anyone from the South of England and for all members of the various socioeconomic classes oppressing the pottery workers of Stoke - he actually has an MBA from a respected (the kind where you actually go there and study stuff) university in the US, which I try to point out automatically makes him an upper-middle class American even if he never earns another penny in his life, but he wasn't having it. But somewhere around the border, after conversation has lulled around less heated topics like the state sport and motto of the State of Maryland (jousting and Fatti Maschii Parole Femine, and it wasn't me who brought it up) it's sleepy time and dreamy resolutions of our return next year and at least, say, three days, without beer or red meat. Goodbye Belgrade, we'll see you again.
Hi Arthur. Enjoyed reading that. It reminded me of April 2011 in Belgrade with Morton CC being taught a cricket lesson by a wide variety of Serbian teams and your own Magyarorszag/Mežica select. Cricket, Jelen and wave after wave of char-grilled meat. What a great combination. I think you might have had to suffer a post-match Belton analysis of Scottish football failings (a never-ending story). Cheers
ReplyDeleteStuart Campbell
Edinburgh
Hi Stuart, nice to hear from you. That was a great time with Morton last year and I look forward to seeing you guys soon again in Belgrade, or in Budapest or elsewhere. What's this I hear about that big stadium they're building in Oslo for a joint Scotland/Faroese/Norwegian team after independence?
ReplyDeleteCheers, Arthur