Milica's Diary: January 23rd, 2011
Dear Diary,
Sorry, I haven’t written in a few days. I know, I know, my English will never get better if I don’t keep regular practice. But there have been a great many developments. Maybe that’s a little too dramatic.
But first, there were student protests at University. Vienna has not been so lovely in my 6 months here.
Sarajevo is slow, as you know. For years we ran everywhere, afraid of the snipers in the hills. Running to school and for groceries, but once the war ended the whole city slowed down. Vienna has no ruins, the streets are clean, and there are no mass graves, but the pace seems just as slow. I had yet to feel the speed of the West I have always heard of. And then the protests happened. I saw some posters but I think everything happened on the internet, it seemed like it came from nowhere. One day it was peaceful, and the next day thousands of the students were in the square. They were complaining about tuition fees, not the most selfless cause, but the spirit was still beautiful. I sometimes think the years of war have killed the spirit of Sarajevo. I pray that’s not true.
Second, when I was walking around to read all the signs this funny boy came to me. I should say man, but he looked young. I saw him when he was about 10 steps away because it looked like he was walking right at me, and I thought he was trying to walk past. But no, he walked right to me and said “Hi.” That’s it. Can you believe? So I said “Hi.” Then he asked me to be his date to a formal dinner that night, without even asking my name. I’m not sure why, I think I was just confused, so I said “Okay.” He told me to meet him at the same spot at 7pm. When I went home, I thought he must be crazy, but for some reason, maybe because I wanted to go to a fancy dinner, maybe because it would be free, I went to that same place. When I got there, he was dressed in the same clothes he had been earlier, jeans and a tee shirt that had big lips with a tongue sticking out. It said Rolling Rocks? I forget.
Anyway, when I asked him why he was not dressed for the dinner, he said he forgot it was tomorrow. He laughed a lot, then he said “Don’t worry. We will go to a very nice place.”
We went to Hotel Stefanie and he ordered everything! Gnocchi, beef consommé, char fillet, veal goulash and I forget, but few more things. We ate and talked for 2 hours. I told him about the environmental course I was taking at university, and this strange boy disagreed with everything. Somehow he did it in a way that did not make me mad, so we kept drinking and eating. He bought a lot of drinks, I must find out, do all Americans drink this much? So I don’t remember exactly, but he was very strong against global warming. Actually no, not global warming, he was talking about Tokyo Accord or Kyoto Protocol and how stupid carbon taxes were. He said all the environmental problems were because of globalization, because of large countries and governments which could control people in big numbers.
He hated that large corporations get away with destroying the planet in so many ways. By the end, I was feeling a little foolish about devoting 6 months to helping the environmental club here, printing fliers telling people to take the bus. He listed almost 10 different environmental disasters right from the top of his head and said their combined impact was more than all the carbon emissions we produced in last 10 years. I must check this later.
Whether he really knew all of this or he was making it from his ass, as the Americans say, I don’t know. But I agreed to go meet him again the next day, anyway.
The next day we met again at the same spot at lunchtime, and we took the train to Dürnstein. We walked to the ruins of the castle and enjoyed the view. He said in this castle Duke Leopold of Austria held King Richard the Lion Heart captive and then he was excommunicated. I need to check this too.
Then we went to town for early dinner and we had drinks and walked around the Abbey. It was beautiful, and I thought it might be like this at Disneyland. When I told Rohan, that is his name, he laughed and laughed. He said Disneyland was full of pricks and bratty kids wasting money on trinkets, hoping to capture the feeling of a happy family for a day or two. He sounds extreme doesn’t he? I thought so too, and I told him. He said that just because you hold a moderate position doesn’t automatically make you right. It was a good point, I thought.
At 8 in the night, I said we should head back to Vienna, and that boy had fooled me! The last train already left. We got a room with two beds, but by that time I was a little drunk. We slept together and next morning I was so mad. But when I woke up he was pouring me coffee and said he had plans for us for lunch. My contacts hurt from not taking them out, but when vision cleared and I saw him standing there with a grin, and for some reason I didn’t feel mad anymore. Right away I knew we would spend a lot of time together. His philosophy is strange, but it is charming.
Anyway, it has been great few days. I hope everything continues. Sorry I didn’t write sooner.
Love,
Milica