izubachi's New Writeups

How to cure everything with rakija (place)

2008-08-26T11:08:04Z

Diseases in Macedonia enter through the throat.

Actually, this doesn't just happen in Macedonia. Diseases enter through the throat throughout the entire Slavic world, as I’ve found out by talking to some of the other Slavs visiting or studying here. So, for example, letting a kid go out during the winter without a scarf in the Czech Republic is considered tantamount to child abuse.

Macedonia takes this health mythology one step further, though, and prescribes throat-based cures. For added Balkanness, pretty much all the cures involve that omnipresent Balkan brandy, rakija. Rakija does everything. It’s a drink! It’s a disinfectant! It makes making julienne fries a lot more enjoyable! And it’s the key to a proper cold cure here.

So three ways of using rakija I’ve heard so far:

Mix rakija with water and sugar. Heat it up (which is gross–-rakija is drunk cool or at room temperature) and down it. This custom has been…

A tale of two janissaries (place)

2008-07-30T17:15:16Z

When the Balkans was still under the rule of the Turks, children would be taken from all across the multi-ethnic, multi-religious expanse of the empire. They would be gathered in Istanbul and molded into the perfect soldiers. Whatever their background or language, however different they appeared, the Ottomans would train them to be one-and-the-same loyal defenders of the established order, more Turkish than the Turks. And then they would return to the communities they came from, alien to those who should have been their friends and family. They were nothing more than extensions of a distant, hostile force. They extracted taxes, they hunted down rebels, they enforced laws. Native sons became foreign oppressors.

The memory of the Janissaries still has resonance in the Balkans. The past has presence, in a way that can seem strange to an American.

The United States is one of the most ahistorical countries on Earth. It was a nation founded…

October 17, 2007 (idea)

2007-10-17T01:27:35Z

I wanna kick someone's face in.

Or I wannna read the minds of strangers until I find the one guy who wishes someone would hug him, right then, right there, because he's so lonely he could blow apart. Then I want to hug him.

Or get on my bike and ride. On and on and on, dehydrated, lost, until I collapse in a corn field, anywhere.

Or do everything I've ever wanted to accomplish, all at once, in some cathartic burst of energy, and never worry about ambition again.

Or turn off the part of my brain that anticipates negative consequences and fly blind.

Or line up every person who's never met me that I'm trying to impress, in my imagination, and scream at them "FUCK OFF." One after another.

I want no more…

August 21, 2007 (place)

2007-08-21T17:11:37Z

Dispatches from Macedonia

A brief rundown of why I have no time to indulge my normally ravenous internet addiction:

I took a trip to Struga, the smaller town around the lake from Ohrid, with a large group of Americans, Croatians, Germans, Albanians, and a Hungarian. We switched back and forth between Macedonian and English, sometimes in mid-sentence. Struga is laid out much differently from Ohrid and not as tourist-focused. Instead of Macedonian folk tshotshkes, English-language nationalist t-shirts, and cheap Chinese goods, the street-side booths sold Balkan pop music, Macedonian-language nationalist t-shirts, and Albanian Islamic books. Struga has a much larger presence of Albanians. If nothing else, you could tell because all signs were at least bilingual Macedonian and Albanian, if not tri- or quatralingual if you threw English and German into the mix. Macedonians identify Albanians with certain very particular (and generally…

August 18, 2007 (place)

2007-08-18T06:55:06Z

Dispatches from Macedonia

I'm afraid that if I don't slow down to write this all out, I'm never going to catch up with my experiences here.

This has been so different from previous study abroad programs I've done. When I was in Germany, there were only classes. Everything else was left to you. My day was so occupied with negotiating chores, laundry, groceries, and all the minutae of daily life made exponentially more difficult by poor command of the local language, that I didn't actually have much time to meet Germans.

Japan was the opposite. Our time was rigorously structured and we were given little opportunity to roam or relax. I spent most of my time doing homework. I didn't really meet any Japanese people excepting my host family and their neighbors. Any free time I had was spent with Americans.

Macedonia has offered a completely different experience. I've been relaxing. I…

August 17, 2007 (place)

2007-08-17T07:03:50Z

Dispatches from Macedonia

The last two days feel as though they have lasted a week's worth. Not because I'm not enjoying myself, but because there's so much to take in, it feels as though two days is hardly enough bandwidth to fit it all.

I think that my sense of place has grown acute over the past few years. When I was younger, I never had the sensation of being fascinated by merely existing, moving, and inhabiting a particular place with its particular qualities. It never crossed my mind to stop and marvel at how beautiful my hometown is, for example. There were far more important things to worry about. Tests, parties, interpersonal drama, stymied sex drive, etc.

It's not as though I don't still obsess over all of those, but now they have to timeshare with this strange sensation of revelry that possesses me. When I come home to Chicago, I have to set…