Solo noi

When I was a kid I practiced violin. I loved the sound of it. Not the one I produced but I loved anything that had it.

My family is a mix of Serbian and Hungarian influence on my maternal grandmother's side. I still have a complicated relationship with Hungary because of the stories my grandma told me from the concentration camp she was interned at during the WWII. She was about 11 when she got taken together with her family. I know some Hungarian to this day. And I deeply hate knowing it because I know why she learned it. 

My maternal grandfather is a Serb from the beautiful city of Mostar. He wrote down his recollection of the events of establishing the independent state of Croatia. To cut the story short, people were gathered at one of the meeting points and told that new state was proclaimed and if I remember correctly,one of the ladies,a catholic Croat told him to run. He ended up in Nedić controlled, German occupation zone of Serbia where he was shielded by a family of strangers. He was about 12 years old. He lived for years thinking he was the only survivor.

My paternal grandfather is from Split. We can trace our branch of the surname for I think around 200 years. But as of today I don't know the origin. I actually know the least about it. What I know is that my close relative organized the resistance in the city and together with Mokranjac was the greatest south Slav composer in history. Famous people were connected to us but that is irrelevant for now.

My paternal grandmother is from a very rooted family of Šibenik. We go centuries back. We are catholic Croats. And obviously we had a difficult relationship with the Italians. Cultural, political and physical domination is visible until today. That side of my family did what entirety of Šibenik did. We joined the only right side of the WWII. And we payed for it. Buildings in Šibenik and surrounding areas are full of my family's surnames commemorating our sacrifice for the liberation and unification of the fatherland.

My parents met in an elementary school in a border city with Italy. The area is effectively trilingual. Rapid industrialization made Serbo-Croatian an unofficial language. Slovenian was the majority language and Italy was still projecting it's domination via various channels.

And there my story actually begins.

All the blockbusters I saw for the first time were Italian dubbed. Terminator. Back to the future. Lion King. Disney's Robin Hood. You name it. It took me years to rewire my brain to start singing along the songs from cartoons in the original language.

But my parents gave me a gift. Or the upside of the horror, madness,evil and insanity of the destruction of my homeland.

They gave me music.

Today Toto Cotugno died. I loved his music. 

I am ashamed to say it but despite my reservation towards the Italian nationalism I sang along to L'Italiano. And then my favorite one.

Solo noi.

The reason why it's special to me is because when Teo's mom came for the first time to stay with me she was very nervous in the car. So I played music from my phone. That was the song that came. And it was perfect in my mind.

I'm sure that Toto touched hundreds of millions of people. If he touched just mine it would have been enough. 

But he did so much more.

Buon viaggio. Grazie per tutto.

Resti in pace. 

Adesso siete solo voi.

expat

Before I came to Scandinavia I worked on a cruise ship as a night auditor. It's an interesting position because it's a mixture of administration, safety, quite literally keeping the captain awake, doing bartender's job without serving drinks, show and low-key leavemealone vibe. The plan was to learn the trait and become a manager of several ships. Live in Botswana and work on the Nile.But I found out I was going to be a father.

That changed everything. Every thing I had planned got scrapped. 

I remember talking to my friends Danijela and Mile about them studying in Upsala and I said to myself I could visit but live,never.

But there I was. Pregnant partner and myself. No job. No idea what is going on. Reinventing myself for the second time in a year. 

Her family is some of the best people I know.

I'll cut it short and tell you it didn't work out.

But we did it together in the beginning.

I got a job after exactly two months and ten days. Actually she found it. In Brondby. East part. The industrial part. IKEA warehouse. Salary was enough for the bills, mortgage for her apartment, cigarettes, cheapest coffee on the way to work, absolutely clueless to how the system works.

Coronavirus time was hell. I'd wake up at 10am, do what I needed to wake up, and leave at 11 to be sure I am at work at 2pm. Trains were going every hour, with 500 people being in person checked by the Danish border control. I will not comment on the way it was conducted.

On the way home I would get home between half past midnight and 2am, depending on the train. Worst case scenario was when the train that comes from Brondby would be one minute before the train that goes to Malmö. That meant I have to sprint about 300m to catch it after 8h work in a warehouse. And I can't explain the mental breakdowns I had if I didn't make it. Because it meant I will have to walk from the central station in Malmö to our home. And Sweden decided to cancel public transportation after certain time.

But my son was born.

And he didn't like to sleep. It would take him to fall asleep couple of hours. So sometimes when I came home after all of this I would take him out to walk him into sleep. My ex was exhausted. Any mom can relate to that. She needed some rest. But that was the only thing I could do at the time. I probably could have done more but I was exhausted.

That's all for this time.

I have to sleep.

observationer

I've been living in the north of Europe for four years now. Can confirm that I expanded my horizons and learned a lot about myself and people here. But also people back home.

Let's start with some of the cultural shock I experienced. 

First thing I can point out is something I can call empathy leveling. Most of people are superficially distant and from a southern European perspective cold. Later you probably knew from the stereotypes like "it's cold but, standard,hey!". But, what I learned is if someone embraces you after some time,they are genuine in that. It's different situation from back home where you meet a person and it takes about 7 minutes to have a lifelong friendship feeling. You won't be invited to anyone's house for a year,but once you are,you can expect to have help with dismembering a body,no questions asked. 

On the other side, people are not cruel. In situations where facts are presented in a rational manner,even with alcohol present, people tend to keep their cool, accept new information and admit potential misjudgement. There's also a lack of action in potentially dangerous situations,something I can atribute to the trust in the institutions. I've heard more than one time that I shouldn't act and let the police/firefighters/ambulance deal with it.

Second huge shock was that noone covers their mouth when yawning. I remember vividly my 6th grade biology class teacher yelling at me that she's disgusted with the sight of my kidneys when I yawned and promptly kicked me out of the classroom.

Here people yawn in the middle of the sentence on a date powering through the yawn so the sentence wouldn't suffer. Imagine my surprise when I saw that for the first time on a gorgeous girl. 

Biological functions are also very much not taboo. Shitting is normally discussed among friends and lovers. I'm not going to go into details but I had a cute situation where I was driving a truly beautiful woman and she said that she has to fart. I was a bit taken by surprise but for some reason that spells closeness to me. Something that family does.

Seconds after that,she said through laughter that she shat herself. No embarrassment. Just a fact. But hilarious situation.

Next one is nudity.

I used to take my son to a local pool every weekend because he loves water. And the first time I went to leave my stuff in the locker room I was greeted with a sight of about 10 people of all ages having a friendly discussion among themselves. Butt naked. Scratching their balls, touching each other when someone makes a joke I suppose. And a woman, equally naked coming in to call her kid to come. Noone payed attention.

A few years ago I was with my friends from previous work place and we went to sit on one of millions of Copenhagen piers. All immigrants except for the two. In Denmark you can drink in public. In Sweden you can't. Mostly.

It was a warm day for the middle of May. 

So there were we, playing bunch of music from 4 continents and a young lady approaches us,sits next to us for a few minutes and promptly takes off her clothes and proceed to jump in the sea. All of us stopped talking. Except for the 2 Danes. It is so uncomfortable thinking about it because I am sure that we looked like bunch of creeps. Which we are,have to admit. But after she swam a bit she came out, stayed some time next to us and after she dried up she put on the clothes and left.

And the culture around bodies is so much healthier than I grew up with. Perhaps that's a personal thing. I'm not sure.

People just seem to enjoy their bodies more.

Sex is another one but I won't get into that now.

There's a lot of things that I find interesting here. I'll probably write more in the future. For now this is it.