Everyday Life in Novi Sad

Life in the Conditional

Three months after president Milosevic had suddenly come to Novi Sad to declare on television opening of reconstruction of everything demolished, citizens of Novi Sad are still crossing the Danube by boat or by ferry, they fear rain, have neither electric power supply nor hot water and await winter with anxiety

AIM Podgorica, 15 September, 1999

In the postwar period, Novi Sad is living torn between civilised habits and reality. If somebody happens to complain about not having hot water for days, a well-meaning quick-witted fellow-citizen will remind him that he lives in the poorest state in Europe, poorer even than mythic Albania, with a jocular warning that he should match his civilisation "whims" with this fact.

When despite installed cable television, a set does not work, citizens of Novi Sad know that the part of the city where the seat of the system is located has no power supply. Cable television has become an important segment of life in this city, because many people watch regularly news program of TV Montenegro, two channels of Croatian TV, and apart from a selection of foreign satellite programs, it is possible to see state television and those local stations which re-broadcast daily news program of Radio-Television Serbia, such as TV BAP (from Backa Palanka, the town that more than a decade ago launched into the political orbit Mihalj Kertes and Radovan Pankov - exceptionally important people of the third Yugoslavia and close associates of president Milosevic).

An electric engineer, expert for computers, drove home in his car on leftovers of gasoline. In search for gasoline he realised that those surprisingly few sellers of gasoline in bottles have been removed from the streets; that rumour that one of the gas stations is selling fuel resulted in a five-kilometre long queue of people and cars, but not in their possibility to fill their tanks; that in the bank which he dropped by to encash a part of his salary (he prefers not to keep track which part and what month the salary was for) there was no cash...

With a bitter smile he explained that he was after all a lucky man: that day he had no business on the Petrovaradin side of the Danube so he was spared crossing the river by ferry or boat which carry melancholy and concerned people to the other bank every day, alongside the destroyed bridges the remains of which are jutting out of the water. Then he got angry: "When on 21 September I go out into the street to demonstrations, I shall not go back home until I see them go". The day when he snapped was just an ordinary one. His quite ordinary and average Novi Sad family had already overcome the first day in fourth grade of its twins and the pains of having to buy two of each - textbooks and notebooks and other school equipment, but also tennis shoes and sweatshirts...

Novi Sad is a poor city like all the other fortunate cities in Serbia where the opposition has won power in local elections, not because the citizens had voted wrong, but because the money from the city travels a long way - the income made in the city is transferred to the Republican budget and then the Republican authorities decide how much of it will be returned to the city. Citizens of Novi Sad live in the conditional tense: if the city transportation enterprise gets fuel, buses run almost regularly, if it does not, they are drastically reduced; if municipal services in charge of keeping the city clean have fuel to start their engines going, they take away the garbage - if they do not, it remains in the streets; if by any chance edible oil and sugar appears in one of the city stores, they call each other and then if they have the money they buy some of these scarce foodstuffs; if they know someone who sells fuel, they buy it even if they do not drive. Somebody will need it. Edible oil is kept for primitive lights sold in churches and used instead of candles because they last longer which, if distributed well can illuminate an apartment to shine "like Versaille", because nobody knows when electric power will go out.

The city needs money and its minister of finance Branislav Pomoriski is persistenly trying to make the Republican authorities at least implement the regulations which entitle cities to keep the sum of their income spent on reconstruction of what has been destroyed in the bombing:

We collected documentation which weighed six kilos", he says while explaining how many times he has gone to Belgrade to his Republican counterpart and his deputy just to be told that "deputy minister has lost the documentation". Pomoriski is telling the history of the money in order to corroborate his statement that the Board for reconstruction of the country is reconstructing Novi Sad with its own money. The immediate cause at the latest session of the City Assembly was the debate about construction of bridges. The city would like to finance construction of a pedestrian bridge with the remains of the old iron bridge which connects the city centre with the Petrovaradin forthress. Republican Board for reconstruction of the country conditioned the permit by the report of the auditing commission. All things considered, this report will arrive too late for anything to be done in this constructing season.

Nobody knows what autumn with rain and south-east wind will bring. Everybody fears winter, long and cold, with no electric power supply and heating. Grotesque offers can be read among the ads: "I trade an electric stove for a tin coal burner or a cooking stove that burns firewood". Fear is growing of winter with icebergs floating down the Danube which will make communication between the two parts of the city on the two banks of the river completely impossible.

Three months after president of FRY Slobodan Milosevic unexpectedly (on 14 June) visited Novi Sad in order to declare the beginning of reconstruction of the whole country and everything destroyed in NATO bombing, and promised the citizens of Novi Sad that the bridge near Beska on the road between Belgrade and Subotica would be reconstructed in 40 days and a railway bridge in three months, citizens of Novi Sad are still crossing the Danube by ferry and by boat, and the bridge near Beska has been patched but had to be shut down a few times already for repair, and the promised railway bridge is still just on paper.

While central authorities are trying to impose themselves as the only contractors in reconstruction of the destroyed Novi Sad, its citizens are frowning at temporary "prefabricated that can be dismantled" ideas and suspect that these are offered them for their own money. The citizens who have to cross the river every day in order to go to school, work, for medical treatment, to give birth to their children, have not forgotten that the city of Vienna had offered a temporary bridge to their city authorities, but that Austrian engineers were denied visas by the federal administration.

"He came from school dripping wet", says a mother of a high school student who goes to the classical language high school in Sremski Karlovci, one of the only two schools in Serbia where Latin and Greek are taught. This high school is considered to be an elite school, older even than Matica Srpska (central cultural and publishing society) which is not at all insignificant in Novi Sad. She also laments that the family standard is seriously affected by 25 dinars she gives her son every day "just in case" - a part for lunch and 10 dinars for the boat in case he misses the ferry.

Impotence because of poverty and uncertainty are two predominant feelings among ordinary citizens. "There is the war. And there is NATO. And Clinton. And Sloba. There they all are, but I where am I. What will become of me", a fourteen-year old boy wrote down during bombing on a small piece of paper his grown-ups found only after the bombing had stopped. He day-dreamed on this small piece of paper that he would enroll in the Serb High School in Budapest because he had heard from his friends that they had a "European system of studying" over there. His friends and he do not buy croissants for lunch any more; they buy bread because it is cheaper and bigger, and if any money remains, they buy some juice and share it...

Milena Putnik

(AIM)