The Balkans – Culture Shock
As strange as it is to say, I haven’t really felt too much of a culture shock while being here. I don’t know if it’s thanks to my (rather limited) prior experience traveling, the limited length of this trip and our continuous travel throughout the region during it, or simply that I find myself to be so curious about any difference around me, but I haven’t felt anything I would really describe as culture shock — nothing that I feel like I’ve been jolted into and need serious adaptation to.
Of course, there are differences — as I’ve already explained, the differences in how mealtimes work is a major one, and the language is another — but I haven’t felt much shock. However, I did have a burst of homesickness, when I desperately wanted nothing more than my own kitchen where I could prepare my own foods and live in more than just a hotel room. It was short-lived, though, and my excitement for my surroundings and my trip returned within a day.
If I were to choose the biggest difference between Belgrade and Boston (or even Sarajevo and Boston, though the two Balkan cities are very different, in my opinion) it would be the lack of diversity that you see on the streets. In Boston, I’m used to walking past people on any and every race down one city block; here, the few non-white students in our group definitely stick out amongst the crowd. It’s honestly a bit unnerving, though I can’t imagine what it must be like for them.
Another major visual difference is the stark contrast in architecture — there are examples of beautiful, elaborate window boxes and carvings remaining from the time of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and wedges right between them are cold, ugly blocks of buildings that remain from the Communist era. There’s not much to them to describe besides they’re grey, they’re square, and they’re nondescript — every window looks just like the one next to it. Seeing these two completely different ideologies physically represented in the city is bizarre.
One final difference is how elaborate the cemeteries are. I’m not saying I’ve never seen some overdone graveyards in the U.S. (overdone is what we do best, right?) but it seems like every grave in every cemetery here is somehow adorned — a picture on the headstone, bouquets of flowers, small candles, huge statues, symbols carved onto the stones. It honestly surprised me to see just how much people here seem to revere their dead, and I actually wandered the graveyards feeling a bit conflicted on my thoughts and opinions when it came to such adornment.
