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stealing your maps
Submitted by jillmagid on Thu, 27/07/2006 - 4:44pm.
I arrived in Belgrade early. Before the expedition officially begins I began my own.
While living in Amsterdam these past five years, I became close with a few wonderful people coming from various areas of the Balkans. I often got mixed up, much to the faux(?)-frustration of these friends,
as to who comes from Serbia or from Bosnia or from Croatia. They always corrected me, then chalked it up to me being American.
Now that I am here I begin to understand. The images that I've constructed of these cities- based on their stories and habits (and much less so by what I saw on TV) are quickly being eclipsed by what i physically observe before me. These friends-and now their friends, continue to act as my lenses. I view the city they show me- visiting their bar boats ("splav") on the river, drinking wild pear rakije, holding up the florescent tubes of tesla's museum as the little lightnings jump off the copper display, or sleeping in my friend's childhood bedroom in the hills of sarajevo.
I am asking these friends who are here, as well as those who are not here--and anyone you who is reading this, to please send me a map. your personal map--a map can be a story, a memory, an uneventful place, the way to get to your favorite coffee, or doorway, in town... the more obscure the better (as I am quite fond of secrets). To someone or somewhere you can send me. I will go, and bring something back. This is a request. If I cannot go, I will bring something back anyway, depending on your description, and the city your map is to be found in. Please send it to jill@jillmagid.net or post it here. I will be on the LHE until August 8th, so please send a map that falls along this route or close enough to it that i may find my way. I will show you what I come up with.
Thank you! and happy trails...
Jill
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SLEEPLESS NOVI SAD
It is close to home but I had feeling that going there is like traveling abroad.I never stayed to sleep but I remebrer that once I had to stay awaken all night long. We were printing proofs for our architetural magazine in the office of my friends father. They hade the largeest and the fastest printer we could find nearby. We came over night when nobody is in there and started to work, repetative and boring task. Although we had the best technology of a time, for thirty pages of black and white prints we stayed untill the morning. My friends father saw that I was to sleepy to drive back and asked the office driver to take us to Belgrade. He was driving my car while we were seating on the back bench. It was warm morning with the sun on the front window.Flat horizont of the feilds passing by were flatening my mind and I fall into sleep.
Zagreb Nap
Dear Jill, the post office in Zagreb that I was telling you about is
Post office: 10090 ZAGREB
Street: ILICA 508
Place: ZAGREB
City: ZAGREB
Countie: GRAD ZAGREB
Tel: 3463-381
Fax: 3457-897
http://www.posta.hr/main.aspx?id=193&idpost=903&vrsta=3
After a night train from another city I had to spend several tired hours before something else I came for was to be open. I was looking for a place to sit, and the only such place was this post office in the center of Zagreb. I believe that it was a second floor walk up into a narrow space with representatives on the left and two chairs and the table on the right. Chairs were fabricated by a furniture factory called Mladost (Youth) and were yellow. One of the representatives behind the glass was a man. If you sit down he would not see you. I fell asleep. If you find this, I wonder what you may find.
zagreb matter
my friend from zagreb was painter so the room that i stayed was full of started and completed paintings. some of them where unknown to me before and some were copies of famus modernist paintings that he used to do for selling because his ones nobody buyed.he was living in the appartment with his očd parents because he could never sell enough to get enough. this was not good enough reason to make him frusrated, on the contrary his painting wherefull of colours . it was hard to sleep in the room with them because these colours were able to enlight darkness. I need to cover them with blancet to catch some sleep. this room was anyway too small for all that painting and bed.so were the other rooms. corridor was too narow. it was diffcult to move without touching walls and walls were full of old thigs that were fallintg down as soon as you pass by.looking from the outside apparment could not be identify because it was one of many with same windows that were set on the front of large cubic building that was one of several identical build during socialzm at the outscirt of city. take a tram from center to the southwest and get out at the last station. maybe it is not the one i am writting about but it will look alike.
ljubljana inside
enter and go to left, front is blocked with shelves full of books.living room and kitchen are in one space. kitchen is to the wright, bed that i used to sleep is on the left and round dinning table is closer to kitchen then to the bed. books are all around. there is no specific style in interior. it looks temporary and warm. ordinary wooden floor, white walls, wooden shelves, bed and chair looks like picked from second hand market. you could say that it fits the facelss appearance of the exterior. however this absece of identity makes it very comfortable.the space looks like anything can happen in it. it is formless but full of potentials.
Dear Jill
This morning while I was waking up I was trying to remember other places in Ljubljana where I used to sleep. The first adress that came to my mind is Zupanciceva 8 where my friend had apartment. I could remeber its interior but I could not remember anything about street, building, enterance and starways. Another adress is corner of Rimska and French plaza, if i get it wright. I remember building outlook but I do not remember interior. Could you help me to refresh my memory.
Ivan Kucina
Ivan's interiors and exteriors
Dear Ivan
I walk through a park, past the apartment buildings, and the flat grey roof that looks like an empty stage, past a swing set to your street. The French embassy is across from building number 8. Three police officers and one civilian stand in front of the door talking. The front door of your building is not locked. I enter. The front entrance is white with pistachio colored trim. The trim defines another kind of architecture, unlike the actual building it is encased within. It looks like the surface of a wedding cake. The floor is made from smoothly polished pieces of stone, one of them with two scripted letters: T and P. I walk up three steps and turn towards left, towards a large wooden door with a small penguin sicker. I pass a series of mailboxes with foreign names. The door is locked and no one answers. I proceed up the steps and continue to knock on each door of every floor. On the first floor, an elderly man answers, his mouth old and slightly gaping. He says he does not speak English and closes the door. I go up to the next flight and knock. An older woman with dyed red hair opens the door slightly. She says she does not speak English and begins to close the door, I repeat Do you speak a little English, even a little? She says Wait. The door closes and then opens again. A large, young man with a big beard and a ferocious head of hair- (he looks like a greatful dead concert goer) comes to the door. I explain that you used to live in this building, and that I would please like to come in and see the apartment.
I think the reason you cannot recall the surrounding neighborhood is that it is unremarkable. Even today I cannot recall it either, and this was only yesterday. The streets are too much like all the other streets in all the other cities.
Please tell me about the inside.
Correct Me
Dear Jill,
I could not help retrieving a blurry memory from Ljubljana in 1986. It was the event when the tasting of the first Western fast food in socialist Yugoslavia, called Pizza, and going to a Leibach concert that night, raised more desire for an 18 year soldier, than much else. I have found the restaurant by asking people on the street who new immediately where it was. The lavish, but restrained restaurant was adjacent to Cankarjev Dom, the grand convention centre built in the '70s; an important piece of architecture with a large platform, modernist version of an urban square. It was in the back of the convention centre, tugged below concrete slabs holing the first floor. It was closed, but there was a long fancy double-sided eating bar rounded at one edge, designed with '70s rounded edges and bar chairs on glossy rubber floor. On the typical full glass storefront there was a poster for a retrospective exhibition for Josip Plecnik, held at the Gospodarsko Razstavisce, unknown at the time. I went there and was very impressed. On the way to the concert I passed Cankarjev platform again, changed my plans and observed a bronze sculpture on the square continuing to slowly corrode to green.
The Sculpture
Dear Srdjan, tell me about the sculpture.
Sculpture
Dear Jill,
It is an oversized sculpture portrait of Ivan Cankar, most known Slovenian poet. Th bronze is cast in a traditional neo-romantic way, massive and slightly bulbous. When I saw it last it was about 35% green corroded. I knew that it takes about 15-20 years to get completely green and then another 100 to become black, all in proportion to the thickness of the bronze. Since it was placed in the '70s and I saw it in the mid '80s, I though that it must take at least twice as long. I often imagined it, in some whatever moments anywhere, when it would be completed in green. Perhaps it is now. According to the above calculus, since it took 35% for 15 years only, the entire corrosion would happen in approximatelly 45 years, which is in 2015. But, I read that it corrodes faster after half is already passed so it may be just now.
eggs
Dear Srdjan,
The Cankerjev Dom is closed when I am there as well. I arrive in the back and walk around the side, from the shade towards the sun. There is a sign saying Pizza with an arrow pointing down. It must be underground.
Not far from there I pass a bronze sculpture. According to your calculations it must not be very old; there is no green patina. The sculpture is abstract, quite organic, inspired by some kind of budding plant. It has one tall central stalk and two leaves forking out to the sky. The leaves begin halfway up the stalk and extend at 45 degrees from the center. There are rows of eggs, held like peas, on all three leaves. It is nothing extraordinary as a form, but I am seduced by it all the same. The eggs have golden tops where the original bronze tone has been worn away. I know from experience that the only way to achieve this effect is by rubbing them.
The sculpture is at the corner of a yellow building in a small square, near a crosswalk. The eggs are at a level equal to my shoulders, perhaps a bit lower, but I can only guess. I saw it from the other side of the crosswalk. Perhaps people rub them while the light is red.