Photobunt

Nobby, my friend and landlord of our WG, and his girlfriend Suzy, want to invite friends and acquaintances to their Vernissage R2 in July. Here is Nobby’s invitation, as he sent to me asking if I could publish it on Photobunt:

sorry, wenn ich hier mit was anderem komme, aber ich möchte über petars seite die leute von euch ansprechen, die meine lebensabschnittbegleitende beziehungspartnerin und mich schon kennengelernt haben:

vernissage ” R2 ” am 26. juli 2008 in regensburg!

–> Kunst im nächsten Raum <-- wer uns kennt und wen wir vergessen haben, einzuladen und wer jetzt deshalb (nach eingehender vorheriger prüfung^^) eine einladung möchte, schreibt bitte eine email mit postanschrift an: sagsmir@hotmail.de und - wichtig - ...und hinterlässt bitte einen kleinen gästebucheintrag hier: Kunst im nächsten Raum Gästebuch (wäre sehr nett…!)

From the last Vernissage:

Croatia, Albania, somewhere near Romania
It’s Europe and NATO, why the hell do we go
Priština, blew up huh, head for Macedonia
I’ll race ya

Somewhere far overseas
There’s a place called Kosovo
That’s where you don’t wanna go if you aren’t Albanian at all

Protecting human rights
Air strikes and fire fights
And we’ll be dropping our bombs
Wherever Serbian bad guys hide
Just up from Kosovo

Somalia, Grenada, or rescuing Kuwait yeah
We screwed ya Rwanda, wish we coulda helped ya
Iraqi embargo, that’s where got hustled

Ooo so now we’re helping out in Kosovo
We’ll kick some ass
And then we’ll see how it goes
And then we really don’t know
Good luck to Kosovo

Milo-so-vitch, you sorry son of a bitch

Every time we go
To little places like Kosovo
We never really know what happens after we go
Tough luck for Kosovo

Croatia, Albania, somewhere near Romania
It’s Europe and NATO, why the hell do we go
Priština, blew up huh, head for Macedonia

Well we’re heading down to Kosovo
We’ll kick some ass
And then we’ll see how it goes
And then we really don’t know
That sucks for Kosovo

Somalia, Grenada, or rescuing Kuwait yeah
We screwed ya Rwanda, wish we coulda helped ya
Iraqi embargo, how it is we don’t know

Ooo I wanna take you down to Kosovo
We’ll get there fast
And then we’ll take it slow
That’s where we wanna go
Way down to Kosovo

Produced by unknown Norwegian soldiers in Kosovo. Youtube link provided by Kulturbunt.

In Serbia, the business is booming. Across the street from Pancevo City Hospital there are two undertaker offices, clearly visible from patient’s rooms. So that the relatives of a patient wouldn’t have to search for one, if the need comes.

The competition in this business is fierce, like in any other. When a patient dies in a hospital the relatives will get a call from an undertaker, offering his services to the shocked family, in a matter of minutes after the loved one died. The undertakers have doctors and nurses on their paying lists; they are buying information about the deceased immediately after exitus letalis has been diagnosed. The competition is so brutal that in some cases an undertaker will call a patient’s family even before the poor one really died, which can have tragicomic implications. At the time when the official telegram from the hospital arrives, the fastest undertaker has already long ago booked a funeral.

I heard that in some other small Serbian city two undertakers also have their offices in the same street. The stores are facing each other, and big shop windows are full of different articles. Among black pillows and silk cloths one of them has displayed a small child’s coffin, in order to attract customers to his shop. About 60cm long. And in white, of course.

Take a look at this post from Kiklop Nandor’s Blog: Stone cutter’s business card on graves in Pancevo Cemetery (or “What do you wait for, order a tombstone”).

On the picture is an advertisement for a funerals band in the old Zemun’s cemetery, Belgrade. Everybody is invited to pluck off a small excerpt with a telephone number.

Post title: Stefan

One evening in 1991 Vanja was showing me photos from her childhood. She took one after another out of an old shoe box, and eventually she took this one out. I glanced on it, and thought how strange it was that she had one of my photos. She said: “The girl on the right, that’s me.” “It cannot be!” I thought in disbelief: I definitely had the same picture. “And the boy on the left – that’s me!”, I said. We looked each other in astonishment. Than we started laughing… and the picture was laughing back at us. After many years, we discovered that once we have already been holding hands. And never knew it.

On the back of my photo, in handwriting of my grandmother, stands “2. IV. 1977”. We were both about 4 years old.

—-

Many years later, near Klismerina in Montenegro.