Karton City
By Dan Doric
Me, and my faithful companion Tobias Fischer are no stingy travelers as most of our friends assume. No, not by any means do we skimp on adventure. Here is an account of not the usual lush and lavish landscape of exotic distant lands but a more ragged encounter. We undertook a trip of overbearing scope as we decided to hitchhike (stick out your thumb) and Couchsurf (www.couchsurfing.com) around the diverse peninsula of the Balkans last autumn. As you might imagine, we encountered numerous freaks and partook in some grand adventures. We started this Balkan Odyssey in Zagreb, Croatia and worked our way eastward into Bosnia.
After dozens of kilometers of dragging our feet, a few weird conversations with truckers, an encounter with a busload of Japanese tourists and spending a frigid night homeless on the streets of a chilly Mostar, we had made it to Sarajevo, the heart of the Ottoman Turk influence left in the Balkans, and a real gem. We immediately fell in love with the Bosnian Kafa (basically turkish coffee), delicious Burek and Cevapcici (local eats), the architecture (dotted with bullet holes), aesthetics and smells akin to Istanbul. After a few attempted pick-pocketings, we most importantly became infatuated with the local pests: the gypsies (more P.C. – the Roma).
In fact we decided unconsciously that we would become a sort of Marsh and Cope – a Watson and Crick (passive-aggressive scientists) of the Roma world- thus the gypsies became our subjects. We ventured deeper into the Balkan abyss and into Serbia (being a Croat, mind darkening upon the mere pronunciation of the name), where we found in the capital of Beograd, the largest concentration of gypsies, delicious street meat, cool youngsters and crumbling buildings (some literally rubble from some US bombings). All our new friends sent us to Karton sity.
Karton Sity, the shantytown, resembling a Brazilian favela, was downtown for gypsy Beograd and was found in the outskirts of the regular-tax-paying-citizen Beograd. We chose to explore this place, a nefarious yet alluring location of enchantment. Located in the Novi Beograd area, this suburb of Beograd proper was known for its cheap student housing and a recent influx of Chinese immigrants. Tram #9 from the railway station across the Sava takes you straight there. Cutting through a rural-looking unpaved little ‘alley’, it brought us to the Gazella Bridge.
Under the underbelly of this main artery of traffic in and out of the city (which if you travel to Beograd by train or car, you will surely pass) was an area littered with the homes of as many as a thousand gypsies, although the number we got was unofficial as it was an illegal settlement. The Roma gypsies didn’t enter the system nor did they care about how many of them were there (nor can they count). Recently it has been reported that 986 people in 176 families lived in this shantytown. The Beograd neighborhood scheduled as the landing site of a new fenced ‘ghetto’ for the expelled gypsies complained about taking them in, stating that such a ghetto in the area would depreciate their property. After a lot of racial slandering and name-calling, in May of 2009, the Roma families were given a 45-day notice of their eviction out of their homes near city center.
The dismantling of the shantytown eventually relocated these Roma families into temporary homes fashioned from shipping Containers scattered around the 5 municipalities of Beograd, or returned to their towns of origin if known. The main concern for the city of Beograd was that Karton Sity was located on prime real estate right on the waterfront of the Sava River. It took the city 4 years to finally go through with the “relocation” of the poor Roma. The Roma that do remain in the Beograd area are offered some social assistance, under the condition that their children attend school.
When we finally did start snooping around the settlement, we attracted the attention of some kids playing in the garbage. They waved at us. We had our in! We happily scurried over the street to befriend them, our expensive camera on hand. As we sat down on the ground they laughed that we were sitting in garbage. Their keen senses of distinguishing between “garbage” and “landscape” were definitely much more honed than ours. We talked about such broad topics as hygiene, lice shampoo, drug abuse, infant mortality (most were orphans who lost many siblings to disease), world geography and crime. Vera (12), the eldest, was the leader, and practically spoon-fed us everything we wanted to hear. Social ladders were very well developed, as all the children parented each other -with slaps across the back of the head.
The little children charmed us but we were also aghast at the rift that existed between us. They, not attending school, had no perceptions of the world outside. They knew very little of Europe and labeled us as Germans, not to mention they could not even conceive of where Canada was located. Most amazing was how mature they appeared for little children. On the other hand, they were floored by our old age (24 and 25), and even more shocked that we had 50-something year old parents, the children having very little adult influence. Having to deal with the harsh realities of their environment, made them grow up much quicker. Vera was very familiar and even ashamed of the prostitutes hanging around the slum.
By the end of our encounter, we were so thrilled with the little gypsy children, and they with us, that we made plans to come back and visit again the next day. It was an amazing insight into the very real and harsh lifestyle of the Roma community in Beograd, and really made us appreciate our cushy upbringing and life at home. The Roma laugh at the norms of society, they laugh at schooling, paying taxes, social customs, government laws, and the system in general. I guess that’s why the locals really don’t appreciate them and label the Roma as pest.
