Walking in a WinterWonderLand or: How I discovered the Secret of Serbian Women

First of all

Happy New Year 2015 to you all! May all your wishes come true and I hope you will be able to make everything happen that is close to your heart!

I am just coming from the most wonderful snow-christmas holidays in Serbia! The weather here in Germany is so bad, but my last two weeks were cold, fresh air, 20cm of snow, long walks through frozen forests with hands buried deep in the pockets of the jacket and chilly toes in spite of a double layer of wooly socks and lots of doing nothing and drinking hot chocolates. It was wonderful.

But let me tell from the beginning:

To spend as much time with my lovely muž as possible, I went to Kruši the first possible date right after the classes and my internship finished for 2014. That also meant: Christmas in Serbia! Since Serbian Christmas is later than ours (yesterday, actually, on the 7th of January), and our Christmas day is just any other day in the Serbian Orthodox calendar, I didn´t expect much, I had already given my presents to my family before setting off and thought Christmas was sorta cancelled this year. But no, my muz and family in law made the biggest effort to bring German Christmas in their homes and after a lot of walking through all the shops in town twice or three times we had a full-on Christmas evening with Krompir salatu (potato salad),Weißwürstchen, Spiegeleiern, an Adventskranz on the table and a more than respectable Christmas tree lighting up the room.

Fun Fact number 1: Serbs have Christmas lights, like, a lot. But they blink. Christmas in Serbia is not all silent night, it´s party party partysani!

Fun Fact number 2: Serbs get christmas trees too, but only on New Years do they enter their houses (the Christmas trees, I mean. Not the Serbs). And most often it is not real trees but plastic branches (as far as I saw, correct me if I´m wrong)

On the first Christmas day, we had a feast with a family friend who had emigrated, now lived with his wife and daughter in Switzerland and had come back to visit for the winter holidays. We had delicious turkey, grilled vegetables and hungarian chocolate cake and locally made red wine. It was wonderful and I had a fun time listening in to the Serbian conversation and looking up random vocabulary on my phone.

Fun Fact number 3: So many Čarapanis (=people from Krusevac) /Serbians have migrated to Switzerland or Austria! I met many like the friend who spent that evening with the Gajic family, making a new life abroad. The economical situation in Serbia is just so unlucky, so moving there seems to me to be something like “the thing to do"!

We slept, helped in the Gajic clinic (he did, I sat on the fotelja and watched and ate chocolates), went on walks, watched “Kevin alone at home” and “Gone Girl”, and went to see his great-aunt in her frizerski where I – attention, secret coming – found out the truth about why Serbian women always have so miraculously straight and well-kept hair! They just go to the hairdresser to get it done! And hair feels so DIFFERENT when it´s nicely washed, conditioned and straight air-dried. The hairdresser/great-aunt did it to me and I was amazed I can have pretty hair too!! :D So…

Fun Fact number 4: Serbian women don´t grow up having super straight hair or have more beauty skills in how to handle a blow-drier or hair-straightener. They let the hairdresser do it!

Then, it finally started snowing. A LOT.

Fidje and me were walking home late from an invitation at a professor´s familie´s house from his university town Mitrovica and we while we had been there, snow had piled up to 20 cm on the streets, lamps, fences, and we had the whole city to ourselves while the snow kept falling incessantly. It was a perfect winter night walk.

And the next morning it was even more beautiful! Everything was shining bright and white and wintry haven!

As were the next days, only a bit more grey:

New Year´s eve we had a dinner with traditional sarma (stuffed cabbage with minced meat) and my absolute favorite nut-chocolate layer cake from the mom, again home-made-wine, and by midnight we were so tired we only quickly went to watch the city´s fireworks from the old castle park, and then to bed. It was -15 degrees after all. Plus: Serbs don´t do New Years and that´s it, they have a rerun, and a re-rerun the nights after, so we just went out to Moment, the bar where verybody hangs out, the evening after, and it was a great fun night with live Serbian music.

Now I´m back without my Filip, who had to stay in Serbia to study for more exams and also to wait for his visa still to be approved . I feel like this

:(

and I miss this view from the front porch:

and the great Serbian people who seem to have the ability to make you feel at ease with them so quickly because there´s no pretence in their behaviour but honest openness and loveliness,

and of course I miss my baby <3 p="">

But…again, I had a great, great time. The more time I spend in Serbia and with my man, the more I like both of them. It is wonderful knowing they exist, and I feel very blessed starting into this new year together! :)

All the best to all of you, and lovely greetings!