2 Nov 07

The ALU welcome party is indeed as crazy as everyone said it would be. Hopefully this will frame a bit of the experiece: At 2pm the band was just finishing setting up the stage and doing sound checks. People began to wander in and out of the Metal Working room turned party hall, to walk out with glasses of vino and pivo. I'm still working in the studio on a plaster carving and decide to take a peek for myself, I walk in and they've got two Tuborg beer taps...they do take their parties seriously!! So, what better way to enjoy an afternoon working than with a pivo! That didn't last long, soon after the Irish band began to play, and to much to my surprise they played some Flogging Molly! The party apparently went on until 10pm, but I left long before, since I had all intentions of going back to the studio the next day!

I am happy to report that I have begun significant work on one of my bigger pieces that I am planning. It finally feels as though I am getting somewhere! Related pics are posted on myspace and Flickr.

During that afternoon, I heard rumours of the Academy closing at noon the next day, I kinda forgot about it. Then, Wednesday morning at least five people reminded me that I had to vacate at noon, so it was true. So at noon, I packed up whatever I could manage to do in the dorm and found Croatia's version of wal-mart, but, hopefully without the despicable labor practices. I was happy to find Honey Nut Cherrios and the weather is cold enough that I can buy regular milk and put it in what I like to call the mini-fridge, which it really a shopping bag rigged outside my window. So every morning I can have nicely chilled milk over my Cherrios.

After seeeing a film at the Festival last week, "The Living and the Dead," as silly as it sounds, I really began to understand what is so easy to forget, that this area was in a war 15 years ago. Typically I would think 15 years is a span of time when things would settle down and the traces of a war would be, for the most part, eroded away. It wasn't until I was surrounded with some 1,000 people watching the film about six Croatian soliders in Bosina in 1993, with a paralleled subplot of 10 Yugoslav soliders during WWII, and I was able to witness how they reacted to the jokes (and the movie in general) made by the characters that I began to realize that the war wasn't that long ago and a bitter senitment is still in the air. I then realized that many people (or at least the Croatian filmmaker) views the war as the Balkan version of Vietnam or Iraq, a war that might be "over" but the catalyst for the war will resonate for many years to come. Then, Sunday, when I was walking through the seemingly endless flea market, beyond the typical cheap goods shipped in from Asia there were stands with random used electronics, household fare, jewelry, etc, I started to wonder the provenance of such items being sold. If there's a possibility that the stuff is from where I think it came did, I'm not so sure that's a market I want to be an active participant in.

All of this aside, I am by no means rethinking my decision to come here, rather, all the more pleased that I did, since I would have never had this experience or new perspective if i hadn't.