It's a Kind of Fashion...

The Night of Museums 2012

I was surprised to hear that the first Night of Museums was only held in 1997. The first Belgrade Night of Museums was held on 17 APril 2005, which means it did not take long for Belgrade to jump on the bandwagon and join other European cities, all considering.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Night_of_Museums

Later on I read some media reports that Belgrade hosted some 200 000 museum visitors on that May 26th.

I do not know if this is Belgrade's branch of Occupy Wall Street but this group was clever to take the opportunity to get some attention with so many people in the streets. 

 After I met up with my cousin "by the horse" we decided to start the tour of the museums at Dorćol's Museum of Theatre Arts.

 On this special night it honored the great diva of Serbian theatre and cinema - Olivera Marković.

We didn't have time to watch an entire movie as we rushed to check out the Gallery of Frescoes.  

 In the Gallery of Frescoes, this night was all about the Studentica Monastery. 

 The next in order was the Jewish Museum...

After the grim scenes from the Jewish history, we had to lighten things up with the visit to the Superstition Exhibition called "Pomeri se s mesta" ("Move in your seat" literally translated and often heard in the Balkans whenever something is mentioned that you do not wish upon yourself or those dear to you, what a translation conundrum!). Beautiful lighting adorned the Ethnographic Museum that night...

 ..but to get inside, we had to pass under a ladder...

 Creepy.

Grab a nearest chimney sweeper by his button to fend off all those bad omens!

And then... the Soul Food of Serbia exhibition. 

 Orgaqnized by the same advertising group that authored this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z3P2_q7fzM

 Milena is crazy about ballerina flats... and these came straight from the Bolshoi Theater (some with visible blood on them and all autographed by the Russian ballerinas who danced in them).

 And in the Students' Cultural Centre, I discovered a remote corner entirely dedicated  to my remote hometown - Jajce. 

That's not all. Stay tuned for more. 

My Office

I already wrote about the office building where I work just after I landed the job. What I had not known back then is that those who inhabit the buildings are under no circumstances allowed to open any windows  for the fear that one of these ugly brown-tinted panes would break. The rumor has it that the company that produced them back in the day no longer exists.

Strangely enough, no windowpane was broken in the 1999 NATO bombing thus the orange-brown
ugliness lives on and on.
As for the interior, this was how our conference room looked when we got keys to it.

Endless boxes of animal ear tags...

...period furniture that we decided to keep.  

KEEP IT (soc-)REAL!!!

...and more ear-tags...

 ..complete with instructions how to staple them onto the poor cows' ears.

 And endless boxes with blank farm logs for animal farmers to keep.

Every visit to every animal is to be duly noted and recorded. 

Yeah, right. 

Finally we got some tables. And they are HUGE. The boss, still waiting for his, temporarily relocated to our office.  

Merely two weeks after we moved in, we got a pair of brand new PCs and a broken printer.

Our boss, the Minimalist, happy to get a table and a working wi-fi, moved into his office.
Yes, this is his office AFTER he moved in!

Girls will be girls, so we made ourselves at home in no time.

The ever-remaining thorn in our eye was our conference room.
No more procrastination, it was high time we dealt with it.
Dealt we did by having all the boxes  with ear-tags moved and neatly stacked in the tiny room between our offices and the conference room which we decided to ignore for the time being.

In the Balkans no menial work gets done without at least a hint of a plumber's ass.

The conference table looked like it had arrived from a  conference center in Dubai.
A total eye-sore amid the drab remnants of the socialist era but it does the job.

One month into the project, we're up and running!
We've come a long way, considering that we started from the sign above the door for "Civil Aviation Directorate of the Republic of Serbia" (our project is about animal welfare and food safety, mind you).