Urban Development

Serbia is, once again, divided into two camps. Two big music festivals that Serbia hosts seem to be attracting polary opposed crowds. The Exit Festival is held in Novi Sad and features latest & greatest of popular rock and electronic music. A good chunk of people who attend this festival think of themselves as urban, sophisticated, fashionable and whatnot. Festival of brass bands (think drunk people without teeth, not your high-school marching band) in Guča hosts Serbian best traditional (folklore) trumpet players and is considered, by the Exit crowd, to be rural. Did I mention that calling somebody a villager (seljak) is an insult in Serbia?

Of course, this urban and rural classification is absolutely arbitrary, but there has nevertheless been a lot of animosity between the two. Exit is accused of attracting people who lack in sobriety, cash strapped tourists and generally unruly characters. On the other hand, Guča is accused of attracting people who lack in sobriety, cash strapped tourists and generally unruly characters.

The conflict culminated when the Serbian Prime Minister, Vojislav Koštunica, visited Guča this year, but not Exit. Everybody seems to mind it because Guča is “rural” (people getting drunk silly, swimming in mud and ornamenting musicians with Euros), and our PM is promoting it over an “urban” thing. Like I mentioned before, that’s bullshit that I won’t even attempt to argue against (a much better argument would be that the Exit Festival is, unlike Guča, politically active, and promotes groovy stuff like an end to human trafficking).

Still, I was amazed at the speech Koštunica, our master of populist muppetry and cliché, gave on Guča. He said that Guča is the heart of Serbia, which I would guess, makes Šabac its nostrils, while Subotica is an elbow. He also said that people who don’t understand Guča are not capable of understanding Serbia either, which does nicely explain the slight feeling of confusion I often have when I walk out of home.

Another interesting thing, Prime Minister of Republika Srpska, Dodik, attended Guča with Koštunica. Koštunica returned the visit for a soccer match in Republika Srpska. What’s that supposed to mean?