Village Part III

Today (Sunday) we went out to another village, which is where Helen's father grew up. We saw the old farm, but it was all overgrown & abandoned, as there is no more family able to tend to it - very sad. Serbian real estate culture is very different to Australian, in that there is very little in the way of buying & selling property. Once there is no one left to live in a property, it tends to just become abandoned. The family tried to sell the land to other farmers for a bargain basement price, but no-one was interested.

Following on from an earlier post, the families here tend to stay much closer together for longer. A lot of the houses are like mini apartment blocks, with entire extended families living in them, one per floor. For example, Helen's niece lives in the same house as her parent's-in-law - the parents are on the ground floor, his older brother lives on the 2nd floor, and they live on the top.

Village/rural life is very hard here. I was introduced to Helen's aunt on her father's side, who is in her 80's. Very stooped, with grizzled features, and amazing hands... felt like I was shaking hands with a brickie's labourer! But they are all so incredibly hospitable, fully willing to cook a meal at a drop of a hat for any visitors! I mentioned the sad-sack expressions of the immigration people at Belgrade, but in reality they are all such nice people.

Helen's aunt had a sister in law helping out, also in her 80's. It was hilarious to listen to them talk, as the sister in law kept telling the aunt to keep quiet as she was telling her stories. I am still only picking up a few words of Serbian at a time, but one I have known for a while is "cuti bre..." pronounced "chooti bre". It basically translates to shush! And I heard it many times!!