Views On A Funeral

We were honored to be able to attend a funeral here yesterday. The deceased was the mother of a friend of ours. The family is Orthodox from Kosovo, and so the traditions were somewhat different from a Serbian or Montenegrin Orthodox funeral.
Prior to burial, there was a condolence time where the guests expressed their sympathies to the family of the decedent. This took place at a small chapel located within the cemetery. The female relatives (by blood or marriage) stand in a receiving line inside the chapel along the wall, the casket is in the center of the room, but elevated, so this is not a "viewing," you do not see inside. The male blood relatives stand in a line outside the chapel door. If there are no male relations by blood, in-laws stand there.
We entered with a group of friends, men going first, and shook hands with each family member, offering condolences to each, even if we didn't know them. After the visitors have filed out of the chapel, a priest comes and chants something-I didn't understand what he said. Then someone delivered a eulogy of sorts. I was able to pick up the titles the woman held in life, such as aunt, mother, grandmother, etc. and the names of her parents, siblings, children, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, great grands...
The casket is brought out and put on a cart and wheeled to the grave site. Women bring the memorial flowers. Family plots are large concrete or marble tombs that hold several caskets, and are closed by concrete or marble slabs.
At the grave site, the coffin was opened, the priest poured some wine into the casket by the head, and at the feet over a burial cloth. He also poured some into the open tomb (our Serbian friends said this is something unique to Kosovan Orthodox tradition). He then delivered a sermon. Then each of the daughters of the deceased woman kissed her and said goodbye. The burial cloth was draped over the whole body, and the coffin lid was put back on and locked. Then the coffin was lowered into the tomb. Some family members took handfuls of dirt and sprinkled them over the casket. The concrete slabs were put back in place, and all the flowers were arranged on top.

Since this was not an appropriate place for a camera, I have no pictures to attach.

Doing Things Differently

Obviously things are done differently in different countries because of preference, culture, tradition, etc. In the past month or so, we have experienced some of the differences for the first time, or been reminded of them. There was an minor earthquake here in mid December. In the states, I believe it is common during drills or actual quakes to get under doorways, or desks or similar. Here everybody tries to get outside and out from under balconies because the ceilings are concrete and you really don't want that coming down on you.

In this region a decorated evergreen is really more for New Year's, just like Santa, and the tree involved in Orthodox Christmas celebration is a branch cut from an oak tree, retaining it's withered brown leaves. We saw several people selling these on Christmas Eve (January 6th). People display these (undecorated) outside the entrance to their homes, some even fasten small ones to the grill or mirror of their car. Then late that night the tradition is to take them to the church where they are burned in a bonfire. I believe it has something to do with protection from evil throughout the year. We did notice that some people just toss theirs in the trash though.

Fireworks and crackers are set of starting in the beginning of December and are especially prevelent at midnight or December 31st, January 6th and January 13th(the 14th is Orthodox New Year). Hopefully they are all done now for awhile. On the plus side they taught Esther a new word' "bang!"

They don't really do "toddler beds" here either. You graduate from a crib to a twin bed with no rails. I believe they stay in the crib for awhile. We choose to use crib mattresses on the floor so that if the girls do roll out, the don't have far to go. We surround the wall with foam puzzle pieces to keep them from bumping their heads on it.

Getting To Know Montenegro

First, apologies that it's been so long since I made a post.

 

Now here is are some random "did you know?"s about Montenegro

Montenegro is the Latin name for the country, but the people here call it Crna Gora (which also means black mountain).

Montenegro was an independent kingdom early last century, though some parts of it's modern territory were ruled by the Ottoman and Austrian empires

Around the first world war Serbia incorporated MNE into it's domain. The royal family was exiled to France where they still live.

After the second world war it was part of Yugoslavia

When Yugoslavia was dismantled, it remained with Serbia until 2006, when it became an independent nation again.

The official language is Montenegrin, which is closely related to Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian (just think of the differences between the English spoken in US, Great Britain and Australia for example).

According to Wikipedia, only about 45% of the population is actually Montenegrin and about 29% is Serbian. Just under 9% is from Bosnia.

The population is just under 630,000 as of the 2011 census. 

The size of the country is 5019 square miles (just a bit smaller that Connecticut, whose population is over 3 1/2 million).

Here is an approximate breakdown of the religious affiliations of the people here: 60% Orthodox Christian, 30% Muslim, 8% Catholic Christian. The remainder includes Mormons, Jehovah's Witness, Seventh Day Adventists, and "other." Evangelical Protestant Christian makes up less than one tenth of one percent-about 200 total.

Since the majority of population is Orthodox, that is the calendar that is followed, so today, January 7th is actually Christmas.

And as a fun fact, Santa (here called Deda Mraz-Grandfather Frost) is associated with New Year's rather than Christmas-this is common in some former communist countries.

Shopping In Tongues

It can be quite a multi-lingual experience shopping here. Some things, such as this jar of parsley flakes is labelled in Serbian, as you would expect.

I want to appologize because many of the pictures in this post will be sideways. Since Serbian/Montenegrin is the language we're learning, it is good when things are in the local tongue. It is also good that we know enough of the language to be able to figure out what something is when it isn't obvious by container or store location. For example this tube of baby toothpaste which looks alot like a tube of diaper cream:

or the peanut butter which is located in the refridgerated dairy section of the store.

Isn't too hard to tell what audience peanut butter is marketed to, is it? Some other items, like our mouthwash, are products of Italy:

And there are some things where the label is in Greek, Turkish, German or Macedonian. I like it best when an item has several different languages on it:

I don't know if we would have figured out that this was nutmeg otherwise. And of course the point of all this shopping is so that we can eat and our girls can feed themselves, or each other:

Cultural Differences-Restaurant Edition

We went out to eat last week and Steve ordered a cheeseburger and fries while I ordered a pizza. The waitress brought ketchup to our table and put it in front of me :-) .
When you order a drink, it hardly ever comes from the tap, usually you get a small bottle or can and a glass, which only rarely comes with ice. They collect the bottles and cans for recycling.
We have been to only one restaurant, and one hotel dinning room that had a highchair available, and then only one or two. We have yet to see a children's menu.
Almost every restaurant has cloth tablecloths and napkins.
In some places you pay an extra fee for silverware.
Almost everything, including utensils, comes on its own napkin covered plate.
There are ashtrays on each table.
You often receive a separate bill for drinks and food, and each time you add something to your order you get another one.

I hope you enjoyed this little cultural tour of Montenegro's restaurants. Sorry I don't have any pictures of the girls in this.

Crazy Spicy People

I am a person who enjoys puns. In English there are words like "right", "old", and "lost" that have multiple meanings and opposites. In Serbian/Montenegrin there are some of those but during my learning, I am having more fun with the words that sound the same (at least to me). One example is ludi, ljuti, ljudi- to a foreign ear the difference is almost imperceptible, but the difference in meaning is significant-ludi means crazy or angry, ljuti means spicy and ljudi means people. Boli means sick, bolji means better. Izvor is source or spring (like spring water), izbor means choice. Odbichno means usually, odlichno means excellent. Ja sam means I am, samo means only or alone so if a person named Sam wanted to introduce himself he could say "ja sam samo Sam" and I suppose a Serbian copy of Green Eggs and Ham (no doubt entitled "Zelene Jaje I Shunka") would have the line "Ja sam Sam, Sam ja sam!"

Please note that there are letters in the Serbian language which my computer won't make, so I typed it more or less phonetically.

And since a blog post isn't really complete without a few shots of the girls, I threw in one of Ruth and Steve playing a game on the tablet, and Esther gazing out the window.

Crossing the Border

 

 

We went to Albania to celebrate Ruth's third birthday with some friends. They had a lovely cake made for her. We visited a castle overlooking the city of Lezhe, where Esther found a window just hear size. There were also ants which drew Ruth's attention "look at them go!" And we were amused by the goats eating leaves from the pomegranate trees.