<nettime> friday, april 2nd

[insomnia <insomnia@EUnet.yu>]

Friday, april 2nd
'they killed our bridge', said a girl with tears in her eyes. the
varadin bridge, which connects novi sad with petrovaradin and with
belgrade (which is some 80 kilometers from my town), lies in the waters
of danube like a bird with broken wings, or, more precisely, like a
battered toy. people come to see the ruins, to shed a tear of deep pain
and sorrow, to light a candle and put a flower on the steel remnants
lying on the shore. a few protest banners are left beside the late
bridge. they are not sharp or witty anymore, they do not refer to bill
clintoris nor mock NATO. they are sad, full of forced optimism. they say
(in serbian or in broken english as mine is these days) 'we will build a
more beautiful one', 'the bridge is dead, long live the bridge'. i took
a piece of concrete from the shore to keep it as a reminder of these
horrible times. 
somebody wrote an email to me, saying that my diary entries are not
truthful. i cannot help anybody's disbelief. i can only swear that i've
seen these things happening and experienced them. the personal
experience counts most of all, i think.
and if somebody is still not persuaded in the fact that NATO strikes at
civilian targets, let me tell him or her that i've never seen a military
vehicle on our late bridge; this bridge i crossed a million times while
a teenager in bus rides to my high school in sremski karlovci, some
twenty killometers from novi sad, to the �Sremski Karlovci grammar
school' founded more than two hundred years ago;  on the petrovaradin
bank by the bridge lies the fortress dating from the XII century where
museum and academy of arts are located;  i should also tell you that a
catholic church 'sveti juraj' was damaged in the explosion that
destroyed the bridge; that what was destroyed is not just a
communication between vojvodina and serbia, but also the bond between
the multiethnic and multiconfessional novi sad and basically catholic
petrovaradin. how now?
and let me add something possibly irrelevant - 36 window panes on the
front side of the faculty of philosophy were shattered in the explosion.
the worst damage is done to the reading rooms.

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