From November 2003
Dear Friends and Family:
As you saw from my earlier note, I arrived this evening in Ljubljana, Slovenia after four days in Prishtina, Kosovo. I feel as if I have crossed an ocean rather than just the Adriatic Sea.
You probably remember Kosovo from the NATO bombings of the June 1999. The bombings were the last stage in the Yugoslav War and the one that broke the back of then President of Yugoslavia, Milosevic. I had never before visited Kosovo but it has always been known as the most barren part of Yugoslavia. Indeed it was to Kosovo that the Croatian Serbs were sent in July 1995 when then President of Croatia Tudjman turfed them out of the mountain ranges of Croatia.
My assignment in Kosovo was to review the draft company law from a corporate governance perspective. But unlike other countries, my counterparts were not local officials but members of the international community. In 1999 after the Yugoslav Army gave up Kosovo, the UN sent in a civilian contingent to accompany the military force. The civil servants of the UN thus took over all the government functions of the Kosovo region—and they started to treat Kosovo as a separate country with its own set of government ministries, manned by staff of the United Nations and consultants hired by the European Union. Using a vague reference to “economic development” in a statement by the G-8 Ministers of Finance (which includes Canada), this group of international civil servants and European consultants drafted basic commercial legislation for Kosovo. It was rather necessary. The international community had deemed that all Yugoslav legislation enacted after 1989 was not applicable to Kosovo. Starting in 1999, the UN had established itself as a fully-functioning government with the ability to write regulations with the force of law. Now the UN and the European Union-funded consultants have drafted a law that would replace the UN regulation and provide a workable base for Kosovo’s enterprises and emerging corporations. My job was to give comments on the draft law.
It was amazing to me to see the Kosovars give up so much authority to the international community. After 1989, Milosevic had closed the Albanian-speaking schools in Kosovo and disbanded the Kosovar parliament. The Kosovars argued that they had lost at least a decade and were missing the intellectual capital to run their own corner of the world. They were so grateful to Clinton that they named the main street Bill Clinton Boulevard. Even Maria Theresa does not have such imposing street in Prishtina to her name.
It was fascinating to see how Kosovo has developed under the tutelage of the international community. At first blush, Kosovo looks like the classic post-Soviet place with potholes in the sidewalks and street-lights that don’t work at night. Electric service is off every night throughout the city, sometimes starting at midnight and sometimes at 8 pm in a series of rolling blackouts that are intended to reduce demand on the electric system. However I also noticed that cars slowed down for pedestrians, rather than speeding up or just maintaining a high speed as they do in other post-Soviet countries. Also I saw no prostitutes or thugs in my hotel and in general there was little evidence of corruption. Yet the UN estimated in 2001 that 40 percent of all heroin consumed in Europe and North America passed through Kosovo. I saw in our office a three-page list of bars and restaurants for which staff was prohibited from frequenting. It’s the first local office that I have visited where a list of prohibited bars and restaurants was given to visiting staff. There is clearly a strong criminal mafia in Kosovo but they haven’t been able to corrupt the local government—or at least not yet, not until the Kosovars take back their government.
So I spent my four days working till midnight every evening and trying to recover from a ferocious flu that I picked up as I was leaving Washington. One night I found the UN gym, which had a treadmill for my workout. Another evening I found an internet café (from whence I wrote the first note saying that I was in Prishtina). On my last day, I discovered a garden of landmines and unexploded ordnance—other places have rose gardens and museums. Kosovo has a manicured garden of landmines. I also wrote a 12 page report on ways in which the draft company law could be improved to strengthen corporate governance—and why transparency of ownership and control of companies was even more important in a place like Kosovo that in developed countries.
Sue
Saturday, November 8, 2003
Sunday, March 30, 2003
Searching for a Tennis Practice Wall in Slovakia
Bratislava, March 2003
Dear Friends and Family:
It’s Sunday night on a warm spring evening and I am writing to you sitting in a dark bar in the old town of Bratislava.
Today was my day off, in as much as I was able to take a few hours off. I wanted to get away from my work and the TV war coverage. I had carried a tennis racquet through the airports of Washington, Frankfurt, Moscow, and Vienna. I figured that if the Czechs produced great tennis players, then the Slovaks must also have good tennis facilities.
Yesterday I asked the hotel’s front desk about tennis clubs but Igor was only able to find two courts in a huge sports center 18 kms from the center of the city. After a long winter of virtually no tennis at home, I was ready to settle for a wall against which I could practice. But even that proved to be difficult. In most cities there are flat empty walls against which one can hit tennis balls on a week-end afternoon. Usually school playgrounds or warehouse loading facilities or at least the hotel’s garage has a wall that I can use for practice. But not here.
Yesterday after giving up on the resources of the front desk, I looked around for a wall that might be suitable for practicing tennis strokes. It looked like the nearby postal service delivery docks might be ok. When I had finished yesterday’s work, I walked over to the postal wall to check it out. Unfortunately the wall was made of hand cut rock with uneven edges. That wouldn’t do—good for footwork but not for building consistent strokes.
I had been sitting outside on the terrace of the hotel’s fitness center, wearing a bikini, and I had put on loose fitting jeans and tennis shirt to walk around the corner and check out the wall. I kept thinking that there must be a wall nearby and I would just have to walk a few minutes to find something. So I kept walking.
Before I was finished, I had traversed through a decrepit industrial area on the water-front, across the Old Bridge with the week-end bicyclists and roller-bladders, down the pedestrian path across the river among the families, and back home along the New Bridge with the serious cyclists. Still no suitable practice wall. I was beginning to think about going back and explaining to the US Embassy guards that I wanted to use the hotel garage for tennis practice. However without speaking Slovak, it seemed like a difficult task.
Today I tried the internet and a Google search of tennis+bratislava. Longline Tennis Club showed up among the results and it looked like they had red clay tennis courts. However when I shared my findings with the hotel’s front desk, the staff was skeptical. Igor was off for the afternoon but his colleague pointed out that the street (Senecka Cesta) was beyond the hotel’s map for Bratislava. I felt like I was planning to go beyond the limit of civilization since the street was not on the hotel’s map. The clerk checked into the comprehensive Bratislava map and she made me a copy of the pages and so I set off to find some tennis. A taxi might have been a good idea but I figured that the walk to the club would be the interesting part.
It was true. I walked past old 19th buildings that must have dated to the time when Bratislava was the temporary capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Then as I strode up a steep hill, I found houses under construction—large buildings with floor to ceiling windows and views of the valley below. They looked like the best of contemporary architecture. And then, at the very crest of the hill, I fell upon a street of huge garish houses, one in purple and another with window bars almost to the third floor. The road was full of police but they were not the police officers who defend the public interest. Among their cars was a large current model black BMW, with a blue police light. My drivers in other countries have explained how such cars belong to the mafia. If I had had any doubt, it was gone when I saw three muscular young men who looked bored and hung around an interior driveway as if they had been there for hours. As I was leaving, yet another car of police drove up and the other police officers yelled approvingly, “Gang-sta”.
I kept walking, still looking for my tennis club. The street turned from huge mansions with police guards to tiny houses with vegetable plots. Then I found a city park full of paths and joggers—and birds. The city of Bratislava seems to build bird-houses for their flying residents and I found several such houses in the trees.
Fifteen minutes later I had come to end of the park and the edge of my hotel map. It was time to pull out the photocopied map. But that map had less detail and I had trouble finding my way. I finally asked an older woman at the bus top. “Prosim,” I asked. Prosim seems to be used as a form of requesting attention. I pulled out my map, with a circle where the tennis club was supposed to be. “Tennis?” she asked, swinging her arm in a modified forehand. “Yah,” I responded, trying to guess what yes might sound like in Slovak and turning to show her the racquet in my back-pack. She gave me hand signals--down the street and then turn left. I tried to find the words for thank you but realized that in a week of meetings, I hadn’t heard anyone say thank you in Slovak. I generally learn my limited local vocabulary listening to the conversations between my hosts and the tea ladies who always bring tea or coffee or mineral water for office meetings. I realized that I hadn’t heard thank you in Slovak all week. So I said thank you in German, hoping that would be sufficient to accompany the smile that was the true expression of my thanks.
The club was exactly where she said it would be. It wasn’t called Longlife Tennis Club, at least not any more and there was no one playing. At first, I thought it must be due to the late hour (then nearly 6 pm). But then I realized that the white tape that represents the court lines had not yet been laid down in the red clay. I walked around the club and found a tennis wall of sorts. The wall wasn’t very high and the ground made my balls very dirty but at least it was a practice wall. Voikl was stenciled against the green paint and my shots sometimes hit the stacks of bags of red clay but I felt that I was able to practice a little.
After 45 minutes, I decided that I should think about finding my way home. It had taken two hours to find the tennis club and I had seen only one bus on the main thoroughfare during my practiced time. I walked into the restaurant called Tenis Restaurancia, trying to find a friendly person in tennis clothes or at least athletic warm-ups. It was not to be. No one had the look of a dedicated tennis player. It was just a restaurant for the local residents.
There was still some light at 7 pm and Bratislava is not generally a dangerous city. So I decided to walk, back through the park with even more birds than before. It made me want to live in a place where I could also build bird-houses and have them sing to me in the evening. The mafia houses still had their corrupt police officers. And then walking down the steepest part of the hill, I saw the old white-haired couple I had seen walking earlier that day.
Igor at the front desk of my hotel wanted to know if I had found a tennis practice wall. At the tennis club, I had written down all the Slovak writing that seemed to pertain to the club name and contact information and showed my notes to Igor. Unfortunately what I thought was the name of the tennis club turned out to be Slovak for the Rules and Regulations of the club. However I still had the telephone numbers and next week-end I can ask the hotel staff to call and see if the lines have been stapled onto the red clay.
Sue
Dear Friends and Family:
It’s Sunday night on a warm spring evening and I am writing to you sitting in a dark bar in the old town of Bratislava.
Today was my day off, in as much as I was able to take a few hours off. I wanted to get away from my work and the TV war coverage. I had carried a tennis racquet through the airports of Washington, Frankfurt, Moscow, and Vienna. I figured that if the Czechs produced great tennis players, then the Slovaks must also have good tennis facilities.
Yesterday I asked the hotel’s front desk about tennis clubs but Igor was only able to find two courts in a huge sports center 18 kms from the center of the city. After a long winter of virtually no tennis at home, I was ready to settle for a wall against which I could practice. But even that proved to be difficult. In most cities there are flat empty walls against which one can hit tennis balls on a week-end afternoon. Usually school playgrounds or warehouse loading facilities or at least the hotel’s garage has a wall that I can use for practice. But not here.
Yesterday after giving up on the resources of the front desk, I looked around for a wall that might be suitable for practicing tennis strokes. It looked like the nearby postal service delivery docks might be ok. When I had finished yesterday’s work, I walked over to the postal wall to check it out. Unfortunately the wall was made of hand cut rock with uneven edges. That wouldn’t do—good for footwork but not for building consistent strokes.
I had been sitting outside on the terrace of the hotel’s fitness center, wearing a bikini, and I had put on loose fitting jeans and tennis shirt to walk around the corner and check out the wall. I kept thinking that there must be a wall nearby and I would just have to walk a few minutes to find something. So I kept walking.
Before I was finished, I had traversed through a decrepit industrial area on the water-front, across the Old Bridge with the week-end bicyclists and roller-bladders, down the pedestrian path across the river among the families, and back home along the New Bridge with the serious cyclists. Still no suitable practice wall. I was beginning to think about going back and explaining to the US Embassy guards that I wanted to use the hotel garage for tennis practice. However without speaking Slovak, it seemed like a difficult task.
Today I tried the internet and a Google search of tennis+bratislava. Longline Tennis Club showed up among the results and it looked like they had red clay tennis courts. However when I shared my findings with the hotel’s front desk, the staff was skeptical. Igor was off for the afternoon but his colleague pointed out that the street (Senecka Cesta) was beyond the hotel’s map for Bratislava. I felt like I was planning to go beyond the limit of civilization since the street was not on the hotel’s map. The clerk checked into the comprehensive Bratislava map and she made me a copy of the pages and so I set off to find some tennis. A taxi might have been a good idea but I figured that the walk to the club would be the interesting part.
It was true. I walked past old 19th buildings that must have dated to the time when Bratislava was the temporary capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Then as I strode up a steep hill, I found houses under construction—large buildings with floor to ceiling windows and views of the valley below. They looked like the best of contemporary architecture. And then, at the very crest of the hill, I fell upon a street of huge garish houses, one in purple and another with window bars almost to the third floor. The road was full of police but they were not the police officers who defend the public interest. Among their cars was a large current model black BMW, with a blue police light. My drivers in other countries have explained how such cars belong to the mafia. If I had had any doubt, it was gone when I saw three muscular young men who looked bored and hung around an interior driveway as if they had been there for hours. As I was leaving, yet another car of police drove up and the other police officers yelled approvingly, “Gang-sta”.
I kept walking, still looking for my tennis club. The street turned from huge mansions with police guards to tiny houses with vegetable plots. Then I found a city park full of paths and joggers—and birds. The city of Bratislava seems to build bird-houses for their flying residents and I found several such houses in the trees.
Fifteen minutes later I had come to end of the park and the edge of my hotel map. It was time to pull out the photocopied map. But that map had less detail and I had trouble finding my way. I finally asked an older woman at the bus top. “Prosim,” I asked. Prosim seems to be used as a form of requesting attention. I pulled out my map, with a circle where the tennis club was supposed to be. “Tennis?” she asked, swinging her arm in a modified forehand. “Yah,” I responded, trying to guess what yes might sound like in Slovak and turning to show her the racquet in my back-pack. She gave me hand signals--down the street and then turn left. I tried to find the words for thank you but realized that in a week of meetings, I hadn’t heard anyone say thank you in Slovak. I generally learn my limited local vocabulary listening to the conversations between my hosts and the tea ladies who always bring tea or coffee or mineral water for office meetings. I realized that I hadn’t heard thank you in Slovak all week. So I said thank you in German, hoping that would be sufficient to accompany the smile that was the true expression of my thanks.
The club was exactly where she said it would be. It wasn’t called Longlife Tennis Club, at least not any more and there was no one playing. At first, I thought it must be due to the late hour (then nearly 6 pm). But then I realized that the white tape that represents the court lines had not yet been laid down in the red clay. I walked around the club and found a tennis wall of sorts. The wall wasn’t very high and the ground made my balls very dirty but at least it was a practice wall. Voikl was stenciled against the green paint and my shots sometimes hit the stacks of bags of red clay but I felt that I was able to practice a little.
After 45 minutes, I decided that I should think about finding my way home. It had taken two hours to find the tennis club and I had seen only one bus on the main thoroughfare during my practiced time. I walked into the restaurant called Tenis Restaurancia, trying to find a friendly person in tennis clothes or at least athletic warm-ups. It was not to be. No one had the look of a dedicated tennis player. It was just a restaurant for the local residents.
There was still some light at 7 pm and Bratislava is not generally a dangerous city. So I decided to walk, back through the park with even more birds than before. It made me want to live in a place where I could also build bird-houses and have them sing to me in the evening. The mafia houses still had their corrupt police officers. And then walking down the steepest part of the hill, I saw the old white-haired couple I had seen walking earlier that day.
Igor at the front desk of my hotel wanted to know if I had found a tennis practice wall. At the tennis club, I had written down all the Slovak writing that seemed to pertain to the club name and contact information and showed my notes to Igor. Unfortunately what I thought was the name of the tennis club turned out to be Slovak for the Rules and Regulations of the club. However I still had the telephone numbers and next week-end I can ask the hotel staff to call and see if the lines have been stapled onto the red clay.
Sue
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
