A small village called Ranilovici on mountain Kosmaj is a rescue place for my family. We are escaping here when summers get unbearably hot in the city. We go here to spend evenings next to fireplace when winters are gray in Belgrade.

My children and my brother’s kids are enjoying freedom of a village life here. They are one of the rear youngsters who sensed smell of hey and cattle, who know how to catch firefly in a jar. They saw a birth of a baby calf and a lamb. They are running across meadows of my great-grandfather’s youth. Here, they are learning values that, unfortunately, are not that common among their kinder garden and school friends.

Not only that our everyday life is richer because of this lovely village, but our heritage is here too. I carry wonderful memories from my childhood, my father too, and it goes on further to past generations. My great-grandfather was cultivating silk-warms that can only survive on mulberry leaves. There are still many mulberry trees around our family house, and my sun adores eating their fruits. Behind the house there is a trough carved out of one piece of stone, my great-great-grandfather’s hand work. It amazes me every time I look at it.

A life wouldn’t be the same without time spent here.

Ranilovici is the place I like.

–       Jelica Vasic

Mirror Mirror on the Wall, am I the Fairest of Them All?

Once a week, I pass right by this Door. But this time I saw them: The 1906s Art Nouveau Door of Josef Sabetaja Finci's house.

For the last two years, I have been taking photos of doors in Sarajevo, but these are the most captivating ones. All the buildings in the spirit of the secessionist art in Sarajevo have distinctive decorative facades, with the floral motifs beneath the roof cornices, around the windows and doors. However, this Door is the only thing decorating the exterior of Finci's house.

Floral motifs, in the most beautiful manner grace this Door, especially parts of the wrought iron. What makes this Door the Fairest of Them All, is the dynamic floral motifs of laurel leafs and berries carved in the wood. No other door in Sarajevo has the wooden floral relief like this one.

– Lejla Kahrovic Handzic

It is nice when the fog hides everything and unveils the detail, then slowly by its disappearance I fall all over again in love with beatyful Boka Bay.

–        Iva Petkovic

In the complex of the Clinical Center of Vojvodina there is a small green wooden house not easy to spot. It used to be a home to Dr  Adolf Hempt and is one of the few remaining copies of the typical houses designed for health care and built all over Europe after the WWI. In this particular building serums and vaccines were made which citizens of Novi Sad received.

– Ivana Volic

Prizren is not only what is seen with eyes wide open. To understand Prizren accurately, two eyes are not enough.

Prizren is not only beautiful houses with distinguished aesthetic features, but above all pleasant talks during sunsets with regular guests in courtyards or inside rooms embellished for pleasure-seeking.

Prizren is not only paving that shines with elegance whenever it rains, but above all the history written on it. Cobble stones of Prizren are a documentary that tells stories of the city with all the joys of suffering, war and peace, solidarities and insincerities.

Prizren is not only in masterpieces of architecture, churches and mosques, but above all in communication among people of different religions. As school of emancipation, as control of patriarchate, as tolerance and love, as discrimination and hatred... Prizren is not only in imperfections of Albanian and Turkish, but most of all in ability of its inhabitants to talk in four different languages during the same day.

Prizren is not only river that divides it, but above all narratives constructed in centuries to think about freshness of the water that flows through all town’s houses. Prizren also is an urban legend that was made up to frighten children not to urinate in the river.

Prizren is no idyll or a nightmare, is neither paradise nor hell. It is not only greed nor generosity... Prizren is just Prizren. And it is difficult to see it only with eyes wide open.

To read the text in Albanian click here

–        Hajrulla Ceku

There is nothing as exciting, dear and secure as the coast of my childhood. Time spent on the island Pag probably formed me into a person I am today. That is a reason why from all the places I have been at, I treasure Pag as a special one - a place of freedom. I remember hours spent in endless games on the beach. Back then there was still a source of drinking water on the beach, and for me the greatest joy was to come out of the sea and pour a glass of cold fresh water and drink it. Nowadays I realize what a precious thing that spring was. Children that are playing on the same spot today cannot share the same experience because the spring is not the same anymore. Nevertheless, with all the tradition, nature, architecture and heritage, Pag is a speculate island. To me, there is nothing like a feeling when I sit on the same send I sat down 35 years ago and all emotions from all those years just overwhelm me, in September, when sun is still warm and there is no one on the beach where a clean spring was.

 – Dean

“Čatmara” is a name for traditional vernacular house in the mountainous area in Serbia. These types of houses have been preserved till today. They were built in a specific way, without nails and bolts; timber construction was tangled in a skeleton that was covered with mixture of mud and straw. Base walls were made of stones, magnificently precise in composition. Like most traditional crafts, the craftsmanship of building “čatmaras” is a disappearing one. 

"As long as I am living, I will maintain it. The roots of my family are in its foundations, I feel warmth and energy in it, I am a part of it. It is a reminder who and where i come from, it is a representative of an old Serbian house, a monument.

Our village houses are becoming ruins, but not mine. We are forgetting who we are and where we come from. I can’t give money to go around world sights, and let mine go to waste" – said Dragan Gligorijevic from Jagodina

For the full story click here.

–        Dragan Gligorijevic to www.telegraf.rs

An office with a view in a deteriorating building that used to be one of the landmarks, the masterpiece of Yugoslavian modern architecture the head office of the biggest publishing corporation in Yugoslavia. The front façade of BIGZ, where my office is, is facing Belgrade Trade Fair Center, another important sign of something that once was an innovation, and now is a connection with exciting and prosperous past and even more hectic nowadays. The office that I work in is also looking at bridges, river and famous railway that goes to Bar, a railway that changed who knows how many lives. The vanishing view - soon a polygon for new construction sites that we know nothing about, nor who the users are going to be. And the view I like as it is, it might seem deserted and unfriendly, on the contrary, just think of all the stories that are hidden there, the melody, the rhapsody.

–         Rastko Tanasijevic

One of many healing components of rowing is time spent on water in the nature.

Then privilege of traveling enriches spirit, therefore every time a winter gets near, I start to be excited because I know that the Bay is waiting for me. Boka Bay is always exhilarating, but during the winter months it has a special note of mysticism that inspires poets and oarsmen equally. Maybe I am a bit more sensible to Boka’s spells than my team-mates are because of my roots. My ancestors Mršulja are from Kotor. I spent my childhood summers here. To me, the Bay is the most exciting and beautiful part of Adriatic Riviera. And I am so glad that national rowing team as well as CZ’s first team traditionally comes here to train to feel exceptional combination of heritage and enchanted nature.

–  Ivica Mršulja

Ice, carried by the river still struggling and flowing not completely frozen, follows the river matrix, overtakes it and crashesuponitself, overlaps and clings onto itself, piling up threateningly on the bends below the Petrovaradin Fortress. Once, the ice used to carry away bridges and boats in Novi Sad, and now it takes the breath away to all who venture out into the cold air, colder even by the Danube, to see this sight, with the Fortress standing above peacefully and steadily. Since the foundations were laid in 1962 for the Fortress we know today, at least three hundred snows have covered its rooftops, walls bastions.

While exploring the white expanses of the Fortress, you can hardly come across any other person, who could bring the postcard images to life, break the silence and the sound of snow crunching under the feet. Magical moments come into being while we are alone with our thoughts and the Fortress. We write blueprints on white paths, think of the times gone by and dream of those to come. We explore the past to better imagine the future. We listen to the silence as we are amazed by the snowy reflections on the Fortress winter face. The unknown faces of the fortresses built into the one erected in XVIII century, were equally covered by winter snows and solitude. And still, the snow has never conquered it, and it met and fell over many armies, wars and empires, which left clues of their cultures and civilizations, traces of life. After it covers and washes the Fortress, the snow melts and seeks the Danube, the only one who crosses all pages of history and the exciting Petrovaradin fortress underground.

Our desire is to keep listening to Fortress stories, to interpret and share them with others; to uncover all the beauties and potentials of this remarkable piece of fortification architecture, this living and breathing history textbook and the town’s symbol on the opposite shore, an equally special place for art creation and the visitors’ enjoyment and relaxation. Each new snow marks another year for the Fortress standing abovethe river and watching over the town, patiently waiting to be explored, cared for accordingly and visited more often, at the very least.

– Team Scenatoria