In the era of the Internet and sites like Yelp (a site where users can leave reviews for locals) and social media, everyone can visit some place and become its critic. In that spirit, the author of this text appears in the role of “not so much a critic” as far as “a typical text by Bert Stein in which he talks about music, culture and the past, and through that prism, he makes a parallel with the present,” but that title is certainly boring and long, and therefore forget about it!

What did I actually want to tell you about? About the fact that in the last days I often go to the Rock Bar Krug, which for some reason (the four letters, the sign, the atmosphere, the music!? …) I often mistakenly call “Dors” (derived from Doors), a magical place known to the older alternatives of 90s of the past century in Skopje. Of course, those who follow my writings know that they are nostalgic after that era, so do not expect this to be different!

In the 90s in Skopje there were many places where alternative youth could be found like Baghdad-cafe, Dors, Dzadzo, 21, to New Age, ZZ, Music Garden, Energy, SF and others, today these places are rare, but also alternative people in Skopje are also rare. Perhaps partly because of the hypster movement in which tattoos became fashion, which in itself is paradoxical, because fashions are transient, and tattoos are permanent. Long hair in the 90s meant insurrection, disregard for things, differentiation and someone rarely decided to shave his scalp under the long hair, and when he did, he was an incarnation of Phil Anselmo from Panthera. Today, any “turbofolk” person (in terms of behavior and attitudes towards life, not necessarily in relation to the music he is listening to) can grow a beard, make a Man Bun and get tattooed. Today, children in elementary school (seen by the author of the text, even in the third grade), paint their hair blue, and in the 90s this meant reprimanding or being thrown away from high school. In my works, my adventures with professors and the director of the gymnasium “Josip Broz Tito” have already been recorded, just because I had long hair, and I will not write about that topic again. But times are changing and I would not like to sound like someone who is afraid of the changes. I am glad that we are up to date with the world trends, although it only applies to hairstyles, and I hope that through that our art, science or ecology will be influenced also. But let’s not turn in a circle (krug) and move to the point.

In the “Krug” (Circle) on the upper floor there is a beautiful long wooden table without legs, tilted to the walls, like I have always dreamed of having at home, and a some of my texts (like this one!) was created on it. I do not know why, but when I sit in a café, creativity flows out from me like an unstoppable river, and I just follow it, I let myself to the flow without resistance. Often I wonder what is motivating me to create when I am surrounded by sounds and movements, when in a life contrary to that, I search for loneliness, withdrawal and like to be left alone with my thoughts.

Yes, life requires harmony and balance, if we want to be creative and productive individuals for ourselves and for the society. But, it seems to me that I (we) need good music as a background or a kind of “soundtrack” of life. Without it, life would really be empty, and the music in “Circle” will take you to the grunge and punk rock of the 90’s through Nirvana, Green Day, GNR, The Cranberries, REM, Lenny Kravitz, but also back to rock sound the 80s with Joan Jett, AC/DC, U2 or 70’s and the psychedelic or hard-rock tones of The Doors, Rolling Stones, ZZ Top, Eagles, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Queen and others. And while the solo guitar in Whola Lotta Love “cuts through” the air inside the café, outside the pollution in the Aerodrom is at its maximum. Nothing new, right. It seems to me that this is the normal state of affairs in our little country. It is our reality with which we live, whether we like it or not. Of course I’m talking about pollution, not about the good music.

“Circle” is a place for lovers of real music, wtih kind waiters, a macchiato for 60 denars (1 euro), custom made for the people’s pocket. For the rest I leave the “pop” cafés and their expensive coffees – I hope the word has not lost meaning in the past decades, and formerly meant “non-alternative”, “conformists”, “those who listen to popular music”. Besides the things listed, when you visit the “Circle”, the upper large table the irresistible, always present and as great as the Bible, “Course in General Chemistry” (1965) in Bulgarian will welcome you as well. But what is the relationship between chemistry and music? As chemistry, physics and biology teach us, circling things in nature is an important thing and without it there would be no living world, so in human society it is necessary to replace old things with new ones. Grunge, plaid shirts and tangled long hair with should be replaced with Man Buns and hypster tattoos, and that’s natural and necessary. But as fashion and music periodically go backwards to go forward, through the so-called retro styles, it is also necessary for young people to know about the different times, attitudes and the ways of living. We can call it a circle of things in culture if we want it to live and be fruitful. My mission as a writer is to do it through my works and I rejoice when there are places like “Circle” to remind us of the different music and atmosphere of clubs from the previous decades, because modern life sometimes blinds us with its speed and sometimes it’s necessary to stop, reduce the speed to 45, and look around us. And then we may become aware that the LP turns into “Circle”!

Bert Stein
Dec 12, 2018

My grandfather was not as tall although he was Montenegrin, but he was a strong man, with thick white mustache yellowed with cigarette smoking, and he smoked cigarettes like his life depended on them. He smoked all kinds, from “Sarajevo Drina” to “HB,” but he also bought tobacco from the village, kept it in jars and wrapped cigarettes from it. The drawers were full of cigarette packs and lighters that were given to him by his fellow fighters from the National Liberation Army Club in the center of Sarajevo, near the “Sarajka” department store, surrounded by a large park and trees, where as children we descended the slopes with our poems and be-em-iks, inspired by films like “E.T. the Extraterrestrial”. But my grandfather did not care about this American influence, because he was a hardcore socialist, just as he was a hardcore smoker.

Judging by the number of cigarette lighters in the drawers, he did not succed to repair them, and it was even more strange that he lighted his hand-wrapped cigarettes with a flint stone that he kept in a small leather case along with a piece of special mushroom. He would take the stone, put the mushroom on it and hit several times with a piece of metal, after which the mushroom began to smoke from the spark of the stone. So cigarettes burned, and I sat next to him surrounded by cigarette smoke and together we watched Yugoslav films and series, and he told me about the Second World War.

“It was 1943 on Neretva,” I try to remember the conversations that, like in the mist, reverberate in the memories. My grandfather was a Montenegrin partisan who fought in the official battles in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and who knows the history of the Second World War knows that the bloodiest battles were taking place there. “Give me your hand,” he took my little hand with his hairy and aging hands, with the yellowed fingers of tobacco, and with my two fingers pressed on his leg, where I could clearly feel something hard. “It’s a bullet,” he told me, and then continued to tell me how he was wounded in the war, no less or no more, but – 12 times! He was operated without anestesia multiple times, and those bullets that could not be removed were left in his leg, his hand and who knows where else. In the community was considered some kind of a human phenomenon, and not just because he was a medical miracle that walks on two legs, but he was also a kind of mathematical wunderkind who could randomly calculate large numbers for which others needed a calculator.

… looked from another perspective, there was another Yugoslavia …

With his warrior-friends they gathered in the Club of Fighters, a magical place for me, where there was a playground covered with sand. They teamed up there, those war veterans in the fight against the Nazi occupier, and now took put stone balls instead of machine guns and bombs and threw them in the air, trying to strike other stone balls and get as close as possible to the little ball. When they did not compete in this game, another war started on the tables covered with green material, where they made machine gun nests from queens and kings, and instead of ammunition they threw money. My grandfather, although he was a good mathematician, often lost in these games, at least that is how I remember things, because they spied on his cards in his thick dark glasses. Maybe he was losing because he did not see good anymore, he walked with a cane and had constant pain in his legs, but mostly because after my grandmother died, his partisan love, he was half of my old grandfather as I knew him.

“Young Partisan Girl”, a famous song to all who grew up in Yugoslavia, but for me also the concept of my grandmother. Bosnian woman, who, like my grandfather, participated in the same battles, but on the other side of the trenches, as a nurse, she met him there, after which an “instant classic” from Yugoslav partisan films arose. But before that, her adventures meant hunger, a great hunger from which comrades died, hiding from the Germans for days on the mountains, in the snow, in the holes in the earth covered with branches, and from this she got rheumatism and twisted fingers. But she never complained, on the contrary, she gave commands and led the whole family, until her death, when the command was dissolved, my family collapsed, and in parallel my country.

However, looked from another perspective, there was another Yugoslavia, which did not imply partisans and socialism, but also kingdom, aristocracy and private property. It was Yugoslavia before the Second World War, long before I was born, but my ancestors, my other grandfather and grandmother, were part of it, and as young capitalists in Skopje (Macedonia) in the 1920s, in the era of the birth of SHS, they built houses, factories and bought property that will be taken away, and they themselves will be called “rotten capitalists”. That is my Yugoslavia, contradictory, romantic and tragic, and paradoxical.

When we were children, in the 80s of the 20th century, I did not know another nation except Yugoslav, my friends, now I know, most were Muslims and Croats, some a Serb, but all were the same for me and such a spirit was built in Yugoslavia, especially in Bosnia where they swore in everything with “My dear Tito!”. I loved Tito, because we all loved him, we glued stickers with his face at home, we had him on the notebooks and every day we watched him on the wall of the classroom. But my grandfather did not love Tito. Why? Because my grandfather loved Stalin, and Tito betrayed Stalin. But why would anyone like a mass killer? To understand this, you need to imagine a young man who fought for the socialist ideal in the war and could not give up that for what he received 12 bullets. But he did not talk about it, except when he was provoked by the spies of the system in the National Liberation Army Club, so he could not refrain himself. And then they reported him and he ended up on Goli Otok, twice in two and a half years.

…in the tragedy hides the joy of living…

My grandmother waited for him, the first and second time. In Yugoslavia there were no divorces, at least not as much as today, there was no internet, there were no hundreds of channels on TV, there were no mobile phones and no one did selfies, the cult of the person was dedicated to one and only character – Tito, but we had everything we need, freedom, parents returning from work by 3 o’clock PM, birthday parties with Coca-Cola and chios, playing outside, endlessly playing outside on the street when the dense Sarajevo smog, from which the snow turned black, was a normal part of everyday life, and the children were calling each-other going from door to door instead on the mobile phone. I’m not saying that everything was better, but it was certainly different.

This is Yugoslavia for me, my country that no longer exists, my childhood and friends from all nations and religions, the Kingdom of SHS and the Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia, the King, Tito and Stalin, the Brotherhood and Unity and Goli Otok, capitalism and Coca-Cola Socialism, freedom, disintegration, war, death and the loss of all my friends from childhood … a story that has been told many times, but who has not survived it will never find out that in the tragedy hides the joy of living.

Bert Stein
Dec 11, 2018

The books of the series “Small Factopedia” are aimed at younger population and their acquaintance with some of the most important figures from the world of science, art, music, culture and the influence that they had on the humanity, but also on our lives. Explore the “Extraordinary Facts” of their lives and be inspired to find out more about what makes these people special, and you may want to do something more about yourself, the people around you, and – why not – change the world!

Extraordinary Facts From the Life of Albert Einstein

Editor: Branko Prlja
Edition: Small FActopedia: Science
Year: 2017
Format: 10 cm
Volume: 60 p.
ISBN: 978-608-65839-5-8

Extraordinary Facts From the Life of Nikola Tesla

Editor: Branko Prlja
Edition: Small FActopedia: Science
Year: 2017
Format: 10 cm
Volume: 60 p.
ISBN: 978-608-65839-4-1

The purpose of the edition “I want to be …” is to explore children’s dreams and create a creative basis for their further development and implementation.

The first book of this edition “Horses” (or “a manual on how to become a real cowgirl”) examines the interest of the author, Nina Prlja, for horseback riding and horses, her commitment, internal struggle and her results achieved in this field, with a focus on love of drawing and horses. These two major interests of her are joined in a creative product that is interesting to read for the younger and the adult population as well.

Horses (a manual on how to become a real cowgirl)

Illustrations: Nina Prlja
Edition: I want to be…, Book 1
Year: 2015
Format: 15 cm
Volume: 32 p. (color)
ISBN: 978-608-65839-2-7

2013  Umbrella Without a Hand To Carry It

2010  News From the Unconscious

2015  Letters, In a Word!

2015  (Un)finished Stories

Visit us at Book Fair (Goten’s stall)!

(Un)finished Stories

Ideas: Ivan Prlja
Illustrations: Nina Prlja
Edition: Kapka, book 1
Year: 2015
Format: 10 cm
Volume: 60 p.
ISBN: 978-608-65839-1-0

Letters, In a Word!

Ideas: Kapka
Illustrations: Nina Prlja
Edition: ABC, Book 3
Year: 2015
Format: 10 cm
Volume: 60 p.
ISBN: 978-608-65839-0-3

2005  News in Wonderland
2006  Money Kills
2007  News From My Grandma’s Basement

2009  Dossier: Planet X