It happened yesterday, when I was finishing my morning coffee. Croatian coffee is cooked twice, resulting in thick and grainy syrup at the bottom of every cup. I'd gotten used to it after my third or fourth cup in Zagreb, but yesterday morning I realized how completely alien that last sip is to anything I'd ever drank back home.
The grounds get stuck in between your teeth, and as a result coffee is served with a tall glass of water at most coffeehouses here. But the point is, I had stopped relating coffee here to coffee back home. That last sip had become the norm to me, instead of it functioning as some sort of exotic experience exclusive to Croatia.
It hasn't happened only with coffee. In fact, I've almost completely lost the ability or desire to relate my experiences here with life in the United States. After the 10th or 11th time I said, "in America we do this too," or "at home, we would have done this in a different way," the whole exercise had become futile. Even things here that seem American with a capital A, like the organization of family life around television, aren't like anything I am used to. Despite the monolithic presence of American entertainment media on Croatian television, this interaction between media and individuals is still a uniquely Croatian experience, outside of my imported standards and perspectives.
But sometimes, it's difficult not to compare things or look for all things Western in everyday life abroad. When a friend and I got involved in the anarchist community in Zagreb, we expected things to be similar to our experiences in the United States. We expected that the Movement, intentionally capitalized, would be the same anywhere across the globe. But even with anarchism, imported standards don't apply in Croatia. When we were invited to take part in Food Not Bombs, these differences bubbled to the top of the figurative coffeepot.
In Croatia and the U.S., Food Not Bombs is a loose network of people who cook vegan food (sometimes, if not usually, salvaged from dumpsters) and distribute it in a public place. But this is where the similarities end. In Zagreb, the practice is called Hrana, A Ne Oru?je. This translates directly to "Food, But Not Weapons."
The difference is telling. As we served food outside the main train station, there were also anti-NATO pamphlets and a petition to stop gentrification in the city center. In this way, the practice takes on a much broader mission, where in the states, or at least in D.C., FNB's main aim is to feed the city's homeless population.
I had become used to recognizing my own privilege in my interactions with my host family, but once I started working with the anarchist community here, I found a lot of privilege in places I hadn't expected to. For instance, Food But Not Weapons is not a weekly or even monthly occurrence in Zagreb. As it was explained to me, the organizers have jobs, are in school or have other demands on their time that bars them from keeping the more rigid schedule I've seen with FNB in the States.
My friend Jane called it a "transplantable experience." A group of people or a social interaction that, at least externally, could be transplanted into my everyday life in America. But despite knowing folks back home with dreadlocks of equal or greater length, the similarities were only external.
While the people who serve Food But Not Weapons look the same and maybe act the same as people in the states who serve Food Not Bombs, they certainly aren't transplantable. But, like the grainy coffee, their experience is the norm here. Mine is the outside perspective and my notions of difference only exist to me.
So, for me, it's easier to ignore the difference. It makes every day life here in Croatia a lot less cataclysmic if I just accept that nothing here will be transplantable, western or American with a capital A. The Movement, much like the coffee, is rooted in a specifically Croatian perspective and experience.
