After much trouble and effort I managed to enroll at Marlboro College, Vermont (USA), a small but prestigious educational institution. They offered me a best possible scholarship, based on my needs. I only needed to specify the income of my parents, and they would use mathematical formulas and matrices to calculate how much I should pay.
Hyperinflation was increasing, my parents’ salary was 10 German marks at the time. I didn’t want it to sound too little so I wrote 15, thinking of the ways to get the remaining five. I received immediate reply from the college: “Thank you very much for the form, but it seems there was a mistake. Send it again. “I sent a new form, I wrote 15 marks, and I got another letter from the college. “There is a mistake again, you did not properly specify the amount.” They thought I had mistakenly written 15 instead of 15,000 or 1,500 marks. After another exchange of letters (this was the time without the Internet) I gave up and so did they.
This event, that occurred twenty years ago, reminds me more and more of the relations between Serbia and the European Union. It is clear that both have good and pure intentions – Serbia wants to become an equal member of EU and Brussels would like to accept the remaining European countries primarily because of its own interests – market expansion, greater security, fight against crime. But it seems we do not understand each other very well. While they are looking for one thing, we reply with something else. As Nikola Pasic said in an anecdote: ‘You are right, and he is right, and the one who claims it’s not possible for both of you to be right, is also right.’
I dropped the Marlboro College because I got an alternative. I sent a letter to an American publishing house inquiring where and how to get their book ‘Scholarships Register.’ I got a reply from the director’s secretary whose name I still remember – Erika Milovic – she photocopied and sent me the Registry and some other materials without asking for a penny. I got a scholarship very quickly, and then another one and another one…
Serbia has no alternative, we don’t have someone like Erika Milovic who would offer a better solution out of pure humanity and compassion, and without any corrupt interests. Russia, China, the non-aligned movement – these are all side roads which just prevent us from making right decision quickly and without wrong calculations.
Sometimes it could seem to us that we are not welcome, that we are asked to fill several ‘forms’ more than anyone else, and our applications would be returned as incorrect because we probably made some mistakes, but we must bear one thing in mind – we are not doing this for them, but for ourselves.