Bosnia

Since my late 30’s I started to desire my own home but it was a mild desire. Traveling always had the priority, until I reached the 45 and it became obvious I spend more time in camp spots than on the bicycle. Now that Geo and I have an own home, including 4 cats (accidently 3 too many) I find it remarkable that the pull to get back home and water-bath my tomatoes is rather strong.

Is the limit based on being-away time before this homely pull kicks in, or is it the destination that we set which has been reached?

The destination is Mljet, a natural park at the coast of Croatia. It is here that I will start kickbiking around on the island. However, when we get there we turn our heels very quickly, back to Bosnia as if bolted by lightening.

We start off with with a wheel blocked by brake pads. I am proud of Geo that he doesn’t whine but start to fix it immediately: as it is not as simple as fixing a bicycle. In the meantime I pose and hand tools.

I see suddenly no desire in kicking around while I sit comfortably in a van. I see little to no charm in kicking on an island that is steep, covered in prickly impenetrable bushes flourishing on rocky uneven ground. To kick on the one existing main road dotted with holiday maker cars is something not so very appealing. The best surface for kickbiking are unpaved paths or old forgotten sealed roads. Preferably flattish.

I should have studied the map a bit better perhaps, but I actually enjoy the going in our Sunflower van. Our compromise works.

We speed out of Hungary into Croatia where the first night is spend on heat emanating from concrete slabs. Toilet paper, condoms and mosquitoes surrounding us while the smell of rat and mice poop is mild. We are away from the road and behind an abandoned Serbian building with artillery holes visible.

Leaving this spot with first sunlight, after a few tractors boomed past our camp spot, a place not exactly one you would dream of when thinking Croatian camping. Early morning we gather our breakfast in huge supermarket Kaufland in Vukovar. At a terrace outside among smokers coughing we overlook the clientele, quite a few of them war victims. ‘Alive and Kicking’ from the Simple Minds plays over the speakers. Eighties music somehow is popular, here, in Hungary and throughout Bosnia.

My precious regular routine is collapsed, soon heading to impairment of the bowel movement and over sensitivity. It reaches a climax when we go buy breakfast in Bingo supermarket in the outskirts of Sarajevo. Although burek is my favorite sort of hearty pastry, together with rubbery fried fish in an extremely noisy cafe where the coffee is undrinkable strong, where the toilet is out of order and the music too loud and thus I can not help but escape the scene abruptly. Leaving the breakfast table and Geo behind in a daze of confusion, unthankfulness and unease. I am laden with a headache throbbing almost unnoticeable soft in the back of my head, constipation and already ongoing tiredness. It is 40 degrees and we have a guided tour through Sarajevo coming up.

As soon as I see the old town of Sarajevo I am feeling rather quite well. A sudden dash of interest and that good old recognition feeling makes me like the town at once. The people are remarkable optimistic, friendly, easy going and pleasant. I feel good among the veils, niqabs, hijabs and obvious not belonging Muslim men appearing straight from Kuwait, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh. Apparently, that is where the overly pious looking Muslims hail from. They seek a mild Islamic place to live where there is cool air, freshness, mountains clad in trees and rivers, lakes and affordable prices. It’s all here, though we have no time to stroll around.

‘Thank you for helping us,’ says Adnan to Geo when we have this former lieutenant as our city guide of Sarajevo. Geo worked here at the exact same time that Adnan fought. Adnan stories being hit 3 times by grenade shells and bullets, digging a road through dense mountainous forest and being part of the underground tunnel that provided food, makes the tour of the city suddenly come to life. The war gets a face when you meet people who fought it. Filled with personal details about the 3 year siege, his living in a cellar with a goat kept in a corner to marrying the nurse who gave him Dutch stroopwafels made this Funky tour unforgettable.

We found a free parking place in the old town spacy enough for the Renault Master van, including an overseer.

That evening we are advised to go to Igman mountains, free of mines and camping is allowed (to me it seems camping is allowed everywhere). We are above 1000 meter in altitude and I feel we truly reached beauty. To reach such beauty by kickbike would take me a long time.

It is here that I come to the conclusion that bears must be part of the habitation (I declined to go to the Romanian mountains for this reason). That night I sleep less peaceful.

I have a weird interest in abandoned buildings and staying two nights near the ramshackle ski resort buildings up the hill is cool. Once a battleground, the war scars visible, I now climb the ski ramp.

In my ignorance I try walking up the ramp and when my ankles are unable to cope the gradient, I walk backwards up. Until I realize the going gets hard, more or less impossible somehow. Someone shows up telling me there is a stairway at the back of the 112 meter high ramp. ‘It’s safer,’ and it indeed is.

We continue to Mostar. The temperatures waver nicely towards 40 C degrees and that old fashioned holiday feel springs up.

Together with the change of surrounding I can smell the mediterranean. It makes us slow, tired and ice creamy. Not much later my whole system feels like a clogged soft-ice machine.

A photo from when Geo worked in Mostar, taken by a collegue. The town was hard to recognize but hotel Ero still stands, despite bazooka attacks (with Geo outisde at the building).

Mostar appeared hugely intersting, maybe especially because of the Quwaitis, Bangladeshis, Saudies, Turks and immigrant children born in their parents refuge country. A good mix of people in a sort of setting I was 15 years earlier. Now there are girls in string bikinis, oddly tattood limps, floaty lips and plastic inserted boobs on display. Loud, very loud music, hordes of tourists and young and old all amidst a very restaurated old Ottoman town with extreme cobblestones and thick roof plates. I have seen it before in a pure setting, one functioning as the only way of life and without unfitting elements. Geo has seen it in total destruction almost 30 years earlier. It is beautiful and the whole feel of the town is pleasant but 1 hour is enough and we rush out.

Međugorje is next. In 1981 village children started to see the apparition of Maria, the mother of Jesus. Though not recognized fully by the Vatican, the village sees loads of pilgrims. I usually love such places, for the quietness, the soberness, the calm and normality. India has loads of these places and indeed, here I experience the ashram feel immediately. Both tired of the journey and ongoing heat we leave the town but come back a few days later.

Some devotees walk barefoot to the cross placed on a hill, I wear barefoot shoes. One such barefoot devotee, a Croatian lady living in Australia, talks to us. In fact, we have 99% more social contact here than in Hungary. While threading the slippery stones from the cross back down she says: ‘Our Mom knows what’s best for us,’ and ‘Must we do more than our best?’ and ‘Should we go past our will, to suffer, just like She did?’ She talks so much that I wonder how she can concentrate on the deeper thoughts of a pilgrimage? I did not concentrate on such thoughts, only on my own discomfort. That of not being able to have gone through the usual start of the day, no visit to the ‘toilet’ and a late stale breakfast. But then I start wondering ‘is Mary our Mother?’ ‘If God is our Father, there mustn’t be a mother needed but besides that, we, all living creatures, need a female to be born.’ And so this Croatian talkative barefoot pilgrim spurred me on.

At night thunder sounds near and my body feels the shaking of the soil. Next morning the heat is blown out and the smell of wild thyme flourishing. I pluck a bouquet to take home with us.

Morning mass was much clearer. The church fuller than its capacity with people trickling in throughout the service (very annoying but not more than the lady behind me scraping her throat often, producing sharp edgy rasps). An Irish group performed church service, with a fantastic singer playing the guitar. A middle aged pastor preaching. He told us we all have a little Pharisee in us. In order to come closer to God (or, to be purer) we must overthrow hypocrisy. If we feel we are hiding something from our beloved one, or our family, we must stop doing it. What is done in secrecy must be faced, confessed and stopped.

Croatia has become pricey since the recent entree of euro’s. The coastline not only has reached upper class tourism but also built an impressive bridge to bypass Bosnia. It is that bridge we do not take to leave Croatia quicker than we entered.

Food is actually a huge thing for me (not for Geo). I love my garden and the food I am able to place on the table is of a very high level (not because I am so fantastic but Ottolenghi is). The first place we eat in Croatia is an unlucky shot: fully processed and impossible to guess it’s ingredients. The second meal we are about to have in Croatia is one I deny because of it’s ridiculous high price (8 euro for cold coffee). We’re off to Neum. Not that most we eat goes far beyond fast-food though…

Unlike Hungary, where they devour pork, that we both don’t eat, we ask whether the food we order has ‘svinja’ in it. We are looked upon as kafirs, some laugh at us in an almost offense tone.

Neretva delta, Croatia

Bosnia is not part of the EU yet it feels as being away from Europe. Yoghurt, cheese, meat and fruit has a serious, real, delicious, true taste. The people are enthusiastic, avid smokers and not shy to dump their trash where ever it suits them.

Isn’t nature the best place to dump things not needed anymore? Shaved sheep hairs, filled diapers, incompostable wet toilet paper, filled condoms and its wrappings, bathroom tiles, beer cans, animal bones and plastic bottles are often the backdrop, if not the padding of my camp spots. This view is great, the spot concealed from the road but too stinky and dirty for me.

Tourism can be an ugly thing and parking a van just somewhere might not be right. Our camp spots are usually on local proclaimed trash sites, parking spots, dead end streets and usually odd shady places (which you may expect from condoms).

We’re at a gypsie spot, easy to recognize their style, and I would avoid such sites to camp. Geo not and a local tells us gypsies are just fine and they probably are, but I just want to be sure of aloneness and certainly not a trash dump.

Bosnia is not as prosperous as many EU countries yet a whole lot cheaper than Hungary, where income might be as low as Bosnia.

In Bosnia dogs are not substitutes for children, though quite a few stray dogs exist yet they seem friendly.

Yet, there is complication here. As Geo explains: as a result of the Yugoslav wars, 6 countries that had formed Yugoslavia became independent. Bosnia & Herzegovina, Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. The ethnic conflicts continued especially in Bosnia & Herzegovina between Bosnian Serbs, Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Muslims (‘Bosniaks’). Bosnian Serbs on one side and Bosniaks together with Bosnian Croats on the other side were fighting each other. In 1992/1993 a ‘war within a war’ started between the former allies Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks. Most famously in and around the city of Mostar. The Bosnian was is known for its genocides and many war crimes.

I feel at home in Muslim societies. No one looks odd at my self wrapped turban aka head cloth.

In my understanding trouble started after Tito died. Serbs wanted to form a ‘Greater Serbia’. The others wanted instead to become independent countries (as we see today Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, BiH). Underlying were always these ethnic tensions between the 3 entities. Today the independent country of Bosnia & Herzegovina has now 2 equally big entities: the ‘Republika Srpska’ (Republic of Serbia) and the ‘Federation of Bosnia & Herzegovina’. The Federation is inhabited predominantly by Croats and Bosniaks. Then again, there are areas in the federation that are prominent Croat or Bosniak. The ‘Republika Srpska’ is predominantly inhabited by Serbs.

Drvar feels as if in another era. As if we are back in Soviet times where a war went through and time froze soon after that. It is understandable that one wants to be independent but quite obvious it is not really flourishing in this Serbian town. With the river Una flowing through and an abundant nature surrounding, hills and endless forests, this part may be called wonderful.

The route from somewhere on the M – 6.1 near Posusje towards Drvar is incredible far removed from what I think of as Europe. Large open meadows, far reaching unstoppable spaces where no other roads seem to exist. Hill after hill, mountainous bulge after another. Swept beauty and a desire to kickbike through, if not there are bears and mines. I actually also sit so comfortably. We feel truly far away with clear evidence of something terrible happened in the past. Most houses on this South West region bordering Croatia are ghostly, abandoned, ruined. Artillery scars are everywhere, as are shepherds and sheep.

Like in the old days, I enjoy traveling by public transport, Geo the sole driver, we hunt for camp spots together each evening. I get to see the country well and thoroughly. I marvel through the supermarkets, something which tells me much about the country. I get to see many more than would I be on a kickbike. We drink countless coffees (all too strong) and eat out, something I don’t any longer by myself.

For some reason I dislike being in a car and on a motorbike but not in a truck and van.

Last camp is in Podovi, roughly 300 kilometers from home. Our longing to be home is of such a level that we drive back in one go. Back to the garden, to substantial food and my 4 cats. Though, admittedly, I sit like a princess in the co-drivers seat.

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Curious what becomes of the hand dyed swatches I embroider?

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Pricey tents are not less prone to tear and wear or in this case, insect damage. A Hilleberg tent is easy to repair if you know how to.