Sunday, January 11, 2009

Balkan Beauty and the Beast

They were just a bunch of kids playing football in a misty mountain town outside Sarajevo when a sniper opened fire, killing three of them before they were able to take cover.

"He was professional," the Bosnian bartender said with a shrug of his shoulders, referring to the speed and accuracy of the shooter. The first victim, shot a few meters away from him, had been his cousin.

***

We left for the Balkans one morning in early September. After just arriving from the States the night before, I woke with difficulty at 3:30 a.m. and cabbed it back to the airport with my Polish flatmate Julia and her friend Dan, a tall Czech with a shaved head and pigment-loss rings around his eyes. We flew out on a 6 a.m. flight to Split, in the southern part of coastal Croatia. They were looking forward to lots of beach time. The main attraction for me was further inland, up in the mountains.

For our first night, Julia had reserved a room for us in Trogir, a little coastal village on the other side of the bay from the large city of Split. We hailed a cab at the airport, and I chatted up the driver during the ten minute ride. With broken English, he threw some complimentary adjectives at us in response to a question about Trogir. I also asked him about Croatia's path to EU membership. With its coast, the country and its economy have fared better than most of the other former Yugoslav Republics, and so EU membership is on the horizon. But the cabbie was skeptical of what the Euro would do to the economy and the autonomy of the country. After the breakup and wars for independence and control of Yugoslavia, he was tentative to give up any hard-won freedoms.

Days in a Daze
Like any ancient coastal city, Trogir had to be ready for naval assault. Parts of the walls and fortresses of the old city can still be seen, and are well preserved for us tourists. Wandering on the narrow whitish stone streets through the maze of whitish stone buildings, we eventually found our house and were shown to our room by the owner. He spoke a little English, but had to think hard to express himself. Julia asked him about beaches, and he pointed a few out on the map.

"Please, please," he responded to our thanks, nodding and smiling sheepishly.

Jet lagged and tired as hell, my body wanted nothing more than to crash, but I fought off the urge as it was still late morning, and followed my travel companions on their search for the beach. Staying clear of the cars, we walked along a garbage-strewn road passing a slab of concrete along the water before turning back when we realized that that had been the beach. The two Slavs unfurled their towels on the cement and caught some rays while I sat on the wall, my toes splashing in the sea. Vehicles whizzed by on the road behind us, and there was trash everywhere, but I was comforted to see a lot of life in the water. Schools of small fish lazily drifted near my feet before jerking in another direction, shrimp dashed along the bottom, and a crab crawled up the side of my wall. The water was cool and clear and I popped in for a quick dip, then returned to my seat again to dumbly watch the sea creatures. My head perked up when a busty young blond laid out her towel aways down from us, and Dan's did too when she took off her top. We looked at each other, then suggested Julia to do the same. She ignored us.

After awhile, I left the Slavs on the beach for a nap in our flat, and awoke groggily several hours later to find Dan on the balcony, quietly rolling a joint.

"Where the hell did you get that?" I asked.

Not taking his sunglassed-eyes off his work, he nodded at a small tub of Nivea skin cream. Inside sat a little bag of weed that he had hidden in the cream. The fucker had flown with illegal drugs in his bag.

"What if there had been dogs, dude?"

He shrugged. Czechs.

The night was spent exploring the fishing boats and lit up stone buildings of Trogir, but I remember very little due to my sleep deprivation, and walked around in a daze.


SPLIT, Croatia

The next day we bussed back around the bay to Split. To keep myself occupied during the long ride, I sipped from a nearly empty water bottle and blew in it a low tone to alert Dan whenever a smoking hot Croatian chick (of which there were several) entered the bus. The system had been devised the night before at an outdoor restaurant, and would serve us well for the trip.

Split is a nearly 2000-year-old city located in the Dalmatia region of Croatia. With its white stone buildings and fortresses, it looks like Trogir, though on a much grander scale. The old town and surrounding areas are uniformly built from dirty white stone, and then encircled by a wall. Though unimpressive on the outside, from within it was something else entirely, bringing to mind images of Minas Tirith, the besieged "White City" in the Lord of the Rings movies. The streets again were a narrow maze of whitish stone walkways between whitish stone buildings. A large tower protrudes from the ruins and provides a view of the water. Marching up some steps within the city walls, we came upon a bar and took one of the few small tables against the opposite building outside, which stood only about ten feet away. As the night progressed and the bar filled up, people spilled out to the walkway, and pedestrians had to wade through the crowd of young people just to pass through. I blew my bottle several times, but we never worked up the courage to talk to anyone. Instead we drank a lot and blamed our cowardice on the presence of Julia. With Dan hiccuping loudly and uncontrollably, we retreated late to our rented room just outside the city walls, and slept hard.

Leaving for the beach the next morning, we greeted our landlady, a pleasant and friendly-looking old woman with toes jutting out from her sandaled-feet at a 45 degree angle. The day before she had given us a tour of the room completely in her native Croatian, describing features such as the curtains and the air conditioner remote. I smiled at her blankly, but as she was speaking a Slavic language, my Polish and Czech companions told me later they had understood some of what she'd said. Apparently the last guys in the room had nearly frozen themselves by inadvertantly cranking up the AC.


We followed our city map to the sea, passing numerous mangy cats along the way. They blinked slowly in the shade of trees and flipped their tails. The beach was on a cove with two long peninsulas curving inward on both sides. I sat on my towel for a bit and stole glances at a American girl in street clothes gradually work up the courage to undress and sun herself in her underwear. I blew in my bottle for Dan, redundantly as he had already noticed, then took a splash.

Early that evening we caught a boat to the island of Brač ("Brahtch"), just off the coast. Sadly there was no outdoor seating, so I grabbed a place by the window for the hour long cruise. They pumped a hits radio station into the cabin, but I tried to ignore it and with my head pressed against the window, gazed at the sea. The waves lulled me into a dreamy and relaxed state, and I was about to doze off when a black dorsal fin directly in my field of vision broke the surface of the water. Half asleep, I thought I had imagined it, but the fin again curled up above the waves and then fluidly sliced down. Julia, sitting behind me, gasped and pointed it out to Dan, and I followed it with my eyes. The dolphin swam past us, rising and submerging in the water, a wave pattern through the waves.

the Island Village of Bol
We arrived at the island town of Bol just before sunset. A massive green ridge rose from behind the light-colored buildings, grouped together along the shore. The anchor chains of the sail and rowboats were visible through the shallow blue water, and a few screeching seagulls hovered above the beach. It was a pretty little place.

Hauling our bags, we left the commotion on the dock but were stopped by a man with wind-tussled orange hair and a half-buttoned shirt. He barked a few words incomprehensibly at us, and we looked back blankly until Dan realized he was offering us accommodation in Croatian-accented German.

"Dri nachts?! Zwei!?" he said, holding up thumb and forefinger. "Achtzig Euro!"

We agreed to look at it, and he walked us to his house, pointing out his boat along the way. Upon arrival we were pleased to find a nice three room flat and a balcony with a view of the sea. Not a bad deal for 80 Euro. We played a three-way variation of paper-rock-scissors using ones and twos to assign the two bedrooms, and Julia won her privacy. Dan and I looked at each other and shrugged.

That night on the way back to town, we passed a mongrel dog sitting outside a shack. The makeshift door, which was closed behind him, didn't completely fill the doorway and light poured out of the wide cracks. He glared at us through the darkness and sniffed the air. On our walk home, feeling the courage of a few beers, I approached and tried to pet him. His eyes were foggy, but he bared his teeth when my hand was close enough, and I snatched it back before he had a chance to bite. Mean ol' blind dog.

My Slavic travel companions were anxious to hit the beach, so the next day we went to a pointed and stony peninsula that cuts into the sea, aptly named Zlatni Rat, meaning "Golden Scythe." We laid out our towels on the slant of the embankment, and with hands extended out to my sides, I waded into the clear water. A few big yachts had come about and anchored only a few hundred feet away. My feet sank beneath the water-worn stones with each step.

I tried sunning myself on the beach, but got restless and went for a lazy walk inland along the peninsula. The pebbles crunched beneath my feet and the wind and waves tickled my bare skin. I was completely relaxed, so much that I failed to realize when I first entered the nudist section of the beach. My initial surprise quickly changed to curiosity though, and I tried to look around discretely for some talent. But it was mostly old couples, so I returned to my towel.

When vicious dark clouds began moving in from the west, the peninsula started to clear out. Dan and Julia retreated with the others, but I stayed behind to witness the full force of the rainstorm.

"Pussies," I said to myself smugly, but the temperature fell drastically as the first few drops hit, and I had to leave as well.

That evening the three of us sat on the patio with our orange-haired landlord and his wife over a few glasses of red wine. The man spoke to us in simple German, and his wife spoke to us in simple English, and when they found out my travel companions were fellow Slavs, they switched to full-on Croatian. I spaced out while Dan and Julia struggled to keep up. They asked what brought us to their country, and related stories of their war for independence, from a certain point of view. The wife mentioned the Croatian city of Vukovar and Hiroshima in the same sentence. Vukovar is located deep into the Balkan peninsula, far from the sea and almost on top of what is now the Serb-Croat border. It was there that a self-organized army of 2,000 Croats held off the Serb army for 87 days before being overrun. Most were killed. The woman shook her head in silence, and with my head buzzing a little from the wine, I heard the sound of the waves.

the Long Road Up the Mountains

I awoke early the next morning and leaving Dan and Julia behind, caught a boat back to the mainland. Once in Split, I boarded an international bus for the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The ride was long, and breathtakingly beautiful. The driver first took us south on a two lane highway along the coast of Croatia. The blue ocean splashed softly against the beaches far below, and the land rose quickly and steeply into the mountains where we drove. Up ahead I could see another mass of rain clouds attempting an assault on the Balkan Peninsula, but they were repelled by the high mountain walls and curled upward and back towards the sea. We passed by circular green coves, and I noticed places where the flat water was rippled by rogue gusts of wind.

Halfway through the nine-hour ride, we turned inland along an east-bound road which led us higher into the mountains and into Bosnia. The temperature swiftly dropped as the elevation rose, and the craggly gray cliffs changed to green hills and then smooth white stone and then back again. I saw a whisp of white cloud laying against the face of a dark mountain like a long mustache, and dozed off.

The woman on my left snapped me back to attention with a poke in the shoulder and some chattering that I didn't understand. She had a problem with her phone, and was asking me something. I shrugged blankly, and handed her mine, which didn't work for her either. Later when I wasn't able to get through to my hostel on my phone, she kindly lent me hers.

"Hlava, hlava," I said, mispronouncing the Croatian thank you of "hvala" and nodding like Rainman.

We stopped briefly in the Bosnian city of Mostar nearly seven hours into the ride, and I noticed not only a large Crusifix on a hill but also several mosques with their skinny rocket-shaped minarets poking above the low skyline. As it was our first stop in the new country, I hopped out to pull some Bosnian Marks from an ATM, collected my new money, then promptly forgot to take back my bank card. Luckily an Australian woman from the bus found it and ran me down waving the card in her hand. Disaster averted.

During the Balkan wars in the early 90's, the Croatians massacred the entrenched but poorly-equipped Bosnians in the battle for control of this city. According to Wikipedia, the Croatian commander Slobodan Praljak is currently on trial for war crimes committed there, including the destruction of the 16th-Century Stari Most ("Old Bridge"). It has since been rebuilt, but I didn't see it. After looking at this picture, I wish I had.



SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina

In case you don't know, Sarajejvo was the sight of a great battle in the early 90's, the longest siege in modern warfare, again according to Wikipedia. From April 5, 1992 to February 29, 1996 the Bosnian-held city was attacked by superior-armed forces, this time Serbs, who shelled and sniped from the surrounding hills and buildings, but refrained from an all-out invasion fearing the costs of urban warfare. In that time, 12,000 people were killed (mostly Bosnians), a lot more were wounded and the city's population decreased by 36%. Many more certainly would have died had it not been for arms and supplies brought through the Tunnel, which ran from a Bosnian-held part of the city to the Sarajevo Airport on the outskirts, secured by the U.N. (which did little else until the ceasefire).

Upon reaching our destination, I threw my bag over my shoulder, withdrew my map and plotted a course to the city center. I had secured a hostel for the following day, but that evening I was bedless. A dweeby kid from Vancouver had the same problem, so we teamed up and started off through the parking lot. I ignored a slightly grungy dude's offer of "accomodation?" but the kid stopped to hear more. He proposed driving us to his cousin's place, which sounded a bit suspect, but the price he quoted was decent and I figured if the shit went down, the Canadian couldn't outrun me.

As he drove, he explained in broken but understandable English that we had to pick up his cousin, and I raised my eyebrows, ready to do battle if the dude was springing a trap. But after waiting a few minutes outside an apartment complex, a middle-aged woman came running out and got in the car. She didn't speak English, but excitedly yelled back to us in German from the passenger seat.

We got dropped at a surprisingly nice house near the river that cuts through the center of town. The driver asked for a tip, and I gave him a few coins. He had earned it. The woman showed us to our separate rooms, which were clean and cozy. Jackpot, all for the price of a bed in a hostel. Good job Canadian and Bosnian dudes.

It was incredibly colder up in Sarajevo than it had been on the coast, and I bundled up with the few clothes I had before setting out to explore. The western half of the city is surrounded by a green bluff, and houses poked up from among the trees. I crossed the shallow but wide river and watched an old tram roll by in the darkness. The streets were fairly narrow for a larger city, and as the city marked the place where the Ottoman and Hapsburg Empire rubbed up against each other, the architecture varied from a Turkish style to a more traditionally European one. I passed several pretty churches, both Serb Orthodox and Croatian Catholic, and in bed that night I was lightly roused as an iman through a PA system quietly sang the Call to Prayer.

The next morning the woman provided us with a light breakfast in her dining room, and we comically tried to make conversation.

"Will it be cold again today, or warm?" I asked her, speaking loudly and slowly.

She looked back blankly.

"Cold?" I said again, rubbing my shoulders. "Brrrr!"

"Ah, kalt!" she said. "Ja, ja, kalt! Nein varm."

We paid and left. A light drizzle rudely complimented the cool air. I parted ways with the Canadian kid and left to find my hostel. Again I was lucky, as it was not only close to the woman's house, but also directly in the center of the city. After checking in I perused some guide brochures, plunked my bag down under my bunk and took another stroll around the city, this time with the benefit of daylight. I noticed lots of hot young women always in tight jeans, many of whom surprised me by boldly holding my eye contact. I guess when you're born into a war zone, the opposite sex isn't very intimidating. The Bosnians are Muslims, and some wore traditional garb. One stylish woman's burka matched her purple, high-heeled pumps. After a late afternoon nap and a tasty and traditional dinner at a cafeteria-style restaurant, I was in the mood for adventure.

the Club
I half-heartedly looked around the hostel for a drinking buddy, but didn't come upon anyone promising, so I started out on my own. I had read about a place with Tuesday-night live music in the tourist brochures called the Club, and found it after a brisk walk through town. Once inside, like a moth to a light bulb, I wandered towards a TV in a side room playing an English football game, but a young waiter with a shaved head cut me off and said something in Bosnian. Seeing my blank reaction, he immediately switched to fluent English and saying something about a private party, steered me towards the hallway, where I could see the TV through the double-sided bar.

Elbows on the counter, I gulped my beer and watched the little players in bright jerseys run around the pitch. When the bartender, a lean fellow with rolled up sleeves and an apron looked over at me while drying a mug, I asked him a generic question about the game to make conversation. Shy and a little standoffish at first, he told me his name was Mirnes after we had chatted for a bit, then relaxed and opened up. As a kid, he loved wearing his Michael Jordan jersey and Bulls shorts. After the Balkan Wars, President Clinton came to his village and shook his hand, along with many others in the crowd of grateful Bosnians. Cops in Sarajveo are stupid, and after being pulled over, he was once able to talk his way out of a DUI, though he was hammered. And when he was a boy, his cousin was shot dead a few meters from him by a Serb sniper while they played football.

I asked him what he thought of Serbs, and he shrugged. But another waiter heard my question and angrily barked something I couldn't make out on his way past. He may have said the f-word

"They killed his father," Mirnes said. "He doesn't like them."

When I asked him if he had Serb co-workers, he nodded over to a man in a bow-tie, the head waiter and his boss. I asked him if he had any Serb friends, and he said no. He added that he didn't have any problem with them, as long as they left him alone.

"You touch me, I touch you," he said, this time with a little life in his eyes.

The band started filing in, carrying their instruments, but otherwise the place was empty. Two tall and hot singers followed, both wearing tight jeans, dangly earrings and pony tails. Mirnes poured me a shot of something called "rakkia," and it took us a few minutes of questions and clarification to agree that the English word for its main component was plums. He urged me to try other flavors, and bought me a few more shots, but when I offered to return the favor, he politely declined. It was Ramadan, and he was abstaining from alcohol during the month-long religious observance. I guess the rest of the "Bosniaks" (Bosnian muslims in Sarajevo) were too, based on the lack of attendance at the Club.

Fairly sloshed now, I half-listened to Mirnes tell stories of drunkenly dancing with girls behind the bar, and beating unruly customers on the doorstep. Apparently the Club is rocking on weekends. A short man appeared to my right, and on his phone showed me a video of himself flamboyantly juggling and pouring flaming drinks behind the bar. I asked him some questions in simple English, and through Mirnes he explained that he could understand everything I said, but couldn't speak the language. He mentioned Amsterdam and black prostitutes with a smile, and looked just like Dave Attell.

When the band started its second set, I left my friends behind at the bar and caught some surprisingly good versions of "Hound Dog" and "Black Fire." When the band wrapped up, I put on my coat and visited Mirnes on the way out to shake his hand and loudly promise to come back tomorrow night. He smiled and went back to washing glasses.

Haris and the Tour of the City
My head was thumping when I awoke the next morning. But I had made a reservation for a tour of Sarajevo, so I cleaned myself up as quickly as I could and headed out. The guide was a little dude named Haris. He had squinty, Asian-looking eyes, and dark hair trimmed short on the sides but left longer on the scalp from front to back. Reminded me a bit like a rooster. He had a friendly face, a nasally voice and said things like "twelve thousands peoples, including many childrens, were killed." He and another non-English speaking Bosnian drove our group in two large vans around the city, taking us to Sniper Alley, the Olympic Village from the '84 Winter Games, the Tunnel, a traditional Bosnian restaurant and the UN-financed and newly-reconstructed parliament building. A dark sedan pulled out of the underground garage, and Haris pointed out the Bosnian president, Dr. Haris Silajdžić, sitting in the back seat.

"He designed the Tunnel," he said. "Engineer."

On the outskirts of city, the Tunnel opens up into a little house next to the airfield. We walked through the surviving twenty meters of the 1.5m x 1.5m passage, crouching under the beams on the ceiling and high stepping over the rails on the floor. An estimated 20 million tons of food entered through it, and over a million people passed in or out of it. Without it, the city would have fallen.

At Sniper Alley, a street which provided no cover from the excellent shooting positions in the hills above, the guide sadly recounted the horrors of the siege. There were still bullet holes in some of the buildings, and Sarajevo Roses on the sidewalk -  mortar scars in the concrete filled with red resin. They look like splatter patterns, which in a way, they are. I noticed several others while walking around the city. All were faded and chipping away. I hope they find a more lasting way to preserve the roses.


DUBROVNIK, Croatia
The bus ride out of Bosnia and Herzegovina was shorter but no less beautiful than the one in. Driving through a coastal village, I noticed a large warship flying an American flag and floating quietly near the shore. At the border a Croatian soldier boarded the bus and briefly flipped through my passport, and I was back in.

At the southern tip of Croatia, the walled center of Dubrovnik made Split look dirty and cheap by comparison. The bright white stone buildings, walls, and fortresses contrasted incredibly with the orange roofs and clear blue water. I met Dan and Julia at the clock tower within the walls, and we caught up on the last few days while walking up the steep stone steps of the city in search of food. A waiter with bad teeth and a navy and white striped shirt convinced us to sit at one of his outdoor tables in the narrow passageway, and entertained us by hassling other passers-by to do the same. When one tourist told him "not yet," he scoffed.

"All day people tell me the same thing: 'Not yet'."

A dude who can aptly be described as tall, dark and handsome sat alone at an adjacent table. We rebuffed his initial attempts to inject himself into our conversation, but after a few glasses of wine we became friends. He told us he was a Dutchman touring Eastern Europe for a month, and that he operates high-tech digging equipment, a job lucrative enough that he can work when he wants. He was alright, and we invited him to come along with us.

The sun was setting and we were merry with wine, so we went to the sea. Dark by the time we arrived and devoid of people, we luckily found a tiki bar still serving drinks, and kept the party going. Standing on one foot on the stony beach, I wobbily pulled off all my clothes and changed into my swimming suit. The night was cold and the surf colder, but I awkwardly ran through the water until it cut me off at the knees. It hit my face and torso with a smack and I got a mouthful of saltwater. As a child of the Midwest, the taste of the sea will always be a surprise to me. Julia stood on the beach, nagging maternally for me to come back in, and I did after my dulled nerves regained their senses and alerted me to the temperature.

Wrapped in a towel, I took a seat next to Dan at a plastic table. The sea washed gently on the beach and we had to speak up over the hiss of the waves splashing the pebbles. The Dutchman, chatting up Julia at the bar, shrewdly brought bottles of beer for us and continued to do so for the remainder of the night. Satiated with Croatian "pivo" and ignoring Julia's polite requests and then demands to quiet down, Dan and I leaned back in our chairs and told increasingly loud and dirty stories, and slapped each other on the back as we cackled hysterically.

The next day after a light breakfast, we hit another beach for a few hours and watched a school group attempt to construct sea-worthy vessels out of cardboard boxes and plastic sheeting. Most failed, but one of the boats made it out aways and back without taking in much water. I watched from a floating raft ten meters from the shore, then cannon-balled back into the sea.

For the final afternoon of our holiday, we bought a ticket and dodging families of Germans and Russians snapping constant photos, walked on the wall which encircles the entire city. At the corners sat raised stone forts, and I peeked through the small arrow-shooting holes down at my friends on the wall, and the beautiful clear water below.