A BALKAN ROAD TRIP FAIRYTALE
“You problem have?”
Viktor my friendly waiter asks as he sets down a small bowl of sugared fritters with my coffee. The perplexed look on my face is not because my new landlord, a rangy toothless man of tall tales and pockets full of unanswered mobile phones, has seemingly disappeared - and my rented flat still had no internet connection he had promised. Hence getting to know Viktor at the local cafe around the corner….or that my Croatian language course has been postponed for another week leaving me with not a lot to do in sleepy, wintertime Split.
My puzzled expression, has more to do with a news story I had just come across on my laptop. Johnny Depp is nearby. As in Serbia.
I find it fitting that Depp is the honorary guest at an offbeat indie film and music festival, organized by the notoriously rebellious Serbian producer and director Emir Kusturica. With his own set of personal politics and a lineup of raucous films that are like a wild ride through Balkan gypsy culture, politics, and war, Kusturica has a cult like, bad boy status in film circles. Whether or not he stirs the pot, he has taken home not one, but two Palm D’or awards at Cannes. His epic film Underground, is a nearly 3 hour compilation of madness, music, and misfits. I glanced around the empty cafe, and the equally empty Peristil square outside the cafe windows, and back to Viktor grinning at me from the bar.
Kusturica is known to rub elbows with some interesting names - filmmaker Jim Jarmush, Anthony Hopkins, Diego Maradone, and has a long running camaraderie with Hollywood bad boy Johnny Depp. The avant-garde, ‘anti-Hollywood’, Kustendorf festival hosts special guests each year, and takes place in Drvengrad, Kusturica’s self created, for film, faux-mountain village deep in the western Serbian hills. By my quick calculations, that makes Johnny Depp only a day’s drive away from where I am in Split, on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia.
Edgy filmmakers, live music, and Depp - all taking place in a very off grid location. Topped off with the challenge of getting there, and it sounded like the perfect distraction and cure for the crossroads in life I was at.
My boots echo in the empty square at 5am as I pass down to the harbour, startling a few stray cats as I cut across the shuttered market square. Only a few lost souls are hanging around the bus station as I board my Sarajevo bound bus. I simultaneously wonder if my personal belongings will still be in my apartment when I return, and a fleeting moment of doubt about my spontaneous journey that has some gaping logistical holes in it.
The bus travels inland and into Bosnia-Herzegovina, as a weak sun fights to shine through the clouds. The greyness of the day does nothing for the towns the bus passes through. I gaze out at rows of bleak socialist era apartment blocks, the only colours coming from the laundry hanging from balconies, snapping in the wind.
I wake up to the traffic jams of Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital. The smoke of a thousand wood-burning stoves hangs over the valley, lending the surrounding hills a ghostly appearance. I spy minarets poking out from the haze. Skeletons of bombed-out buildings rub shoulders with modern glass-fronted shopping malls. A large sign reading "Hotel Banana City" stands pristine in front of an empty building. The bus driver is playing folk music, whistling and tapping the steering wheel along to the beat.
The Sarajevo bus station does not provide me with the answers that my impulsive internet searches had led me to expect. I receive an apathetic shake of the head, followed by a dismissive gesture and expression from a haggard women behind murky glass, waving her hand at me as if I was a small fly - and finally a "no today no no NO Serbia!," as she slides the wooden door shut.
Approaching the taxi stand I am quickly surrounded by a circle of hulking, smoking men. Initially bemused by my intended destination, they are more focussed on driving me to a hotel, the ‘best Bosnian restaurant’, or giving me a guided tour of the city. I eventually pick a friendly giant, Dragan. He removes the taxi dome light from the roof and chucks it in the trunk of the old Mercedes, then does the same with my pack, and we are off - the other drivers cheering us on and slapping the roof of the car as we lurched out of the parking lot. I suspect that the price we have agreed is way above the norm, and that this is the main reason for their excitement. I feel victorious anyways.
We make quick friends. Our banter consisting of my limited language skills and Dragan’s animal impressions as he pointed out the window into the snowy fields outside Sarajevo.
“Baawwwwah!”
“Moo!.”
Eventually he becomes embarrassed, opens the glove compartment and pulls out his only CD, “Party Mix 2005!” He smokes and hums along as the road climbs up through fields and pine forests dusted with snow. He pulls up his sleeve and shows me the massive scar running from his elbow to his wrist, his souvenir from four years spent as a soldier during the Bosnian war. We are travelling along a deep canyon, the road following the swollen and milky green river that had breached the embankments. Plastic bags of all colours and sizes were trapped in the branches of half submerged trees.
At a roadside bar what I imagine to be a whole lamb is rotating on a spit in the far corner, while a life-size plastic effigy of Santa Claus holding a saxophone dominates the bar area where a table of men smoke, hunched over their beers. They all stare unabashedly at me as I walk past them to the restroom. On returning to the table, I piece together the conversation that Dragan is engaged in with them. He has told them all that he is driving a hot-shot Canadian journalist to meet Johnny Depp and I allow him that pleasure, and the fascination that everyone is seeming to have at my expense. He chews on a toothpick and winks - we are off again.
Serbian border.
Raised eyebrows from the officials. 3 of them crammed into the station box, cigarettes dangling from their mouths.
Another wink and we are off.
Mokra Gora village is misty and nearing dark, with dim lights shining from the few houses that lined the road. We crawl along, peering out of the car into the fog, Dragan mumbling and cursing under his breathe.
Suddenly he is very serious and blurts out bluntly, "I go home now." and pulls over. Stunned, by this quick change in mood, and no idea where to go, I beg him to do one more sweep of the town to see any signs to this festival.
Huddled under a bus stop, passing around a bottle, three teens are happy to act as guides, in exchange for a ride and the whole mess of them pile in to the back seat of the taxi.
The car is struggling up a muddy and steep road. Mokra Gora which translates to Wet Mountain was living up to its name.
This is where Dragan has had enough of driving his livelihood; the old Mercedes, into uncharted territory. Most likely territory that is evoking loaded memories of his wartime days.
He hands me my pack, and with his furrowed brow slips me his business card, ‘in case I need help’, and pats me on the shoulder. I have grown fond of this gentle giant. A teen grabs my bag and I follow the group up the dark hill imagining the taxi stand chit chat back in Sarajevo, about the crazy little Canadian he dumped in the wilds of Serbia.
With no invite to this exclusive event, I was not really that surprised to learn there was no room for me, in the village of Drvengrad. I did not have a plan B though - also not surprising. After a pretty frosty reception followed by rejection; I found myself and my pack outside again, passing the rakija bottle around with the teens, and wondering what to do.
Enter Illija.
Silver haired, wide grinned, and gumboot wearing and somehow popping out from the darkness. After a quick exchange, I am following him back down that muddy hill wishing I had his boots.
Ensconced in a warm house, by a wood burning stove - I sat one one side, and Ilija, his red cheeked wife, and three sons in a row on the other - staring happily across at me. Their paying guest for the next three days.
"Is there a cash machine in Mokra Gora?" “Ne.”
“Is there a bank I can go to tomorrow?”
“Da.”
Ilija digs around in his jacket and pulls some dinar bills from his wallet, sliding them across the table at me.
"For you, for tonight," his son translates and pours me another rakija.
I am in a deep sleep under a pile of heavy blankets when a bright-eyed Ilija knocks on my door at 7 in the morning.
Still shaking off sleep, and the previous nights rakija, I am told by the bank teller that my Croatian kuna was not welcome here, nor was my Canadian bank card.
Ilija, the captain of no stress, just grinned at me.
"No problem, we go other town."
No breakfast, no coffee...
So the journey begins. Ilija is driving the car like a bat out of hell, tearing the Yugo through the un-plowed streets of the village. He tries to explain, to me that driving the Yugo fast is best - or it stalls.
We screech to a stop outside a house.
Ilija beckons me to the back of the car, to help him lift a whole pig carcass out of the trunk and into the hands of an elderly man who immediately hoists it up on a giant hook in his barn. We drive off in a blast of black smoke and Serbian folk-pop music.
The night's fresh snowfall blankets everything, and smoke trails from the chimneys of wooden houses in the hills. The scene is quite charming, and Ilija is pointing out the sights to me as we descend down a valley to the hazy industrial looking town of Uzice.
Having the time of his life, Ilija is stopping, shaking hands and introducing me to everyone he meets from the lady selling goldfish, the watchmaker, and the butcher as we weave our way through the town's bustling market. My stomach has eaten itself by now.
A smoke filled cafe bar pit stop, for a turkish coffee you could stand a spoon in, and the all important money exchange mission is accomplished in the back room. No bank needed. Within minutes of handing over the cash to Illija, we make another stop in a narrow alley.
He is getting new speakers installed in his car, handing over a good portion of the money I just gave him. Easy come, easy go.
Illija gives me his pointy toothed grin, grabs my arm, leading me through a beaded curtain for another coffee.
I reflect while admiring the interior decor - a Yugoslavian deslign time capsule - velvet, gold and peach striped wallpaper, mirrored ceilings, and dusty light fixtures… that so far this day has included everything but what I had crossed 3 borders for.
We hit the highway, trying out the new super woofer speakers…but not for long. Lurching to a stop in front of a roadside restaurant, Illija turns to me with his grin,
"Pivo?” (“Beer?”)
I cannot possibly refuse.
This turns out to be the first of four “pivo” pit stops we make on the 40km trip home. At the final stop, Ilija pours the last drops from his glass onto the palm of his hand, runs it through his silver hair, grinning away at me.
By the time we reach town, and I trudge up that muddy hill, it is apparent that Depp has already left the scene in his helicopter. And very recently according to the few stragglers and the marching band still playing next to all that remained of Johnny Depp.
A strange waxen, wooden and life size statue of Depp, with a few scruffy dogs sniffing around at its feet.
Perched on a hilltop, this wooden village/movie set turned tourist attraction and festival location is where Kusturica also lives. The streets are named after Fellini (of course), Che Guevara, Bruce Lee, Joe Strummer, Nikola Tesla, and Ivo Andric, the iconic Yugoslavian writer is also in the mix. Everything is built from wood, from the streets designed not from cobblestones, but in a checkerboard parquet pattern of wood pieces.
The whole effect is pretty, and charming-but a bit too tickety-boo, theme parkish for my liking. Nothing close to the chaos of Kusturica’s creations on films that explode with animals, mad characters, and wild disorder.
The Urban Prison of Humanism and Renaissance ‘jail’
