Hvala Atcho Boi

Red shows my route as of 13 March,
2011, Green shows the impenetrable
wall of Schengen and Blue the border
of Serbia and the self-imposed
entrapment I managed for myself. 

One of the most pressing and important issues that my generation is currently facing is the task of updating one’s iPod.  As iPods get larger (and concurrently smaller), it becomes increasingly important that we consistently update our collections, while retaining tracks that we consider classics.  So naturally, the main problem for me by March of 2010 was that my iPod was stuck in the past, specifically summer 2009.  Of course, one cannot think that this is ‘retro’ in the same way as finding a mixtape from 1998, as the requisite amount of time had not properly elapsed.  This is why meeting up with Sally had been so fundamental to keeping myself sane, grounded, and connected to the Western World.  Being a smart, clever and liberated young woman, she brought her computer and I was able to upload the song that had been in my head since November: Edward Maya’s Stereo Love.  While it’s no secret that this is the greatest song to ever come out of Romania (and technically Azerbaijan, where its origins are), I think we need to start considering the wider implications for how important this song has been in defining ourselves.  Indeed, if I had to express myself through the medium of song, I would not hesitate to pick Stereo Love.  

So it’s no surprise that I was listening to Stereo Love on loop while I boarded a train north from Sarajevo towards Belgrade.  Of course, I assumed I could trick the rail services as in times past, by crossing the border by foot and reboarding the same train.  This unfortunately didn’t work as well as I had hoped, and I accidentally bought a ticket to the town on the Croatian side (—yes, we went through Croatia to get to Belgrade.  No doubt Tito had something in mind when he planned the rail services throughout Ex-oslavia) and paid the crossing fee.  Live and learn.  I emerged from the train on a snowy plain that was desolate, cold, and windy.  I knew immediately I was back in the former Kingdom of Hungary, because there is nothing that Hungarians love more than an endless flat plain. The Croat-Bosnian border, seemingly defined only geographically by the Sava River, actually reached back several centuries and for a long time was the frontier between Catholic Austria and Muslim Turkey; between Europe and Asia and in some geopolitical discourses it still is.  In fact, if it weren’t for the Sava River, I don’t think I would have even noticed I had crossed a border, except for the obvious linguistic switch from the Bosnian “Hvala” for the Croatian “Fala” (pronounced like “hvala”).

While the Dalmatian Coast was sunny and Mediterraneanesque, this corner of Croatia was bleak, cold, and decidedly ‘eastern.’  One problem with taking trains to the borders and walking is that when I arrive in a new country, I am usually without currency, and unlike the 100km radius on either side of the Canada-US border, these microstates in eastern Europe are wholly unprepared and unwilling to accept currencies that aren’t a reflection of their own hard-won independence and national pride.  So hard-won, in fact, that it necessitated instilling this pride and hatred in the next generation of Balkan upstarts.  Just a day earlier the bus ride from Neum to Mostar was a surprising flurry of ethnic tension.  A group of young teenagers on the bus talked with us in excellent English and asked questions about Canada.  Rolling into Mostar, they pointed out the windows and said, “The muslims live there, and the Croats live there, and there was a war and we *referring to himself and a few others* beat them. *gesturing towards some other kids on the bus*” They all seemed quite good natured and affable about the whole affair.  Optimistically I asked, “But you’re all friends now, right?” and they immediately assured me that no, they most certainly were not.  Despite their insistence that Serbo-Croatian-Bosnian-Montenegrin was in fact the same language (to which I replied, “Oh, you mean Russian?” and only I laughed at), they were all raised to believe that they hated whatever ethnicity lived next door, undoing all of Tito’s 40-year iron-gripped suppression of nationalism.  Nancy—of dubious French Canadian descent—and I used this opportunity to note that we come from a country of differences too but that we live together peacefully, mildly resenting one and other—just like a real family.  

But solving the Balkan Question was not in the cards for me this time around.  As clear as it is to everyone in the diplomatic community that I know what is best for the region, I had bigger fish to fry at this point in time, specifically the biggest fish of all, the Ukraine.  I am not sure if you have ever looked at Ukraine on a map, but it is ginormous.  Everyone knows that Canada is big, Russia bigger, and the US and China to have well-endowed surface areas.  But until one’s eyes veer ever so slightly to the right on a map of Europe to see who or what is knocking at its back door that the true magnanimity of the Ukraine is brought home.  

Now, there are a couple of gaps that I should perhaps explain the buildup to me being deposited in a tiny village in Croatia waiting to get into Serbia.  When I docked in Sicily off a boat from Africa, the Italian customs officer informed me that I was over my Schengen visa time allowance.  I balked at this: me! A Canadian!  I am exactly what you people want in Europe, stacked with travel insurance and dolla dolla billz to burn.  There was no way they wouldn’t let me into Europe.  Europe was created with the sole intention of being my playground.  As it turned out, however, they weren’t going to let me into Europe, but they took pity on me and let me have a three day layover while I waited to board my plane to Romania—which is not Europe, lest we forget.  That was my only Get Out of Jail Free Card, however, and I had used it up.  So if Italy of all bureaucratically lethargic countries was not going to let me in, there was no way a country like Hungary or Slovenia, anxious to prove their worth in the new customs regime, would as well.  Europe-as-fortress stood before this intrepid young globetrotter.  

Behind door number two was Serbia, that great thorn in the Balkans’ side.  It is no secret that Serbia and I have had our differences over the years.  In 2007 I sent a scathing email to friends and family chastising the hopeless inadequacies of the Serbian rail network, and just a few days before I had been in Kosovo, de jure illegally entering Serbian territory.  Words of caution from Wikitravel and a light Googling of “Am I allowed to enter Serbia if I have three Kosovo stamps on my passport or will I be arrested?” suggested to me that is was a definite maybe that I would either have my Kosovar stamps crossed out, or in a worst case scenario I would be refused entry.  The third option, the least emotionally draining but by far the most irksome would be to return South through Bosnia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria and then Romania—essentially retracing my steps and assumedly having the exact same adventures all over again.  Feeling particularly plucky and assuming my impish charm could spring me from any situation, I opted for Serbia.  We had been engaged in a delicate and elusive dance of brinkmanship for years, and I was not one to back down.  

As such, this is how I found myself on this endlessly flat plain in eastern Croatia on  I had to walk to the next town to a bank, but in that town there was no rail connection.  I hitchhiked for a few hours with little success and rapidly soaking feet to Vrpolje, with a nice young man who took me right to the station, where I was greeted by an even nicer train ticket salesperson who hooked me up with a Croatian train schedule, cheerfully informed me that the train I wanted to catch was leaving at that very moment, and advised that I had two hours to kill before the next train.  The silver lining was that I had more time to explore the immediate surroundings of the train station and eat a pita stuffed with meatballs and raw yellow onions, wash down the lingering aftertaste with a beer and a coffee, and write about my feelings as I nervously edged towards the uppity Balkan superpower that may force me to come to terms with my past. 

*A point worth noting is that I have, do and will continue to use a definite article when referring to Malorussia.  ‘Ukraine’ is merely the overarching state apparatus that currently occupies the geographical designation The Ukraine.