Sandra the Suzuki - 7th August 2017

I woke up to my alarm with a very foggy head. Lack of sleep and the red wine hangover were not a nice combination. I quietly changed, so as not to disturb John, and then went downstairs for breakfast. It was just after 9:30am, and I had planned to call the car company before the original pick up time. I hovered over the food choices at the buffet, opting for bread and spread with coffee and juice. I connected to the Wi-Fi, looked for the phone number and made the call. They were happy enough for us to arrive later, so I ended the call and proceeded to eat and read the news on my phone. The breakfast room had only the tail end of the breakfast crowd, some mulling over their day ahead sipping their second or third coffee. The staff were a little less diligent in their cleaning as they may have been an hour earlier.

I returned to our room, and slowly woke John up. It was now around 11am, and we needed to travel part way across the city to get to the car hire place. We both showered and changed, still snoozy from the past 16 hours of mayhem, and checked out of the hotel. I was keen on getting that hotel receipt for Wizz Air to refund. The receptionist was chirpy, happily inviting us back again soon.

We then clunked our large suitcase over and around the roadworks outside, and onward to the main boulevard. We approached a tram stop that followed the curved road south, then west, towards the Danube. We scrambled for tickets to get on the approaching tram, but a lack of confidence in what we were buying saw us consult over the options again, and wait for the next tram. We boarded the modern tram that came next - others we had seen being somewhat older – and stood the 5 stops it took us to the foot of the bridge that spanned the Danube to the south of the centre. Grand buildings of Imperial style and faded grandeur lined the route. Many had shops or bars on their ground level, with accommodation or offices rising above them to 6 or 7 storeys. The tramlines ran down the middle, with two or three lanes of traffic either side, complete with pedestrian walkways sliced between them all.

Once off, we took a side street that was less broad but still very much a thoroughfare to the neighbourhood. Trees lined the pavements, adding to the shaded nature of the street; a nice rest from the already rising morning heat. We dropped into a bakery so John could get some breaded items for his breakfast, and then continued for 5 minutes before turning right onto yet another smaller side street. On the ground floor of a newly built apartment block was our car rental place. After waiting for 15 minutes for the client ahead of us to be sorted, we were served. We had a small but sporty Suzuki that we name Sandra for the entirety of the journey. After ‘papping’ John in the driver seat, we entered our directions into the in-built sat nav and departed.

Now, one thing to probably check before you depart in a car with in-built sat nav in a foreign country, is that the language is set to English. We learned that quickly, having to interpret the visual guidance without audio, as we navigated wide boulevards with tramlines intersecting, on our rush out of the city. Despite that, John did a Class A job of getting us out and on to the ease of open motorway. We dared not tamper with the sat nav, lest we lose our way or focus. And so, the rest of the journey to Novi Sad was conducted in Hungarian.

There was no drawn out departure from the city. It was an abrupt transition from urban concentration to rural expanse. The journey was uneventful in itself, no topographical or architectural points to note. The Danube and Tisza rivers helped produce the flat Great Hungarian Plain. Agriculture thrived in this environment, and its richness is one of the reasons why it has been hotly contested in the past. Miles upon miles of fields and farms were what lay either side of us.

Conversations rang of expectations for the days ahead, and more concrete plans for the afternoon and evening before us. John firmly placed beer as one of those priorities. My Spotify playlist made for motivational listening in the background, a mix of indie and pop hits of the 90s and Noughties. We stopped just before the border to top up the car with petrol, stretch our legs, and grab a coffee. Minutes after pulling back out on to the motorway, we were at the border. I had anticipated that it would be rather busy, as it was a major artery between two countries, and the border of the EU. However, only three cars were in front of us on the Hungarian side, which was repeated as we crossed no man’s land to the Serbian checkpoint.

Again, the monotony of the vista resumed. The odd village was passed, but never a city. Szeged and Subotica, on either side of the border, were 20 or so kilometres away from the motorway. In Serbia, though, we had to pay at tolls to use the motorways. To be fair, there were only two occasions that we had to pass through a tollgate, and we could pay the £2.50 fees with card, so the passage was cheap and easy.

As we approached Novi Sad from the north, hills began to emerge out of the horizon. You could imagine this being a part of the Hungarian state, as it once was, if you married geography to state boundaries. Yet, since the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes following World War I, this territory lies firmly in Serbia; albeit in an autonomous province called Vojvodina. A majority Serb population lives alongside a sizeable Hungarian population. This is noted in the bilingual road signs we passed. Smatterings of other groups live here too – Vlachs, Romanians, Croats and so on. Back further, Germans of Saxon descent lived in the area that had periods within both the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires – and formed the Military Frontier of the latter. Furthermore, Vojvodina is also comprised of three partial geographic areas in the region. The Backa, which has a corresponding region in Hungary; the Banat, which has a corresponding region in Romania; and the Srijem, a wedge of land south of the Danube but north of the Sava, which extends into Croatia.

I was reeling all these facts off to John along the way, before we slipped off the motorway. We travelled along an approach road into the city, and this was clearly the neighbourhood where the Gypsy community lived. On the outskirts, it lacked any visible state support for better infrastructure or a cleaner environment. It is a similar case across Eastern Europe, and we come up for scrutiny too.

We came to the central part now, and turned towards the works site for the building of the new bridge across the Danube. It did not look like it had moved any further forward from when we were here the previous year. We drove along the riverside for 100 yards, and then turned right into a concrete housing estate. We parked up, faced the heat of the mid-afternoon, and trundled our luggage to the front door.

The mother or neighbour of the owner came to meet us, and gave us our keys. We could see the Danube from the window, at an angle, and the place was basic but clean. Its main value was that it was a 5-minute walk to the centre of the old town. We left immediately after I made a call to my mother, to tell her about our fraught overnight journey, and went straight to a bar on the shopping street. We visited the same place we ate at last year. John got his promised beer.

We mulled food options elsewhere, but settled on where we were. So, after eating, we had a proper walk around the city. The main, open expanse at one end of the shopping street was quiet, as the searing heat kept people in the shade. Parked on a pavement was a water tanker providing free water to passers-by.

We looped around the old city centre, taking in the brutal National Theatre, and the back streets with their cafes and shops. We found a snug bar with a patio area out back and had a couple of beers. Dusk approached before we left, and we were starting to feel tired. So, we walked back via the river to look at the Fortress. We had an early night, so we could be fresh for Belgrade the next day.

A Delayed Start - 6th August 2017

Oh Luton. How you build up such great expectations for a departure, purely by default, and then spectacularly dash them with such élan.

We began our journey, John and I, by taking the Thameslink from central London to Luton Parkway. A standard activity with cans of vodka-mixer added to liven things up. This was the second trip we were taking to south-east Europe, albeit with a shortened length of two weeks. This time we decided to ditch public transport and hire a car for the two weeks. No backpacks and buses for us. This trip would be air-con heavy, and Spotify playlists all the way (‘CEE Drive Time’ on Spotify, for anyone interested). The added freedom allowed us to stop en route between our destinations, to my excitement but John’s chagrin.

We would be starting and ending in Budapest, somewhere John had been to recently, but I had never been. Images in my mind of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy merged with the trappings of being the second Imperial city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Our route would take us to Novi Sad, Belgrade, Zagreb via Vukovar and Jasenovac, Rovinj, and then Ljubljana. We would mostly be touring the southern part of the Lands of the Crown of St Stephen, as they were know towards the end of Austria-Hungary; this area also formed part of the Military Frontier at other times, as a bulwark against the Ottoman Empire.

We arrived at the airport and proceeded to the executive lounge. As it was daytime and we planned to arrive in good time, we thought we would treat ourselves to food and drink before we board. And this we did, whilst charging our phones and finishing off last minute work/personal admin. I sank the best part of a bottle of red wine, soaked up by some pasta and nachos. John was on a similar track. With our gate being called after a short delay, we departed, said our goodbyes to the maître de, and walked to our gate. We queued up, as usual, and watched as a Wizz Air plane arrived at our gate, ending its previous journey, and witness its passengers disembark.

This is when the confusion began. This was clearly our plane. It was in our gate, and the people in our queue should be boarding it. However, after an hour with no updates and no progression on boarding, we had an announcement to say that our flight would be further delayed, and that another gate full of passengers would be boarding our plane, heading to Cluj-Napoca. We were told to go away and listen for further announcements. Incredible! We could not get back in to the lounge, so instead we sat at the bar in the main departure hall.

After another round of drinks and snacks, John went to the gate to find out more information. He was none the wiser. At this juncture, a guy who was sat next to us began chatting to us. He was a young lad currently living in Budapest, but hailed from Debrecen. We chatted about the delay, and what we were doing on our travels. I mentioned to him the EU compensation scheme, which he did not know about, so that lifted spirits somewhat.

After another hour I decided I would go down to the gate. There was a bit of commotion as the Wizz Air staff had begun to handout vouchers for food and drink, as the delay was ongoing. No announcement of this was made, of course. When I approached one person, she bluntly announced that I was drunk and should mind myself. I said it’s a bit of a cheek to hand out a voucher for food and drink to the value of £3.50 when all the restaurants and shops had now closed, apart from one bar and a Starbucks. I grabbed my two vouchers as a consolation prize, and returned to John. We carried on chatting to our new friend, keeping to soft drinks now following my caution. 5 hours after our scheduled departure, we finally had a call to go to our gate. It was just past 11pm, with a scheduled take off of 12:10am. After much huffing and puffing we boarded, and arranged to meet our new friend in Budapest at the end of our trip.

We arrived to a quiet Budapest airport just after 3am. As there was no public transport with any sort of frequency, we decided to get a taxi and claim it back from the airline. I had tried to message the hostel we planned to stay at, to say that we would be extremely delayed. I had received no response, so assumed it would be OK to check in at 4am.

We were dropped off on a main boulevard, which was wet from either a recent rain shower or street cleaners, and approached an apartment block of faded grandeur and tried to get in. We buzzed and phoned the hostel numerous times but could not get in. Tired and frustrated, we began to march down the road, as we saw a couple of international looking hotels to try and get a room at, our luggage dragging through the puddles behind us. The first two were booked up, but the second recommended a hotel around the corner, aptly called Soho Hotel. We entered and thankfully they had space. I felt rather queasy when John paid €99 for basically 6 hours in a hotel. But we both needed a shower and a lie down, and that is exactly what we did. I said that I would wake up a little earlier and call the car hire company to tell them that we would now be picking the car up after 12pm, rather than 10am as planned, so John could get some extra sleep. He was the nominated driver for the first stretch on the road trip. 5am we finally went to sleep. What a way to start!

Around the Balkans in 20 Days – Part 10

The luxury of a twin room is that one does not disturb the other when it comes to tossing and turning, or when one gets up. I think John was happy of this fact as I turned out of bed at a not too late a time, in order to get breakfast.

I sat in the jazzy reception area where breakfast was put on, alongside a family with two toddlers and two straight couples. I grabbed some coffee, cheese and bread, sat myself down, and then oscillated between looking up news on my phone and awkwardly smiling in appreciation when one of the toddlers became rambunctious. After my second cup of coffee, and fully briefed on world news, I returned to the room to wake a sleepy John and get ready for the day out. It must have been around 10:30am.

It was a grey day, so John wore jeans and a jumper. I stopped after adding a jacket, wanting to keep my shorts on, as it was still warm. We visited the small bakery at the T-junction yards from our B&B, so John could grab a pastry to eat as we walked. As we began to retrace our route yesterday, it decided to rain. So we ducked into the Produce Market on Mula Mustafe Bašeskije, the site of the mortar attacks that killed scored of people during the siege. In-between walking around the food stalls in search for one that sold umbrellas; we stopped and read the mural to those killed that took up the whole space of the back wall. Once we looped round and walked back to the road, we managed to locate a stand that sold allsorts and purchased an umbrella for 10KM (about £5).

We then carried on towards our destination, the railway station. We passed the memorial from yesterday, and now noted that the road we were walking along and the pedestrian road yesterday becomes Maršala Tita – Marshall Tito. The rain was dying down as we passed the modern BBI shopping centre to our left, and arrived at a large junction with Ali Pasha’s Mosque commanding a dominant position. We crossed over the road and at a fork, took a right, splitting off from the main east west road taking us direct to the station. Away from the traffic, we looked up and around us. The street was quiet, with the odd café having seated patrons outside. The brown-grey Austrian-style blocks that started off the street still had bullet holes on them, alongside more recent graffiti. These then opened up to more familiar 1960s high-rise blocks before the train station plaza and tram stop welcomed us.

The train station was built in the modernist style, reflecting that of Templehof airport in Berlin. Almost light yellow in colour with a hint of marble effect; the curved building seemed to hug the plaza area in front. Only a handful of people seemed to inhabit the plaza and cafés nestled under a canopy at the station entrance. The modern, glass mini skyscraper loomed over us to our right as we approached the main ticket hall. There was as much life in here as there was outside, and we were soon to find out the reason why.

I approached one of the two open ticket desks and asked if there was a train to Mostar in a few days time. She shook her head politely, to which I responded with a “No!?”. She then explained in simple terms that there were no trains south. The train line is closed. This now made sense, as research I did before the trip seemed to imply that there were no trains. But learning from my previous trip, I thought things might have been different when here. We were then directed to the bus station located next door. We walked around past a couple of newspaper kiosks and entered the rather dated building plastered in an array of adverts for a multitude of bus companies and routes. We walked in to a small, dark-wooded ticket hall, and joined the queue. We didn’t need to get the tickets today, but I wanted to check how much they would be and how frequent the service was. After greeting the ticket seller with “Dobar dan” I soon conversed in English to ask my key questions. The price was similar if not a little cheaper than the train, and there were around 7 buses a day. He gave me the times of them so we could consult. Prior to the journey, I had already booked a bus ticket from Dubrovnik to Split to get the flight home. They were a Croatian company, but had services from Croatian parts of Bosnia. I noticed that they had services from Mostar. Later on, I would marry up the Sarajevo-Mostar route, plan for a short stop over, and then book a ticket for the Mostar-Dubrovnik route.

John wanted a soft drink, so we went to one of the kiosks outside. After purchasing, we had an idea to visit the Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina then the National Museum, which were located next to each other. So we walked south alongside the heavily fortified US Embassy, crossed the main road, and went in to the Historical Museum first. The building had still not been renovated since my last visit, and everything had a sort of ‘thrown together’ sort of feel to it. The display in the lobby area was different to before, with a wall of pictures juxtaposing photos of buildings in Sarajevo immediately after the siege with those recently.

We were directed to go downstairs with two other people for an English tour, led by a strapping young blonde lad in his 20s who was working in the archives. We descended a set of stairs in a small, glass-encased tower, and approached a doorway that had further steps beyond it and into a concrete bunker at the basement level. On our right, after the doorway, were two 1960s low-rise style black leather and silver framed chairs. The archivists’ opening speech focused on these with a story of the visit of the man himself, Tito. I felt that he was aching for us to be both amused and surprised to learn that Tito sat in one of these very chairs before us, so much so that he offered to take our picture in them. We politely declined. He seemed downbeat at our disinterest.

At the bottom of the stairs, and in the first of two sections in the bunker, was a display of Communist paraphernalia, which our guide talked us through with an air of having done this hundred of times. Batons, posters, badges, patches; you name it. We then wondered through a seriously thick metal security door. The room was encircled with militaristic metal shelving, which seemed to underscore a lot of what was on display in the damp and gloomy space. These items were from the Partisan struggle during WWII and contained many firearms and low-grade weapons. Some of the gorier items were clubs containing nails, or barbwire wrapped sticks. Again, there were other items from the period, which the guide talked us through.

When the tour ended 20 minutes later we ascended the glass staircase into the sunlight, continuing up to the second floor where the exhibition was. It came in three parts, the first part being new since my last visit. This was an examination of the material life of Yugoslav citizens since 1945, instantly drawing John and mine’s attention. A squared-off section of the main hall had within it a maze style layout that led us to move between themes. One theme looked at holidays and transportation, showcasing vintage posters of the national airline JAT and emphasizing the liberal migration policy Yugoslavia had in the form of ‘Gastarbeiters’, in deviation from other, Soviet dominated countries. Another theme looked at material life in the home. The 1970s chic outfit of a living room encouraged John to exclaim that it was an exact replica of ours back home. You couldn’t deny it. I fancied a couple of the pieces of furniture myself for the living room.

Once we made our way through this, we then went on to the second phase that looked at the siege. This was chronologically ordered and from a political angle, displaying items that the army or citizens used over the 5-year period. An example was a makeshift cooker that was used when the gas was turned off. I hurried around this part as I had seen it previously, but I still managed to give John the odd contextual explanation as he went around. The final section was post-Dayton looking at the settlement and subsequent governance of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

After this, and all the walking we had done up until now, we decided to go for a drink and a sit down. As we descended the stairs I noticed a cast iron life-sized statue of Tito in commanding pose out in an unkempt courtyard. This was a replica of the one in the grounds of the House of Flowers in Belgrade from a few days ago. I grabbed a snap and continued down the stairs. Tucked at basement level, at the back of the museum, was a café simply called “Caffe Tito”. If there was any evidence to suggest that Bosnians had a soft spot for Tito and Yugoslav nostalgia, then the last hour and half was proof enough. We slid past the patrons sat outside in the warmth, all young and student-like, and headed inside to cooler climes. Despite my aggravation from the heat, I ordered a hot coffee. Thinking ahead to the rest of the day, my third coffee before midday was a bit ambitious and could go either way. In between chatting and updating ourselves with social media banter, we admired the kitsch décor that had sparingly been placed on the walls in the dimly lit interior. The odd poster here and there from post WWII times, and a framed map of the now disintegrated country, was peppered amongst the Partisan and Pioneer memorabilia in the foreground of walls printed in bold patterns in the red, white and blue of the Socialist Yugoslav flag.

After finishing our drinks, we went to the neighbouring National Museum. This one featured archeological artifacts and a botanical garden in the courtyard. Having been before, I rushed around half re-reading signs on the displays. After a wonder around the gardens, we soon departed. We walked eastward to pass the dominant glass encrusted Parliament building on Trg Bosne I Hercegovine. The Holiday Inn loomed across the road as we walked on to a new shopping mall on this main axis of roads. We decided to eat here, visiting the food market section on the top floor, and chose to visit a restaurant that offered an array of food styles, mostly Western. I decided on a chicken, apple and hazelnut salad, which was delicious. Having rested our feet once again, we then walked back to the old town, taking in other side streets and buildings that we had not yet seen.  The most impressive was the Bezistan. This was the old, stone-built market hall in the centre of the old town. Now mostly full of shops selling rather tacky tourist stuff, the odd clothes shop or bag emporium stuck out. I imagined it to be mesmerizing when merchants sold textile or copper in the hall, the noises of production mixing with chatter and camaraderie, all for the shopper to see.

I knew the intense coffee intake earlier would now lead to a massive crash. In desperation, and with a renowned sweet tooth, we stopped at a café in the old town that had a vast selection of cakes on offer. I opted for a coffee and walnut cake that had layers of crushed meringue in it. It was divine! I also had a Bosnian coffee – why the hell not!

We decided to pay a visit to the Sarajevo Pivo Brewery, located on the south side of the river, not too far away. It had a museum too, so we decided it was worth our while. We crossed the river, admiring the town hall building once more, when I stumbled upon a street sign on a building that we were approaching. Below it was another sign with some explanatory text. The two newer signs were on the opposite side of a window to an older one. The newer street sign indicated the road to be called Ulica Obala Isa-Bega Ishakovica, named after the city’s founder. The older one was called Obala Pariske Komune, named to mark the 1871 revolutionary, socialist government in Paris. What the explanatory sign detailed was the history of name changing on this particular street. The Paris Commune connection is an obvious post WWII change. The newer name is a reflection of the Ottoman heritage that present day Bosniaks hold as part of their identity.

The whole issue of naming and re-naming is fascinating, and has been the site of common ideological and national struggles in South East Europe, particularly in the post-Communist era. The symbolic power that naming has, is a reflection of those who are in dominating positions at any one time. When you move beyond street names that come from geographic, topographical or commercial markers, such as Mostar Road, Mountain View, Copper Tin Alley for example; the act of naming then becomes political. This street in Ottoman times was named after two trades that existed on this side of the river when expansion of the city came along. When the Austro-Hungarians decided to regulate the river and create an embankment, they renamed it Careva Street, Careva being ‘Emperor’ in an obvious nod to their Monarch. In 1914, for 5 years, it was named after a sultan before returning to Careva Street then changing to Careva Obala, obala being ‘left bank’. It then changed to Francuska (French) Obala in 1927, then during a period of 4 years under the occupation of the Independent State of Croatia it held a different name before becoming Obala Pariske Komune. It changed to its current name in 1993. One can draw from this, that the last renaming was the attempt of Bosniak officials to lay down a marker that Sarajevo is a Muslim, Bosniak city, with a heritage that rests largely on its proud Ottoman history that will not be erased even when under siege.

We moved on and took a street that climbed up the hillside from the river. I noticed a number of Serbian registered cars here, so was unsure if this was a predominantly Serb area. We then reached the brewery. It was a dominant terracotta-bricked, gothic-styled building that seemed sort of out of place here and rather Bavarian. We passed the goods entrance and noticed a sign for the museum. We went in and noticed that it was literally a room that was 8 meters by 8 meters. The girl on reception said that we could pay something like £2 for the museum, or £3 for the museum and a free drink at the pub. We opted for the latter ticket. So we looked at the brewery themed objects on display and read a bit about the history. I noticed one piece that mentioned that this brewery had a connection with one in Petrovaradin Fortress in Novi Sad. What a coincidence.

We soon left and went to the pub. It was actually very impressive and very spacious. It almost had the style of a very well done Wetherspoons with added Germanic flair. Wood paneling dominated the décor; with a traditional bar almost spanning the whole left side of the pub. You also had a balconied area. We were only amongst a handful of patrons. Obviously too early for most, but I did notice that they had entertainment on at a more modest time of 8pm. We grabbed a seat and claimed our first pivo, fresh from the factory (or one would imagine). Having enjoyed the taste, we paid for another round before leaving.

We descended the hill back into the old town and ate somewhere non-descript. After that we attempted to find one of 3 places we believed to be LGBT friendly venues. After lurking around near the Orthodox Church and canton buildings, we gave up and returned to the B&B. Better that we didn’t drink any more, as we would be driving the next day.