03-VII-1969.: 1969-07

Mom, pop and me packed the fića tight, knowing many packing tricks we learned (and invented some) last year. The number of cans of spam and pašteta that can fit into the spare wheel is incredible. There was, of course, the roof rack that we had from last year, that's where the tent went.

Went alone, no caravan, no company. Started at 2:00 and got as far as Banja Koviljača, perhaps some 200km from home. Then the day of 4th drove over the legendary bridge on Drina (yup, The Bridge on Drina, from Andrić's novel) and eventually slept somewhere on a parking in Ilidža, next to Sarajevo. Didn't stay long, (except to eat ćevapčići in somun at Mrkva's on Baščaršija, which I found when I was there a week before - I actually learned the most important ladmarks of downtown, enough to find my way to it). The plan was to camp at Boračko jezero (lake), which was touted as a pearl of untouched nature. However, the road to there was just ground stones, no signs or anything, and we had to ask around. It was a curvy mountain road, through thick forest, with the white limestone dust covering just about everything near enough to the road.

At some point, there was a Csepel truck ahead of us, and another truck coming. They realized the curve where they'd pass each other was too tight, so the guy on our side just shifted in reverse and started slowly on us, sitting on our front hood (where fića had the gas tank, and additionally there was the 2kg propane-butane bottle we bought last year in Poland). He pushed us for almost a meter, when he finally realized why the other guy was signaling and generally that there's something wrong. It turned out the guy was a tractor driver (for five years, and only 2nd day on a truck), fully accustomed to be alone when operating the vehicle - literally alone, nobody around him within 100m - and he could maneuver anyway he liked.

The guy from the other truck said he'll tell the police down in Konjic and went his way; our guy gave the data (name Omer Banda - banda means gang) and drove away, and we sat in the car waiting for the cops. Within minutes, there was a heavy downpour. Fifteen minutes later, an old muslim, with the turban etc, on a horse, rode slowly by... saw the wrecked hood and cracked windshield, good day good day... will this rain take long? "Every rain stopped, this one will too".

Of course, the two truckers knew each other - probably worked at the same enterprise - or, better, everybody knew everybody, and of course he didn't even think to call the police. Bosnia. Always suspicious of any kind of paperwork, police and insurance high on the top of the best-avoided list.

The rain did stop soon, and we turned around and drove south to Mostar. At least dad knew the area, he's been in the vojska there, and told us at lengths how the place has a weird weather. This is as far as the mediterranean climate goes up the Neretva valley, and the edge of it is usually just south of town. So that was where the plants started resembling the coastal flora, with all the conifers and fragrance, and where we started looking for a campsite. Found it at the mouth of the Buna river. We stayed there for three days, until the car was fixed. Visited the mouth of the river (it's emerging from under a mountain cliff, but its sources are somewhere beyond the other side of the mountain).

Next stop was in one of the Kašteli, the Gomilica, just north of Split. Rather interesting, although the vicinity of a big city could be felt in the water - occasionally you'd swim parallel to (or across, if you were nuts) a floating stream of shit, probably from the ships. I got a sunburn once, and mom said to spread sour cream on me, heard it helps. It does, but the skin gets real taut. I played a few games of solitaire on the little camp table, and then had lots of problems getting up - the skin around my knees was seriously hurting when I tried to stretch them. I toddled slowly and painfully to the nearest tap and washed it off, only to have the same thing repeated twenty minutes later - the cream soaked in the skin was still working.

This is about the first time I had some kind of gang there, mostly guys older than me, who were courting girls not much older than me, and I was there to, well, watch, learn and translate. Learning I was. Two guys from Denmark, some Suzie girl, two guys from Belgrade or so. A guy from Zagreb was teaching me some of their slang. We played šnaps. I taught him a few of our local tricks that didn't work when he tried them on his folks (like holding up a pinky at someone and saying "now try not to laugh while you watch this finger", which works only if you seem like you're laughing contagiously and barely suppressing it - then it does become contagious and all of a sudden one finger is really the funniest thing in the world).

After a week or so we had enough of the shitty sea and went on north. Took us a lot of detours along the way, from Primošten north, and eventually found Borik when it was almost sunset. Stayed there for the rest of the time. Mom liked it a lot, because the tall pines provided all the shade she could ever want, and the place was big enough to meet lots of people.

Our nearest neighbors were a mixed couple from Austria; he was some kind of snob but sociable, and she was the court interpreter for serbocroatian, having been born in Belgrade, somewhere around the observatory (or her dad was a chief there, or chief engineer when it was built?). They had a daughter who wasn't sociable at all, or at least didn't want to speak with me - either I was a young moron at the time, or her english wasn't up to the task. She had a few nice stories about their other visits to the country, specially about her having no idea that in Slovenia they speak a different language (so "ljudska milica" doesn't mean "human Milica", but "people's militia", i.e. police). I've seen bits of the moon landing on few portable TVs people had around the camp, and heard everyone talk about it, but I think we just swam and had barbecue. Fish, I'd guess, the skuša (adriatic mackerel). The daughter had a friend along, and they were both around my age, and equally unreachable.

But on the beach there were other folks, and one girl from Zagreb was friendly enough, and it was almost close to... well, nothing happened, but at least I was getting used to female company. And she was really nice and equally unapproachable.

I've seen a few brief cadres of landing on the Moon, many people had portable television sets, everyone was talking about, but we just went to the beach and fired up the barbecue. Dad learned to love mackerel, had them several times.

That barbecue was just a wee tin box, pedalj long, and had a grid on top, nothing much. He bought it on Baš Čaršija, in Sarajevo. As an old market fox he knew that anything larger should be bought on monday early morning, because the sellers were superstitious, and in this case they believed the first customer of the week is how the week will go, so must sell. He knew that, and haggled it down by half.

The shot is from 1974. I think this tiny tin box ran almost to the eighties, and was then replaced with something larger but collapsible, camping version, it really took very little space. That one held, most likely, to the end of the century.

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Mentions: Borik, fića, pašteta, pedalj, vojska, in serbian

11-IX-2014 - 1-VII-2026