Update/Apology and Act III: "...it's the end of the fucking world, man"

OK, Uhhh...Sorry? I know that doesn't fly, but shit, I was so behind and then once you're behind its just harder and harder to sit down and catch-up. So I sincerely hope I can fill in the last two months fairly well not just for my two readers (HI MOM!) but also for myself since I haven't been keeping a proper journal or anything.

So we'll finish up this Act bullshit. Act III is my time in Bosnia. Act IV will be my life in Tuebingen for the last two months. And then I'll have two posts about the last two and a half weeks which included a trip to London and a trip to Dresden, and these will include pictures. Fair? Fair.

ACT III:

The train ride was to last all night and I would get to Zagreb very early in the morning. On the train I sat in a booth with some boring Canadian kid, a lonely American school teacher who taught at a U.S. Army base in Italy, and these two cats – a Brazilian film student and his Catalan buddy – who were students in Bologna. They were all headed for Budapest. We had some drinks they had brought on board and then the three of us managed to get our own sleeping car from the surly Hungarian conductor. After the standard email swap, we made our beds and slept. I got woken up right outside Zagreb and met up with some Bosnian grad students also studying in Italy. We “jumped the turnstile” on the honor system tram from the train station to the bus station and just shot the shit for a while until me and this girl Nermina’s bus to Tuzla showed up.

Crossing the border from Croatia into Bosnia is always a patriotism-killing exercise. The bus rides from Zagreb on a nice and modern highway that leads to Beograd/Belgrade in Serbia – the two largest cities in former Yugoslavia. There’s new factories and firms all along it. Then you get off the exit and exit the plains into the hills of Bosnia which at first is beautiful from a distance. Then you cross the actual border and its fucking impoverished – half built buildings, skeletons of ancient cars, piles of garbage in otherwise beautiful mountain streams, and then something particularly bothersome for me, a sparkling brand new mosque from Saudi money, or some church. Parts of Croatia are just the same, especially over in Slavonia where the war basically started (look up the city of Vukovar) but shit, I don’t have to see it on my ride to grandma’s. And at the same time, every time I take this trip, there’s a new factory here and there. World Bank just reported that growth is up 5% this quarter. Word. Anyways, Nermina got off at Srebrenik after another email swap in which she promised to send me a link to this Young Socialists meeting that she hyped up so much that I might even do it even if it guarantees a two and a half hour lecture from my dad (with, of course, silent encouragement from Comrade Mom) and the end of any potential political career in the U.S.

Entering Tuzla the first thing you see is the massive thermoelectric plant with four gigantic nuke-looking smokestacks and then it’s another couple of kilometers through heavy industry. I walked through the early morning smog to my grandma’s flat where she nearly had a heart-attack as she thought I was coming tomorrow.

I spent my time doing absolutely nothing for a full week besides from time to time dropping into an internet café to figure out how I’d get back to Tübingen. I ate good food, watched movies, and visited old family friends during the day time. Nights I’d meet friends for coffee, chat for a while, and then usually go to the center to meet up. I’m totally over the whole café and bar scene over there, what’s cool now, is buying a 2 liter bottle of beer (no joke) and heading over to this place by the river (river being a filthy polluted canal) – basically it’s the more stoner, chilled out kids.

Other new things are that bookie joints have sprung up on every fucking corner. On any given weekend every café is packed with fuckers filling out their bets and studying up on quotes. I joined in and my cousin Eddy decided that the odds were pretty good on some Russian hockey league team from some hellhole in Siberia – not. Aside from that, I got to see Eddy’s buddy from last time, Zoka, again. I was like “where’s Zoka, by the way.” “In Germany.” “Oh cool! Is he studying there or something?” “No, he drives a van to Stuttgart for some guy.” So yeah, Zoka’s a smuggler now – when we hung out he says he just sits in the passengers seat until like 20 KM before the Croatian border where he takes the van across, and then they switch again. I guess the “man” has his passport or something flagged in Croatia or some other garbage. It was Easter weekend when I was there, and he came into town really late because apparently some specialist border unit from the capital was brought in to the border cause of the heavy traffic and because they’re better paid, they don’t take bribes as readily as the standard guys. Which was not good for me since I surely planned on violating some customs/international laws on my way back.

So basically I spent a week and a few days living life a la Balkans – doing nothing, drinking, smoking, generally partying, drinking coffee, bitching about life and telling jokes, and visiting various households for more coffee and pastries. I wanted to stay even longer, but I had to be back in Tuebingen for the start of the semester.

The last night I was hanging out at my Aunt’s house, I call the bus station to double check that the bus I want to take to Zagreb real early in the morning at 5:40 is running since it didn’t come up on the website. I get a “yep.” So, cool, I’ll take this bus to Zagreb, hang out with some friends there, have lunch at their house, chat for a while about the fam, and then jump on a bus to Tuebingen which should get me there at around 1AM with 11 hours of driving.

So I leave grammie at 4:20 or so, grab a taxi to the station, casually approach the counter and request a ticket. I get a cool “that bus doesn’t run today…Easter.” Unfuckingbelievable. Sitting on the benches are some surly men and a family who also got the shaft with this bus. So what am I gonna do – I can always go to Stuttgart, but I don’t feel like it, plus I’m not sure when the last train from there to Tuebingen is. I reeeally want to be in Zagreb on time to catch this bus, plus people are expecting me there. As I’m staring at the departures screen, one of those guys comes up to me and says he’ll take us to Zagreb in his cab for a bit of a price. Since there’s two of us, he splits in two ways which comes out to 70 Marks – something I don’t have and aren’t about to shell out for what’s supposed to be a fuggin’ 30 mark ticket. So me and these two guys are hanging out at the front of the station haggling, with one guy there who’s not even going anywhere just commenting. At the same time, when someone enters the station we’re like “Zagreb? Zagreb!?” trying to cut down on this fucking guy’s bill. Finally, the idea comes to drive to this tiny town on the border thinking that the odds are a bus is running from there. And if THAT don’t work, we can cross into Croatia to another small border town. I’m a little hesitant you know, because here I have a place to stay, I know people – if I get stuck in fucking Orašje, which is just a big lot with a mosque, a church, and this goddamn busstation, and also happens to lie in a part of Bosnia completely unfriendly to my ass, AND my new Croatian traveling companion. All logic points to “stay here, take the bus to Stuttgart, its more of a sure bet.” Fast forward 5mins, I’m in the fucking cab in the back with no functioning seatbelt, speeding through thick fog, through villages on narrow winding roads. Everybody in the car is smoking at 4AM simply because what else are you going to do. I’m sitting in silence brainstorming my new situation while these two guys are talking about some common guy they know who was a boxer and a drunkard and always getting into super violent bar fights. I’m thinking “great crowd to be fucking driving around with, Malik, you stupid idiot” On the radio news, a bomb goes off in Istanbul to which Niko (the Croatian guy sitting shotgun) goes “…..its the end of the world man, fuck.” That got me laughing and then after a bit they asked me about my life and name.

We got to that shit hole Orašje pretty quick and Nik jumps out of the cab, runs in, and runs out just as fast, saying there wasn’t any buses, and saying we should cross the border into Croatia to Županje. So now I’m crossing an international border, with some contraband, with some fucking guys who god knows have what pasts, in a goddamn taxi cab. Luckily, everything goes OK and to my surprise, there’s a train for Zagreb in 25 minutes which should get me there with time to spare. Me and Nik’s happiness faded quickly after the cab driver fucked us on the price, and we sat down to drink a coffee when Nik goes, “…shit, that guy’s a Gypsy…I knew I knew him from somewhere” and starts recollecting about some stories he heard about him and then told me how their mutual “buddy” decided to start his own paramilitary unit in the war and slept in a white tent until he died when Serb artillery fell directly onto the fucking thing.

When our bus fell I had the impeccable luck of having no seat for a 3.5 hour ride to Zagreb. But by this time I was so resigned to life that I just fucking threw my bag down, sat on top of it in the aisle, and listened to my music. The lady behind me kept stepping the fuck all over me. The bus driver took pity on me and I got to sit in that little seat up front usually reserved for the guy yammering in the microphone about the sights – next to a big fat lady who had to run to get on and was totally out of breath. The radio was set to some nationalist fucking channel which made me queasy and I slept most of the way.

I met with Bojan my old pal, who’s mom actually delivered my baby-ass, at the train station. I said “so long” to Niko who was headed for the coast and hung out at Bojan’s recalling how I barely made it etc. After some eats and coffee, Bojan took me back to the bus station where I took my seat in a goddamn moving greenhouse which would be my home for 11 hours. I was the only Bosnian on the bus and next to me some lady with a Zagreb so thick I barely understood her kept fighting over the ONE tiny vent in the ceiling that would let fresh air in. She insisted that it remain closed lest the wind make us sick (this, you’ll find, is a common belief in more idiotic parts of the world, and more than once have I driven in some family members Yugo through blistering weather, with the windows tightly rolled up, and my Uncle wearing towels around his neck JUST to make sure it doesn’t get cramped up) So I rallied the support of the other gentlemen behind me who were loosening their collars, and some fat guy barely breathing and managed to keep the fucker open, arguing “Ma’am, I’m going to throw up, and then we’ll all throw up, and that’s a lot worse then the sniffles.” One of the drivers came over to everyone asking us if we were taking back any cartons of cigarettes, and if not, “here, hold this, pretend its yours until we get into Austria.” There’s a strict limit on shit you can bring back, so in addition to my own illegal maneuverings I was carrying a pack of Ronhill Lights for this guy. I managed to sleep a little, read a few magazines, listen to some music, etc. The entire time these two old rednecks from Slavonija (that super poor part of Croatia I mentioned earlier) were talking about nonsense – when we got into Slovenia after waiting forever and nervously at the border, they commented on EVERY detail they saw and how it was better than “by us” except the road – which was narrow and jammed practically the entire way to Austria. However, the loud mouth did say wisely, “a plane’s the best way though, a plane’s the best…nobody’s has yet to stay up there” Later in the trip their relationship was strained when we were all trying to sleep – Loud Mouth (Dejan I think was his name) took his shoes off and kicked back, which caused such a fucking stench that his friend got super pissed and came and took the seat I was resting my feet on and started complaining and saying “he hasn’t showered in god knows how long…I thought I was talking to a gentleman.” So he talked to me, and I had to explain my life story to him, and then later to the lady who warmed to me when the sun fell and I agreed that, yes, now we can close the motherfucking vent.

We finally got to Tuebingen at around 3AM, I had managed to use some guy’s cellphone when we were stopped in Austria to call Carie and find out if I even had a room to enter (remember, that whole fiasco a few posts ago) Luckily I did. But at 3AM, there were no more buses running. I had no idea what my money situation was so I drifted towards a bank, to check on funds and stuff like that. There I am, with two bags, sitting on the floor of an ATM booth rooting through my papers, sorting them on the ground, to figure out how much I can withdraw and still have enough for my rent. I managed, and finally flagged down a cab which was picking up some guys from a gay bar. One was like Cuban-German or something, weird. I was happy beyond belief when I managed to grab my keys from Carie, and dump my shit some place that I’d be staying more than a week finally. We hung out while I explained the last 40 hours of my life and I got ready for two and a half months in Tübingen.