How the other half travel

We are spending a lot of time in Novi Sad at the moment, for reasons that I won't get into here.  As a consequence, I sometimes need to travel from Novi Sad to conferences, as I had to do yesterday when I traveled to Trieste.    This is one of those funny distances (600km) that probably would be best to drive, but as I need to fly from Trieste to Germany, I couldn't take my own car; renting was impossible - no company seemed able to offer a pick-up in Serbia / drop-off in Italy option; the train options were insane: 19 hours and five changes; flying options were similarly crazy: 16 hours and two changes.  The only thing left was the bus.  We checked and yes, indeed, there are buses from Novi Sad to Trieste (every other day) and the journey is between 9 and 10 hours normally.  How hard could it be?  Coaches, at the best of times, are uncomfortable things, and they are worse when you are over 2 meters tall. The company said that the buses are pretty empty this time of year, so comfort wouldn't be a problem.  Great, I thought.  For a mere 50 Euros I got a ticket and arrived at the bus station in Novi Sad at 16.30; bottle of Knjaz Miloš and a couple of Viršle in pastry from the Pekara, I felt the right little Yugoslav Gastarbeiter.

Despite assurances to the contrary, the bus was stuffed to the gunnels - not one spare seat.  Mixture of people of all ages, though no children at all.   Everybody, and I do mean everybody smoked at every possible instant, though mercifully not on the bus.  I'm not exaggerating either.  Everybody.  At one point I thought some older ladies who had, like me, sat on the bus to avoid the weather during one of the numerous pauza cigareta, were also not smoking, but in fact they too soon went outside for a fix.   It's not that this surprises me particularly as most everybody smokes in Serbia, just not those in our circles, and I'm used to at least somebody not smoking in a crowd of nearly 50 people.  

Anyway, the haze of smoke aside, the journey wasn't too bad. Bit uncomfortable, but endurable.  It was very interesting to see the transition of people from the typical Balkan personalities to those of the subdued foreigners.  In Serbia everybody was on their mobile phones and talking rather loudly, but by the time we did our first border crossings everybody got a whole lot quieter. Maybe it was just getting late, but I was pretty certain a timidness was creeping in to everybody's demeanor.  

When we drive with a German car and EU passports across these borders we are very often just waved through without any check at all.  The crossings yesterday, by stark contrast, were the longest I have every experienced.  In a rather bizarre twist of Yugoslav fate, the only crossings needed are in the former Yugoslavia: first to Croatia and then from Croatia into Slovenia (and thus into the EU so none more required).  Each crossing involved everybody getting off the bus twice (once to leave the old country and again to enter the new country), and twice we had to go with our luggage.   We didn't stop at all in Croatia (not even to pee) which a fellow passenger told me was to help the border crossing out of Croatia being easier (i.e. to avoid questions).  The border into Slovenia involved each bag being checked quite thoroughly and even a frisking of each person (or at least looking inside the coats).  Nobody made any comments or complaints and I could see in peoples' faces as we waited this kind of nervousness and hope that everybody gets through lest we all have to wait for hours for one person to go through some kind of official rigmarole.   The Slovenian woman doing the checks was ruder or at least brusquer than anybody I have had search me before, and I couldn't help but feel sorry for these people who are at the mercy of their former comrades for entry into a part of the world that essentially cannot exclude me.  Not since I was travelling around eastern Europe in the mid 1980s did I experience border crossings like this.  The journey time should have been six hours, but for these crossings it was nearly eleven hours.

My mother-in-law has made this journey (or at least one similar: Novi Sad to Heidelberg) about a dozen times to help us look after the kids.  If anything, she prefers it to flying as at least she is in control of the ticket buying process (being savvy with neither internet bookings nor credit cards).  Since yesterday I have a whole lot more respect for what she goes through each time.

Various thoughts on films about the last Balkan wars

Recently I finally managed to watch all of the 1998 film Savior. I say "finally" as I've tried a few times to watch it previously and always give up after the first twenty minutes as it is overall too disturbing (it is the part where Goran and Guy are in the house with the Grandmother). But in the end I think it's worth sticking to it. The film doesn't get any less grim, but perhaps more human after that. Anyway, I liked the film as it is on the whole very evenly balanced on which side were the bad guys (answer: all of them), and ends on a high note. Essentially it is the story of a US military man turned, owing to the murder of his wife and son by Islamic terrorists, stoic and embittered Foreign Legionnaire fighting eventually as a mercenary for the Yugoslav army during the Bosnia war. He meets a Serbian woman pregnant after being raped by Bosnian soldiers and the story is about their attempts to get from Bosnia to Split.

I've seen a few other films about the period. I liked Welcome to Sarajevo a lot, but I have some sympathy with those who say it carries the Western anti-Serb bias; though perhaps bias in these films always stems from perspective (here it being Bosnian Muslims in Sarajevo being targeted by Serbs).

Probably my favorite film, however, about the war in general is Grbavica - the story of a Bosnian muslim woman living with her 15-year old daughter who, unbeknownst to the daughter, is also the product of a rape (by a Serbian Chetnik in a prison camp). I like this film not just as a well-done film, but also for aspects such as the lead role (Emma) being played by a Serbian actress (Mirjana Karanović) who I think did a good thing in taking the part.

The above are all serious films, and G. says that nobody in the former Yugoslavia ever takes them seriously. Somehow telling, I guess, that seemingly the most popular home-grown films about the wars are comedies. We very much liked Sivi kamion crvene boje (The GreyTruck of Red Color), which is a humorous story about a Serbian woman and a Bosniak travelling from Belgrade to the Croatian coast during the early stages of the war. Some of the humor is (to my eyes) a bit dubious, and watching people laugh at scenes where the lead actor jokes his way out of being murdered can be unsettling, but I guess I've married into this culture.

P.S. I'm sorry for never writing - I'll try to do more. I think I've just run out of ideas, or am not always inspired, but I'll work on it.