Nero in Bosnia: Walking in Mostar

What do I say about a town that seems like it has just been taken out of a medieval era and placed in today’s world. A town whose soul is a four hundred year old bridge and every evening, people gather all around and talk the night away. A town that makes you feel as if you have come to a place where you don’t want to do anything but go on long walks in the evenings and sit in the balcony in the night and write.

A town that was ravaged twenty two years back has blocks of stones lying everywhere, with the line “Don’t forget ‘93” written on them in black chalk.

Let’s just start at the beginning.

It was almost ten pm when I got down at Mostar bus station and walked over to ‘Hostel David’.

It was actually a house that had been converted into a hostel. The ground floor had been converted into dorms, and upstairs there were two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and a balcony that was used by the family running the hostel.

A young boy, about sixteen years old, came down the steps and greeted me. His name was Tariq. At six feet one, he was towering over me.

They were all full for the night.

“There is a room upstairs inside the house. I can give it to you at the same price as the dorm.”

Of course, I took it.

Famished, I came out of the room in five minutes to go grab some dinner. 

“Come sit here”, said Pedja, the owner of the hostel. I looked at him, as he sat lazily on a chair in the balcony. His daughter was sitting next to him, and she introduced herself as Ana.

I sat obediently, and he poured wine in two glasses and handed it to me and another backpacker, Bernat. Tariq brought some hot goulash and huge loaves of bread. There was nice music playing in the background and I asked Pedja the language. “Catalan”, said he and Bernat together. Bernat was from Barcelona and we all raised our glasses and grinned at each other.

The dinner was wonderful. In all my travels in two years, never had any hostel offered me a free dinner. And we had barely arrived. These people did not even know us. It was simply a generous gesture and we spent the next two hours sitting there in that balcony, listening to Catalan songs and sipping wine.

But what can I say about a town that makes you feel as if  life could not be more peaceful than here but the moment you read about its past, you are jolted by the gruesome violence that it has been a victim of.

The word “Mostar” means bridge keeper and the name of the town comes from the four hundred year old bridge that is the heart of the town. It lies in the old quarter, and on one side of it lies a delightful Turkish bazaar. A little alley just after the bridge heads downwards and takes you down to the river Neretva. The river is blue green in colour, absolutely crystal clear and deliciously cold. It’s temperature is around 7 degrees and it is one of the coldest rivers in the world. 

Between 1992 and 1993, after Bosnia-Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia, the town was under an 18 month siege. The Yugoslav People’s Army bombed Mostar and controlled a large part of it. The Bozniacs however got support from the Croatian Defence Council and together they chased  the Serb dominated Yugoslav army out of Mostar. But within a few months, the Croats wanted control over Mostar and soon began a bloody war between the Bozniak Muslims and the Bosniak Croats. The Croats took over the western side of the bridge and bombarded and shelled the eastern Muslim area. Those captured were tortured and killed, and as the rest of the world kept silent and watched, a systematic, shocking and brutal ethnic cleansing happened in this town that had for hundreds of years seen Serbs, Croats, Bozniaks, Muslims, Christians all coexist peacefully. The Croats kept firing and bombing and the bridge which had withstood all tests of time, weather and armies, finally collapsed into the river.

It was as if Mostar’s heart had been plucked out. 

Twenty two years since the war, the people from the two sides, the eastern and the western, still don’t mix. There is hostility still in the air.

Pedja would say a lot of things about the waterfalls around the region, the rivers, the fortresses in Herzegovina, but every time I tried to talk to him about the war, he would go silent. It took me a couple of days to understand that he had seen it all, had suffered greatly from it, and did not wish to remember or be reminded  of it. I kicked myself for not realizing it earlier, and made it a point to never talk about the subject in front of him again.

As we walked around Mostar, we could still see some broken houses, still see bullet marks in the walls of houses. Some of these houses stand next to perfectly new buildings. The government picks specific buildings and reconstructs them.

In 2004, the bridge was reconstructed and opened up and the city roared in happiness at the unveiling. In a beautiful move, they decided to build it with the same flaws as it had been originally built, and even retrieved as many stones as they could from the river and reused them in the construction.

Today young local boys hang around the bridge in their speedos, and if you  give them a few euros, they will jump off the top of the 27 metre bridge into the river. There is an annual diving competition too off the bridge. As Pedja told me, "To be a man in Mostar, you have to dive off the bridge."

 Mostar was one of my favourite places in the entire two month trip through the Balkans. I wonder why though.

Maybe it was the bridge. In the evenings, it looks even more beautiful when it is lit up. As I went to it, every evening and sat there every night, I looked at the people as they all came together; the couples kissing or just holding each other, the old men who would sit around a table and play a board game, the girls in the heels who would giggle and laugh and squeal as they  found it impossible to walk on the slippery surface; the café owners on either side who would ask you to come over but never pester, the bazaar  that would completely alive and look as bright as could be with the dazzling lamps, the hookahs, the bowls, the flowing robes, the souvenirs. 

Maybe it was the slowness in the air. Those cobblestone streets, those buildings of Ottoman architecture, the narrow alleys in the bazaar, had a charm that made you feel as if you were in a different era altogether. It made you want to just saunter through those lanes, it made you want to write. 

Or maybe it was just that family I stayed with. Every day as I walked into the hostel, after my morning or evening excursions, Ana and Tariq would smile widely at me. Not just a heavy breakfast, they also insisted on giving me dinner every night. Each time I entered the house, I was offered something to eat. And in the nights, Pedja, Ana, Tariq and I would sit in the balcony, drink wine and listen to the music playing in the background. Sometimes they were songs of Freedom, sometimes they were classics, sometimes they were jazz, but they all sounded beautiful. Pedja would never remember my name and would keep calling me Gandhi, a man he greatly admired. They had never had an Indian in the hostel before, and Gandhi soon became my name there. By two days, we had become very attached.

On the third night, there were a number of new backpackers in the hostel. A rumbuctious lot, they kept shouting and laughing and drinking in the middle of the night, and it annoyed me to see this, especially because Pedja had such long work days, and their noise would not let him sleep. I had not even realized how I had become possessive towards this new family of mine.

On the fourth morning, I planned to leave. Tariq’s face fell when I checked out and paid him for my room.  Something just pulled at my heart right then so I impulsively said “alright I will stay for an extra day.”  Both he and Ana whooped in excitement. Pedja was away conducting a group tour to the waterfalls, and Ana called him to say that I was extending my stay by a day. I could hear him roar on the other end of the line, and say “Tell Gandhi I will put his picture on my wall”.

The whole day I sat with Tariq and Ana at the dining table. We played chess, we spoke, they taught me some Bosnian, I taught them some Hindi. We were all terrible students.

The next morning as I woke up, Tariq grinned at me and said, “my brother”. It sounds cheesy now but in those moments, listening to that giant of a sixteen year old say those words in a heavy accent made me smile.

Finally, I had to leave. When I proceeded to pay for the room, they refused to take money and told me that Pedja had said that he would not accept more money from me. For four nights, the family fed me breakfast, dinner, snacks, and filled me with wine and beer and had not taken a single penny for it. Now they were not even accepting money for the room. I kept pleading but they did not listen.

I walked out of the hostel, shaking my head. As I walked on, I realized I loved this town. Ahead a crowd had collected. A man was blowing large giant bubbles. He was wearing a hat, and long flowing pants.The kids in the crowd were completely fascinated by these large bubbles and came forward to hold them or burst them. He moved his hands in an exaggerated manner, and kept calling out to the kids, and they all came, enchanted, entranced, following his command and following the bubbles. Their parents clapped and the crowd cheered as the man had the kids fascinated. Through his act, the child in all of was coming out.

A small hat lay on the ground, and next to it lay a placard that said he was a traveler from Argentina and needed money to travel. That he went to every town and performed in the evenings. I have seen people busking before, but almost all of these street performers have either been musicians, singers, dancers or fire eaters. It was the first time I was seeing a man blow bubbles, make children happy and try to earn money. I went forward and put a few coins in his hat.

I stood there for ten more minutes, watching him enthrall the kids. Every single person in the audience was smiling and it was beautiful. Realizing that my bus would leave soon, I left. As I walked on, I realized I loved this town.

Do you want to join This Guy on one of his August trips? We are going to Kashmir and Ladakh. Send a mail to narayanan.neeraj@gmail.com if you want to come along.

Now Read:

1) Hitchhiking to Tirana: This Guy's On His Own Trip
2) The Art of Travelling
3) Nero is in Albania

Hitchhiking to Tirana: Nero in Albania

And with that one simple gesture, she had floored me. It wasn’t love in the slightest sort, neither was it infatuation, nor a warmth brewing from friendship. But I was filled with affection, and I didn’t know what to do.

Let’s go back to the beginning of the story.

I was standing on the side of the road, in Berat. A few cars had passed me already and though I put out my thumb, nobody paid any attention to it. I was trying to hitchhike my way from Berat to Tirana, the capital of Albania. Not that there weren’t any buses, and neither was the ticket expensive, but I wanted to see if I could hitchhike my way across a country. Tirana would just serve as a pit stop, and the goal was to hitchhike till Kosovo – Albania’s neighbor and the second newest country in the world.

I didn’t mind the cars not stopping. One would, eventually, I figured. What was inconvenient though was the searing heat. It was over forty degrees celcius and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I tried to let it not bother me. It was, finally, all part of the experience.

Another traveler joined me. He was from New Zealand, and said he was hitchhiking to Tirana too. He introduced himself as Peter. “Nero”, I replied and we shook hands.

 I noticed a man standing on the opposite side of the road, staring at me. I was getting used to it now. None of them had ever met an Indian before. I smiled at him and he walked over to us and asked us where we were from. We spoke for a while and he asked me if I would pose for a photograph with him. So we grinned into his phone, as he took a selfie.

Ten minutes later, a car stopped a few metres ahead and we ran to it, hauling our bags. He wasn’t going to Tirana but he could drop us midway, he said. We hopped in and he started the car’s engine. ‘Falemenderit’, we both told him excitedly,  the Albanian word for “thank you”.

The breeze hit my face, and it was making me feel good about myself. About the hitchhiking that I was doing.

Peter and I started talking and when I asked him how long he had been travelling. “It’s been 9-10 months now” he replied casually.

The man had started his journey from Thailand. After spending some time in the islands, he boarded a bus and headed north. Soon, he had crossed over to Myanmar. After spending two weeks there, he hopped across to India via the Manipur-Myanmar border. Unlike a lot of international backpackers who come to India and do Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Varanasi and Khajuraho, Peter fell in love with the simplicity and virgin beauty of India’s north eastern states and spent over a month trekking through Manipur, Tripura, Arunachal and Assam. He then moved a little south to West Bengal and flitted through the streets of Kolkata, rode the yellow taxis, and sat at the banks of the Hooghly. Moving westward, he entered into Varanasi and had long smoking sessions with a saadhu. Later, he took the train to New Delhi.

The car suddenly stopped and the owner smiled at us sheepishly and said that he was turning into another town and if we wanted to go to Tirana, it made sense to get down there. He was nice enough to stop at a bus stop. We got down, thanked him and saw him drive away.

Peter told me that he would take the next bus and asked if I’d join him. I shook my head. I was sure I wanted to complete this journey only by hitchhiking. We bid adieu to each other.

Peter’s father was French, and when he had started this trip, Peter had decided to go all the way from Asia to France by land. After travelling in India, he crossed over to Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Greece and till a few moments back had been sitting in a car with me in Albania. In a few more weeks, he would be in the land of Napolean, Victor Hugo and Zinedine Zidane and his journey would be complete.

The cars whizzed past me. It was hotter now, and I was quite tempted to join Peter on the bus. I finished the last drops in my water bottle and stared at the road. A bus went by. Maybe he was on it. Safe travels, my friend.

Finally, a car stopped. Two young travellers, a girl and a boy, smiled at me as I got into the back of their car and told me they were from Belgium and were road tripping through Albania.

I was very sleepy and tired when I had gone into the car, but there was something in the way the three of us connected that made me just want to talk to them, and not sleep at all. They were in their early twenties. In love. Soft spoken. Interested in visiting India. They had been to Argentina before. And I was interested in visiting Argentina. They spoke of Shantaram, and I spoke of the Tango. We spoke of how beautiful Albania was, and the need to see places which weren’t swarming with pub crawls, and not swarming with a thousand tourists. I don’t really remember what all we spoke about, but there are days when someone says something and you just smile and nod your head and look out of the window and think about what they said, in your head. I don’t remember what all we spoke about but it’s not every day you say something and someone looks back at you and writes down that line in a brown diary. I don’t remember smiling so much in a conversation in some time.

I don’t remember seeing my destination appear and me wishing that we were driving for some more time.

It was so sudden that we reached Tirana that I didn’t really have time to think of anything except to get out of the car and haul out my bags. I had to still complete my journey to Kosovo, while they were spending the next two days in Tirana.

I looked into the window and wished Noam a pleasant journey ahead. Jasmine had gone down from the car and I turned back and smiled at her. We hugged, and as is regular in Southern and Eastern Europe, I leaned forward and we lightly cheek kissed twice. I was about to withdraw, when she leaned a third time and put her cheek next to mine and said in a soft tone, “In Belgium, we say goodbye by cheek kissing thrice, Nero.”

And with that one simple gesture, she had floored me. It wasn’t love in the slightest sort, neither was it infatuation, nor a warmth brewing from friendship. But I was filled with affection, and I didn’t know what to do. I don’t even know why it felt significant.

I just stood there, looking at the two of them and wondering if the three of us would ever meet again. Somewhere I know they were thinking the same. But we chose to keep silent and after a few moments, Noam started the car and I saw it leave.

I walked to a café, my head still filled with the conversation we had and the two of them. It would be stupid to text that I miss them, I thought to myself. “It’s only been fifteen minutes”, I said to myself. The next moment, I got a message “We miss you. If you haven’t gotten a ride yet to Kosovo, come to our hostel.”

I smiled at the message and finished my sandwich. To go back would be to try and capture the moment again. To go back would be stretching a moment. I picked up my bags and went out of the café.

Eventually, some car would stop. And I would reach Kosovo. What was inconvenient though was the searing heat. It was over forty degrees celcius and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I tried to let it not bother me. It was, finally, all part of the experience.

-------   The End -------

Now read:

1) Nero is in Albania
2) The Art of Travelling
3)  The Good Men of India: A story at 17,000 feet above sea level

Dancing with a man in Malaga airport: Spain Part 4

As I look at the three of them coming out of the pub laughing, screaming and falling over each other, I smile. Einar looks around the street for me, but I make no effort to confirm my presence. As Peter whispers in Isa’s ear, and she doubles over laughing, a sudden wave of affection fills my heart and I know then that the trip to Malaga is  not going to be about the Moors, nor the sea, not the history or the sightseeing. It will be about the four of us.

Let us go back a few hours in time.

Or maybe first, let us tell you a bit about Malaga. Seville, Granada, Malaga and Cordoba form the four major cities of the Andalusian region of Spain, and it is these cities that the Moorish empire most left their mark on. The city is in the Costa De Sol region, an area that is renowned for some of the prettiest beaches of the Mediterranean. The rock island of Gibraltar lies a stone's throw away, and if you have a really strong arm, the stone might cross over and land prettily in Morocco. But if you are not Hercules, Hulk Hogan or me, and still hell bent on having your stone in Moroccan territory, you can hop on a ferry. It will take about four hours to cover the distance.

How I educate you all. Must start charging money soon.

Right, let us now go back a few hours in time. 

Coughing and sniffing, I got down from the bus that brought me from Granada to Malaga. It was 8 pm, and the sun was still shining brightly in the sky.

I called up Isabel, the Couchsurfer whom I was going to stay with in Malaga, and she gave me directions to her house. Moments later, she messaged to confirm if I had understood the directions. I replied saying I would not really mind if she came galloping on a horse, picked me up in one sweeping movement and carried me to her abode. She asked if all Indian males were as macho as I.

 I liked Isa, even though we had only spoken online. Right from the first time I had mailed her asking if I could stay with her, she had been cheery in her replies. I had a feeling we would get on well.

Twenty minutes later, I rang her bell.

Her house was every bit as welcoming as her.  Another Couchsurfer had already been staying there for a few days. “Einar”, he said and there was no doubting the baritone. “Nero”, I replied in the deepest voice I could muster. “Wine?” quipped our pretty host.

We spent the next two hours just the way three strangers meeting for the first time should… drinking wine.

And some more wine.

Somewhere along all this drinking, Isa and Einar told me that at eleven pm, they were going to pick up one of Einar's friends from the airport. I declared, between sips, that Indians hic love picking up people, err fromsh airports and stations, not bodily, so I shwould go too, hic hic!

As the clock struck what it was supposed to, we ran down to the car. Einar insisted that Peter was a fun guy, an absolute character, and it was our duty to play a gag on him at the airport. After sharing several inane ideas, we came up with a plan. Earlier, we used Facebook to identify Peter Castenback.

On arriving at the airport, Isa and I rushed to the receiving gate, while Einar hid behind a pillar close at hand. A camera was positioned strategically to capture the whole scene.

A number of men walked passed us, heading for the exit. A few women streamed in. Some dogs bounded by. None looked very similar to our man. A man walked in our direction, to his family standing next to us. The two young children, both below 7 years of age, fell all over his legs, trying to hug him, and the wife looked on with happy tears. He kissed her, and kissed again while the son tried to lift his heavy suitcase. It wouldn’t budge. The daughter was stuck onto his right arm, wanting to be airborne. She was crying, though maybe, just maybe she was too young to understand pain or separation. For a minute forgot our shenanigans and smiled at the reunion.

Suddenly, Einar hissed from behind the pillar. A gangly figure was approaching. As he neared us, he resembled the man we had seen on Facebook. But wait, what was he wearing?

Right before Peter would pass us by, Isa stepped forward and launched into her speech, as per plan. She insists that Einar has passed out in the house and therefore we have come to receive Peter. The man nods. He is then told that he can accompany us only if he dances here, in the airport.

What would you do in such a situation?

It is my turn. I tell him that I was made to go through the same ordeal, that because I was an Indian, I had to do the kuchipudi to enter Isa's house, that Isa has unusual artistic fetishes. I sound quite rueful. Maybe I should try become an actor. 

Would you have danced? In front of two foreigners you have never met or spoken to before? In front of an entire airport? In a strange country, a strange land you are visiting for the first time? Would you?

Peter Castenback would. Our strange request does not faze him at all. Instead, he grins and tells Isa, "Well, you will have to join me then." Isa looks surprised, if not shocked, but before she can come up with an answer, Peter has spread out his arms and has pulled her into a waltz. Before I can collect my wits, he has started to sing a Swedish song. Loudy, for the entire airport to hear.

Isa sportingly follows his lead, and there they go waltzing around the airport as the clock strikes midnight. Peter is in his element, twirling and waltzing her around as if he has been doing so for years, as if he knows her for years. I am trying to appear nonchalant, as if I have been looking at strangers dancing in airports all my life.

I move back, and look at the man closely.  He is wearing a coat that was part of a suit once, but under that there is no shirt, only a vest that he has probably worn for a week. Where the coat ends, and it was rightfully a trousers’ right to occupy position, there are a pair of shorts. Far below the hairy knees, there are white socks, and pointed black shoes. His hair is tousled and he wears thick spectacles which could pass off as fashionable. From his left ear, sprouts a feather. A blue feather.

Peter Castenback. The man with a feather for an earring. 

Minutes into the performance, Einar bursts out from his hiding place and we all start laughing. The two Swedes hug and clap each others' backs just as all men who are bosom pals do.

We settle into the car, and before the suitcase has been out in the back, Peter brings out a bottle of wine. In the twenty minutes that it takes to reach Isa's house, we are taking large swigs from the bottle, I face a barrage of questions about India, Isa is accused of inviting men over only to see them dance, and Einar is on some alpha Viking trip where he keeps going "oiii" at random people walking on the road, the sky, and surprised dustbins.

We go back to the house to put down Peter's bags. He announces that he would like to change his attire, and before we are halfway close to mouthing 'certainly', he has pulled down his trousers all the way down to his ankles, and we have no choice but to know what Swedish undergarments look like. 

 We spend the whole night hopping from one pub to another. We dance with random people, we speak to random people, and we forget those people. Around 4 am, I step out of a bar and sit on a kerb on the opposite side of the street. Maybe to clear my head, maybe to feel some fresh air, or maybe just to soak in the moment. A girl whom I have seen inside earlier is standing near the bar. Facing me, she does one of the dance steps that I had been doing, and laughingly says something in Spanish. I don’t understand her so I smile. She smiles back, waves and goes down the road.

I would have stared at her walking away, had it not been for my friends bursting out of the bar. As I look at the three of them coming out of the pub laughing, screaming and falling over each other, I smile. Einar looks around the street, to find me, but I make no effort to confirm my presence. As Peter whispers in Isa’s ear, and she doubles over laughing, a sudden wave of affection fills my heart and I know then that the trip to Malaga is  not going to be about the Moors, nor the sea, not the history or the sightseeing. It will be about the four of us.

The next day, Peter, Einar and I had breakfast together. Earlier, Isa had already bathed and left for her father’s house. Towards noon, Einar and Peter left for a seaside village where they planned to surf for a few days. Surf, not couchsurf. Strangely, even though we had only spent a day together, I felt I would miss them.

Isa and I spent the evening talking and made plans to go to a concert and a beer festival with some of her friends. When we reached the venue, she wondered if Einar and Peter would have liked to be there too. We called them up and the lazy louts said they would, and if we would be kind enough to pick them up.

Isa being Isa, that brilliant woman who really should have been a boy, turned the steering wheel and off the two of us went in the middle of the night to pick two Swedish men we had only met a day before. Half an hour later, after getting lost and then finding our way, we turned into the street of their hotel. The two were standing outside with a crate of bottles. When they saw the car, they jumped up and down and screamed as if they were two little boys and not the thirty plus year olds that they were;  hugging us as soon as they got in.

I don't know if I shall ever see the three of them again. Maybe we were meant to meet only once,or maybe they will come to India some day. But that trip to Malaga, it was about the four of us. Isa Per Mar - that lovely girl who welcomed us into our homes and hearts; Einar Norstedt - the alpha male always for a challenge; me; and Peter Castenback - the man with a blue feather for an earring.