Stories from Balkans and beyond

Trebinje is 33 kilometers far from Dubrovnik, and I count it won’t take me much time to get there. After I changed a couple of drivers I was about to approach the border crossing and I called my friend and told him that we would meet and have a coffee in Trebinje. But something else happened.

When you cross the border between Croatia and B&H across that border crossing, you feel like you just entered the new dimension. That place, simply, exudes some dark identity of the border area. Until you cross the border, you’re still being protected from winds by the hills, but when you cross it, you come to the emptiness and the winds hit mercilessly. When you look down you can see the sea, but you’re between the rock and some surreal grass. The wind strikes and there’s nobody out there.

This is the place that first armed clashes in B&H took place in, and everything around you tells that they still haven’t finished. Houses are destroyed. The only things that still work are the local coffee shop, one store and the church. On the riddled walls, you can see the graffiti of the armies that were passing by. On the most of the houses, you can see sprayed caption “ON SALE”. You feel like you’re at the set for some war film, because all you can see are the house skeletons. Those houses are the monuments of some, allegedly, happier times and their purpose was to offer the residence to people who would like to go one day in Trebinje (B&H), another in Dubrovnik(Cro) and third one somewhere in Montenegro. This place is a deadly belly button of the former Yugoslavia.

Hitchhiking is the most direct way to indulge yourself to a matrix of life. But even if it looks chaotic to some people, hitch-hiking has its very strong base and it’s trust. The one who stops and the one who’s passing by him are afraid, but each in his own way. But if the trust overpowers the doubt, the result can give the trust in people back to you, and it means a lot. This world operates on the basis of trust. I remember when I was attacking my friend who was regular hitchhiker telling him he never knew what kind of idiot could stop. He just said: “The one who’s idiot will not stop.” And he was right. The same is with the hitchhiking. That’s like air traffic, the safest in the world, but when some accident happens, it looks terribly and everyone dreads of it.

Finally, after two hours of waiting, the car stops and during half an hour I’m getting back to the peaceful, empirical reality.