balkans '24

"Them big ideas, are buried here."

The bus driver chain-smokes out the window all night. He stops to fill his dashboard fridge with orange-pink jumbo bottles of juice. For his passengers? For hospitality?

Apparently not.

Before the border, the bus pulls up to a random police checkpoint. The officers get a juice. It's a country town, and it feels like a tumbleweed might just chase the stray dogs across the street; the street's a straight line, dusty, lined with aggrandized farmhouses. The bus is a horse, riding the backroads, somewhere in some deep south of this not-America. The country this is, its details, blur into the thick night - the only specific is the illuminated church cupolas perching between bends on the flat land - until the border comes sharply into focus.

There's no mistaking where you've arrived at. A flag flutters, a blue and a yellow field cut diagonally across, a parade of white stars on the blue following the incline. The Bosnian border guards get a juice.

The crescent moon dips behind the treeline by the roadside. Waiting for all our documents to be checked at the border bridge. Midnight birds chirp and sing by the riverside, and human song echoes off the water, from a small-town nightclub. A friendly dog with a wagging stub-tail mingles with us huddled border-crossers, looking for our snacks.

We hop back onto the bus. Someone gets dropped off at a random bus station. The attendant there gets a juice, and a joke. Sarajevo glitters into sight, chalet lights glowing on the hillsides. Arrival, a chill wind and lazily rising sun.

"Can we stand for somethin'?
Now is the time to face the wind"
~ American Requiem, BRead more