Back from the Balkans

Created: 01 Aug 2004

I’m back from a two week visit to the Balkans. In the course of sixteen days I entered five counties: Italy, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Slovenia. Really, since I only spent a few hours in Italy and only travelled through Bosnia twice, without stopping, that’s actually three countries. I’ll be bringing my journal up to date, as and when I can summon the energy.

The Ryanair flight from Stansted to Ancona was late, as someone on the boarding gate noticed that a passenger had an expired passport after her baggage had already been loaded onto the plane. I overheard two Ryanair staff discussing her strategy for travelling with an invalid passport; “Would it help if I told you that my son was a Ryanair pilot?” It didn’t.

I spent the afternoon wandering around Ancona, buying a ferry ticket, feeding myself and generally wasting time until it was time to board the Split 1700 for Split. As I approached the ferry, about twenty minutes before the 2100 departure time, I noticed one of the mooring lines being released from the dock and had one of those have-I-grossly-miscalculated-and-missed-it travelling moments of sheer panic which defy logic. I ran. On embarkation, the girl who checked my passport and ticket noticed that my hands were shaking. I blamed it on a heavy night. Partly true, as I had ended up drinking in the Czech bar until closing with Mat and Iain, but a feeble excuse nonetheless. Actaully I’d panicked, thinking I’d missed the ferry.

Aboard, I was befriended by a group of Aussie girls who took pity on me, having seen me walking around Ancona looking unhappy. I used one of my two stock responses to this. The first is “I always look like that”, which is indeed, unhappily true. The second, the one I used, is the hangover excuse (again). “Want to get another one?” was the apprpriate riposte to that. I didn’t, having had several years of training in the art of drinking more than is good for me.

From the deck of the ferry I enjoyed the daybreak. Soon we were out of the ferry and blinking in the early morning sunshine. I said my goodbyes to Julia and Emily, who by now were being accosted by elderly ladies offering sobe (rooms). At 0730 the sun was already beating down and I moved between patches of shade. It wasn’t long before I bumped into the girls again and we spent the rest of the day together, before I caught the bus to Trogir.

Trogir, on a Friday night in summer is busy. Very busy. Traffic buzzes past, with scooters weaving in between cars, throngs of people fill the esplanade along the quayside. It took me a while to find the house we had rented from Anya. Unfortunately, a distinct lack of street signage and some rather unpredictable numbering (to British eyes, at least) hampered my efforts. After asking a handful of people, I eventually found the right address. Anya’s mother was there to meet me and show me around the house, which is pretty basic. Then she went back to her house in Split and I went to meet the others. Once they were parked and settled in the house, we located food and beers.