A Different Lifetime: Stepping Back in Time in the Former Yugoslavia (10 page)

After another hour the bus
reached the edge of the capital city - Belgrade. To my surprise the city is far
larger and busier than I thought it would be; in fact it takes a further forty
minutes to drive into the centre. The city centre is quite a bustling metropolis;
there are buses and trams and trolley buses and cars, and endless traffic
lights, which all seem to turn red as we approach them. There are numerous
shopping streets and squares, all well illuminated as well as being draped in
Christmas lights. There is such liveliness to this city that one might easily
think you are in a major world centre such as London or New York. But when we
do finally arrive at the city’s long distance bus station I soon begin to
wonder if I am in the right place. I am in a narrow street with three or four
bus stop signs:

“Can this really be the
bus station?”

I am soon descended upon
by several taxi drivers who have parked around this area, and who have noticed
that I am waiting with my luggage, wondering what to do next. One of the said
taxi drivers is particularly aggressive in his quest to deliver me to the
airport. His initial offer of taking me to the airport for 1,600 of the local
coinage is continually being lowered and has finally settled at 800 Dinara. I
really don’t need to pay anything remotely close to this amount anyway. But
then the negotiation takes a strange turn:

“I take you for 1,000
Euros,” the taxi driver adds cheerily.

Of course this is several
times higher than his original offer. It is at this point that I suddenly get
it into my head to check my phone, and low and behold, there is a message from
Icca saying:

“Don’t worry, I’ll be
there at six o’ clock.”

However, as it is now ten
minutes past six, I am beginning to worry!

“Is this where she is expecting
me to be,” I’m thinking. “Is this the actual bus station or some dropping off
point outside of the bus station?”

Then I receive another
text message:

“I’ll be late ten minutes,
because of the city bus.”

But before I know it, Icca
is there: she is wearing a white coat, a red woollen hat, and her usual smile,
and is already dealing with the one taxi driver who is still persistently
waiting for the opportunity to transport me to the airport. And now, everything
is fine; and still smiling she tells me:

“My dad says it’s alright
for you to stay at our apartment tonight.”

Of course this is
wonderful news; I most certainly had not been looking forward to a sixteen hour
wait at the airport.

Almost immediately as she
finishes speaking, she begins to help me pick up my luggage, which we carry
together for some distance. We cross a square and several major thoroughfares
to the far side of the bus station to the place where the local city buses
stop. We have quite a bit to talk about: about the large city, Belgrade, and
Novaginja, the small community that I had just left behind. We have to wait
some time for a bus to arrive, and when it does come it is completely full,
barely any room to stand. It appears to be rush hour in the capital city, but
maybe it is always like this: vibrant and alive and bustling with traffic and
people. Icca clambers aboard through the back door pulling my case behind her,
while I, standing behind the case, am attempting to push it up the steps. We
somehow manage to secure the case at the top of the stairs leaving me with just
enough room to stand clear of the closing door. Of course, there is no way on
earth that we will be able to buy a ticket, it is practically impossible to
move, let alone make it to the front of the bus.

Icca proceeds to point out
some of the passing landmarks, in particular the square at which I would catch
the bus to the airport in the morning. At this point, she decides it would be best
to remain on the bus as we are now getting close to her apartment.

“It would be better to
drop off the bags and then come back out,” she advises.

The traffic is still very
heavy and we are hitting every traffic light on red, which makes the journey
seem to last for ever; but eventually it is time to drag the luggage back off
of the stairs.

Leaving the bus, we walk
along a narrow path behind a pizza restaurant and then we begin to negotiate
some dark narrow streets. We have to walk on the road because of the luggage;
we are carrying the bag between us while I drag the case along behind me. After
a few turns we arrive at the apartment building; entering through the front
door, we proceed to drag the luggage up the stairs to the third floor where
Icca’s apartment is located. Of course, I am by now used to entering and
leaving apartment buildings by this only available method – the stairs. Icca’s
apartment, though not large, consists of a fair size, well equipped, modern
kitchen, a large living room, bedroom, and bathroom. The kitchen windows, which
face onto a brick wall at the back of the building, have been cleverly glazed
to give a mirror like effect which helps to create the sense that the kitchen
is larger than its actual size.

We deposit the luggage
against the windowed wall of the kitchen and make our way out into the street
and back towards the bus stop. We cross the busy thoroughfare on which the
buses run by running between the gaps in the ever present traffic.

“My dad always crosses
this way,” she says.

And it seems like a good
idea, since the crossing is some distance along the street.

A bus soon arrives and we
climb aboard; evidently it is still rush hour as again it is full. We are
headed back into town, but we will need to break our journey at the airline
office so as I can make arrangements to catch the airport bus in the morning.

Strangely, neither of the
two young women working in the airline office speak English; so I am lucky that
Icca is with me. She takes my ticket and negotiates the price and the time that
bus will depart.

“You have to get the bus
that leaves here at 8:30,” she relays, “the next one will not get you there in
time.”

So I hand Icca some cash,
and she proceeds to book my ticket for the bus.

Back outside, we wait some
minutes for a bus to arrive and then board a trolley bus to ride into the city.
Again the bus is filled to capacity. Unbeknown to me, trolley buses, because
they are powered by electricity, start off with quite a lurch, and although I
am hanging on tightly to one of the handles mounted on the ceiling of the
vehicle it is not sufficient to hold me in my place; as the trolley lurches
forward, I lurch backwards crashing into the people standing behind me.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said.

“That’s quite alright,”
came the reply from the young woman I’d almost knocked over, and in a strong
American accent too.

I couldn’t believe my
ears; strangers speaking to me in English again after all this time! Well, now
I’m making sure to tighten my grip on the unruly vehicle’s handrail and we
continue on our journey to the city centre.

This is Icca’s second
promise, to show me around the big city. We alight from the trolley on reaching
the city centre and Icca proceeds to lead me into the main pedestrian shopping
centre. By now it is dark, but the shops are still open and as we walk through
the crowd there is a vibrant sense of excitement all around: perhaps it is a
sense of the excitement that accompanies the last days leading up to Christmas,
or maybe life is always this exciting here; I personally prefer to believe the
latter explanation. People are shopping, there are singers and musicians performing,
and I feel a little sorry that I have only a few hours to discover this
magnificent city.

Icca suddenly points me in
the direction of a shop selling bath fragrances.

“Come,” she says “this is
an English shop.”

Once inside, I am reminded
of one of those candle shops that you find in every American shopping mall,
except that all of the various shapes and scents here are intended for
dissolving in the bath. So we spend some time sniffing the flowers and the shells
and the ones that resemble blocks of cheese and blocks of chocolate. I’m trying
to imagine bathing in cheese or chocolate! But of course, after several minutes
of sniffing it becomes impossible to distinguish one scent from another.

Back outside, we make our
way to the square that marks the centre of the city; again it is a bustling
hive of activity: a mass of people milling around in an area that is surrounded
by brightly lit theatres and museums. Now, I want to take some photographs but
I have some doubts as to whether there will be enough light. So I suggest to
Icca that should pose in front of the buildings; at least she will appear in
the picture even if nothing else does. So I position her in front of the
theatre:

“Come a bit closer!” I
motion, wanting to be sure that she doesn’t disappear amongst the army of
moving pedestrians.

Well, the photographs
turned out to be better than I had hoped, and both Icca and the theatre are
clearly visible.

From the square, we
continue through the remainder of the shopping centre and then cross the street
to enter the park. Immediately I notice the piles of white that are marking the
edges of the paths.

“That looks like snow,” I
said.

“Yes, we’ve had quite a
lot of snow this week,” Icca replied.

Wow, now I am surprised;
we had had a light dusting of snow back in Novaginja, but it had not remained
on the ground more than an hour or two. We continue to follow the path through
the park until we reach the river. The view from the park is magnificent; from
this vantage point high above the river, we can see the many brightly
illuminated bridges spanning the Danube and the brightly lit boats and cafés
along the farthest bank. This is another unbelievable scene that just has to be
photographed; but this is a scene that will probably require a really slow
shutter speed. So I adjust the camera to what I think will be the right setting
and I position Icca once more in the foreground, and luckily  much of  the
detail of the lighting  is  captured  in  the  picture.

We follow the path high
above the river for some distance heading towards an ancient fortress that one
of the former colonial powers, Turkey, had constructed to defend the city. So
far, I haven’t been really aware of the fast declining temperature; while we
were taking photographs in the square, I had noticed that an electronic sign
was displaying the current temperature as being minus one degree Celsius. I
suppose it is the outcome of being in such a vibrant city; the warming effect
one feels when surrounded by bustling crowds and fast flowing traffic.

We are discussing the
local architecture: the eastern influence that dominates the fortress versus
the European influences that are more prominent it the city – the Austrians are
even more unfavourably thought of than the Turks. Within the gate of the
fortress are large grounds with buildings that double as a museum and a sports
facility. In the grounds it is quite dark, but there are areas around the
various gates that are well lit, which again permits the taking of photographs.
In the shadowy areas away from the lights, it is possible to make out the
silhouettes of cannons and tanks and the outlines of basketball and tennis
courts. And so, our conversation turns to sport: what sports we like and what
sports we have played. And by the time our discussion of sport is concluded, we
have covered the entire grounds of the fortress and are leaving through a gate
that brings us back to the streets of the city centre.

As we are about to cross
the street, Icca announces that she is planning to become a dentist after
completing her degree at the Belgrade university. I am aware that her parents
are both dentists: her mother in Novaginja and her father here in Belgrade, but
somehow I don’t picture Icca as a dentist, and for that matter, I doubt anyone
seeing her would think dentist either.

“Oh yea, a model or a
movie star perhaps,” I joked.

 “Oh, such compliments,”
she laughed, and we ran across the busy street, narrowly avoiding the fast
flowing traffic, headed back to the shopping centre.

Now, neither of us have
very much money; in my plans to conserve as much money for the future as
possible, I have neglected to keep back much local currency, but I feel that I
should do something to repay Icca for her hospitality. She has already decided
that we will go back to her apartment to eat, so I decide that we should stop
for a drink at one of the many cafés that are dotted around the centre. Icca
chooses one that is situated on the first floor above some of the shops.
Standing on the upper step of two levels that divide the path through the
shopping precinct, and looking down at me on the lower level, she says.

Are you sure you want to
pay this much?”

“Well, just what is it
going to cost me?” I reply.

She answered with some
figure in the local currency.

“Oh, you couldn’t get a
glass of water for that in England,” I laugh.

So we go in: I followed
Icca through the first of two doors, which brings us face to face with a
security guard sitting at a desk.