A Different Lifetime: Stepping Back in Time in the Former Yugoslavia (5 page)

I’m feeling like Robinson
Crusoe, alone I have settled into my new surroundings, and I am out exploring
the perimeters of my new territory. Like Robinson Crusoe, my new home is
surrounded, or virtually surrounded, by water: not Crusoe’s tropical island surrounded
by blue seas, but an Eastern European town bordered by a river on two sides and
a man-made channel on another. I have been experimenting with the local walks,
those that follow the river from the esplanade. First of all, I followed the
river south beyond the school, past a small sports stadium until my path became
blocked by a locked gate. Later I followed the path atop the floodwall to the
north as it separates from the river, passing small peasant cottages with
chickens and the occasional pig in the gardens, and the odd tractor driving
along the path or working on the adjacent land. Ahead the path reaches a huge
plain, which I imagine to be a floodplain that at times is taken over by the
waters of the Tisa. The plain is vast and in the far distance it is bordered by
what appear to be hills; though Arkom assures me there are no hills closer than
Romania and:

“What you saw must have
been the flood bank.”

I don’t know, but I don’t
believe it was the walls that border and contain the river that I saw, and
anyway, whatever it was was many miles off in the distance and far from the
river; but certainly not in the direction of Romania.

But today, I am walking
along the road which I believe heads in a northerly direction from my
apartment. I know that there must be some kind of community that is centred
there because I have many times observed two large church towers that resemble
those situated in the town centre. The road is as to be expected, lined by the
typical red-roofed cottages and very quiet: I have seen two cars drive past me
so far. But now, the first of the two churches is clearly within my sight, and
there are a couple of small shops, one either side of the street. A man has
come out of the shop ahead on my left and is crossing the road accompanied by
two small children on bikes; these are the first people I’ve seen, and I’ve now
been walking for about twenty minutes. But this is not unexpected, the only
time when one is likely to see the local inhabitants is on a warm Sunday
afternoon when what appears to be the whole community goes out walking along
the esplanade.

After another ten minutes
walking, I have arrived at the first church; it has a clear inscription on its
tower: 1903. It appears, at least from what I can see from the outside, to be
in much better condition than the churches located in the town centre. The
church is situated at a crossroads and there is a large stone cross in the
centre of the junction which serves as a roundabout: the third car I’ve seen
today has just encircled it. I look to the right and I see the other church a
little way in the distance. The road to the left I assume must at some point
lead to the river and the turning to the right perhaps returns to the centre of
town, so I decide to continue straight ahead on the same road.

After about two hundred
metres, my road suddenly becomes a narrow dirt road and I find myself out in
the country: the modest bustle of Novaginja now lies behind me. In front of me
lies flat, rugged, grey-green coloured land, as far as the eye can see. I am
especially concerned about a very large white sign with four lines of large
black writing, I believe in three different languages, that stands forbiddingly
at the entrance of this land.

‘MINEFIELD!’

“Maybe,” I thought to
myself.

“Perhaps, ‘Edge of the
community’, maybe even ‘Edge of the world.’”

This barren, jagged land
does quite resemble a battlefield. But looking to my left and way ahead in the
distance I can see the high ground of the flood wall and a line of trees which
always follow the winding path of the river, so I decide to continue in that
direction. I know that if I am successful in reaching the river, I can follow
it back to the town. I feel confident that if I follow the well flattened path
of the bright orange coloured dirt road, obviously flattened by vehicles, and
if I walk in their tyre tracks, I will be safe from mines.

Apart from the dusty,
ragged terrain, there are some tall reed grasses growing to my right,
encircling some swampy looking dark green water: the only water, I suspect, for
a few miles. After a while, the orange road divides into two: the right fork
heads toward a tiny stone peasant cottage – a dirty white colour with a dark
blue-black roof, alone but possibly inhabited, but in the middle of nowhere. I
follow the left fork towards the river.

I began to cross this vast
expanse of wasteland, still sticking safely to the tyre tracks in the winding
orange road and carefully observing the surrounding terrain. I picture myself
being in the Wild West a hundred or more years ago; the breeze is creating a
haze of dust from the dry earth and it reminds me of a dusty, desert setting of
a western movie. I have now reached the centre of the wasteland and can see a
figure coming towards me: the only other person around me for miles. It is an
old man riding a bicycle. As he draws closer, I can see that he is unshaven and
is a little short on teeth. His appearance and gleaming eyes remind me of a
character from a Spaghetti Western. He smiles as he approaches (or is it a
grimace?), and mutters something unintelligible in passing:

“Good day” or “Reach for
your gun,” or some such thing, but I continue to follow the dirt road, heading
for the flood bank.

Once on top of the high
bank, and looking in the opposite direction to the wasteland, I can see the
mighty floodplain of the River Tisa before me, much greener than the terrain I
have just crossed. There are trees dotted about the landscape and patches of
water lying on the plain, around which a few people have gathered to fish.
There is a tractor and three or four people working on the land. Way in the
distance, beyond the plain, I can see a line of tall trees: the trees mark the
course of the river.

I began to follow the path
atop the flood bank, knowing that it will re-join the river as it enters the
town, and I’m thinking about how the community is bounded by water and how I
have yet to see the man-made channel. It is now early afternoon, a warm sunny
afternoon and perfect weather for exploring.

“How can I explore further?”
I thought to myself. “If I had a bicycle I could perhaps set out for a day, I
could take some food and drink with me and see how far it is possible to go.”

I remembered that Arkom
had once told me that there was another community on the opposite bank of the
river. Apparently, some prosperous Western European country had once offered to
pay for a bridge to link the two communities, but once the bridge had been
designed and the materials bought, it was discovered that the bridge would be
much too small to span the Tisa, and so it was put to use somewhere else.

Now approaching the edge
of the town, a few cars are beginning to pass me driving on the narrow path
atop the flood bank. It seems that people use this path as a means of
travelling between the streets which dead-end here. There are tracks imprinted
in the steep earthen bank where it passes the end of these streets, inscribed
by the succession of cars that have climbed it to reach the path.

From here on, my walk is
becoming familiar to me; it’s the path I’ve walked along many times before, the
one that branches away from the river towards the floodplain. I’m following the
low lying land on the edge of town, passed the peasant cottages and animals and
following the line of tall trees that indicate that the river is now close by,
and I’m now just a short distance from the esplanade and town.

One of my first objectives
to enable me to communicate and keep in touch with friends and family in the
outside world has been to get myself an Internet connection.

“I will take care of it,”
Arkom has assured me.

But as yet several weeks
have passed and no solution has materialised. I have learned from Arkom that
the only connections available here are wireless, and I know from turning on my
laptop that two servers are within range.

“You will first need to
buy their antenna so that you can pick up their signal,” Arkom keeps telling
me, to which I reply:

“It is built into my
computer; I am already able to pick up the signal.”

Much persistence has
followed on my behalf, and much waiting on a time when Arkom’s friend can come
round to the apartment and set up a connection.

“He is very busy,” always
being the reason for the delay.

But one morning, Arkom and
two friends finally arrive to check out the situation.

The problem seems to be
that Arkom’s friend owns the server that is showing a very

weak signal.

“You will have to buy the
antenna,” said Arkom, “John had to buy one.”

In fact Arkom was able to
produce the box that had contained John’s (my predecessor’s) antenna. Of
course, John had taken the actual apparatus with him when he left: he too was
apparently of the opinion that he was able to connect to the Internet without
one and had begrudgingly handed over a fair some of money for the privilege of
getting connected. Unfortunately, I wasn’t prepared to buy an antenna when I
was in range of a very strong alternative signal.

Again much time passed;
Arkom through one reason or another always dismissed the idea of getting
Internet from the other provider. In fact it took something of a disagreement
and my insistence before Arkom would give the idea consideration. Then one
afternoon Arkom suddenly announced:

“It’s more expensive, but here is your username and
password, and you must give me two hundred Dinara for fifty hours and then you
can use it.” 
Well, this did not seem at all expensive to me, and fifty hours would surely be
enough to last me for a couple of months, so I gladly accepted and handed over
the money. And so now with my ability to communicate with the outside world
firmly established my thoughts are now focused on exploring and communicating
with more immediate locations: those beyond the peripheries of Novaginja.

Since my arrival, I have
always had ideas of seeing some of the country, not to mention seeing some of
the nearby neighbours: Croatia, Romania (or Transylvania to be exact) and
Hungary. But one has no concept of how difficult it is to travel when you have
long been accustomed to the simplicity of travelling in the west. Living in the
west, you take for granted simple concepts like renting a car, catching a
train, or catching a bus. In Eastern Europe things are different; the age old
tradition of staying in the town or village in which you were born remains the
norm. It is partly for this reason that one gets the feel of being a time
traveller, travelling into the past. Indeed the whole lack of motor vehicles,
supermarkets, fast food, in fact any chain of shops or businesses at all,
creates an aura of how Western Europe would have been in the early years of the
twentieth century. In fact, it is quite usual to see produce being delivered to
the greengrocer’s on the back of an open horse drawn cart. It is equally as
common to see a large grey horse standing tethered to its empty cart outside
someone’s house, a bag of food over its nose, passing the day awaiting its
owners, the builders, to load up their tools and  ride home at the end of the
day.

Novaginja really is
Shangri-La. It’s a place lost in time; if you are here, you remain here; if

you leave you are perhaps
leaving for good. My thoughts and hopes of renting a bicycle to explore the
adjacent areas have already been dashed.

“There’s nowhere here to
rent one,” said Arkom.

And attempts to borrow or
even pay to borrow Arkom’s are unfruitful on the grounds that he may need it.
So any possibility of renting a car is obviously out of the question.

“There are no cars for
rent here,” I was told, “you would have to go to Novi Sad.”

I have always had thoughts
of travelling to Transylvania – Dracula’s castle is less than a day’s drive
away; and another trip to the north, crossing the border into Hungary and
hopefully reaching Budapest. But the idea is now impossible: attempting the
slow bus trip to Novi Sad on a Saturday, the vague possibility of even being
able to rent a car, the driving back to Novaginja and beyond to my chosen
destination, plus being able to return the car and then the unavailability of a
bus back to Novaginja on a Sunday, would prohibit any such venture.

The option of catching a
train also seems hopeless. If there are, as Arkom has informed me, no trains
going to Novi Sad, and trains to Budapest and Belgrade only run from Novi Sad, and
I have no other means of getting to the station in Novi Sad, then railway is
also not an option. I just might one day catch the bus that runs to Novi Sad.
Novi Sad, the capital of Vojvodina, is the one city of any size and consequence
in the immediate area. However, what there is to do or see there remains a
mystery. And as for seeing nearby countries and cities, well Novaginja really
is Shangri-La: I am here until I choose to leave forever.

And now as we enter into
November, dark evenings and falling temperatures plus days filled with fog are
making notions of travel ever less desirable.

“It is unusual,” my
students tell me,

“It is not usually so
cold.” 

“It is never this cold,”
says Arkom.

My apartment, usually ever
warm, is now becoming cold and I supplement what warmth I have by filling one
of the empty plastic drinking water bottles with hot water from the tap and
placing it under my shirt when I am sitting or in bed while I am sleeping. Yes,
I do have an electric fire, one of those consisting of two bars that glow red
when switched on. However, this has a minimal effect on the temperature of the
apartment and I feel sure that running an electric fire for long periods at a
time will result in an astronomically high electricity bill.

But then workmen arrive to
bleed the radiator system throughout the building, which means they will
temporarily have to turn on the supply of hot water to my radiator. For a few
days I am basking in twenty-five degree heat, until they remember to come and
shut it off again. But something has changed, the pipes that run around my
bathroom walls are remaining hot and this proves sufficient to radiate enough
heat around the whole apartment to maintain a liveable temperature: at least
for a few more days.

Looking out of my window
one dark, cold Friday evening, I can see the first flakes of snow cascading
down over the roofs of the town. It is just a light shower leaving behind a
sprinkling of white dust atop the red roofs. For some reason I expect these few
flakes to soon disappear, but before long, the whole sky is white with snow and
beginning to cover not only the roofs but the streets too. All signs of life
have now disappeared: not one single vehicle attempts to negotiate the roads;
not one pedestrian is out walking, trying to make it home or to any other place
for that matter.

In the morning I awake to
find that everything is still white, and judging by the now obviously   deep
cover, the snow must have continued to fall overnight. After breakfast I start
out as usual to buy groceries, but as I make my way to the main street, I soon
discover that the snow has brought the community to a virtual halt. There are
still no vehicles, and virtually no one is out on foot: unusual for a Saturday morning.

“Are they so unused to
snow?” I wondered. It seemed as though the whole community had gone into
hibernation.

“Yes, snow can usually
hamper getting about,” I thought, “but by mid-morning is it not unusual for
people to have tried?”

As I made my way farther
along the street, I began to notice that several of the shops and cafés were closed.
The snow on the pavements just covered my shoes, so I could see no reason not
to continue. The small supermarket opposite the post office is open for
business as usual, albeit having no customers, and Denna and Ivan the butcher
are working. So I am able to proceed as usual; in fact, other than being cold,
this morning is turning out to be just like any other Saturday for me.

However, one additional
thing that I have planned for today is to make a phone call – an international
phone call if that is at all possible. I have decided that it is time that I
tried to contact my family, but this of course is not as easy as it sounds; no
one has any idea how to go about telephoning outside of the country, you see no
one has any reason to. And so when Saturday evening finally came around, and
with the snow still on the ground and the temperature falling fast – it is
already below zero, I am surprised to hear a knock at the door and a:

“Hyeeeeellow.”

It’s Arkom, braving the
elements and not wanting to let me down, coming to assist me with making the
call as promised.

Arkom has decided that
what I will need to do is to buy a prepaid phone card; so after the usual
remark of astonishment:

“Why do you lock your
door?”

We set out into the cold,
dark evening. Our first stop is the kiosk opposite the greengrocer’s, which
sells newspapers and tobacco and the like. Arkom negotiates a deal with the
young woman in the kiosk, in Serbian of course; it seemed to take a few minutes,
but by the tone of the voices I guessed that things were hopeful.

“Give her one hundred
Dinara,” said Arkom suddenly.

And I obligingly hand over
the said amount, for which the woman hands me a grey plastic card the size of a
credit card. So far so good! But now the mystery thickens. How exactly do we
use this piece of grey plastic that I have just purchased?

Arkom thought for a
moment. 

“We should go to the
hotel,” he exclaimed.

So heading away from the
square, passed the greengrocer’s, we turned left as if headed in the direction
of the school. The hotel is located here, directly behind the theatre. We enter
the hotel lobby and head for the grey phone lying on the reception desk. We
each tried to dial the access number given on the card, but to no avail. Arkom
began to converse with the receptionist; another lengthy, indefinable
conversation, which finally ended when another young woman appeared behind the
desk who spoke perfect English.

“For this kind of card you
will need to use a pay phone,” she told us.

Arkom thought for a
moment.

“We should go to the bus
station,” he decided.

As we walked along the
dark street that leads from the hotel to the bus station, not passing one
single person, the temperature appeared to be falling fast.

“Could it possibly get any
colder,” I thought to myself. After all, it has failed to get above freezing
all day.

We arrive at the deserted
bus station just as the snow began to resume its fall. There are two pay
phones; both are located, of course, outside and fully exposed to the elements.
But perhaps this will work: finally making contact with the outside world; this
surely would be worth my standing in temperatures that were calculated in minus
figures with snow falling on me. I dialled the number on the card and voila it
worked; however, I now found myself listening to extremely long recorded
instructions, none of which made any sense to me at all. I passed the phone to
Arkom.

“It is saying that you
will need to dial these three numbers then the phone number,” he said.

I dialled 335 and then the
number, but once more I got the recorded message. Again I passed the phone to
Arkom,

“It says the number is not
allowed. Are you sure you’ve got the right number?”

“Yes, is there a code
number to dial to get a number outside of the country,” I replied. Arkom began
to read the instructions adjacent to the phone, which apparently shed no light
on the situation.

“I will have to speak to
someone and ask,” he finally announced.

This would of course
require using my phone card:

“There is no other way,”
he exclaimed.

A lengthy conversation
ensued followed by Arkom’s redialling of the number.

“It’s reeeeenging,” he
yelled with obvious excitement, passing the phone to me. 

“No,” I said, “that’s an
engaged tone or maybe a wrong number sound.”

However, we tried once
more:

“Yes it’s ringing,” I
yelled.

This time I was excited.
And yes, my son answered the phone.

“I don’t know how long I
have,” I explained, “it could cut off at any time.”

In fact I had only three
minutes, but it was well worth it. I thanked Arkom for his help and offered to
buy him a drink; it felt like the least I could do.