July 31, 18:43
I am not quite sure what the time is and I don’t
really have the strength or will to take my cell out of my pocket to check. I
don’t really know where I am either, yet it certainly feels like an odd place
to be, so different than what I am used to, new to my eyes, to all my senses.
That is funny, since I am on my way home and the closer I get to it the more
out of place I feel.
We are in the middle of Hungary, heading to Serbia and
then all the way down to the sunny land of Macedonia. The gas station by itself
is quite fine, all the luxuries of a gas station included - by that I mean it
has a working toilet with soap and toilet paper. We didn’t have many of those
ten years ago. I finish smoking my cigarette, still my frozen fingers hold on
to the filter. My fingers seem to be more in shock than me – I’m too tired and
sleep-deprived to be in shock. But images stick to my red eyes and sounds enter
my clogged ears just to end up as impressions strong enough to write about,
like premonitions hinting to what awaits me in the few days to come. They peculiarly make me feel like Bram Stocker’s Jonathan
Harker, a most unfortunate traveler going from the civilized London to the
depths of the Carpathian mountains, right into Transylvania’s heart and into
Count Dracula’s hungry mouth...
July 31, 19:50
I do, however, intend to be smarter and less ignorant
than Mr. Harker, listening carefully to the signs my fate whispers to me on my
journey. There is no way I intend to be eaten. And in no way I am comparing my
home country to the tale's Transylvania and my house to Dracula’s castle. Yet I
am at a stage in my life, when four years of living in the Western world are
enough to make my journey to the East a cultural (besides the thermal) shock.
It all began in my lovely Prague, when I took the nice
subway, relaxing music playing in my earphones all the way, pulled my slightly
overweight fancy suitcase and reached the bus that was to take me home. I was
then forced to leave this world of mine and focus on reality: the loud bus drivers
piling up suitcases, constantly shouting at each other, noisy people speaking
the language that was my mother tongue but I failed to recognize for a few
minutes, the four other relatives of every travelling person that kept on
talking to the relative that leaves, listing all the people they need to send
their greetings to. Then there were the ones that sent out packages to their
relatives, packages that made me wonder if they aren’t sending them cars packed
up in IKEA bags. My suitcase was in the bus so I waited in line to pay for my
ticket – two people were before me, yet another guy budged in, saying he only
wants to ask something real fast, yet ends up letting five other people in the
line meanwhile. I get frustrated and I haven’t even left, is what I think. What
the hell’s next?
July 31, 21:20
I now know the answer to that one. Whoever wants to
know the sound of a transbalkanian journey should google “turbofolk”. It’s as
bad as it sounds. I could survive traditional folk music but not this s*it. It
all sounds the same: it's a weird mixture of folk and pop music, the lyrics are
plain horrible and I cannot possibly understand how a person can listen to that
thing for HOURS without becoming deaf and stupid. It soon becomes a background
noise, for co-travellers start conversing and getting to know each other, you
know, so that they have a more pleasant journey. It tires me to talk to someone
for 18 hours straight – I have tried it and hated it, the girl wouldn’t let me
sleep and felt the utmost necessity to let me to know every detail of the
places she goes to in my hometown and all the famous jet-setters she hangs out
with in Skopje. It is important to be somebody in the capital and you have to
hang out with the crème to be that someone. It's more important than doing
something universally prosperous, like making the world a better place or even
finding a job. Thus I don’t talk, and sometimes I wish I couldn’t hear as well.
Old people just keep complaining about their visit – it was too rainy, too many
eccentrics, oh my GOD they have gays and so on. They are stuck to the little
box they come from and they don’t want to appreciate what they see outside,
just because it is different. I hate close-minded and limited people. And I
seem to come from the nation of the limited. Great. The best ones, however, are
not the visiting tourists but the ones living abroad long-term, like me, the
ones who visit the little box of sunshine instead. They just won’t let go of it
– everything is better at home, food sucks, Czechs are too cold, too many gays,
they only hang out with Macedonians…Why, oh why do they live there if they hate
it? Why are they ungrateful for the opportunities, unable to create a new life
for themselves? I realize I judge too hard, but these ten people in the bus
just remind me of the rest of my nation, unable to fight, grow strong and
prosper – not because they are incapable of doing so, but because they are
afraid.
August 1, 01:12
I try to get used to the fact that I will be amidst
such people during my stay at home. And while my internal fight continues (and
ends as night falls and the cold comes) so does the landscape change, together
with the surrounding people and languages. The gypsy woman washing her hair in
the lavatory, the bus driver handing his passport with a fifty euro bill in it
to the border police, the garbage this guy just threw out of the bus window,
the seatbelts getting completely ignored by the drivers… Images stick to me
even when I am not aware of it. They create the image of home, how home feels
and looks like after four years of being away and how it will only get worse
with the many more years to come.
August 1, 07:33
As morning draws closer and the air gets warmer a new
smell comes with it – the smell of a hot, dry summer in the land of the sneaky
sun, that gets not only on your skin, but under it as well, warms up all the
coldness and strictness you have gathered while being away from it. I look at
the faces around me, the ones that looked so ugly in the Hungarian and Serbian
nights, and when I look at them closer, I realize we all look the same right
now. We all smile with our brown and hazel eyes, smile to the morning sun that
glistens on the bus windows.
August 2, 21:45
I sit in darkness right now and have no idea what the
time is – I am so engrossed in writing down my transbalkanian journey that I
can’t bring my eyes to look down at the clock on my computer screen. I think I
am sitting at my balcony, yet I am not sure – I might as well be in heaven now.
Heaven must be just as warm and and as fragrant as this air around me. I just
finished eating the best watermelon in my life. Ok, well I know I said the one
yesterday was the best, but I think I lied. It literally cracked when I slid
the knife into it, and it was the perfect blend of pink and red, juicy and
crunchy. The plate is empty but the ashtray is full. I didn’t smoke four years
ago, it slightly unnerves me I have to carry the ashtray around with me now.
This is home. A slightly different home, I am aware of that. Different is not
bad, unless you take into account Dracula. Then different is always a bad idea.
Yet the only Draculas around me are my three fluffy cats, the three sisters.
And a few of those bites I think I can handle.
Anastasia
Siljanoska
