A Balkan Journey (April 2019)
Preamble
When I drove into Bosnia for the first time, in the early summer of 2013, atop my blue Yamaha FJR 1300, there had been apprehension, too.
In the old town of Zadar the night before, I had penned a letter to my terminally ill father, fighting brain cancer for nearly three years, clinging to life with all of his immense strength and will power, not ready to let go of the beauty of life despite no longer even being able to communicate with his friends and family; asking him in that note to consider to let go of his suffering, his affliction, his desire for more when God had determined that his time was up.
Departing the charming Dalmatian coastline for the interior that is Hercegovina, the junior province of Bosnia, of which Mostar is the capital, and seat of the United World College in Bosnia & Hercegovina, which was to impress me so much. (see http://uwcmostar.ba/)
Like then, we drove up the valley of the river Neretva, commencing at the coast, where its sweet water riches have created a fertile delta of fruit gardens and vegetable fields; floating fertility as far as the eye can see. This time, in April 2019, I was accompanied by the head mistress of our Varsovian secondary school, ‘Nowowejska’ to the local cognoscenti, DwaSLO to the Polish educational establishment, and www.2slo.pl for those curious to read more about this school attended by all four of our daughters, two already alumnae, one of Poland’s top-ten high schools. DwaSLO has not just assembled an excellent and dedicated troupe of teachers with a passion, managed by a pair of female directors that are not afraid of any challenge, and a Polish youth that impresses in their academic potential and humanistic ambitions, but which has also been able to retain a collegiate atmosphere, a sense of community, a dedication to altruism and social projects, and an international ambition; all that despite being grounded in the Polish realities of being an always funding-constrained, co-operative self-governed school in an atmosphere of anti-intellectualism, anti-elitism, botched educational reforms, and alternative facts. Well, Director Sobala-Zbroszczyk, Anna to her friends, is not somebody easily scared of Bosnia, or anything else for that matter.
Like six years earlier, I had to thank my friend, my former headmaster and inspirational figure, David B. Sutcliffe (DBS), for helping arrange this trip to pay a second visit to the UWC of Bosnia; this time we went there with a mission: to learn more about this school, which teaches the International Baccalaureate (IB), and which is hosted in a famous local school, the Gimnazja Mostar, founded in 1893 when Bosnia was under Austro-Hungarian influence, and which was one of the first schools at the time to admit students of all congregations, Orthodox Christians (mostly Serbian), Catholics (mostly Croats), Muslims (mostly Bosniaks) and Jews; the Gimnazija Mostar teaches the Bosnian high school curriculum (well, three actually, for each ethnic group a slightly different one to go with the ‘new normal’ segregational realities in the post-1996 Dayton Peace Agreement realities in B&H …).
We were interested to determine whether its ambition to be local and international, to promote social service and civic-mindedness, ethnic integration and a multinational student body, as well as educational excellence and international promise for its graduates had something to offer as a role model for the next stage of development of DwaSLO (which had adopted the IB as its second pillar some years earlier and has now in excess of 400 students, roughly double the number of the UWC BiH – but with very few international students thus far.)
Little did I know that it was one of the last favours DBS would do me in person. Six years after my father, this second father figure to me passed away in November 2019, but not without leaving his leading hallmark, his encouragement to do better, to try harder, not to give up, to strive for higher things, not to stop believing in ideals, never to stop seeking to apply oneself for the wider good of humanity.
You can read more about this irrepressible man and path-blazing educator in the Times obituary of December 2019, or on a memorial page at UWC Mostar’s website dedicated to him, links below:
Over two days in Mostar we learned many insightful things and met many of the impressive educators and administrators, 90% women, who run UWC BiH and make it an island of post-war reconciliation for a select group of Croat, Bosnian and Serb, as well as international students – material for another blog entry (and lots of follow-up work for us at DwaSLO).
I have never been able to visit these Balkan lands without remembering that when I was privileged to go to school with some of its inhabitants in nearby Duino (Trieste/Italy), at the UWC of the Adriatic in 1983-85, they were all still Yugoslavs, living together peacefully in a multi-ethnic and multi-nation state, the ‘southern Slavs’. They spoke essentially the same language, whether it was Croatian with a Latin alphabet or Serbian with a Serbia Cyrillic alphabet – it was then known as Serbo-Croat; you won’t find anyone referring to it like that in these lands of ethnic identity politics any more.
And neither will I forget the horrors of war and ethnic cleansing that happened under the eyes of NATO and the UN peacekeepers in Bosnia, during the Bosnian war of 1992-95. I have yet to muster the courage to visit Srebrenica, where Dutch peacekeeping troops failed to avert the worst massacre in Europe post-WW2, in which >8,300 Bosnian men and boys were murdered by Bosnian Serb troops (this is prior to the undeclared war in Eastern Ukraine, also very much in Europe). But visiting the museums in Sarajevo in 2013 and reading the excellent books by British journalist Misha Glenny (e.g. The Fall of Yugoslavia (1992) and The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers (1999)) have given me an understanding of what horrors transpired with Europe standing by idly.
The Memorable Journey Back from Mostar to Dubrovnik and Warsaw
So – after that long introduction – I wanted to tell of our surreal and absurd journey back to Dubrovnik Airport after these two inspiring days in Mostar. At the advice of one of the locals, we chose not to return the same route that we had come up alongside the Neretva river, but to turn SE shortly after leaving Mostar, and to travel through the Serbian province of Bosnia, geographically a closer trip to the Croat-Bosnian border post hugging the mountain range just outside of and to the NE of Dubrovnik.
Anna is usually not a lady lost for words. But as we entered this part of Bosnia, the mood turned sober. The roads were desolate, the villages bereft of human life, the sky laden.
Past goats and aberrant cows, meandering down the roads, in the desolate Republika Srpska, the Serbian part of Bosnia, grey sky, grey mountains, grey roads, not a living soul in sight. The contrast with the lively young students at Mostar could not have been starker. Images came to mind from the absurd and hilariously funny movies of Bosnian director Emil Kosturica, such as Black Cat White Cat (1998): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zw1Np-BV8I
The most modern infrastructure, so it appeared to my inner eye as the gloom grew, were the relatively new and well-maintained cemeteries; a solitary elderly woman all dressed in the black of sorrow one of the few people along the road. An unreal experience. Anna I are drove for 90 minutes in apprehensive silence, quite out of character.
But we finally got to Trebinje near the Croatian border, already able to see the Adriatic Sea. We pass the last border guard on the Bosnian side, some 100 minutes prior to our scheduled departure – only to be told that the border on the Croatian side was closed ‘out of season’. Shut. Just like that. Nista! Nada! Niente! Rien! Nix!
The puzzled border guard, upon seeing our frozen faces, explained that there was an alternative route to the SE, some 70km, running through Montenegro before looping back north to reach Dubrovnik from the south.
While to Germans the F1 is associated with Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel, to Poles the fast-driving hero is Robert Kubica, the talented local who despite a horrific rally accident some years back made a comeback to F1 recently. So we donned our Robert Kubica hats; we were not going to take this bureaucratic force majeure event lying down, we kind of wanted to get home!
The Balkan rally was on. Three countries in 90 minutes, hairpins up and down mountains, with goats crossing off and on for added excitement … After what seemed like interminable and adrenalin-filled 25 minutes racing south, we reached the Montenegrin border … a sleepy little outpost, single lane, a largish truck coming to a halt in front of us, switching off the engine; the border guard appears to have gone off on his coffee break. Having sweaty hands from gripping the steering wheel too hard, now a cold sweat breaks down the back .. more impotence in the face of constraints imposed by reality. [Little did we know what the coronavirus would do to really slow mobility only a year later …]
The border guard takes one bored look at my German ID, but returns to his hut to put a proper stamp into the Polish passport of the head mistress, all must be in order, as Montenegro – like Bosnia – is not an EU country. Onwards and upwards we race, failing to appreciate the rugged beauty of Montenegro, a country we are both ‘visiting’ for the first time. The rental car willingly goes at twice the speed limit, breaking into the corners and accelerating out of the corners as I floor the poor beast – just like Dad had taught me years ago on an exuberant Italian trip. I glance sideways at my respected head mistress, but she shrugs and laughs -- ‘why so slow?’
Finally we reach the sea, at the famous and beautiful Bay of Kotor, as beautiful as it is urban with slowing traffic. We reach what looks like an interminable road construction site, alternating traffic with traffic lights. 30 cars wait at the red light. Like a good German I get in line, and chuck hope out of the window. But then a local jumps the queue … Anna looks at me, and I jerk the car into the empty lane … ‘when in Rome, do as the Romans do.’ We are making beautiful progress until oncoming traffic forces us sideways into the bushes, not once but twice. But once out at the other end, we can smell success. I floor the sucker again.
Alas, celebrations were premature. The border post looms, this time Montenegro into Croatia, i.e. the much-discussed EU external border. Five booths, only one manned, 10 cars waiting. Our heart drops into our pants, once again … (this is a German saying in literal translation).
Well, even that passes after what appears to be a little eternity, and we are just 10 minutes away from Dubrovnik airport. Flush with adrenaline and with ‘We are the Champions …’ music in my ears, we accelerate away … oh, NO!
Too late I recognize the astute and well-hidden Croatian police speed trap … caught, all over, done for, funtoosh, nemesis after hubris, all for nothin’ …
I have no local currency, the policeman wants to send me to a local ATM. I plead and finally he takes a credit card. I am such a nervous wreck by this stage that I get my PIN wrong. He looks at the traffic-rules-infringing moron and shakes his head. F..k!
All appears lost, but I get Kaszka on the phone and ask her to call LOT to tell them that we are coming. LOT, the Polish flag carrier, has an unkind nickname: Late Or Tomorrow. Never have we hoped more strongly that it might live up to its name today. Inshallah!
Well, we finally arrive at the airport, tires screeching, racing to the check-in desks, the time is 10 minutes before the schedule departure. The hall is empty, no check-in agent in sight, the flight not even on the screen any more. All over.
But! Suddenly nice Croatian ladies re-open the check-in desk, having been alerted by that Warsaw phone call via far-flung friends in the airline business. Running back to the car to fetch the luggage. Upstairs. Running to drop the rental car keys at the center, shouting an apology and explanation, met by smiles. Through security and up to the gate, not a pretty sight by this stage. LOT announces boarding, the flight is all of 15 minutes late … there is a deity. YES!!
What relief! Happiness! Coming home. Ordering drinks on the plane and toasting our good luck. Never so happy to be above the clouds as this evening.
[And it took the forced slow-down of Covid-19 self-isolation to bring this hurried and breathtaking travel experience down onto paper. Not going anywhere soon currently.]
PS: Dwojka deserves a look if you have children in the eligible vicinity. Attached the introductory presentation we gave in Mostar (2 SLO Presentation). If you are Polish income tax payer and want to support the school and its valiant efforts, your 1% donations are always welcome, details below:
Nazwa OPP: Społeczne Towarzystwo Oświatowe
Numer KRS: 0000012189
Cel szczegółowy: SKT 144 STO
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