Balkan Kismet: Bosnia Transport (Mis)Adventures

Our day had started much like a typical one on the road for us.  We had woken early (it happened to be New Year’s Day) in Mostar, done a bit of perfunctory sightseeing, and were anxious to get back to Sarajevo.  We had only stayed overnight in Sarajevo previously, and were eager to explore the city more thoroughly.  We were thrilled to get dropped off at the bus station just as a bus for Sarajevo was departing.  We threw crumpled bills at the ticket kiosk and boarded the bus to see a group of passengers none-to-thrilled by our shenanigans, costing them time that could be spent going home.

Our transportation in the Balkans previous to this had been smooth, easy, and relatively on-time.  Save the fact that the Sarajevo Airport had been closed for the three previous weeks due to heavy fog in the city.  Apparently this happens every year – a fact that clearly eluded our outdated travel guide.  Luckily for us, however, the skies parted in Sarajevo the day before we arrived.  Until this point, our transportation luck felt like kismet.

I think any traveler would agree that there is an inherent aspect of Murphy’s Law in travel. Most often it materializes from nothing, seeking to ruin well-made plans and best intentions – like deus ex machina in reverse.  And so, on New Year’s Day in the middle of the road between Mostar and Sarajevo, our bus began to tremble, and with a great sigh, sputter to a stop.

For a while the bus continued, albeit refusing to get out of first gear.  Typical Balkan drivers, looking for speed on the highway, jeered at us as they passed.  After an hour or so of this, language and cultural barriers started to dismantle themselves, and the ten or so of us on the bus began to exchange pleasantries in the form of shrugs, raised eyebrows, and frustrated huffs.

The cast of characters on the bus wasn’t atypical.  As travelers, though, how often do we take note of the demographic makeup of the people on buses with us?  Those transportation legs melt together unconsciously, leaving few precise memories.  A bus breaking down being notable enough, I scanned the bus to see with whom we’d be stuck in this predicament. Sitting stranded on the bus with myself and David, a gay couple from Seattle decked out in designer smartwool, were four young men, an elderly woman, and a few other faces I can’t recall.

After waiting on the bus for an hour on the outskirts of Konjic, the bus matriarch spoke up, arguing with the driver and attendant.  The boys chimed in as well.  David and I were frustrated, and provided mental solidarity.  The woman turned to us and said, “They’ll give you your fare back if you get on the bus right now, come with us.”  And so our exodus began – David, myself, the woman, and the four boys.

The woman told us to give her our returned fare and that she’d figure it out.  With that, she and the four boys began to trying to down cars; anything that looked big enough to fit our motley crew.  It took what seemed like only a few minutes for a car to pull over and negotiations to begin.  We were already to halfway to Sarajevo, so we could probably get some money back, the woman explained to us.  She was right, once we boarded, she handed David and me back two five Bosnian Mark bills.

The group, thick as thieves by now, began to open up.  Why were we in Bosnia?  What is America like?  Why did you come in Winter?  Where are your wives?  We found out the four boys were all friends who had grown up in Mostar, and now studying computer science together in Sarajevo.  The woman had a background that could only be a Bosnian one: In the seventies through the early 90’s, she’d been an electrical engineer both under Tito and autonomous rule, and had traveled all over the world to conferences to speak about power (as in, electrical) in Yugoslavia.  She was also a widow – her husband had died in the 90s, she said.  We didn’t ask how.

The drive was short in the converted sprinter van, and before long we were entering Sarajevo, its fog returned and making visible only blurred orbs of light on the street sides and in oncoming cars.  The woman would be dropped on the outskirts of the city, in Ilidza, the district closest to the aforementioned airport.  She shook our hands and wrote down her phone number for us – or was it a phone number of a relative? – and thanked us for visiting Bosnia and for talking with her.  She looked up at the boys and scolded them mildly in a way your sassy great aunt would, communicating no scorn, only adoration.

The boys in the front laughed and chatted with us for the rest of the ride to the bus station.  We smiled and gave them some chocolate bars, dripping in Pacific Northwest privilege and guilt, and told them to study hard.  In the end the ride, which had taken just two and a half hours the day before, had taken five and a half.  Haggard and tired, David and I boarded the tram that would take us to the National Library, from which we would ascend an icy hill to our Airbnb.  As we trundled down Marshall Tito, the city’s main thoroughfare, we were silent.

It might seem strange that I don’t remember the woman’s name who left such a mark on our experience in Bosnia.  To tell you the truth, I’m not sure if I ever learned it in the first place.  But it doesn’t matter, really – what matters is the information we gleaned from her during our short time together.  Places are ephemeral and quick to change (more so today than ever), and I’m happier to have those memories than a name that lacks the emotional connection to the moments we shared on that New Years Day, between Mostar and Sarajevo.