Saturday in Skopje.

We are pretty tired after last night long long party and wont be up to much today. Plus the little we did happened about a month before the day i am writing this and not everything stayed in my memory. I can remember however that we went out in the park next doors with Tonin and Aurelie. A nice park where we come across a dog that looked very much like a wolf. Probably half wolf or one quarter wolf. H was held on a damn big chain but seemed to be pretty well dresser. Otherwise the park seemed pretty much deserted and we understood later why. When we tell a friend of Aurelie who also lives in Avtokomanda thet we went there, he says “ah the forest with Albanians...” What? i knew only of forest with trees :) It seems that it is not a safe place, at least so do the locals believe. Albanian go there to shoot around with their weapons and steal from people walking around with computer and cameras... What do you think is the part of truth in this? I had my camera along, and still have it and we didn't hear any gunfire...
At night we go out for the beer fest, it is a major event in Skopje. We walk a bit in town and are a bit disappointed, the streets are pretty empty. Well we soon find out that it is not because this Saturday, everyone decided to stay home but because the whole youth of Skopje is at the beer fest! The kitschy rock on the live stage is not so convincing, we drink a Chimay... mmm long time no good beer! And then move to the Dj scene, to our surprise, they are playing Seeed , Raggasonic and Spook and the Guay amongst other European reggae artists.
We are t tired to take it late into the night but still appreciate a bit of the live Gypsy music on the live stage before taking a cab home. Taxis are really cheap in Skopje, especially at night when there is no traffic and we get home for less than a euro.

3 is ok, more would be to much

Third day here, the sound of trumpets is everywhere, the smell of roast is in the air. A little (humhum) hangover from last night so the day is pretty quiet one for me, sleep and swimming pool are the main activities.
Today is the main day of competition, bands play and the best wins the golden trumpet. This the original reason for this festival. The competition takes place in the afternoon and we listen to most of it from the swimming pool right next to the scene. At night everything goes on in the streets of Guca, madness, like the previous days. There are less people and no more trumpet fanfares in the street, just the bars playing the same songs over and over. To kick of the night we have a couple cafes bucheron, special recipe by Manon. we then join the crowd at the various stands after buying a couple souvenir t-shirts. Lorin is on fire tonight, jokes, crazy sentences to the waiters, trying to bargain everything. On lache rien ce soir! Niko is not around, to busy somewhere else. PJ goes to sleep pretty soon, Judith follows a bit later. We go on at the place with most people, with our neighbors from the camp, Lorin, Marcel, Jeremie and I. I ll try to picture the madness since i have no pictures of this day. My camera is down and Judiths out of battery. A simple example of what was going on that night: a car comes in and tries to drive down the street where we are dancing to the 3-4 track play list. The blond chick dancing and hypnotizing most men around gets in front of it, to the pleasure of the driver. Lorin gets on the car, rolling over the hood, then shaking his beer at the windows. Others occasionally shake the car itself and when the car goes 5 more meters we realize it is pulling and empty trailer, people start getting into it, dancing like mad, shaking the whole thing, including the car... Same for all cars passing and when a bigger semi truck passed it is shaken even harder.
This mayhem is not of the polices taste witch will escort all the cars from now on. And one or two policemen are efficient enough to keep the crowd away. They are a bit to efficient also when diving through with their own cars,, going as far as hitting random people in the crowd. Our friend Sarah makes the painful experience...
Later at one o'clock sharp, the police turns off the music and closes the bars. General disappointment but the previous force demonstration calmed everybody and the crowd accepts this intervention without a word. After a while, Marcel gets into discussion with some drunk people asking him what he thinks of Kosovo. we decide it is time to leave. Back at the parking which is now empty, some motivated people make a small fire to heat up. It got real cold tonight... We squeeze into the tent, 5 people and way to many bags... Three days were definitely enough!

More trumpets and meat at Guca

Train to Guca!!!

Early wake to catch the bus to Podgorica in Montenegro where we take the train back into Serbia to join our friends in Guca! The bus ride is hot and uncomfortable, the night was short and we are a bit tired. In Podgorica i see the man who rented my his room back then. He is quite surprise to see me again :)

We get train tickets, 15 euro for some 400 km, it is the cheapest way to get around in the Balkans, but we soon find out why... it is also the slowest and the most unreliable. The train is one and a half hour late and when it finally comes in we are really happy to have made reservations. It is packed with people. Most of them only go the Bielo Luka, the most northern town of Montenegro. I leave my seat to an older man, to dig a bit the view and the people on the corridor. Two young boys are yelling songs and banging on the windows. By the way all windows are big opened and everyone smokes there. Big changes from silent air conditioned swiss trains. Soon two police officers come around to apprehend them and take them out for interrogation and god knows hat else...



Despite the slow rhythm, I am happy we chose the train, the track is the most beautiful train ride I had so far, trough mountains, tunnels, bridges along magnificent cliffs and gorges. This old track from the seaside to Belgrade is probably full of history and its construction most have cost lots of lives and mens sweat. We stop in the middle of nowhere numerous times for different reasons. Mostly because the trains from the two directions can only cross in given places the rest being single tracked. the other reason is the waiting at the boarder.


We arrive a Pozeda with about 4 hours delay, they also had to change the locomotive... In the general wondering during the one hour stop in Uzice i meet a French couple going to Guca, they are traveling the Balkans, mostly by bike. Since the night is falling, they cannot get there by bike anymore and will organize a taxi together with their Serban friend met on the train.
In Pozeda we struggle with a serial bullshiter promising us a cheap taxi... We finally stop counting on his help and get a ride with a conventional taxi, skipping on the drunk bunch of youngsters i met on the tracks and who are taking the bus with a local. Anyhow... off to Guca!!! Finally!
there we are slowly taken over by the drums all over the plac and meet Niko at their improvised camp. On the car park, in a field, they build up their two tents and a shade area between them. We quickly drink a beer, buy a couple more and get into the festival area. No entry fee, no security check, we walk in with our cheap beers.





I am sooooo please to meet Lorin, Pj and Marcel again!! I really missed that crazy band! The music is going, blowing and bangng, the people are crazy, you can smell roasted meet everywhere and the beer and Rakija is flowing in great amounts. But the real madness starts as Boban Markovic comes on the scene and everybody is once again dancing like mad and singing to all the songs! We get to sing a bit as well as him and his brass band plays some of the most famous Balkan songs. The trumpets blow on late into the night and we get to hear them as we exit the festival ground and go into the town where they are playing requests and walking around the place. Soon i loose my friends in this craziness and meet a Serbian bunch. Later i am tired of searching for everybody and pretty tired i head for the tents. I am quite happy to get there as it starts raining right away... good night. Lucky i have nice friend how think abut bringing tents :)

Last day at Exit

Time flies and it is allready our last day here. One more afternoon wondering around this city turend upside down for a couple days, chilling the overcrowded beach, meeting my friend Stevan from Belgrad again. One more night of crazy concerts, Drum n Bass and electronic music...

Found this old school car wondering around.

After bumbing into Mina and Natasa unexpectedly again, in the streets of Novi Sad this time, they recomend us a good Kafana. Me and Jeremie, always up for a good big fat meat plate head to the Duck (in Serbian, forgot how it is called) and have our hudge plate! We get into the forteress a bit late, but in time for Yougoslavian Punk ledgend Pekinska Patka. Good music, probably excelent lyrics (i only understood the one in english) but the lifted like, fake teeth smiling face of the band leader leaves a wierd impression for me.
I am suposed to meet the crew again before begining of the Sex Pistols concert but instead, i find a very wasted girl who keeps speaking to me in Norvegian and look pretty damn wasted. She is serbian, lost her friend and obviously took some acid or other psychadelic drug. During the Sex pistols concert we watched toghether, she looked at me with eyes full of tears at the end of numerous songs, loosing complete control of her emotions. "I m sorry, it is too strong" she kept saying, followed by incomprehensible mumble in Serbian or Norvegian, could not tell... Surprising encounter :) The concert itself was quite pleasant to me at least, Jonny Rotten looked very much like a distroyed clown, wierd black and white long shirt, his disformed face with missing teeth, the shoes, the pant wich made him look like a disarticulated pantin and of course his numerous strange moves and faces.

The best electronic performance at Exit 08 to my taste, DatA wich we saw right after the Sex Pistols.

After ending the night listening to the massive drum and bass of Shy FX and Dillinga (even better than yesterdays Roni Size), we head to find Nicolas and Anna and go catch a train home to belgrade. They have to catch a plan home to europe and are in a bit of a rush.

Waiting for the train, no sleep, still in the buzz from the festival and thinking we might never get on the train with all these people. Finaly the train arrived everybody got on, it was packed no more space until all the english got of realising the train was bound to Belgrade and not Bratislava... We get to belgrade confortably seated but quite sweaty and of course exhausted. Me and Nicolas have a couple of those unstopable giggles.

Third day at Exit

This is the very awaited day of Gogol Bordelo, Manu Chao, Afrika bambaataa, Kruder and Dorfmeister, Kiril and more!! Unfortunatly i had no time to think about making some pictures let alone make them something correct... So i have few and not so good pictures of that day.

From here the the scene there is quite a distance and some 30.000 people...

The crowd was hudge and quite amazingly, after meeting Jeremies friends, we are joined, in the middle of this hudge crowd by Stephanie and later by Nicolas and his girlfriend Anna. The Gogol bordelo concert is scheduled a bit early but the crowd is allready warmed up and the concert is explosiv. Since me and Jeremie have absolutely no will to see Juliette and the licks, we leave the group, promise to meet around here, next to the projector for Manu Chao. We go wondering around and find some quit brutal metal concerts (i used to love this music but now except for bands like Nine inch nails, it only rarely makes an impression on me) and a couple stage changes. We stop at one of the and wait for the begining of Besh o Drom ... sounded a bit like Bezodrom and the amount of instruments on scene woke our couriosity :) It s a good surprise but after a few songs it all sounds the same.


We head for Manu Chao. Incredibly, we imidiatly find the 3 friends of Jeremie, Stephanie, Nicholas and Anna and making our way further to the front we come across Mina and Natasa!! We have tried to meet them all nighte yesterday and now we stop searching, we finaly find them!! in the middle of some 30.000 people! The concert is great, jumping around for 2 h, finaly get some real dancing action in this festival. Like always the crowd is too dense in the begining but looses up with time.

Tonight, for change, we get tired of the electronic music, Kruder and Dorfmeister are very disapointing to me but the little we saw from Kiril was fantastic! . We will get a little more sleep this night since it is "only" 5. This is the night were we are happy to sleep by the danube and not in the official camping where a tree branch will colaps due to that nights storm and kill a young macedonian.

Second day at Exit

After chilling the afternoon on the beach, refreshing ourselves and talking about music with my new fanzine journalist friend. I meet Jeremie, Nicolas and Stephanie for a bit a food (junk food of course, bureks, pljeskavicas, pizzas will be on the menu all week end with an occasional asia wok...) and a nice cold draught Jellen Pivo of course.
We slowly head over the bridge and along the streets to the festival. Making our way through the maze of fetival-goers and all kinds of vendors, i get an other sharper idea of this daily pilgrinage into the froteress. What you could walk in mear 10 minits, is done in more then half an hour, stopping to buy cigaretts, beers, hats, t-shirts, home made sandwiches, industrial hot-dogs, ice creams, noisy toys or wistles. Everything is Exit branded and it seems like everybody in Novi Sad turned into a short time vendor to get a little money out of this. It is realy pleasant to see this self organisation, the lack of regulation (or maybe i am simply not aware of the rules or mafia governing this) resulting in you beeing able to get fresh beer from a simple citizen using a big plastic basin filled with ice to chill the beer and energy drinks under the burning sun. And this at any time of the day or night...
The begining of the night is quiet, we sit and listen to a bit of reggae befor heading for the first concerts : Smoke and soul, great discovery followed by great (and expected) disapointment of Gentelman.

Gentelman at the third bigest scene, its all about wawing your hand during the 36th and 93rd second of each song....

An other view from further back. Full of people, we moved some 200 m further to find Serbian music and dance to Mesecina :)

End of the night, begining of the day, the sun is rising, people moved to the electronic scene were the party goes on every morning until 8... It is now time for sunglasses and styled looks.

The night will be short tonight again, only a couple hours by the refreshing danube before the sun makes it imposible to sleep.

First day in the Exit madness

I happily and easily arrived in Novi Sad were the streets are allready full of live and activity, people playing guitar and drums on the streets and in the parks and drunk englishmen all over. Mmm i will hear lots of Serbs complaining about them to a very drunk me but have to admidt englishmen are loudder, dirtier than me and a bit a little regardless about were they are, its just like home with cheeper beers.
I am supposed to meet Mina, Natasa, Jeremie and Nicolas here but none of them is there today, they will arrive on Friday. So after resting a bit in a park, recovering from the sleepless train journey, i meet some crazy people. Most crazy of all, probably Dr. Rock. We have quite a few drinks with his gang on the park lawn before getting into the festival.

Dr Rock on his way to the festival, crossing this crazy bridge were massive loudspeakers blast music. We are also half way down the Rakija bottle and full of beers...

Dr Rock and ???

Reloaad, a bit of energy. It is about 10pm, i am way to drunk for the time of the night. Got caught up by events once more. Around midnight exausted from the trip and Dr Rocks crazyness, i fall asleep on a lawn of the festival, to wake up a couple hours later for....

a beautiful early sunrise and DJ Hype!!

Around 8 am i go to sleep in a remote place i found, in the middle of a bambous field, nice and fresh and shaded. Far from the afterparties along the danube, the crazy camping and all the englishmen ;) Tonight was very rocky.

Back online after Guca

Before resuming the story were i left it, at Exit festival, here is a small paranthesis at guca (about a month after Exit...). In Guca i had the extreme pleasure to meet some of my friends from Lausanne again! Lorin, Marcel, Niko and Pj came out far in the East to live the wilderness, excitment Guca festival. It was all about trompets all day, grilled pigs and lambs on the stick, drinking Rakija and Beer and dancing aroung like crazy. 3 days of madness realy...

Retrouvailles :)

Living the intense music...

Sorry for leaving you without news for a couple days (didnt bother many it seems...). I m back and will try to keep up with the daily posting. Now back to Exit and more on Guca in a month :)

Leaving civilisation

This sunny day is the begining of a long serie of modified version of Pierpoljaks song "Pierpoljak" where after the chorus sings something like "Pierpoljak what are you doing, the plane is gona take off soon" he sings: "No, go ahead, i m staying here, i want to leave that crazy civilisation, live in nature, far from polution"


This song, besides remembering us both of our time at school, listening this on the bus, onm Tv, on radio stations or at home in our stereo (yes i did listen to this guy, but i belive he has done less ridiculous songs in his early days... :). Well besides this, it was very addapted to our hike to Durmitor, the national park in the north of Montenegro and we started adapting this song with my co-hitchhiker/trecker/camper Alain and sing about our trip to the park. So we where singing about leaving Podgorica, getting into wilderness and nature in the park, asking cars to stop and take us along, far from this crazy town...

Alain is almost my neighbour, he lives right next to Annecy! He is a funny guy, a good travel compagnon and this is the begining of fun times and some great adventures! For both of us it is the first time we try to hitchhike with an other guy. Thoght it might be a little more difficult but in fact a guy driving a 4x4 Yugo (funny Nelly, who kindly drove us to the city outskirts, told us we d see plenty of those in the parks...) rapidly pulls over. Vladan is a sculptor, about 50-60 years old, hel tells us about his work/passion/art and shows us his small book. He is an orthodox like many people around here and has a very nice philosophy of life. He also works as an art teacher in Belgrade and for this to has a very nice aproach i tought.
Speaking about his work, the various asignments, i asked him what was his craziest job. He laughts and say "tombs". He then tells us about this rich guy with some crazy ideas. The man wanted to be able to see arc angel Gabriel once he would be buried in his tomb... So he asked the skulpter to make an icon so it can be buried above him and that he can see it for eternity ! Our driver said that it would be not able to see it in the ground, the coffin and earth between them would hide the icon so the work was usless... The client said he had the solution to this! His cousin, working in Germany is selling paint and has this very special fluoerescent paint! Ok said Vladan, so before i do the sculpture, we do a test, we both get in the coffin, burie some piece of marbour painted with your paint above us and if we see the bloc, i do the sculpture! "Bastard!!" said the client, loosing the illusion of seeing his arcangel for eternity....

Vladan also made us visite an orthodox monastary on the road:

Maraca Monsatary

He then droped us in Mojcovac where we have a long avaited luch, a classic, burek and jogurt! cheap, nutritive, fat n tasty! After this meal we get to the road driving up to Zabljak (hat on the z, speaks jhabiak). This is the start of 70 kms on an almost desert road, few cars pass and half of them are taxis offering us there services the othere half locals offering us there taxi servises... Finally a local, hudge guy stop and want to driv away when we say zabljak, I manage to hold him back and explain to him we will get there "malo po malo" its a good thing if he can just help us for a couple kilometers, there is only one road anyway... So he drives us 5 kms...
He dropes us next to the place where a farmer is cuting his grass using his sickle. After 40 mins the first car drives by and... does not stop :) we eat "duo keks" some sort of local prince and keep on singing stupid verions of Pierpoljak and other songs. Good times but slight desparation in this spot:

Deserted road....

End of this epic jurney tomorrow :)

Life in Podgorica

After chatting for a long while with Marko, the owner who is also working as a policeman, as a programmer and has opened a martial art school. I realise who hart i may be for people here to live, the programming job gives him 210 monthly €... so he has 3 other jobs... You might think life here is much much cheaper then in France or Switzerland but this is NOT true. Gas is almost the same price (maybe 10% difference), basic aliments like bread, flour, sugar or milk area little cheaper but only about 2 times...

After settling down in my room, taking a long awaited shower, i make my way to meet Maria, her boyfriend and Alain the Frenchmen surfing her couch. We have a great meal of cevapci, grilled meet, Kajmac (difficult to explain, it is like butter, but with a cheesy taste... it is made by boiling milk and taking the foam on top. Odlicno, Delicious), Ajvar (a paprika paste), some salad (Krupus of course, cabbage) and delicious fat fries! After that nice meal, we make our way to a jazz concert under a bridge.

Alain and Vuk (wolf in Sernian) drinkin beers and chillin the concert.

After that nice music, the music in the packed with hudge serbians (2m + and 120 kgs +...) night bars is a bit of a shock and i make my way to sleep. The next day is all walking around podgorica, getting to Marias flat, chillin, talking with Maria, Engel, Alain, the roommate Nelly, the student of Maria, Valdana. Some nice dinner, listening to the credence clearwater album i was offered, some more talking about politics, music etc...
Me and Alain have planned to trip a little together for the next days and go up north, to the Durmitor national park. So tomorrow we will start hitchhiking around 9 and try to get there by the evening. But know i am joining Vladana and her 2 friends for a couple beers in the city. Nice long and pleasant night out with those young people. The night will be short, tomorrow we are back on the road!

The longest day

I did not know this but this was about to be the longest day since the start of my trip. After a short ride taking me just out of the city, a nicer spot where i could watch the sunrise and wait for a better ride. This ride comes pretty soon. Jermio works in a refinery, he does 12h work, 24 h rest then 12h work, 48 rest and this all over the year. When he gets one of those breaks, he goes fishing. Harpoon fishing, apnee fishing. Its his passion and he indeed speaks very passionately about it. Very nice person. He is about 45, he tells me about fishing, a little about family and a lot about Credence Clearwater Revival. which he puts on as loud as it gets in his Renault.

He drops me at the point where he goes down to the see. It is still very early, about 8-9. I m hungry so i decide to drop my stuff and walk a little bit up on of those arid hills around. No track it s a bit like climbing among razor blades. Very nice. I have some of the bread and delicious sausages from the Rijeka market and take a couple pictures..

Shadows... :) The island in the back is pag, they make excellent cheeses there ! the sea was so calm you could see th reflection of pag in the sea !

I the got down and rapidly got an other ride closer to Nin, a place i wanted to visit 2 years ago but didn't have time to. Dont remember why but it was still there in the back of my head. Got to the right crossing with my ride, a cargo ship captain, with an ank tattooed on his arm -for real!- nice man no has a ship for tourists and drives them around. The next guy how will bring me into Nin is owner of bouchery and has 300 kilo of dead meet in the back of his car!

It is about 12 and i find a nice camping and info about a beach where there is a windsurf rental. Go! The place is unfoirtunatlz closes so i go to chat with the guys kite surfing a little further... One of them turns out to be the owner. He has no windsurf gear yet... In 3 days the seasons starts ! shit :) anyway i chat a bit with him and his friend who just got back from windsurfing in Maroco. We talk a lot about ski, surf, and climbing. They recommend the place i past a couple km before. Paklenica, it is a national park, worldly renowned for climbing and one of the guys who was taking a kite lesson drives past it on his way back to Rijeka!

I quikly make up my mind, i will visit this park tonight and sleep in a hut there! But that is an other story, to be told tomorrow :)

Vienne dans une caravanne lundi soir

Voila je suis tout seul snifff...

Vu que j'ai plus les clefs de l'appart, je suis l'invite de Lena a la Wagenbourg Wien. Encore une assos terrible qui se bouge et fait plein de truc, manif, soundsystem mobil, petit concert et peut etre un petit festival prevu bientot.

Tout les Lundi c'est journee porte ouverte, differentes personnes de different milieux et ages viennent boir un pot et discuter jusque tard dans la nuit au son de seeed, ALIF soudsystem et autre bon sons dont j'ingnore l'origine. Y' aussi les pyromant qui se font un tit feux sur le bar, le jongleur qui t'explique que tu peut fair des superbe balle de jonglage avec de la farine et des ballons de bodruch: tu remplis le premeir ballon de farine, tu tasse bien et ensuite tu envelope ce premier ballon dans un autre, tu coupe le bout qui depasse et tu fait ca 4 5 fois pour avoir un truc bien solide :) easy.

Quelque mots sur le spot, Une 15aine de caravanes, des tit chiens, des gros chien. Une bonne organisation, de l'eau courante, des douches, des toilettes, une cuisine comune, un enclos pour les chiens avec un portail fait maison arborant une sculpture d-arignee matalic qui crache du feu faite par Rico Mais surtout une 15 d'occupants permanants aux occupation diverses: mecanos, ebeniste, physiciene etc... Des occupant au grand coeur, pres a acceuilir nimporte qui, et dont les mot d'ordre sont autogestion, tolerance, respect. J'ai dormis dans l'ancinene caravane de Lena, une remorque old school, celle en forme d'oeuf. Petit spot tranquile et chaleureux, comme mes hotes.

2 tites roulottes, moi j avais la blanche un peu deriere sur le gauche

Le partail avec l'arignee!

Wien Stadt der begabten II.

Un autre surdoue de Vienne, Mr Hunderdwasser. Architecte un peu philosophe, dans un mouvement contraire, original, il met du vert (du vrai vert, des arbres quoi) et des couleurs dans ses batiments. Des forme un peu moins geometrique et plus arondies.

Et la nouvelle generation de surdouees aussi s'affaire, nottament lors de bonne rigolade avec les jeunes etudiants dans les maison d'etudiant et avec les arrache du coin (on a rencontre un cuisto, lui par contre est completement illegal, mais tout aussi arrache que vous autre). Mais surtout dans une assos completement alternative de vienne> I:DA Idee directe Action un lieu ou Lena (qui te salue Gus d'ailleur) et ses potes s'affairent a creer un lieu alternatif pour la culture, l'information et une vie en societe differente, reele en fait. Superbe concert du Goat Orchestra, Marcel je leur ai filer le contact de sat, tout comme aux Yopla Guys d'ailleur :) Bon on a fini arraches et avec du chocolat partout.

Mmmm une fontaine de chocolat, c est bon mais ca tache....