Infected Mushroom.

Today is the day of that live concert that has kept me in the area and (i dont know it yet) will keep me around for some time. I leave Nis in the morning, this time i m hitchhiking back and it should not be a problem to get over the 200 kilometers to Skopje. I get out of the city after a minimal breakfast and a long struggle at the post office to get a package sent to Switzerland, a freaking long customs paper to fill which is fortunately in Serbian and French unlike the other paper for the post office which is only in Serbian, written in Cyrillic. The women at the desk is just as nice as in most French post offices, she is disgusting. Anyway, the guard is nice, we chat and laugh.
The first men who picks me up in the outskirts of Nis is young, he works for the family business and he takes me a couple kilometers, a good spot to get south, not by the highway but the normal local road. Soon an truck comes up, and i get the best ride of the day. A man in his 50s, he is driving his truck all over the place and has been to most European countries. he is keen to talk and with such people my Serbian is good enough to talk about almost anything. Of course we speak about the usual topic, the beautiful Serbian country. Its food, it girls, its music, culture and beautiful natural landscape. Serbia, he says, is a country with such great land that it was never hungry, always had plenty to eat and plenty of the best since it all comes from the neighboring fields and farms. It is true, you can see food growing everywhere and what you buy at the market (unless you are in Belgrade or buying bananas) rarely was driven around for hundreds of kilometers. You get fresh, local, seasonal and delicious fruits and vegetables. For proof of that he points at his belly, big and round like always in the Balkan, shows a great smile and drives on. We then also talk about his job, he tells me he has driven this Mercedes i am sitting in for 800 000 kilometers without maintenance, just the normal oil change. And it keeps going! he has driven over 3.5 millions kilometers in his lifetime!
H drops me in a tow some 40 kilometers south, Leskovac. A short but pleasant ride. As I walk to the right spot to continue my journey, a men on a tractor passes slowly, turns around on his seat and gives m the finger with a bad grin on his face. I realize how fast I can change moods, not that he scared me but he switched my thoughts from very positive ones inspired by my ride to darker ones about human nature. I then have to wait quite long before i get a ride with Vladimir to Bujanovac, he drives to visit his girlfriend or the weekend. We talk about rock, watch a live concert on the small screen sitting next to the driving wheel. He drops me in a familiar place, i have waited her on my less successful ride north a couple days ago...He started his journey this morning in Trieste, he is in a bit of a hurry and quite tired. Understandable, he has been driving for over 10 hours straight...
We pull up at the Macedonian side boarder, big queue 15 minutes of waiting, far to much for my stressed driver. He sakes little, we converse in a mix of languages, Italian, English and Macedonian. While we wait we watch the dogs begging for food at each car and make jokes. We pull over at the cafe just across the boarder, it seems my driver needs one more awaking drink to make it the last 70 kilometers. After the boarder i get to see the industrial zone bordering Skopje, on my way out, i was sitting on a bus reading the small book by Suskind i was offered by a German on the ferry in Albania. At first it is a real nice sight, some of the hilly fields have just been worked on and are brown other are yellow, between them rare trees and houses stand to complete the landscape. There is something about this view that made me think it is beautiful and i think it is the round shape of the fields laying on a hill side. Nothing is straight or flat. The dark brown color adding to the impression of relief.
We arrive in Skopje, i get of in Autokomanda, the area Aurelie lives in. she is not home so i take a little time and sit at the internet cafe where i wait for her and Totor. As they arrive, we head for her home and drink the bottle of beer that was waiting for us in the fridge. impossible to buy more, the stores stop selling alcohol in Macedonia at 7 pm. So we start the bottle of Raki i was offered on my first ride into Skopje. It is strong. I show em how to prepare a cafe bucheron. Make coffee, add a lot of sugar, dont stir, drink the coffee, leave the sugar, add the raki. Then comes the funny part, us a metal spoon to stir and as you stir put the raki on fire and mix until all the sugar is melted in. Nazdravie.
A friend of Aurelie who will get her in for free joins us and we head for the Skopje fair where the concert takes place. We catch a cab and i discover once again how cheap they are. About a euro, maximum two fro a ride trough the city. The crowd is pretty young and excited, so are we. guy at the wardrobe is a fucking asshole, i give him 100 and as i don't see my 50 change, i understand that he has no change and i need to wait, i give him an other 50 but never get my 100 back. Motherfucker. oups sorry did i just write that?? The The next lesson about Skopje is that it is a drug city. It is a trance night so of course there are drugs but I did not expect this many. Almost everybody takes something: mdma, ecstasy, amphetamine, speed, lsd... but it seems cocaine is to expensive. Tonight I am a little drunk and very excited to see Infected mushroom, the only trance band i really like, so i don't need any of this and off course you all know that it is not my type of drug. A bit later, i find Nicolas and Alberik who came from Pristina for the night. Nice to see them again!
Soon the show starts, distorted guitars, electric keyboard, crazy light show and the singers modified voice singing the classics of infected mushroom. Remembers me of the times i was biking over the hills of Sydney listening to my ipod. “I m the supervisor”. The crowd goes crazy, people dancing everywhere, jumping, turning, running... It is all over much to fast, but a good dj takes over and makes us dance for a couple more hours. As the show ends, we are all still up for more and try to find an after party. Impossible, so we head for a place Enes knows. We all expect an apartment and are surprised as we get into a strange internet cafe after a long taxi drive. The place smells like cigarettes and is pretty crowded (remember it is about 5 am) with people sitting in front of their screens. There are also a couple girls, young, maybe 19 sitting in the chairs, laid back. Unreal moment. What are we doing here?? Enes tells us there are rooms and we can go sit there... Hu?? we can rent a private room and site there... this just gets stranger. We don't real want this so we head to Aurelie's place. There i am confirmed what i know about Skopje. As Aurelie is sleeping next door, her young Macedonian friends (about 20) take an acid trip at 7 in the morning... Me and Nicola watch this unreal scene laughing and not really believing it. Soon i to go to sleep.

Meeting MiNatasa in Nis

We wake up, slightly hang over, hungry for some solid food after all last nights strictly liquid food. Since Mina and Natasa are not in Belgrade but in Nis and that i also came here to visit them, i decide to use the last day before the concert in Skopje to visit them and take a look at this town i have only passed by. But before i need to write more stuff on my blog. I spent some time in the Internet cafe and head for the bus station. This time i try to sleep all the way, still tired from last night, i spend the whole 3 and a half hour drive half asleep half hypnotized by the shitty movie playing on th buses tv.
Arriving in Nis, i have the whole day to walk around and check out the city. I drop my bag in the shop where i get some pictures printed. A couple for Mina Natasa and Ivana, a couple for me, more postcards to send out! So i walk around this nice city, its castle and fortifications. Along its river and trough its parks. The weather is not so bad anymore Even though the temperature remains to low... Since the weather changed about a week ago, it kept raining, being gray and the temperature did not raise again, it remains under 20... Belgrade was quite different in this weather, cold and wet. People got out their coats and winter clothes, i am still running around in slippers and shorts... dont want to admit it :)
After walking around i sit down to write a couple postcard and letters, to drink a hot chocolate (what a huge one, rich and full of cream) and check my mail once again. Latter i meet Mina and Natasa in a restaurant, they were starving and sick of all the meat so they went for an Italian restaurant but did not realize the place they were recommended was so posh. I walk in, shorts and slippers, not shaved huge backpack, slightly dirty... what a sight this must have been for the waiter. I drop the bag at the entrance, get of my jacket which is taken care of by the waiter... I sit down get a handkerchief, a menu and a very respectful treatment. I feel it is a bit overdone as always in those places. But funny. I order a pizza. After eating for a very surprisingly reasonable price, we hurry out, the waiter helps me to put on my heavy back pack. I weighted it this morning, 18 kilogram altogether, 3 of them being technical stuff (computer, phone, cameras, chargers and cables). We go for the hotel, no problem at the reception, i can share the room nobody cares. Natasa is dead tired, me an Mina go out for a drink and a dance. Nis was the city with the best nightlife not so long ago. Mina knows, she has been going all around Serbia promoting drinks and cigarettes in the bars and clubs. For my part i think of Nicola who has lived here for some month before going to Pristina.

Belgrade again!

Again and again i come to this city! Even though i love it and come regularly, this time it also because i have to. I have to pick up a letter (a new swiss sim card replacing the one i lost in the madness of exit festival and some sweet words) and also bring my camera to maintenance so that they can clean the captor, full of dust and dirt making some dark spots on the pictures. Besides my blog which needs feeding, this gives me a lot to do today.
This time i am staying at Jeremie's place once again but it is not the same place. Since Stephanie moved back home, he had to leave the flat and he is now living in novi Beograd with the father of a Serbian friend from Switzerland. I will have the pleasure to meet him tonight. We leave the flat, Jeremie goes to work, i get busy. After finding a wifi cafe, updating a bit of my blog and writing numerous mails, i meet Jeremie for lunch. We go for a nearby small kafana and eat one more rich Serbian portioned meal. I have goulash and red peppers if i remember correctly. It is red peppers season, they are everywhere, sold in big huge bags on the road side to bottle them or make ajvar for the winter. O and a beer of course! Delicious and cheap as always. Lots of things to talk about with Jeremie as usual :)
In the afternoon i just run all around the streets of Belgrade, go for the camera shop but they send me to the Nikon maintenance center. Then head back on the other side of the bridge to delta city mall where i meet Mina's brother to pick up the letters. The mall is packed, people are getting from shop to shop or simply walking around checking out each other while they get their nails done or have coffee. I hate this temples of consumerism, all these well presented shop with their “marketing concepts”, the sterile environment: white neon light, ultra clean windows, shinny floors... The bad music and the security service forbidding me to take pictures for security reasons on top of that... It is still fun and i do manage to take a couple pictures.
As i get back to the flat, Milan, Vlad's father, is sleeping resting from a long day of work. He works in a clinic as a radiologist, taking early or late shifts. His living room is full of a huge collection of records, mostly rock. When he wakes up, he shows me his video about Vienna, so funny to see my city on tape, so many places i recognize! We then go down to the local restaurant and have out evening meal, a supper of beer please! Even thought Milan is from a different generation then us, he seems so young. Both his face and his word make me think he is in his early 30s. We joke around, laugh a lot and cheer all the time. Giveli! Soon it is midnights, the restaurant closes, we get a couple more bottles and head back up to the flat. We start to be quite drunk and start a skype conference call with Judith and Vlad. More fun and laughter. Even though they might not understand everything that is going on on this side... Milan takes out his accordion and starts to play... Mythique! We shoot a couple pictures before going to bed, drunk as ... Milan wakes up tomorrow to be at work at 7... i am happy i don't have to and that I can sleep a little longer.

hitchin’ Serbian history again.

I leave Aurelie's home in the morning, last nights laziness made me change my schedule from 7 to 9 am... big mistake... I got used to the Albanian/Kosovan easy hitching around and figured it wouldn't take me more than 8 hours to get to Belgrade. Even though there are only about 500kms, i was very wrong, i am writing this on the bus, listening to Ty’s “Do you want more” and quite happy to be in a warm place after spending almost 10 hours on the roads to get only 200 kms further, to Nis.
I resign hitchhiking and to be at the right place at the right moment on Friday i will probably do so on the way back, get a train, cheaper, longer but who cares.... i actually tried this route for th 3rd time today and once again it was no good. Not that the second attempt was unpleasant, that was the time i ended up at the hippie festival. But i really would like to be in place and time for Infected mushrooms in Skopje on Friday.
I am on a bus for the second time today, i had to take one to get out of Skopje after 3 hours of unsuccessful thumb action on the roadsides and the gas stations. On this bus, a bunch of school kids tried to get me a free ride. One told the driver he had forgotten his card and gave it to me... Off course the driver was not so easy to fool and he kept the card. The kid then had to explain i have low money (i didn't ask anything, cool crazy kids!) and after failing to negotiate a free ride, pay to get his card back (with my money of course).
So i got some 20 km further and there i had to wait in the rain an hour for a rid across the boarder. Funny dudes, seem to be in some sort of fraud. Picking up some (fake?) papers from an Albanian dude across the boarder. So I got 70 km from Skopje... almost 400 to go. Again i wait over an hour to get 15 km further, to Vranje. There i wait again, on top of a hill, exposed to wind and not really protected from the rain by the bridge running over my head.
I am now standing there for over hours when finally an old men from Gnjilane stops. And what a ride this will be. Again, i love hitchhiking and immediately forget this morning. I meet local knowledge, a local front man in science, developing paint for ceramics and metals. And also a life full of incredible events. I will hear an other Serbian version of Kosovo history. but first the science talk, i am all interested in his metal paints, they are mineral based and very heat resistant. Something ideal for solar application and something that was researched in the lab i worked at in Lausanne. we exchange contacts and I question him about all sorts of details regarding his different paints. He also gives me the phone number of the boss of a Serbian group building solar collectors and heaters.
Now the history part, it did not begin after some question of mine, rather it was very surprising and sudden as i was answering his question about why French have a little hostility towards Serbians. As i was trying to explain the impact of the news on peoples opinions and mentioned Kosovo... he started and was unstoppable for the rest of the drive to Nis. He first explains that the division of Serbians and Albanians in Kosovo started well before the bombing of 99, under the regime of Tito. He gives the example of the factory which he was working for as a chemical engineer when it decided to expand. It had to hire 6 more employees. The places where put on competition and despite more than 400 (!!!) Serbs applying, 5 Albanians and a gypsy where chosen. When he asked the director which he was close to because of his engineer position why that was, he was first asked to shut up and as he was insisting, he was told that was an order from the regime. Since in Kosovo there are 90% Albanians, the jobs should be distributed in a similar way. Problem was that in his town, Gniilane, there were only one third Albanians... This sort of political decisions, along with the influence of radical Albanian political groups create tensions and made Serbs flee Kosovo.
An other thing he mention a couple times and that quite surprised me, is that many Albanians, he said about 50 % of Kosovo Albanians. well they were Serbs a couple generation before and just considered Albanian because they converted to Islam. This sorta make sense to me, i cant really tell an Albanian from a Serb but i sure do know the first are Muslim and the later Orthodox.
He then told me how since 1910, him and his family had to exile from Gnijlane 3 times. The first time, the region was under turk control. His grand mother had died after giving birth to his father and his grand father had been single for many years when he remarried to a widow. The widow of a turk man with whom she had had a daughter, now 15 years old. The Turks at that time wanted to take their young daughter away. The grand father reacted to this very violently, took back the daughter and kicked some turks ass, The turks then surrounded the Serbian house, the Serbian community reacted and helped the whole family, including the daughter to flee to the next Serbian village. The all lived there until 1912, year where Serbia liberated Kosovo from the turks and where they could go back. The step grand mother and her daughter however stayed since the later had found a husband. The grand father, father and wife moved back into Gnijlane.
They had to flee again, during the second world war when Italian fascists where occupying the place alongside the extremist Albanian faction (i unfortunately forgot the name of). They could come back after the war but again, only to stay a couple years since soon, the situation will progressively become unlivable because of the political pressure i mentioned before, influence of extremist Albanian groups and eventually the bombings by NATO. His parents are now dead, the father is buried in Gnijlane, the mother in the region of Vranje.

Damn this local histories are always so moving and every time what i think i had understood the pictures, i realize didn't completely and that there is probably no big picture. What i notice again and again however, is that Serbs are always willing to make their losers position clear and still generally tolerate foreigners very much (you might think that as a European you are not responsible but if you dig little and that is what Serbians do, you find out the European governments played a big part in all the conflicts since world war one(. But also that it is important to be careful about what you hear from people... for example, I clarified (i think i did) recently what i heard about Srebrenica. Someone told me the number of casualties in the massacre were blown up and that is impossible that thousands were killed since it is an 800 souls village... If this number might be accurate it is however not the count of people present at that time since there were many refugees. This of course does not mean numbers have not been blown up...

I arrive in Belgrade where Jeremie welcomes me at the bus station and takes me to the ? kafana. How nice it is to be so warmly welcomed once again in Belgrade! I start to become a local here :) We eat, drink and talk. Three things i love.

Ride down to Macedonia

Heading off, one of the only pictures of the surroundings since i was low on battery and had no plug available...

This morning, we meet Paul at 9 to head of south. Christa, Sarah and Helena are coming along to Prizren where they will catch buses or trains to go back, up north. There are 4 more on the ride, Dimitra, a girl from Norway, a german couple and me. Thats 8 happy hippies going back to civilization. And quite happy about this. But we ain't there yet, the old VW bus wont jump on, the battery is empty. We push it down the hill without success, we finally are lucky enough a diesel camper van helps us starting it. We can now make our sloooww way through those bumpy macadam roads. i still cant believe they are marked on my Balkan map. The first thing we see getting back on the main road is a lake, besides a tourist complex where we of course stop for a good bath! ahhh it is good to swim in fresh waters!
As we arrive in Prizren, except for Christa and Sarah who need to catch their bus, we all head to a restaurant for some meat! No meat for some days, for some it has been many days, we are all sorta craving for meet. Serbia is the right place to catch up on this! We get huge platers of meet!
We are full with food and have prepared some sandwiches with the leftovers and the ride down south can now begin. It is a very nice one, all sitting, chatting or sleeping somewhere somehow in the back of the van. The boarder crossing is a funny on, the dude is amazed by the weird mix in that car and jokes around with us. The Norwegian girl speaks a pretty good basis of Serbian and does all the chatting.
They all need to get to Greece so they drop me where i need to go west. it is past midnight, i have no envy at all to hitchhike any more so i find a nice quiet spot by the road and get some rest.

The day of all activities.

Full moon aoooowww

The day starts by a bread and cheese mission for Timothee who has his Tai chi workshop in the morning. I engage Christa to come along on the mission whch unfortunately fails... the farmers have nothing left to sell :) good business it seems. At todays very rich first food circle where few people are present and we all get second time food, a lot of activities are proposed. Not only there are heaps of things to do in the afternoon but they are all very interesting. A men speaks about his experience in amazonia, there is a chacra meditation, a medicinal plant introduction, massage workshop and a plum mission to make jam...
With Timothee we join the plant workshop. We are with a bunch of about 20 eople, following a guy around who tells us much about the different properties of plants. Antibiotic, photoactive for less depression in the winter, against head aches, for reinforcing the immune system etc.. However, writing this 3 weeks later, it is hard to remember everything.
I remember much more about the last part where an other brother started telling about nutrition. The fact that our stomach is not appropriate to eat meet. Not any meet i should precise since soft parts like brain liver, fat etc are very well digested. This is no big surprise to me, i notice very well that big meals of roasted meat are not always well digested. The meat has to stay at the butcher for a while and is broken down by some bacteria to make the job easier for our stomach. The job is even easier when it is white meet or when it has been marinated for a while with fruits. The acids in fruits break down the meet a bit more. More surprising however is the little story from the Berlin zoo who's lions could not give birth to living offspring and that the zoos vet solved the problem when he saw lions in the savanna go for the soft parts of their pray first, intestines, liver, hart, brains... As they fed thees parts to the captive animals, they rapidly had a happy living bunch of kids...
All this seems very reasonable and the men seems to know what he is taking about but still could be checked. He will tel us much more about eating, That you find more vitamin C in onions than in oranges, that there is a lot of vitamin b12 in everything that tastes like marcepan, namely in the seed of peaches. That the blackberries give you fruit sugar but at the same time lower your blood sugar, that you can eat the rhizomes from reeds (roseaux in French), the sprouts from fern (fougere in French), that there are some bacteria in soils (clean soils) that our digestive system can need... and much more.

We leave this workshop full of new knowledge. After last nights serious history class we now got a nutrition introduction. All this made us a little hungry and we decide to go looking for mushrooms. It has not rained in awhile and hope is low but we almost immediately find some Plerote, growing on a tree. Timothee is an edible plant expert and also knows a lot about mushrooms. i fully trust him when i taste this little acid mushroom growing on the bark of trees. We then finish our walk around with a huge plum picking session. We find a plum tree with ripe fruit and get good 10 kilos of it. This will be shared at tonights food circle where we make one round of plums for everyone.

Tonight there is a workshop on cannabis :) i know this story which is actually more about the amalgam between hemp growing for industrial purpose and cannabis consumption. Introducing the illegality of the later is very linked with US cotton production and was sponsored by Dupont corp who just invented nylon... for those who are intrested there is a documentary explaining this very well. just google video it! i will report on thing doctor Otman said however. when a farmer now buys hemp seeds with less than point something percent of thc in the plant (to comply with international law), well he has to do so every year because the thc level naturally increases over the years :)
Because we know this story already, we prefer to sit around the fire, talk with our French, Israeli and German brothers and sisters. And when we get tired of standing around the great fire, lite our own small fire where we grill mushrooms with olive oil, salt and cheese :) mmm delicious!

An other day with simple, great people.

The night was short, i was waken up by my neighbors who started a fire and telling stories, selling like wolves once in a while making very animalistic noises some other times.., Crazy but great people around here. i finally get a bit of sleep and wake up to some new neighbors. Two girls, Sarah from Switzerland, Christa from Germany and a Frenchman, Julien. Julien is looking for a ride further out into the west, he only stayed a couple days. He is a medical student and works in a hospital. He is very happy to be away from all the stress and we joke about the little contradiction that you sometimes find in the camp. Hippies with those very trendy plastic sandals that he wears all day at hospital and cant see anymore, those couple bosses that organize everything and are always full of great ideas and projects but whom you never see actually do something etc... The normal stuff you find in any society.
After the first food circle we all relax in the shade, take a nap, read a bit and chat around. Julien found his ride and left, I for my part meet a German brother who is driving down to Greece to sell his van and has plenty of room! So he can take me to Macedonia! We met that Frenchman, Timothe, whom i was cutting vegetables with yesterday and as we sit in the evening circle, he pulls out cheese and bread out of his bag. He has been round for more than a week already and for him it is a great achievement to finally have bread again. he is a real Frenchman after all :) So we share some of his delicious fresh goat cheese and bread before getting tonights meal which has been prepared by the Czech brothers and sisters. As before every food circle, tonights activities are announced and we decide to join the Yugoslavian history workshop.

The sign that are all over the place, despite them, one brother wil run around naked, choking the Nons.

It is held around a fire, Otman passing roasted hemp seeds around and telling his story about Yugoslavia. It is a long story which i might tell soon in a separate post. The mood is very relaxed and more people are listening very carefully than in most lectures i attended at Uni. After he has finished, questions are asked about the subject and many others, we start talking about universities, creating new schools of knowledge and have more talking circles like this one. We also mention that the activities proposed at the gatherings are becoming fewer and try to argue about the reason for this. Some say it is a general thing, that more and more people just shlap along as one would say.
After the talking circle, i join Timothe spot for sleeping and finally find a real flat spot! Timothe has a very nice sleeping spot ,his mosquito netted hamac is covered by a tent tissue to protect from wind and rain. Under this he can stand, store his bike and bag and sleep in any weather. Much better than a tent and way lighter! of course you dont sleep 100% flat and are not protected from the wind but who cares in this hot summer.

Morning light in the camp

First day at the camp.

Tonight is fool moon! big ass fire

The Austrian takes us to the main site of the gathering. Tonight is full moon and should be the peak of the event. We arrive into an open space after an good hour walk through forests. this place is real remote, probably 100s of kilometers of the next big city. because of tonight celebration, today is silent until the first food circle. I use this to get some rest and sleep in this complete tranquility, in the shade of a tree. The camp is not t all dense, people are scattered around, some have put up a real tippy, others build a shelter with wood and a big plastic sheet.
A while later, Helena comes back and tells us it is time for th first food circle there is watermelon and muesli! What i find down at the main circle is quite surprising... All this new vocabulary is too. So as i get down three, some hundreds of people are forming two concentric circles around a huge dead fireplace. They are singing a song about the sun, the sky, the moon and some other quite crazy stuff:). It all looks like a bunch of religious freaks but i cant refuse the kind invitation of one of them to join in. So we are there, holding hands and singing this song of freedom and preparing to get food. After raising our hands above our heads, putting them together and bringing them back down in front of us, we knee down to the floor and put our head to the ground. This feels ridiculous the first time and i actually did not knee down all the way. Thinking back about it now, it is a pretty good ritual to precede a meal. It is like thanking the sky and earth for the food but also and mostly to me it is an act that makes you more conscience that you are about to eat. i mean by there to avoid just get the whole plate down in 5 sec mechanically. Some very healthy food in healthy portions (all the contrary of Serbian food) is served in circle. Muesli first time and you hand out your plate. The people serving the food are going around the circle clockwise and you get the different things in turn. Today it is different sorts of muesli, polenta and watermelon and we get two rounds. A first time and a second time. I will learn that this is not always the case and that some meals are really minimal. We eat, i chat a bit with my neighbors, but getting into all this is not easy.
To integrate better, i join the wood chain and go gathering wood for the big fire of tonight. I meat a Brazilian living in Germany, a Frenchman and a Serbian. After sweating and walking through the wood with big amounts of wood, i wash my hand, with ashes (it is real efficient, or at least it feels real clean and ashes can technically not be dirty) and join the kitchen. 10 to 20 people are cleaning and chopping vegetables. I must have cut 30 tomatoes, 10 cucumbers and 5 whole cabbages that afternoon! you realize ho much so many people eat... next to the chopping table, people are cooking soups and rice in huge pots over the fire. I meet Timothe a French who came to the Gathering by bike. All these people are cooking by the sounds of musicians playing us some incredible song such as I cut the cabbage (but i didn't cut the watermelon) or i dont want no polenta no more... It is a real great spirit here. We then proceed to squeezing the cabbage to release its juice. This is pretty hard work when you sit in front of some 30 kilos of sliced cabbage... The salad is going to be delicious (sauce of salt and lemon juice) and so is the rest of the meal: filled paprika, soups and chapati. The whole cooking is simply done by people who decided to organize todays food. Everybody participates, one or two focalizers keep everybody going in the right direction, together. It is a real good feeling. finally, every thing is about to be ready and we make the first food circle call. At the count of three everybody in the kitchen sings out loud :Food Circle!!! Now!!! This is the second or third call, the previous being done an hour before. The call propagates through out the camp, everyone singing it out. Beautiful communication!
We carry the food to the circle were meanwhile, a huge wood pile has been erected. the sky is a bit gray and threatens to rain on us but for now nothing, just a bit of wind. The wind of change... Tonights food circle is once again a nice one, nice neighbors, everyone is nice and friendly. Or not? That one neighbor does not car about the first or second time and just hold out an other plate every time he gets the occasion to. I am still la little lost in this exotic crowd... we eat, it gets cold, i go back to the kitchen and heat up some remaining soup, delicious bean soup! I meet a couple from the ride, the radio guy and his girlfriend. We drink Mate tea and talk a while. they leave and i meat Lara from Barcelona, chats, laughter, simple interaction with no second thoughts. Beautiful, once again!

The fire is started, huge, it reaches some 10 15 meters. I decide to go a bit up and make a picture from the distance. Cameras are tolerated but not very well seen by everybody in this camp. The nice thing about this camp is that everything is tolerated, something might not necessarily be supported or some idea not shared, but it is still tolerated and respected. It is all based on respect. I love this Utopia. I go to sleep full of thoughts under that new full moon.

Back on the road, alone

I decide to head down to Macedonia where i will meet Natasa and Mina for a bit of paragliding! Natasa is in a paragliding club and they are going for a week security course. Also it is Macedonia's most beautiful setting, next to Ohrid lake. sounds real exciting but i first need to get down there! its some 700kms away and i will have to get on the highway i did not manage to ride down with Judith last month. Also i decided to buy that camera and it takes me quite a while before i get to the petrol station i will start from.

It is 11 when i am there and past 12 when i walk up to a long haired man, hippie looks, i figure with those looks he will pick me up for sure!
And he does despite that there is not much space left in their van already packed with 8 people, 2 kids and 2 dogs... All these people except the driver and the big dog are sitting or laying in the back. They are from Check Republic and are heading for a hippie gathering in Serbia.
They have been driving a long way and we soon stop at a petrol station for water, a bit of rest and a watermelon. I get to occasion to have a real look at all this nice company, or family as they say. All roots, long haired, dreadlocks, natural clothes, smiles and sparkling eyes. We drive on and as we get on the highway, the exhaust falls down and starts making an incredible noise. Sandy, the driver gets under the car, between burning asphalt and the hot car, he fixes it in a rudimentary way and follow a men who stopped to help us to his friends auto servis. They will solder it back together. We get there and they want 100 euros for this basic fixing... After it is done, the men (only 2 alongside 6 girls/women) argue with the mechanics and pay only 50. It would have been a huge ripoff to pay that much.

Fixin the exhaust

We are bake on our way south. I was first supposed to follow only until Paracin but as it goes i start to like Sandy, his wife, Orlike and their other son, Helena and all the others... I decide to check out that gathering as i have a proper ride to get there!!! The ride is however long and we arrive on the macadam road leading to the parking after the night... It is not an easy road and we are going slowly, some 40km in this manner will take us over 2 hours. Everybody is exhausted, the hot day and now all this retelling and shaking... We find our way thanks to the stones and hanging cravat at each intersection. Even the other car we met with a GPS could not find it without them... We arrive at almost midnight at the parking where we are welcomed by an Austrian who helps us parking. We then sit by the fire, some have tea, i go to sleep.

Front of the Van :)

Orlike playin us a tune, smert 3 year old musician boy :)

Petrol stop, dog is happy the night is kickin in and it is not sooo hot anymore.

Once again the magic of hitchhiking has kicked in, i was heading for 700 km of road, i make it mere 200 down south and i am probably no closer to my goal considering the tough roads. But i am discovering something completely new. Tonight we sleep at the parking which is separate from the gathering since the later is without cars or electricity and a good hour walk from the parking.

Back to civilisation

We catch an early bus out of this deserted battlefield. In the morning, all fogy and covered garbage the parking has a real mystical touch. The bus ride is quite epic. All squeezed in, we watch how Lorin gets real close to catastrophe :) At the Cacak bus station we all look quite exhausted. The crazy bunch is going on to Sarajevo, we are going back to Belgrade with Jeremie. The ride is long and hard... back in Belgrade we get a long awaited shower and eat some fruits and vegetables. mmm healthy food :)
At night we go for the ? Kafana where Jeremie now has a waiter friend and gets special treatment :) We don't need a menu, he bring us mix of plates to share amongst us. After starter and a first round of main plates we are quite satisfied... and he comes with a second main plate! Ok no desert please :)
On the next day Judith leaves, back to Switzerland and i am alone again... well not completely alone since i am staying once again at Jeremie's place. The next days are very uninteresting, i wonder if i should buy an eee Pc to blog and Skype. I finally buy it, and right now i am sitting in a camping, thinking back about this and typing the 15th blog entry of the day. Unfortunately the internet connexion is down and i ll be late with all the blogging. But at least i m outside, 100m from the beach :) I also get my camera to the repair shop after dismantling it repairing the dis functioning mode selector and realizing the Jimy Hendrix purple images are due to a defective chip and canon will replace it for free. I will however not get i back before leaving and consider once again buying a serious semi pro camera... the guy from the computer shop advises my to go and see a serious camera shop were they have a used Nikon D70. I go check it out and get to see a well preserved camera with 2 batteries, a bag, memory card and hand harness. The whole lot for 400 euros. I exceeded my withdrawal limit today but might well come back tomorrow. Night will bring me advice.

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 :)

Welcom to Sarajevo!

Warning, long post today, but plenty of pictures too...

We head off after no breakfast, last nights dinner is still being digested... Saying goodbye to our nice cute little guest‘s couple is as always not easy... We walk a bit through the nice nature, fortunately it is not raining but only mystically cloudy. the nature is beautiful around here, too bad the weather is not better, i would have been happy to walk a bit around those fields and mountains. Getting back down to the main road is much easier, the owner of the first home which could not host us last night drives us a couple kilometers to the hotel. From there a Bosnian couple drives us from there down to the main road. Sweet rides :)

Nice rides, but still bad weather :(

mm what a poser

Down on the main road it is once again a great success, a mixed couple, Serbian and Polish, with their young child take us along in their tiny car. After rearranging stuff inside it turns out like often small cars offer a lot of space, some times more practical than big cars. They are both English teachers in Poland and the ride is one of the most pleasant, easy going. They are going for lunch in Mokra Gora, the rainy mountains (quite adequate name...), just the place we are going to to visit Kusturica‘s Village. Mokra Gora is a real sweet little village with its old mini train station. The rails are narrow, the locomotives and carriages are real old school and i walk around the old Steam Locos fascinated by all the machinery.

ai ai captain!

We then walk up to the village which is a big disappointment. Entrance fee, into a fenced village, we expected a typical film setting somewhat like in a Kusturica‘s movie but we found a Souvenir shop, Jacuzzis, restaurants, a small cinema we could not visit because we just missed the start of a projection, an art gallery displaying very tasteless paintings and numerous houses which are actually hotel rooms... in the end we felt like paying for access to visit a Hilton like hotel...

The greenes green in Serbia...

My car?? fast an furious.

Bruce Lee street.

View on the Village.

Back on the road after delicious Prebranac we hope to get to Sarajevo today, it is some 200kms away and it is already pat 4pm... Luckily we get ride after ride. One past the boarder with a agriculture mechanics salesman to Visegrad, one with a crazy driving Bosnian a bit further and one with an Italian speaking couple coming back from their holiday house. 6 easy rides today, finally Judith experiences a nice hitchhiking day and gets to speak with the driver (in Italian). After 2-3 days of failure, endless waiting, and rain we smoothly get to Sarajevo.

Visegrad bridge, read the bridge over the Drina, good book about this regions history.

The entry into the Sarajevo from the north is very impressive, coming out of a tunnel in the middle of some hills we suddenly are facing the old library which is not restaurant yet and still carries the scars of war, it is full of bullet holes and shell impacts. After checking the center out quickly, we head for the hotel recommended by our last driver. 65 Euro scares us out of this place and we finally find a comfy, not to expensive private dorm 10 min walk from the center. We have one of those Balkans best Bureks and tea and we go to sleep.

Steaks Dejan Style!

Dejan and Katrina are most welcoming us two poor lost souls in the hills. They offer us hot tea, a place to dry our cloth, soaking wet. Soup, Bread and grandmas Pita. Later we get crackers of all sorts, beer and delicious vines... And Dejan gets out some nice meat out of the freezer for later dinner. It is 5 pm and we jut had a great meal... Dejan is a warm, always smiling baker who speaks little English. Between my poor Serbian and his basic English we understand each other pretty well. I have to laugh every time he is searching for a word and makes big gestures and speaks out some Jebote and other words i wont translate. The girls go to sleep and watch a movie while we keep talking and drinking spritzers :) is this the modern role of men and wife? he he just kidding, small joke regarding yesterday...
Around midnight, the meat has unfrozen and Dejan prepares a whole bunch of schnitzel and an omelet with delicious bacon. This bacon is nothing like what you find around our supermarkets, it is almost completely white, excellent, tasty fat! We literally explode our stomaches and roll to bed after a little Rakija and more Vine.

Chef at work, faster than light when it comes to slaming schnitzel!

A bit of seasoning...

and here you go, Schnitzel for two!

with omelet...