The two weary travellers pulled themselves from the deliciously comfortable bed they had collapsed into the night before.
The previous day had been brutal. They had spent hours standing by the dusty two-lane roads of Croatia, heavy packs resting by their legs when they were too exhausted to carry them, slowly hitchhiking toward their next destination. The day had ended badly, waiting for a trucker who promised them a ride across the border, but never reappeared, leaving them to cross on foot and try to find somewhere to spend the night.
Camping was out of the question. The road leading from the Bosnian border was lined with a reed-filled swamp and home to unfathomable numbers of mosquitoes. It was only as the sun started to set that the pair decided that waiting for their trucker wasn’t going to result in a ride, and started toward the nearest town, or at least where they hoped a town would be.
The walk was a brutal one. Road weary from hitching across a country in the sweltering heat, their bags felt like they were full of car batteries. They had been told that there was a small town a few kilometers down the road, but the language barrier made the directions unclear. They could barely see a hundred yards due to the high reeds lining the narrow road, reeds that were home to vampyric bugs, emerging in their clouds of millions as the two paced their way to presumed refuge.
The mosquitoes came out in force. Despite their sweating bodies, the couple covered themselves in as many layers as they could. Heads wrapped, bodies jacketed, and legs pantsed, they whimpered their way through the last few kilometers of their day’s journey. Still, the vile creatures shoved their needles through layers, covering their arms and faces.
Finally, they arrived in the ‘town’. It consisted of a crossroad with a building on each corner. One, they saw, was a motel. Bordering on exhaustion, they stumbled through the door in a cloud of bugs, sweat, and tears. The man behind the counter didn’t even ask for their passports or payment methods. He ushered them upstairs without a word and opened the door to a double bed and a hot shower. “Breakfast 7 till 10”, he said as he closed the door on the broken travellers.
Dead tired, they dropped their bags, stripped their clothes, and showered. He could hear her crying from exhaustion while she washed the long day from her exhausted, bug-bitten body. By the time he finally stepped from the heavenly, hot, soapy shower, she was already deep asleep.
So, when they woke, finally in Bosnia, ready to start hitching once again, their reluctance to stick out a thumb was understandable. Making their way downstairs, in the cleanest clothes they could find in their dusty packs, they were greeted by a wonderful breakfast spread. Balkans know how to feast on a morning, and the breads, cheeses, meats, and rich Bosnian coffee looked like a Roman banquet to the two.
They had been living on sandwiches, noodles, and whatever food the various friendly drivers had offered. For three hours the previous day, he had been fed around 15 cigarettes an hour by a truck driver while she slept comfortably on his cab bed. He knew he had lost around 2 years of his life on that journey alone.
Refreshed and with tupperware full of stolen buffet items, they paid their bill, which came to only a few pounds. For the haven that the place provided, they would have given a kidney the night before. Once again, they set out into the morning light, hoping that some charitable soul would take them from the northern border of Bosnia, closer to their final destination in Sarajevo.
They had briefly checked, using the motel’s Wi-Fi, on what their route would be. They didn’t have any cell service and had to rely on the directions of their lifts to know where they were going. But the crossroad made the choice an easy one. Bosnia isn’t a country with many roads, and the south-facing, two-lane road was the one that would take them all the way to the capital city. So, with hope in their hearts and a continental breakfast in their bellies, they stuck out a thumb.
One hour went by beside the dusty road. One or two pulled over, but none were going in their direction. Another hour went by, and the sun started to get higher in the sky. It was clearly going to be a hot day. Already, the pair were losing hope. Some days, a ride would arrive in minutes; others, they wouldn’t arrive at all. There was no public transport at this nowhere border town, so this was their only option. A third hour threatened to come to an end when a glimmer of hope came to a screaming dusty halt beside them.
The car in question stood out like a sore thumb in the usual flow of Balkan traffic. This wasn’t the typical ’90s hatchback. In front of them, shining like a black stallion, was an Audi A4. A luxury sedan with all the mod cons of the 21st century. Just the thought of air conditioning was enough to get their blood rushing.
Before the car had even settled into the roadside dirt, the trunk popped up. The driver’s door flew open, and someone hopped out, obscured due to their height and the cloud of dust still settling from the rapid stop. Appearing from the rear of the vehicle came a short, squat, bald man in his late fifties. He was dressed in board shorts and a string vest and had a very noticeable hole in his throat from a previous surgery.
Yammering away in Bosnian, he grabbed her bag and threw it into his boot. Presumably, he had seen their sign with Sarajevo written on the front. Holding onto his own, her partner tried to explain where they needed to go and ask how far the man would take them. No discernible communication was made between the three of them, but before they knew it, both their packs were in the car, and they were bundled after them. In a blink, they were on their way, with her occupying the back seat, and him up front with the short and incredibly fast-moving man.
He merged back into the single lane of traffic as he pushed his foot into the floor of the automatic, 2-litre, turbocharged car. With a spray of gravel, they were off. They had no idea how far, and no idea with whom. It was immediately evident that although he had taken the time to pick them up, the man was in a hurry. He dominated the route, able to overtake almost everything else that crawled its way through the country’s winding roads. He had a monster under the hood, and he wasn’t afraid to use it.
Our new driver talked nonstop. He didn’t let the tracheostomy in his throat slow him down either. He yabbered away in a hacking, raspy blend of 99% Bosnian and 1% English as he drove. The only time he stopped talking was to swig from one of two enormous bottles of basic-value energy drink that he kept beside his seat, or to break into fits of body-wracking coughing. Repeatedly, as tears rolled down the man’s face, and his lungs hacked up a lifetime of smoking, his fearful passenger would reach over and put one hand on the wheel, navigating the three-car, blind bend overtake that was being attempted during the attack.
In the back, she lay down. She used two seatbelts. One on her middle, and one on her chest, to tie her to the back seat. Speaking of it later, she said she came to terms with the idea of death on that journey. She believed that this was it. The short, vest-wearing, throat-hole-coughing man, performing death-defying overtakes through Bosnia’s jungle-lined, single-lane roads, would be the reason for her slipping from the mortal coil in a fiery, energy drink-soaked explosion. The stress was so much that she simply fell asleep.
But, it was up to her partner in the front to watch the road scream past while the daredevil pilot peered through eyes streaming with tears, as he whistled air in through the hole in his neck, and pushed his car to limits that even the Audi engineers would be shocked by.
Through broken English and barebones Bosnian, the two conversed in the front. The man pointed out various landmarks and historical areas of the country. He had lived through the Civil War and had a deep love for his homeland. Now, though, he lived in Serbia. He explained that today was the anniversary of the death of his mother, and he was going to Sarajevo to spend time at her grave with his brothers and sisters. His passengers feared they might also be celebrating their funerals on the same day as his dearly departed parent.
A drive that should have taken at least a day through hitchhiking was over in a matter of hours. She awoke in the back as the car came careening into a city driveway. The man popped the trunk and hopped from the car, moving into a loving embrace with a man who was visibly his brother.
For the couple, the feeling of solid ground beneath their feet in a city they had been aiming to reach for three days was almost beyond belief. The relief washed over them as they looked at one another wordlessly, standing outside the car. They took a moment beside the black sedan, still ticking as the heat of the engine cooled from the breakneck rally. They waited in shellshocked silence as the adrenaline of the ride slowly began to soak into the rest of their bodies. Suddenly, he felt very tired, and she desperately needed to pee. They were alive, and they were in Sarajevo.
She approached the driver, and as was her custom, handed him a small portrait she had drawn while sitting in the back. He took it and shook our hands before turning back to his brother. It was clear that the exchange was over, and it was time for them to leave. Slightly weak at the knees, but happy they had finally finished their journey, the couple pulled out packs from his car, loaded them onto their backs, waved one final goodbye, and headed into the city to figure out the local transport and look for somewhere to sleep.
