I arrived in Belgrade, Serbia, after dark and without a clue where I was going, but luckily the guy who gave me a ride was willing to call the person I was staying with, take me into the city center, and drop me off at her apartment. This was the beginning of what would turn out to be a crazy month-long adventure in the Balkans, and this was my first taste of the incredible trust, kindness, and hospitality in the Balkans that fear, selfishness, and negative media seem to have exterminated from the Western world. Throughout my trip I would meet dozens of people who picked me up on the road and drove me out of their way to where I needed to go, saw me with a backpack and invited me into their homes for meals or for a roof to sleep under, and gave me food and drinks for the journey without knowing anything about me or even being able to speak my language. This kind of open trust and lack of suspicion towards strangers is the first thing that struck me as different about the Balkan people (and all of Eastern Europe, really) compared to my experiences in the US and much of Western Europe. It seemed that in the Balkans, there were many people who would immediately trust me and want to help me because they had no reason not to, whereas in Western cultures we are taught to be suspicious of anybody we don’t know until they prove themselves to be trustworthy. It’s a bit sad, really.
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| My first sleeping pad ran out of space so I gave it to a Syrian refugee who was sleeping on the ground near the Belgrade train station and found a new one to use as a hitchhiking sign |
That night I spent at the apartment of the sister of a Serbian guy who I vaguely remember meeting at a music festival a few months earlier. We were facebook friends though so I sent him a message a few days before I came to Belgrade and he managed to find me a place to stay even though he wasn’t around. His sister, Marjana, was a great host and took me out for some Ćevapčići, the delicious Balkan meat sticks that are somehow way more flavorful than any regular meat. Marjana had a tiny apartment so she went to stay with a friend while she gave me the keys to her apartment for the night; another indication of a very trusting culture. This was the only time I stayed with someone that I had some sort of previous connection with in the Balkans, because I quickly found that it was totally unnecessary to plan accommodation in advance in a place where people were so welcoming. For the rest of my trip I was mostly traveling with a Polish girl, Weronika, and we would only stay with people who picked us up hitchhiking, people who walked up to us on the street and invited us into their homes, and one last minute couchsurfer who was hosting for his first time.
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| Weronika and I convinced our couchsurfing host, Vukasin, to come on an adventure with us and Milko, the man on the front right, saw us in a grocery store with our backpacks and invited us to stay at his house for a few days, and took us to his neighbor’s house where they gave us fresh raw goat milk (in the bowl) and homemade cheese. |
When I tell other Americans who haven’t been to the region that I’ve been hitchhiking around various countries in Eastern Europe like Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, 90% of the responses I get are either: “Isn’t that dangerous?” or “where’s that?”. The answer to the first question: no, and to the latter question: it’s on google maps. Of course there is risk, but it is quite small compared to how it is often perceived; most of it is just paranoia. This is something that we as Americans need to get out of our heads: most other countries are no more dangerous than ours. “Danger” is an incredibly subjective measure, and it’s not fair to call another country dangerous because their police force is corrupt, when much of the crime that we worry about doesn’t exist in their culture in the first place. There are dangers and crazy people everywhere, but the risk is minimal, the benefits of this type of exploration are incredible, and the knowledge of how to get yourself out of a sticky situation is something easy to learn while traveling which will be useful in every aspect of life. We live in a country where anyone can walk into a store and buy a handgun, a device that has absolutely no practical use other than murdering another human being. Almost nowhere else in the world can you do that. We live in a country where police shoot people simply based on the color of their skin and school shootings happen more often than all of the rest of the world combined. Many people who live in New York City or LA will take a cab home after going out to the bars, even if they live only a short distance away, whereas in Belgrade it appeared perfectly normal for a female to walk home alone at 4am. They probably do have to deal with more bullshit on the streets like catcalls and creeps hitting on them, but the risk of violent crime is lower. The illusion of danger in these countries is created by negative media due to a war that was largely instigated by The USA and ended almost 20 years ago, but that’s over now, and they don’t have the culture of stealing from others for personal gain that so commonly causes street violence in urban areas of the States.
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| Belgrade, certainly safer than LA |
The region is certainly not without problems though; alcoholism is rampant, everyone seems to be constantly chain smoking cigarettes (I couldn’t figure out how they afford so many cigarettes when a pack costs 1-2 hours’ wages), the corrupt governments take tax money without investing much in anything useful for the people, and the idea of all people being equal has not yet taken hold so sexism is a big problem, women are marginalized, and prejudice against all other Balkan countries is a major issue. Even in the cities a normal wage is only $1-2 an hour, which effectively prevents most people from traveling outside of the region and makes it much more difficult to do things that we [Americans] consider necessities, such as fixing broken parts of a house or buying a smartphone and laptop. This also pushes a lot of the most skilled workers to move out of their home country and go to work in Northern/Western Europe, causing a brain drain. Many older-generation people I met lamented about how much more prosperous Yugoslavia was under Tito’s communist rule 25 years ago, but much of the industry was destroyed in the war. Though they now have far more freedom, the capitalist economy and the push of consumerism and individualism from Western cultures has brought about income inequality that never existed before, which, coupled with the decrease in job opportunities after everything was destroyed in the war, has made the majority of people poorer than they used to be while a select few make big profits.
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| Statue of Tito in Uzice, Serbia |
The next night I stayed at the apartment of a guy who had traveled all over the world, hitchhiking from Serbia to China and back. Now he has no job and no money, but he was still welcoming travelers into his home and sharing everything he had, including his incredible cooking skills. I bought us some beers while he cooked an amazing meal from vegetables which were given to him by a local farmer and fish caught in the Danube River. In the evening two of his friends came over and we had a great conversation. One of them was a 60-ish year old British man who had been living in Serbia for about a decade and told me all about his extensive travels in communist Iron Curtain countries in the 70s and 80s. It was a really interesting glimpse into a life that I knew almost nothing about, a life with very little freedom but a life where personal profits didn’t matter and money had little value. I wrote a few notes from our conversation which are as follows:
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Street food was exactly the same as 5 star restaurant food, except in a fancy restaurant they would give you champagne and caviar with the meal.
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Every building was the same, every car was the same
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A cheese shop in Prague had a roll of cheese for 50 cents. He tried to buy the whole thing but they would only sell him 100g because it was for the whole neighborhood.
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In East Berlin he would buy beers for everyone in the bar because they cost so little.
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He tried to give a man money on the street in Moscow but the man refused because he had nothing to spend money on.
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| Sloboda: “Freedom” in Serbian |
The general attitude of the Balkan people that I encountered (especially the villagers) was much more relaxed about life and they were incredibly generous. Perhaps a remaining trace of the communist days, money and personal profits didn’t seem to be valued the way it is in American culture. Even those who had nothing would share it down to the very last penny. In the villages, life was more about producing enough food to eat, much of which was home grown and seemed to be very abundant in the summer/autumn months (I expect winter is harder, but I didn’t experience this so I can’t comment on it). Many told me that the life is very difficult in the Balkans, which is certainly true because of the lack of jobs and lack of money, but it also seemed that stress levels were much lower than in the American work-ridiculous-hours-and-don’t-get-a-break culture. How much has our consumption actually benefited us in the US, when considering overall happiness and satisfaction in life?
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| Roasting fresh peppers to make Ajvar, a delicious pepper spread and the way that some of the people we stayed with make their money |
Throughout the next several weeks, I would wind my way slowly through Serbia and Bosnia and into Slovenia, travelling with a friend, Weronika, who I met in the rainbow caravan. We would hitchhike with vague destinations in mind but would usually end up going somewhere completely different that we had never heard of, when the drivers who picked us up offered to host us for a night or two. Fresh home made cheese, raw goat milk, amazing home cooked Balkan meals, and rakija would fill our stomachs for the next weeks thanks to the generosity of everyone we met. I had never experienced travel so easy as in the Balkans; I had never been to a place so trusting and hospitable before. The details of that adventure will be coming soon in the next post. Do keep in mind that everything I’ve said in this post are generalizations based on my limited experience as a male traveler, though, so don’t expect every person you meet from the Balkan region to think along these lines.
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| Hitching a ride to Mojstrana, Slovenia, to go explore the Julian Alps |
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| Weronika and I near Uzice, Serbia |
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| Sausage and cheese given to us by an old man who approached us on the road in Indija, Serbia and wasn’t bothered by the fact that none of us spoke the same language. |
