I Remember Yugoslavia The year after President Tito died, we drove through Yugoslavia on our way to Greece and back. At that time communism still had a firm hold and there still remained a few large sheet-like banners with Tito's head displayed on buildings. The interior of Yugoslavia through Belgrade to the border was bleak. I remember a factory town completely smothered in noxious purple smoke and a rural village with funeral notices showing photos of the deceased posted on telephone poles. On our return trip along the Dalmatian Coast, we stayed in a quaint hotel in Pes . Our room looked down on a convent school. Early in the morning a military file of uniformed children waited outside the huge gothic doors until they were admitted by blue-robed nuns. They marched inside and two nuns quickly closed the doors behind them. While we watched, a small boy came running breathlessly down the street and stood forlornly outside and knocked, until the massive door opened wide enough for a flowing blue arm to reach out and pluck him inside. We passed tarpalined Gypsy camps along the roadsides on our way to Ohrid, within sight of Albania. A young man on a bicycle chased our car to inform us he had a zimmerfrie where we could stay in his beautiful new house. It turned out to be a sagging couch in the living room of a utilitarian three-room flat in a Russian-style apartment block. The family's comparative affluence was due to his trips to Australia with the Merchant Navy. I remember the pregnant wife, their little boys and girls, all with shaved heads, and a glass cabinet, which proudly displayed souvenir cigarette packages from the husband's trips away from communism. We stayed in a zimmer along the coast where a young girl proudly tried to talk to us in school English and as we were leaving her mother filled my arms with freshly cut flowers. We took a side trip to ugly pre-Olympic Sarajevo, by way of Mostar, with its priceless ancient Starimost arched stone bridge. We stopped at a stand on the roadside to buy black and red figs from two peasant-skirted and kerchiefed farm ladies. Unfortunately we mixed the figs together which caused a heated crisis between the women when it came time to pay. The severe Comrade Lady in Sarajevo Tourism found us a room in a house crowded with several noisy and colorfully dressed families. For the tourist dollars, the student son gave up a lumpy fold-down couch in his room full of medical texts. I had laryngitis. The plump lady who looked Turkish brought me a big tomato and with sign language, ordered me to suck it. We visited the oldest synagogue in Yugoslavia, the mosque, the Orthodox Church and the Turkish market where my only purchase was a nested set of Russian dolls. Back up the coast, we saw the ancient Roman ruins in Split and stopped over in medieval Dubrovnik, to explore the historical walled city. We walked around on the walls, took pictures of the old clock in the square, and ate our meals in narrow side-street cafes. We often joined the schoolchildren who bought huge bagels and extra-delicious yogurt from the street vendors at lunchtime. Wherever we stayed, we petted dogs and cats, smiled at children and admired babies. We never knew for sure who or what was Serb or Croat or Macedonian or Albanian. Today, Dubrovnik has been smashed so badly it will never be the same again. The Stari-most Bridge that survived the centuries has been broken in pieces. The medical student will long since have become an adult, so will the little girl who spoke English and the boy who was late for school. The young family in Ohrid near Albania will have grown up in very troubled times. The figseller ladies in the little cottages are probably grandmothers, if they are still there. I look at the pictures we took and I think about all of them and I wonder.. ~~ Daphne Wilson |
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Your comments are very much appreciated. ~Daphne |
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This page was last updated on: 28/1/02
