Skip navigation.

Labris

Banka hrane

 
Srbija 2020

Srbija do Bijeljina! ?

It was just after the border crossing that the radio started to freak out. The Artic Monkeys’ tune crackled, popped, faded and was lost to static. I adjusted the frequency, frantically searching for the tune, but it had been lost to the ether.

In silence I edged further away from the safety of the Republic of Serbia into the no-man’s land separating the country from its neighbour. A large slow-moving lorry blocked my path and my view, ensuring that I didn’t catch sight of the Sava until the great river was almost upon us.

The truck ushered us onto a rickety road-rail bridge that was reminiscent of that ‘70s film the Cassandra Crossing. ‘Would a train full of infectious Bosnians one day plummet to their deaths from this very bridge?’ I wondered. ‘How many had already met their end in the fast-flowing waters of the Sava?’

Thankfully, and contrary to my fearful imaginings, the bridge crossing ended without incident. The truck veered off to the side and, as I accelerated, the radio jumped back into life at full blast, with a yelp and a squeak and a “samo jedan da-a-a-n-n”. I reached to turn it off, fearing that otherwise my brain would explode, and almost hit the welcome sign that loomed large ahead of me in English: “Welcome to Republic of Serbs”. Hadn’t I just left that place?

 For the first three or four months of Marko Pulenović’s life – the incubation period as it were – I didn’t realise that the place I heard people around me call Srbija and the place they called Republika Srpska were two different places. I just thought the latter was some fancy way of referring to the former. When I did finally register that the Republic of Serbia actually borders an ‘entity’ called the Republic of Serbs, I was flabbergasted. ‘What’s the point?’ I thought. 

Then it occurred to me that this could be somehow similar to the Irish situation that I am so familiar with – two countries of more or less the same name, one beside the other, but separated for religious and ideological reasons. Maybe the Serbs of the Republic of Serbs were separated from the Serbs of the Republic of Serbia because their religious denomination was different, or their languages and cultures clashed, or maybe even because they were only called ‘Serbs’ because of where they came from and not because they were part of the same nation. I was wrong.

The Serbs of Serbia and the Serbs of Republika Srpska do not differ markedly as nations. They both have the same religion, language, culture, value system and, for want of a better word, dreams. If anything, the main difference is that the Serbs of Republika Srpska are more… well… Serb, albeit Serbs with Bosnian zeal. 

I swerved to avoid the gaudy, grammatically flawed welcome sign and headed for the border.

“Gdje idete?” (Where are you going?), asked the customs officer.

“Ne razumem” (I don’t understand), I lied in response.

“Where you go?” he spat.

“Aha. Erm. Biyeliyine,” I said slowly and with an exaggerated foreign accent. “Vistin’ a friend init mate,” I explained further.

He examined my well-thumbed passport for longer than was necessary, before reaching for the stamp. ‘What’s the date?’ he whispered to a friend, before adjusting the rubber stamp and using it to beat up my passport some more. It was a little before seven pm, but it seemed that I was the first real foreigner to have entered Bosnia & Herzegovina via that border crossing that day.

I drove slowly away from the booth only to be halted a little further down the road by a female customs officer (uff! Female official! The alarm bells rang in my head: Warning! Warning! Irrational overzealous power-crazed female with a badge!)

“What in trunk?” She asked, her armed, shaved henchman leaning over her shoulder. “It’s a boot not a trunk,” I insisted and was ignored.

“Open trunk,” she pointed.

I exited my banger of a right-hand drive Renault cautiously – any false moves and I could be road kill – making my way around to the rear and opening my boot to reveal two battered-looking bottles of water and a ball.

One of the armed skinheads pointed with a bit too much force and pace for my liking, causing me to flinch. “Ragbi!” he declared, excitedly pointing at the ball; a toothy grin plastered to his face and a half-raised AK47 in his hand. I nodded and smiled before turning my gaze toward the lady leader. She nodded for me to close the boot and sent me on my way.

Back on the road I had serious music problems. The first leg of my journey had been okay, enjoyable in fact: a spotless tarmac motorway from Belgrade heading north and West towards Zagreb. A wide variety of radio stations offering everything from domestic yodelling crap to old Yugoslav classics, to international easy listening, world pop and international classics of rock and pop.

Now, though, the quality of the road surface had deteriorated to the classification ‘shale’ and the choice of musical accompaniment had shrank to ‘domestic yodelling crap’ or trumpet techno.

I opted for trumpet techno and concentrated on keeping my speed down – this stretch of road is a favourite for Bosnian-Serb coppers looking to earn a few on the spot fines to pay off their gambling debts.

At a steady 80kmph I headed into Bijeljina and found a parking spot in the centre of town. Stepping out of the car I immediately noticed the large black letters spray-painted on the nearest white wall:

“R E F E R E N D U M!”

I made a quick search for hidden ‘no parking’ signs that would see my car towed away and, finding none, headed towards Bijeljina’s small but lively centre. On my left a large, shiny mosque appeared. It looked new, but I was pretty sure the residents of Bijeljina had neither erected it nor requested its erection, as it was completely fenced off and showed no signs of Islamic life.

On my right was a large town centre square. At one end the locals sat outside a city kafana drinking the local lager, while at the other a mass of youngsters played basketball on the town centre court.

Andrea and I were hungry, but we had no convertible-(Deutsche)marks (Bosnia’s laughably named currency) and it was too late to find an open bank. We needed a bureau de change.

“Gde je menjacnica?” (where’s the bureau de change?) I asked a passer-by.

“Tu je,” (there it is). He pointed to a fat guy who was standing across the square in front of a brightly-lit betting shop. In confusion, I asked a second, a third and a fourth passer-by, but received the same response. In Bijeljina – a district of some 200,000 residents – it seems that there are no foreign currency exchange points other than those offered by bloated street urchins.

I approached the big man. He was draped in gold and nodding his head to the beat of ethno-music. He was standing beside his car, his foot raised and resting on the top of the wheel, his bulk resting on his raised knee. He was certainly no Fonzy, but he seemed to think he was pretty cool. “Do you know where I can exchange dinars for marks?” I asked.

“Right here,” he smiled, whipping a sizeable wad of cash out of his pocket and making the trade. He was unable to provide us with a rate card so we had to take his word for it. Did he rip us off? Does a bear defecate in a wood?

I turned towards the nearest restaurant, another sprayed ‘R E F E R E N D U M!’  sign catching my eye as I did so.

The restaurant was stylish, for Bijeljina, and didn’t smell of stale rakija – always a good sign. We requested the menu and received one of those laminated menu cards offering unreal pictures of plastic looking food. The meals all had Cyrillic explanations (no Latinic to be found in Bijeljina) that didn’t beat around the bush with corny Western embellishments like ‘succulent’ or ‘corn-fed’ or ‘drizzling’. If the offer was meat and veg, the menu read ‘meat and veg’.

“What’s this American Chicken?” I asked the waiter.

“Ah, that’s a chicken breast wrapped in streaky bacon and filled with cheese,” he explained.

“Sounds good. I’ll take that,” I offered him the menu.

“You can’t,” he shook his head. “We don’t serve American chicken anymore because those bastards bombed us.”

“Oh, I see… So why do you have it on the menu?” I asked.

“Because it’s a nice picture on the menu,” he explained, “normalno”.

I accepted the menu back and looked at the American Chicken picture. It did look good. Never mind. I opted for the Leskovaćka mučkalica – like a spicy, meaty stew. It comes highly recommended.

After a short post-supper stroll around the streets of the town that, for me, is far, far more Serbian than Belgrade, it was time to head home and get the Serbian border entry stamp that was, in fact, the only reason I’d come to Bijeljina in the first place.

Heading back towards the car we took a darkened side street. A group of kids, huddled by the wall, caught sight of us and scattered. We approached the spot where they’d been and saw that they’d simply been spraying graffiti on the wall – R E F E R E N D U M, read their message.

Should the people of Republika Srpska (I don’t like translating the name of the place because Republic of Serbs just sounds daft) be allowed to stage a referendum? What would they hope to achieve – independence or the annexing of that part of Bosnia on to Serbia to make up for Serbia’s almost certain territorial loss of Kosovo?

Most of the Belgraders that I know have a standard response to such a question: “samo nam to fali!” (that’s the only thing we’re missing), they tend to say sarcastically. In other words: No. Serbs from Bosnia should not be given the option of joining Serbia in a single country.

What does the rather patriotic Marko Pulenović think? That’s easy: “Srbija do Tokija!”

What does Mark Pullen think? I just worry that, with ethnic Albanians claiming that the countries of the region aren’t ‘natural’ and Serbs spread across the Balkans in enclaves and entities, the long overdue forming of proper ‘nation states’ might just be getting underway on the Balkans.

 What do you think?