Mountain Moonshine and more……

….sorry for the slight delay in the Bosnia tales. As soon as I returned I had to take a Luton van down to Evesham to move out my furniture and supervise the laying of a carpet where I had had the flood in the front room. It was a very hard two days, lifting and humping all the furniture out of the house and loading up the van. Thank God for the tail lift. It was absolutely chocca, but I still had a lot of rubbish and still quite of lot of clothes and kitchen stuff I couldn’t get in. When I arrived back at the farm it all had to be stuffed in the garages and boat shed and the place was so full that I could hardly move about. A full turn out and tidy up was needed over the next three days and then on Saturday a return to Evesham to put the remaining rubbish in a skip, the last few bits in a trailer and the big clean, some of which I confess I decided to contract out to a cleaner next week. I hate the idea of moving into someone’s dirty house, so I can’t leave it anything but perfect. Actually, with the new carpet and decorating, and a good clean, I almost wanted to move back!. (But, it hasn’t sold at a price I want, so I will probably let it at the end of May as I can’t do any sort of legal stuff while I am in the States.) On Monday, I returned back to Catterick to work, so since returning from Bosnia, I haven’t actually stopped yet, and blogging has had to take a back seat. In fact, I am off yet again, on the Harley, tomorrow, this time to Pershore, partly to get a new battery from All American in Kidderminster, and partly at the invitation of the girls from the surgery who have invited me to one of their “Ladies wot lunch” meetings; quite a privilege this, since it is not usual for males to attend at all. ( I don’t quite know what this says about me really, either I am no threat and some degree of fun, or I am a threat and even more degree of fun!)
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…and so, back to the mountain still. The process went on late into the night on the first day, with lights rigged up. We sat round the hot still and boiler with slivo and beers and potatoes baked in the ashes. The smoke and steam and glow of the fire and the atmosphere under the dim lighting was mystical and secretive and very laddish and a lot of fun. Moonshinedistilling is a lot more romantic and enjoyable than doing it in the daytime, although this was only being done, not out of secrecy, but necessity to finish the processing of the mash today. At about 11.30, the whole of the mash had been processed, and the first distilling stored in numerous containers in the cow shed until the morning. Hot, sweaty, tired and not a little inebriated, we all retired to bed until 6.30 when the process was to start all over again. I confess to being late, as I had to get Father up and get the porridge on and get breakfast, so it was actually about 7.30 when I actually arrived on the scene and by that time, they had thoroughly washed out the copper and had a new hot fire in the burner underneath it. The smoke rose from the stove pipe mixing with the early morning mist as it lifted off the valley in the warmth of the sun as it rose over the edge of the mountains bordering the plateau. “Dobra dan” all greeted each other, “Caco ste?”, how are you. “Dobra, havala, caco vie”, fine thanks, and you? Jefto and Branko were busy the former stirring the great handle of the copper and the latter feeding the fire beneath. Zarko was sat by the edge of the condenser, this time the collecting bucket covered with a fine cotton cloth as a filter, while the new clear liquid from the second distillation of yesterday’s liquid dribbled into the bucket. He was testing frequently with his hydrometer to check when the alcohol concentration was right. It seemed to be perfect, about 72% pure alcohol! He offered me a taste of the new brew. I took the small glass and smelled the aromatic scent. A heady mixture, somewhere between apples, plums, Eau de Cologne and Petrol! I raised it to my lips and sipped it, like tasting a new vintage of wine. It was good indeed ( as far as Slivovic goes anyway!) definitely some of the best I have tasted. Finally I downed it….WOW….yes indeed.pretty hot stuff this batch. We were sort of bi-lingually nodding and gossiping and making approving noises when Ranka arrived, somewhat early for the student who normally manages to arise for about mid morning coffee, like most students in Europe I suspect. She was bringing breakfast down the field with Jela, pickles and eggs, bread and Kymac and coffee. (The bottle of slivo was, of course, already on the table and being attacked prior to breakfast and coffee…one shares glasses to a great extent…they are self sterilising!) And then also, Father pottering slowly down the field to join us. The men made to help him, and I stopped them. He needs to do these things by himself sometimes, it is good for his confidence. Ranka helped him the last 30 yards and sat him on the old bus bench that was our “dining room sur l’herbe” next to the busy still. He had already had his breakfast and declined more having been happy with his porridge, but gradually an egg and some de-crusted bread and kymac and a coffee disappeared, so he was on good form. He even volunteered to turn the handle of the still while Jefto had his breakfast, so the old “White Ribboner” who has always been so true to his ethics and teetotalism, joined in for the greater good of the work to relieve one other old man for his breakfast! However he did want me to note that it was only because it was friendly and right to join in, and not because he actually approved of the product or the enterprise in any way. About mid morning, we had to leave the brewing boys, in truth although we had participated, I am quite certain that they could have done it without our help anyway! The end result was that, from 5 oil drums of mash, they finally distilled 63 litres of rocket fuel, all sparking clear after filtration through the cotton cloths and stored in the usual fashion, in almost any bottles they had saved, water bottles, coke bottles, old brandy bottles, last years empties, mostly with various odd labels still on them, belying their contents.

Father and I were off to Livno to see N for lunch. We called into Dulicani on the way to collect Arzija, another friend who is Bosniac. She had been the “boy’s mother” in the Glamoc camp. She was the principal laundry lady, and always regarded the soldiers as her boys. She did indeed look after them rather like a mother, doing their washing and sometimes bits of mending for them. She was always very chatty, talking in a pidgin English of Austrian, Serbo-croat and English, oddly comprehensible but amusing! Arzija had lived in Austria for some time with her mother and father when they fled at the beginning of the war, but they had returned in the early 90’s. The girl we were going to see, N, had been an interpreter when I worked in Glamoc, and she lives and works in Livno, her home town. She is a lovely girl in her early 40’s who is left almost alone since her parents died and her brother fled to Austria during the war. He never returned and hardly gives her any support, and for a single muslim girl on her own, with no father or brother to support her in any way, life has been hard and often lonely. She is a most open, honest friendly and caring woman, eclectic like Ranka, and non-judgmental, and I have liked her ever since I met her. She still works as an interpreter, and has just fortunately got a new contract for another 12 months, but to get and keep work is very hard in Bosnia, and harder still nowadays if you are ethnically different from the majority in your town, as N is. N’s father used to be in charge of the water department in Livno, looking after the great sluice gates that control the flow of water which comes gushing out of the mountain cliffs which overshadow the town and diverting water along the old race, now in decay, to the water mill, now also in ruins. She was brought up in the Water keeper’s house under the cliffs and had shown it to us 18 months ago, together with the beautiful re-constructed mosque where she had been as a child. N and Ranka’s mother had been at university together, in the days when a Serb and a Bosniac could be friends with no thought about it. It was while I was in Glamoc that I met them both and almost accidentally reintroduced them to each other. They have always been and remain firm friends still, which is lovely.

We went to the Forum, the central shopping precinct in Livno. Livno is predominantly ethnically a Croatian town nowadays, and wherever there are Croatians, there is plenty of German investment. Large areas of town are owned and developed by German entrepreneurs and fronted by Croatian businessmen. New housing developments spread into the fields and hills around the town and there is little remaining sign of damaged buildings or recent war in the town itself. There are some expensive German cars around, some driven by German visitors, some driven by Croatian spivs. It seems in some places that there are some people who really made a good profit from the civil war. The same is true in Croatia itself, certainly not now lacking in massive investment and redevelopment of infrastructure and businesses, unlike it’s poverty stricken neighbours of Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo. There is some investment by the European Union, but where real progress is being made, you can almost always see that it was from a money laundering procedure during the war or it is new German money. This aside, the Forum is very much what you would expect to find in Milton Keynes, but about a tenth the size. It has several restaurants, an art shop and gallery, beauty salons, expensive clothes and perfume shops, and one particularly good restaurant where most locals would need a month’s income to have a meal, but to us, a good meal is about £18-00 a head, and that is where Father and I take Arzija and N for lunch. ( not wonderful photo but gives you an idea of the style of the place) It was nice to sit and chat together about what has been happening in the last 18 months. I was happy to learn that N has found a really nice male friend, Y, who she has been seeing for about 12 months. He is the same ethnicity and has a good job and is similar age and not married and treats her well, she deserves it…N is hopeful! About 4.30, we leave the restaurant. Tomorrow N has to travel to Sarajevo to the U.N. office to sign her new contract. It is a long way by Bosnian roads, about 150miles. We also have a long trip, about the same distance, to Zavidovici, with Arzija and her daughter V, to see her other daughter S who is married and has just had a new baby and they have not seen her or the baby in the last 7 months. We say goodbye, N rather sad that we are unable to stay longer or go up to have tea at her flat, but she lives up on the fourth floor of an apartment block and Father definitely can’t manage that amount of stairs, so we decline.

After dropping off Arzija until the morning, we returned to Sumnjajce and Zarko, Ranka’s dad, was with her at the long wooden table in front of the house, preparing a small pig for roasting on the spit, something he has done for us every year, although sometimes it has been a small sheep. Ranka is pouring water over its insides to wash out the blood and then Zarko passes a long stake down its throat through it’s empty carcass and out of its bum and nails a bottle top through its nose and sacrum to stop it spinning on the pole. Finally he wires up the feet to the pole and closes the abdominal wall with wire and makes a few small stabs over the body to let the fat baste it as it turns. The rotisserie is automatic!. A small engine, very common in Bosnia is used to turn the spit, powered by a car battery. These spit engines are made by a combination of large and small gear wheels often obtained from either old bicycles or washing machines, and the whole is powered through the wiper motor of a car. A bit of welding and mounting on a stand and adding a clamp to hold the pole, and you’re in business. The fire is built about 5 feet in front of the spit. It is wood and as it burns, more is added. The charcoal and burning embers are then shovelled underneath the spit, where they stay hot and glow, spread out like a red-grey rug under the turning sizzling beast. They are quite the best spit roasters I have encountered. It is quite an art form and does a wonderful job over about 3 hours, certainly producing the most amazing crackling I have ever eaten.Camping al fresco in the camper in their back lawn, they ask me to put out the blind, and we arrange a table and chairs underneath. The evening turns a bit chilly, as the sun turns red in the sky, and in jumpers and jackets and hats, and Father in my Goretex jacket and a blanket, we sit in friendship, tearing at pieces of the most succulent piglet and cracking with fingers, accompanied by pickled capsicums, beef tomatoes, raw onions, bread and kymac and washed down with Pivo, or fruit juice and finished, of course, with the new brew of slivo and “kaffa”. We toast, “Givoli, cheers, friendship, each other”. Another visit here draws to an end, as we depart for bed ready to move off early for our long trip with Arzija tomorrow morning. It feels sad to leave again. It’s never long enough. Two families from totally different worlds meeting annually in friendship now for 8 years. It’s an amazing thing, friendship, you hardly even need to speak the same language. We just know that we care about each other, and that is quite a good world philosophy!

The morning starts again at 6.30, and by 7.30, Father is up, we have breakfasted, stowed the table, bed and bedding away , and take our leave. Ranka asks us to see her one more time in Banja Luka in a few days time when she is back at Uni. We agree willingly, we will meet for coffee on the way through and phone when we are getting close. We embrace and kiss and some tears….”Sretan put”, safe journey, see you again, take care, come again next year. Oddly, for the first time ever, Father, who said that this would be his last trip this time ( he has said this every year!) did not say so this year; he just said “God willing”…which means the old rascal is up for it again! Let’s go.

next installment....Zavidovici...fantastic trip.

Best wishes, Doc

Post script: I am very sad to say that, this was the last trip for Father. He died peacefully in Hospital in November 2007 after a short illness following a fall in which he broke his hip. I saw him for just a month after I returned from the U.S. Roadtrip. The Bosnian trips can never be the same again, but he will always ride with me. God Bless you and keep you Father, and try and find a place for me! With love and thanks from your son, Paul