Strasbourg and Paris, the long way home.

If you regard a holiday as a period when you go out drinking or clubbing ‘til the early hours and lie in ‘til lunchtime, a trip with Father and me to Bosnia would not suit your taste. Father usually goes to bed about 10 p.m.and in the countryside in Bosnia, when it’s dark, that seems fairly sensible. In the mornings, my body clock is so set in its ways that it almost always wakes me at 6.30a.m., so our holiday followed these sort of hours. All our hosts are around and about at these times too…..

So, in accordance with our normal practice, we were up, breakfasted, stowed away and on the road soon after 7.00 and heading rapidly out of the valley and over the mountain pass towards Mrkonjic Grad and Banja Luka.. It was our intention to return home via Strasbourg which is where our friends, A and S are now living. But for now, as the early morning sunshine burned off the mountain mist, we headed to Banja Luka to meet Ranka who had returned to the university and had asked us to see her once more when we were leaving. We texted her as we dropped down the steep beautiful Vrbas valley from the Čemernica Mountains. As we entered the city, she was there at the side of the first bus stop. With her she had brought her old flatmates, her two closest university friends, to meet us; we are obviously slight local peculiarities, oddities, a fact that I would actually find hard to deny! She introduced A and C, and with some fascination, clearly not having been anywhere near such a strange vehicle, they all clambered inside and we headed for the city centre. The girls were fascinated by the fact that we had a kitchen, bathroom, beds and kitchen all on wheels and were totally independent. Parking was just a bit of a problem and involved the three girls smiling sweetly and chatting up a blushing young parking attendant. Eventually, we squeezed in to a space on a demolition site car park, with a promise by the young official that he would personally take care of their mobile home. This involved the payment of €10.00, about a day’s wages for him, about the price I would expect to pay for a parking space at home. We set off for the pedestrian centre. I was quite surprised because the centre of Banja Luka was so much improved over what I remembered from my last visit about 6 years ago; normally we by-pass the centre. There were clean new pavements and streets, lots of new shops and restaurants and bustling crowds of people. No longer large pot holes and mortar craters, no longer many shell holes visible on the buildings, it could have been almost any European city. We sat in a corner café on the pavement over-looking the square, the past generations, the old gynaecologist, the old family doctor, and the new generation, lawyer, sociologist and psychologist, quite symbolic of the fading out of the old and the hopeful development of the new all around us. Quite suddenly, Ranka said that they were going to leave us for a little while and pop into the market. She thought she knew where there might be a Russian water pump like the one her dad had used to pump the water from the cistern and which I had coveted for wild camping. Such a pump would enable me to go off normal parks and draw water even from a river. Zarko had said that they were very difficult to get and, although he had found it in Banja Luka, he couldn’t remember where. They would not be long. It seems that Ranka had done a bit of research before we arrived and had spoken to some of the hardware stall holders in the large open market and they had put the word out. It was only about 15 minutes before they returned. “We’ve found the pumps” Ranka smiled. So after paying the bill we sat Father on a bench in the square while the three girls and I entered the busy market area. The range of things on sale in this market is extraordinary. You can buy almost anything that we would buy in a large retail park. In one area were the plumbing, heating and electrical stalls. Ranka lead me to the side of one of the stalls and there, under the table with all sorts of plumbing and bathroom stuff was “the” pump. Not only that, but two stalls away there was another one and yet another on a third stall. “Argue! ” she said. There was one new one, complete with spare washers, and Russian instruction booklet and warranty. That had to be the one. We ranged back and forth in the open view of the stall holders, some fascination at the three lovely leggy young women browsing around the plumbing stalls with a grizzled old Englishman. They were, as I have seen my own daughter, in “giggle mode”, and chattering away in Serbian and English and obviously being teased somewhat by the men on the stall. I don’t think they knew whether they were English or Serbian. Ranka translated after rapid exchanges of Serbian. We heard sixty euros at all three stalls, but then refused all three. We passed between them over about 15 minutes, carefully pretending to examine all three and discuss them between us, criticizing each pump for why it was not as good as the others or did not have quite the same properties and such rubbish. The giggles persisted. Finally we got the worst one to 25 Euros, which we spoke of quite loudly. We went to the new pump stall and offered “final price” 30 euros, and succeeded.. The girls were obviously pleased and felt the joy of finding success for their friend. I was delighted with my brilliant acquisition! We wandered back laughing to the square where Father was sitting quietly in the sunshine with an old Bosnian man next to him. He joked that he was still quite safe and had not been mugged or taken away. He remarked that the whole place feels so much more settled and safe this visit, echoing both our impressions. Father touched his cap and bade a very loud “good morning” to the old Bosnian next to him. He looked up bemused but oddly, replied “Dobra dan” appropriately and went back to his dozing in the sunshine. We wandered back across the precinct to where we had parked. I gave the girls a little pocket money to go and treat themselves to a great girls’ lunch and we said our goodbyes and had our hugs. I have invited Ranka and her friends to come to visit us for a holiday in Yorkshire next year, which they all jumped at. I am sure we can arrange this now things are more settled and there is a fairly good international air service to Germany at least. We moved off, waving to each other, amused as the young parking attendant moved in to continue to try to push his early morning luck.

The journey was easy with clear roads and lovely weather, our only real delays being firstly at the Croatian border control and then at the Slovenian. As usual they wanted to know why we had been in the previous country and what we were bringing out. The five litres of Slivovic were stowed quietly sleeping in my berth, and otherwise,with the exception of a prized Russian water pump(sad isn’t it!), we were coming out with much less than when we went in. (Oddly enough, here at the European border areas, there was no check at all on whether we had any hidden passengers, but at the port at Calais, our own Immigration Officers boarded and searched us. It seems that we are the only, and last, bastion of illegal immigration. There, they pulled us over into an inspection area and the friendly officer, who checked all our accommodation areas to ensure we were not people smugglers, said that 13 was the record for a camper van so far, with the people hidden behind false fronts to the fridge and cooker and in the blanket boxes and under beds in place of mattresses with cardboard covers over them!.....now there’s an idea for a partly retired doctor to fund his ramblings. I would not have thought about it unless informed how it can be done) Anyway, we haven’t got to Calais yet, so back to Jesince at the Slovenian border. This was a different border crossing from the one’s we had done before, because instead of returning through Graz in Austria, we were going via Ljubljana,through Villach, Salzburg, Munich and Stuttgart and then dropping slightly south into Strasbourg, a more westerly route and one which we had not traveled before…I thought at least. The actual route itself is slightly irrelevant, you know, motorways, A-class roads, mountains, tunnels, large pastures, forests etc. All very nice and we made good progress in lovely weather, but an irritating trip as Father seemed confused quite a lot of the time. He always remarks on places as we pass through them, he had done on the way down, he always does. Actually, I like that because it means he is enjoying it and watching things, and he knows the route by heart almost. Going this way however, he kept on saying, things like “That’s were we stopped for petrol” and “We stopped for lunch there” and “we change routes soon”. I kept gently telling him that this was a new route for us and that we had not returned this way before via Strasbourg. “It all looks similar, but it’s new”. This was all a bit worrying, I thought he was a bit over tired. Then as we were coming in to Strasbourg he announced that this was the German bit and when we crossed the Rhine bridge we were in France. Well, O.K., he had to get something right!. “Yes, that’s right” I said, although I couldn’t really remember that myself until we arrived there, and even .then I couldn’t understand why I seemed to recognize it. As we neared the area that A and S live, guided by the Satnav, Father was pre-empting the dronal tone of Thomas the Satnav voice, “Left soon”, “This is the main road past their road” Fantastic memory this chap for his age! I have to confess now, and I have only just realized it as I wrote this and looked at the route on the map, it’s me who has gone bonkers, not the Aged Parent! I opened my European map and checked the route we travelled before I started to write. It was highlighted in yellow high-lighter pen. “That’s odd”, I thought, “I never looked at the route in the map this year, I simply set it up on the Satnav”. It was 10 seconds later that it hit me. This was the route we had come down to Bosnia 18 months ago when we stopped at A and S in Strasbourg on the outward journey. The old man had been absolutely spot on….he didn’t feel us driving on the left when he was always pointing that way…they were the places we stopped on the way out!...Now I feel dreadful. I’ll have to tell him. Yes, I really will; he knows he was right and I doubted him, I’ll sort it this weekend….unless he’s forgotten about it? Some chance!

Strasbourg, a really cosmopolitan city with peoples from Eastern and Western Europe, is a lovely old city, with quaint “quartiers” and a mixed language of French and German. The centre is compact, mostly on the French side of the river Rhine with an equal cosmopolitan mix of architecture. A and S are living on the edge of the centre in a ground floor, two bedroomed apartment on a small estate of three or four similar compact blocks. It is largely an area where new French immigrants are housed and is State owned. A and S are asylum seekers in France. They fled from Bosnia when they were outlawed by their own local communities for getting married. Neither of them could get work, accommodation was almost impossible and they were abused in the streets. I had met A when I served in 1999 and he was an interpreter. He was a good friend of N, and she told me about him some time before I met him, He is a very straight good honest man with eclectic beliefs and open mindedness. He is a man of deep and well constructed thought, and is a fascinating conversationalist. But, A is a Bosniac, a Moslem man, and S, a Serbian orthodox Christian. They fled three years ago, after the end of the wars, having both just fallen in love across their peer group boundaries. They had hoped to be able to go to Canada, but the Canadians wanted a minimum of a £5,000 bank roll to support them and that was way beyond their means, and finally, fairly desperate to escape they managed to get some sort of visa and escape to France, where they pleaded for asylum. Fortunately their application was accepted and they spent the next 12 months attending French lessons, political and social instruction, early job training and living in separate sex hostels with drug addicts, alcoholics, prostitutes and other homeless people. They met for a few hours each day determined to find their dream together, A always dreaming of being an artisan, and S, who was training to be a nurse, hoping to continue her training. Finally, when they had permission to stay and apply for citizenship, they found a flat to rent for a few months while the owner was away. A started work as a trainee baker, not quite what he had expected, but S was unable to transfer any of her training or qualifications as they were not recognized by France. She got a job as a care assistant. At last, they both had subsistence jobs and could plan a little. Finally, after almost 2 years, they were allocated this apartment, and restored it together to a superb open, modern, bijou flat. They were allowed to apply for citizenship, but that is still by no means guaranteed. S was pregnant by this time and expecting a baby girl….NOW. We had been all waiting to hear of her birth, and now, some 10 days late, it had still not happened. I was a bit concerned that it might be tiring and difficult for them to entertain us, but when we arrived, she was busy, bright and cheerful as ever with no feelings as if anything was about to happen. A’s sister, V, who had fled to Austria at the start of the War and is married and settled there, had come to help and brought her delightful 8 year old daughter. S’s mother was on a bus coming from Banja Luka and arriving that night. And we turned up. S was totally at ease, just delighted to see so many people she wanted to be with, and V was busy making an evening meal. A came back soon after with Mother, complete with bags of stuff, containing baby clothes, lots of Kymac, some illegally imported slivo, Bosnian beers, and some pre-prepared food. How she had coped with all that lot on the crowded, non-stop 24 hour bus, goodness knows, but had we known she was coming, I would have been delighted to have packed her behind our fridge. We spent a delightful evening together, sharing some memories, catching up on mutual friends, showing our photos of people they know back home, and of course, sipping slivo and coffee. (Only this time, in modest amounts! A drinks very little.) Father and I were parked on their street, just 100 metres away, and intended to sleep there. We wished them goodnight and hoped that S might start in labour during the night, she was due to be induced in 4 days time.. However, S. had a quiet night; I did not. Father is pretty deaf without his hearing aid, and so when he goes to bed he hears virtually nothing. He did not hear the cacophony of singing cats, which started at about 11.00pm, just as the clock in the bell tower 50 metres away sounded the hour. He did not hear the cats at the quarter, half and three quarter hours as the clock in the bell tower kept watch through the night. He did not hear this stone watchman notify every bloody quarter and every bloody hour through the night. At about 2.00, the cats went to bed and my mind got into the rhythm of the chimes, hardly stirring until the hour chimes of six, and that was just too many and I woke up fully, rather yearning for a good night on the Glamoc Polje. No, Father slept well and rose again ready for his porridge at 7.00. Some things went O.K. then!

Over a fabulous continental breakfast of cold meats, eggs, bread from our own boulanger, and Kymac of course, and with as much coffee as I could manage to push down me, we departed, sad of course that we hadn’t managed to meet little baby Uma, but pleased that A and S were so well and so secure now. We set off for Paris, several cans of Red Bull alongside the driver. I had one last mission for the Archer and Arrow together.

Next: Pinnacle of success.

Only two pictures for this bit. (No...really..there ARE only two pictures for this bit) I do manage to post them now but it seems a slow process... I still don’t fully understand exactly what I am doing yet and don’t know anyone to teach me, so bear with it…I'll maybe find an expert in the States!

Best wishes,

Doc