1911

last photos from montenegro.

09Nov09

good morning and good breakfast was there to accept me for the last day spent in montenegro.

from the room window.that strange hill divides montenegro from croatia.

i was hungry so i left the appartment quickly to go to my favorite bar ,just in time to see a tiny kitty dieing of hunger.i never got used to that.people abbandon them near garbage containers.for the left of the day i avoided that stairways,i felt guilty.

i was invited to lunch by my mothers ex colleague, a very kind family who prepared an enormous quantity of food, which is so typical when in balkans.it is something i adore the most .the nonreligious quantity of food, like tomorrow could be the last days for us.

we talked about things we’ve been and what has hit us some time ago, and i said how sorry feel i have no material in my hands of when embargo and inflation almost killed us and when my fathers pay was worth 4 eggs, something like that.i don’t even remember what we ate at that time.i remember only my uncle sent us food with buses and trucks that would have come from serbia to montenegro.you had five hundred milion dinars banknote and you could have not buy anythingit just had no value.. there was no food in shops, electricty blackouts for more then 12 hours,etc.at some point she stood out and said,i’ve got something for you.

she brought from another room the banknotes from that period, it was 1993, 1994,something like that.

she said, keep them so when the times are shitty ,you already know where you’ve been.

after the coffee,hugs and kisses i went back to take a walk and meet my friend for the last day.it was so hot.

we walked a lot, drank too many coffees and liquors,smoking what i guess was too much cigars, because i couldn’t walk any more.the town is all up and down, an incredible amount of stairs, sun,heavy rain sometime.it is almost tropical climate.we went for the last drink at our bar, where we got drunk at school days escaping everything but friendship.

she told me she doesn’t want to separate from me, because i’l never get back here.you hate this place, she told me, and if it wasn’t for the passport you would have never come back.i honestly don’t know.this place has hurt my pride more than anything.it can not be easily forgiven.it humiliated my family,their honesty.i know it wasn’t our fault,but of assholes who thought we small people would never understood the game.

i left her and went to rented room to contemplate my long beloved passport, the map of my all travelings and facts of whom i am ,where i was born, who wanted me and who not.you can’t cancel that.i bought a cap for my sister.it was made from a lovely and very old lady on beach passage.i asked how much she wanted for it.”what ever it’s ok for you young lady.”

i got up and went to balcony half naked, yes it was that hot, to enjoy my last cigarette and to take some pictures.but only one was important.

then the day they gave me passport i needed to leave.i wanted to leave.

Andjelija asked if i needed connection for paris as she new a well known painter who lives there, but comes regularly to montenegro to paint as he finds inspiration here.i think i know what he ment.

i left montenegro in bus, on croatian border they sent back two albanian guys as they were probably escaping kosovo in search for jobs.they took only me out of the bus asking me politely to show what i had in bag. a policeman put on gloves and started taking of my stuff from bag.at some point after seeing all those ampulas of vitamin c in bag, he kindly asked do i think he might find some drugs in my baggage.i laughed so much,that others started to laugh, that he alone started to put things back in bag.i mean what can i say.i know it was all that because of the new immaculate passport i had.

have a pleasant journey, he said.no worries about that, i said.

infact not many people can get passport in 3 days.but it just happens that my mother did a favor to someone who knows someone who knew someone..you know what i mean.

at dubrovnik bus station i don’t know for what strange reason i immediatly found bus coincidence for split.i stoped photographing once i crossed the border.i dont know why.

i wouldn’t have traded this journey for anything.in this silly heart it all fitted.

Filed under: me during day | 1 Comment

ferry boat.

04Nov09

my voyage started strangely.italy-croatia-montenegro.it started with ferry boat to croatia ,then a bus to montenegro.

there was a storm,waves moving ferry, made it impossible to walk on.many naive people went to eat to boat restaurant while we were still attached to harbour.

i was listening to them vomiting all night through.some of them were not even able to go to the bathroom.mostly they were priests and religious people that went to medjugorje (a place like lourdes, sort of ).i heard them praying all night.i can’t say i felt sorry for them being sick.Calvariae est Calvariae.

i moved to the caffe bar just to move a bit and drink a coke, and what i’ve found was a sweet scene of nuns ,eating, drinking,praying and watching simpsons on tv.we sat in religious silence .

we arrived to Split at 6 am, with my enormous luck i found a bus immediately to Dubrovnik.i was more then tired but i couldn’t sleep.there was some sort of blurry scene going on.

meet montenegro.

i arrived to montenegro, hungry and tired, without the room to lay my stuff in.so i started wandering through city center of Herceg Novi asking for private accomodations.

i enter the the boutique, where two lovely ladies on my request answered they had their neighbor offering rooms for rent.they’ve called her and she waited for me at the street.i asked if 10 euros would be ok for her, and she replied that anything i’d say would be ok, smiling.

really lovely women, a wife of ex military officer,you could have see that they had money once the state existed with it’s dignity.she worked as a informatic ingeener. you could have noticed she was a living encyclopidia.atheist and gnostic, open minded woman.she served me breakfast each morning, slowly wakeing me up when i needed to get up early to run for documents.

boiled eggs, raw ham,coffee, milk apart and she stayed in my company for half an hour talking about things that happened to us.as it turns she and her husband lived also in croatia and inside the building there were families that escaped war too.we both noticed how everyone got calm about proper nationality and how spirits of war left much space open for spitrits of new economy.everyone ’s collapsing and ranting about how”once we lived well.”it’s late now.

i left apartment searching for my best friend on the other side of the town.we kissed and hugged each other for so long.it seemed no time and distance separate us.she offered me raw vegetables with mildly cooked broccoli,because she’s eating everything raw now and after, she dragged me through 7km(!) walk to drink coffee by abandoned military buildings.there were some abbanoned dogs following us.you could have see the real propotion of civilisation failure by how many abbondoned dogs has one country.i can not photograph that.

we separated at dark and i went to rented room crying.

Filed under: me during day | 6 Comments

there’s a psycho killer on the radio and you know why

02Nov09

hello.i came back to italy with one of my blurriest achivments.

a passport from a small ,minuscule state of Montenegro that acted as a my home for three years during civil wars.i have no relatives there, no one from my family is still living there,no one from my family was born there,nothing.it hated me as i hated it back for all three years.it is a state where i learned what friendship means, what hunger can do, the humiliation of proper father and mother who can’t offer you anything, the hatred of others who think we are the cause of all the embargo and shit that happened. i would have many anecdotes to tell to you,but it’s been some time ago and i survived that and nothing resemblance it as it should.

i discovered croatians don’t want to give me passport,because i am serbian nationality, even though i was born and lived there, serbians don’t give me passport because i wasn’t born in serbia,italians just don’t want to give me passport,at least not soon.and actually i don’t give a shit.i would keep my immigrants passport anyway.

after knowing all this i came quite nervous to montenegro,but things changed, from weather to people to myself at the end.i think it is good it is my legal home.i learned so much there.it woke me up.maybe i’ll write about it here, i don’t know.

i’ll write about these past few days i spent there again, because they were good and warm.friends can change everything.

i’ll end up this post.

when i got passport i went back to croatia, to Split, to take a ferry boat to italy.

running up and down the city of Split i bought these fantastic shoes,borosana, that once were a symbol of working woman in yugoslavia.now they’re making them again in all the possible colors and prints.i’m a lucky one.

the toothless and what i thought, unpleasant seller that gave me shoes in shop gave me a left in 38 size and 40 the right one, i just discovered it getting and on boat trying to photograph them for you.run,girl, run with 25 kg of weight on shoulders and huge bag besides on dizzy stairs of Split,sweating.

i entered the shop yelling, “please change me the shoe!i need to get on boat!”

she told me “the sweetness of my heart, what happened?”.the shop loaded with people.she pulled everyone beside and asked me what boat i need to get in.

i need to go to italy!, i replied.literally the whole shoped turned into searching another right blue shoe size 38.and they found it under the vendor table.

i guess i was really red in face and sweaty looking, as she gave me a glass of water,took a shoe and opened my bag on my shoulders and tucked the shoe in and accompanied me to the door.

“now go!”

it made me all feel like i know where i belong.i had enough time to take just one other shot.

a garden in stone.it’s one of the prettiest town i ‘ve ever seen.it has something.

the fine young women officer or officer women asked me in custom, do i ever plan to go back, because “if it was for me i would never live here..”

oh baby, you just don’t know what you’re missing being like that.trust me.

so i took my stuff and went back to boat and took all these photographs for you.

Filed under: me during day | 6 Comments

for all you nice people.

23Oct09

i will be back in a week or so.i’m going home to balkans to rearrange my passport.i will talk about it when i get back, because, it sure is an entertaining issue,extra fun if you’re born in strange lands of Balkan.wish me luck people,keep your sweet fingers crossed for me.

for you who likes boiled egg,i will be back with some fine stuff.stay tuned,here’s the preview.

ciao,see you.me.

Filed under: me during day | 4 Comments

just arrived!

20Oct09

this summer some quite negative person(now with negative karma) stole my boyfriend’s bicycle.it was an expensive one(never buy expensive bicycles)but,what was more important, it was his mothers last gift for his birthday.

it made him so sad.now he’s stubbornly driving around his tiny mini,mini,mini mountain bike,which at city streets makes him look mighty weird… i can’t rearrange the damage to him, but i thought this might help,so i bought him this.