For rebecca.

"To my friends in New York, I say 'Hello,'
My friends in L.A., they don't know
Where I been for the past few years or so,
Paris to China to Colorado..." - One Republic


I was turning around to leave again just eighteen hours after arriving, so that's why I was in the small car. My backpack accompanying me to make for a quicker goodbye. That was the logical decision made in the morning by Miran, the forty-something owner of the eponymous hostel in Mostar that I'd stayed at for a brief night made briefer by the unreliability of Eastern European trains. The ones delayed by the extensive border checks between fledgling countries that loathe one another. 

I took a train rather than a bus from Sarajevo to Mostar because of Rebecca West. Her six-week journey through then-Yugoslavia on the eve of the Second Great War is retold in the extensive and impossibly-dense Black Lamb and Grey Falcon; it's the essential book for any serious traveler to the Balkans, despite now being eighty years old. Reading it in modern day means you're doing so for its philosophy, its musings on how life once was before the contamination of the contemporary reached the villages comprising her trip. It means reading with the cruel hindsight of history she, for all her wisdom, lacks. As a travelogue, it has little use; in its twelve-hundred pages of minute descriptions, what quaint civilization wasn't razed by modernity was devoured by warfare. That of the '40s, the '90s, or our newest century- take your pick. But I rightly assumed one experience of hers would hold pretty true from her era to mine. I chose the train rather than the far more frequent bus because of Rebecca, and because there are only so many paths a train can take out of a valley. Only so many ways out of the holes we dig ourselves in. Eighty years can pass, but the train tracks in impoverished countries pretty much stay in place. 129 kilometers of travel at the speed of honey, letting her and I both centipede past the same massive earthen sharkfins rising out of jade rivers. Through nature stunning but unstrategic, in the World War she knew would surely come and the civil war she didn't.

Still, because of its earlier delay at the Croatian/Bosnian border, the train is two hours late in getting to Sarajevo and it carries me into Mostar past eleven at night instead of just after nine. Past the point when the hostel's social circles are pretty much solidified, or at least when there are no longer empty chairs left around the table to sit with the large group on the patio. Which was fine aside from the twinge of jealousy that the cute blonde backpacker also staying there was already flanked by other eager guy travelers. Another road fling never to be. So instead of conversation with the blonde, or any of the others, I chose to wander the city by night. Walking on Mostar's shined'by'wear cobblestones convexing streetlight back at my eyes, as I followed a many'folded map from Hostel Miran to the Old Bridge that spans the Neretva River. Stone leaping above the water as it has for almost six-hundred years, save the decade following its arbitrary destruction in 1993 during the Bosnian war, and prior to its replacement in 2004.

I wake in the early of the morning and it's back to the Bridge again, while it's still mine with minimal sharing. Mainly an old Italian couple and a local man walking his dog to have in my photographic foreground. I'm on the banks of the trickling Neretva before the arrival of tourists and the preening teenage boys goading money out of them, promising to dive the 30 meters off the Old Bridge to the water once the collection reaches 25 Euro. I get back to the hostel for their semi-famous day tour, the reason I chose to stay there in the first place. Before we head to a Dervish monastery perched above a river, or to a hilltop Ottoman fortress, or to Herzegovinian waterfalls, Miran splits our group of 15, me and the fourteen occupied seats from the night before, into two groups. And that's when I'm assigned into the small car with the other 2 backpackers who will also be taking the evening train back to Sarajevo. Two early 20s Brits, a redhead named Aidan and his friend that looks like the offspring of Eric Bana and Frank Turner. Along with Miran's also early 20s nephew, and an Argentinian backpacker, our tiny red car keeps pace with the larger van. Sitting in the smaller car means I'm missing out on more commentary from the absurdly colorful Miran, so rather than anti-establishment anecdotes and the more-than-occasional tactless sexism, the five of us talk football. Of Villa and Fulham, of the Bosnian star Edin Džeko, underutilized striker for Manchester City and current god of Sarajevo, who I'd met while out drinking a few nights before. Of how Džeko donates constantly to Sarajevo children's programs and hospitals, as he too vividly remembers being a small child during the city's Siege. Our young Bosnian driver is also an ultra- think English hooligan without the beer drinking. Just the fighting and flare'lighting, and the confession about how he has to change his shirt between stops because we're entering a mostly-Croatian part of the region where his team's colors and badge could easily provoke violence. Football loyalty being the proxy form of freshly'remembered war. In addition to football, Miran's nephew is also a huge basketball fan, and when he finds out I'm from New York he eagerly asks me about what seeing a game in Brooklyn is like, in the house that Jay built. Of how Barclay's compares to the Garden or to Staples Center in LA. 

For us five the words and jokes all come pretty easy and in between the sights that were advertised is an experience less tangible that wasn't, and a realization I miss one more thing I never realized I lost between LA and New York. It's the simple act of riding in a car with friends. Windows down, sunshine in a heatwave summer, and a soundtrack subtle in the moment that turns Pavlovian the next time you hear it. It was Dre 2001 back in senior year, usually in Vince's 80s Bronco, grabbing breakfast burritos from Corner Cottage or weaving around the Burbank hills. On almost monthly college trips out to Vegas, the year that followed Irwin and I turning 21, it was The Killers' Hot Fuss, cranking "Midnight Show" when we hit the top of the ridge on the 15 when the glowing promise of the city reveals itself and we would hurtle down to the dwarfing Strip with unrestrained smiles. In this Herzegovina summer it's OneRepublic that I don't realize is on until the five of us are caught in a moment of quietude, each looking out the windows with our eyes rather than our camera lenses. A silence not from boredom, or awkwardness, but a communal if subconscious recognition of contentment. Something so basic and ubiquitous that the top 40 song with its rudimentary lyrics is actually the perfect accompaniment. It's a moment we can all understand and we can all appreciate. Its very accessibility is what makes it beautiful. Our five cultures, biographies, and languages all overlapping for just these few car rides and hours but each easily understanding and agreeing. Our Venn being the football and the car ride, the attraction to Bosnia, and the words we take in while also meditating them out, our communal present and our individual futures....

Oh this has gotta be the good life,
This has gotta be the good life, 
This could really be a good life,
A good, good life...

After the song and hours at the Kravice waterfalls, more silent reflection of simple happiness as a particular cerulean dragonfly kept returning to perch unafraid on my knee, it was back to Mostar. The two Brits were also on my evening train back to Sarajevo, the one with far more daylight to see the Bosnian countryside Rebecca had urged me towards. We didn't talk past the casual goodbyes on the Sarajevo platform that mirrored the farewells to our Argentinian and Bosnian brief friends back in Mostar. More afternoon friendships where further communication or contact info traded would only muddy harmonious memories. The discs in the Venn were already slipping apart, towards future cities and soundtracks, but now with another song to bring a vivid moment back. At least for me, hopefully for the other four, and maybe for another traveler in the future. One who is in a car because of a train because of words that don't stop speaking even when the author and her world have long disappeared.