Mostar to Monte Negro

Denis, the architect who we stayed with, took us around Mostar in the morning. Surprisingly, and successfully, the city is waking up from the deranged nightmare and the pain of war, which is now being covered by layers of mundane daily life. The present carries the traces of shell explosions and bullets in the walls, through which the carefree greenery pushes towards light. The trauma contained in the walls is slowly changing into the virtual attraction of wild action stories, captivating the attention of incoming foreigners. We crossed one of the bridges to the Muslim side and entered the oldest mosque in the town. The multitude of Arab inscriptions, which we could not read, reminded us of musical notations or even of grafitti signatures, because of similarities in their shapes. We were told that even before the war physicaly started, there was a symbolic battle of signs and words, which eventually carried the aggression over to the streets. What does it then mean to inscribe and mark someone, a street, a house or a territory? The loyalty to family, tribe (called „pleme“ here), club, nation, or religion, became fateful for many who now rest together in the town center cemetery. The old bridge over Neretva carries a double meaning, it connects, but it also is a mark of the division between two sides. The balance of the letter M, as Mostar, is cracked by the memory of men mauled by the war who now walk on crutches.
Denis chose for himself the latinic letter L, not because it is in Latinic scrit, but because it reminds him of the right angle, which opens up the empry space for thinking and creativity.
Our journey continued towards Stolec through the village of Radmilja, where we stopped to see the necropolis of the Bogomils, a sect which was founded in Macedonia. The date of the founding as well as reasons are unknown…but somewhere, there is a connection with the story of our patrons, Cyril and Metodus. The possible connection? The area of the monumental necropolis was inland, on a highland plateau surrounded by mountians, probably hidden away from the Ottomans or the reach of the Monarchy. Typographically, the basreliefs on the large house-shaped tombs were reminiscent of neolithic or even Aztec markings. The tombs repeated a figure of a hunter or warrior with a raised right arm, which had a disproportionally large hand. Two tombs had inscriptions in a kind of cyrilic script.
We crossed the Klobuk mountain and the border to the independent republic of Montenegro at the height of 1060m, and then rode down the tobogan of narrow roads along the rugged mountain slopes all the way to the sea at the Boka Kotorska bay. With the luck in the left and right arms of our drivers, we were brought to Petrovac on the Sea, where we will stay for a few days.

Going to Mostar

After a night of thunderstorms, we are leaving our temporary home at Vojvodina. "Majka", in Sebian mother, Stojcevska is saying good-bye to us with tears in her eyes. As a last joke when leaving the Jabuka village, we left a marketing logo of Apple on the village name road sign, carrying a second one with us to Mac Edonia. It is pouring rain, all the way to the border between Serbia and Bosnia. The clouds disappeared only there, perhaps to allow us a better contact with the radio reporter Iva, who does weekly reports about our journey for Czech radio Leonardo. Our green promotion flyers help us regularly to overcome problems with road police and border patrols. Sometimes they maybe think that we are a strange religious sect. After we explain the project, we leave the impression that we are just obsessed artists, who set out on a pilgrimage to follow the forgotten winding and dusty paths of disapearing alphabets. Now heading to Mostar (meaning Bridge), which is a metaphor for us for bridging the glagolic, cyrilic, latin and arabic scripts. We stay overnight in the city with the restored monument of regained mutuality. Not sleeping under the bridge, but rather in the house of our friends. My intuition, which I do trust, suggests that this will be an inspirative meeting.

Day of Saint George

Day of Saint George, on this day snakes and lizzards come out of their holes... It was a cloudy day and our plan was to drive to Beograd at noon to make a gentle letter intervention in the place where the old National library used to be. Before leaving, together with Dragan and his parents, we hung white-painted apples bearing glagolic inscriptions up on an apple tree in the family orchard, nearby the pigstall of the three pig sisters. I wondered how the idea of introducing an alphabet to the vast and varied area inhabited by Slavic tribes was actually realized in the dark 9th century. The pagan atmosphere in the Stojcevski family garden was even stronger not only because of the absurdity of our act, but also because Draganís mother was next to us†bent over planting lettuce and his father was wearing strange overalls protecting him from the chemicals he was spraying onto wine plants... plus a desperate lonely old neighbour talking to the plants in the field just behind the fence.
At twelve oíclock we set out on the trip, stopping at a fish restaurant to fill our tanks with used oil. Later we found ourselves parking our cars under the linden trees close to the place of the former National library building at Kosancicev venac. We took out our camping furniture and cleared dust from our cars. After we decided what should be done for our planned two-hour programme, we started to address people passing by and offered them to take part in our event. There were not many passers-by on Sunday. One of the cyclists passing by slowed down, attracted by the unusual situation and later it turned out that he spoke Czech as his grandfather was Czech. He was a student of sociology, so he shortly explained the situation concerning the monument ruins of former library behind the fence. A cat was sleeping on the wall, while we were entertaining ourselves as well the Sunday walkers willing to join our game. Evocations and metaphors of the letter game worked perfectly, and not only for the intellectually-oriented participants. There was still suspicious and shy attitude to foreigners in Beograd, and some people did not understand what we mean by this project and why we were interested in cyrilic and glagolic alphabets. Some of them felt that both of these alphabets are already old-fashionable, and probably would disappear soon. Dictatorship of free market forces them to be "In" (meaning EU?) and melancholy and imagination are not appretiated any longer. Our return to dinner in our Jabuka "home" was enriched by a event in the night garden, initiated by Dragan for Katka who came today from Prague to join us.

Contrast inside ourselves

As usually, day and night of cold weather was followed by hot breath of the land, and hot day started. Because we had an agreement with professors from the Universita Umetnosti /University of Arts/ in Beograd, we had to hurry up, from from the Jabuka village to the meeting. We were dangerously incorporated into city chaos. Traffic, and curly roads have suddenly ended near the place, where the Sava river meets Danube, where the customs office building used to stand close to a former ferry for crossing of the river borderline between Europe and Balkan.
We were sitting in a summer café at the edge of White Fortress-Singidunum in Beograd, talking with Brkič and Serbian intelectuals about the current decline in using cyrilic letters,
about signs and the role of script in dangerous patriotic atmosphere. Also about global fashion of azbuka letters and local iconography. Walking through the city, we were watching rapid changes in use of alphabets. Places with cyrilic writings changed into fashionable, modern and European somehow totalitarian latin letters, ranging from a bizzare bazzar, little shops, up to supermarkets and hotels. Alphabets are fighting among themselves on walls under bridges, in subways and on hidden places. Maybe nobody is realizing this growing distance to the original Slavic writing, similar to the emptiness of deep hole left after the bombing of the National library at Kosancicev venac. How deep does politics infiltrate into the pergamen layers of local attitudes towards traditions and history? Is it dangerous to see this as a territorial struggle of signs and Scripts? Proclamation, description and claiming of place by letters/grafitti reveals the particular attitudes to the environment.
Evening in Jabuka was filled again with longing for homeland, of the Macedonian mountain people who were resettled from the hills to lowland Vojvodina after the World War II.

Third day in Jabuka

Third day in Jabuka, with our laptops and locals,the day, when DADA maestro Massimo has left us on oour own, of course the technical problems with dataarchive have begun.
Some of us spent most of the day at internet caffe in nerby city of Pančevo, the others by shopping materials needed for our actin in the village.Various nations and cultures ere strangely mixed here in Vojvodina area. Therefore we can hear except Serbian and Macedonian also Slovak,hungarian,sometimes Romanian and German language…but it is more question of memory after resettling after the 2nd world war.President Tito was the one ,who invited nations from whole Yugoslavia to settle here in empty houses of Germans,and so the mixture of nations, languages and letters started again. Vojvodina lowland area was always rich in crops of cereals and corn, and therefore it was called barn of Europe. You can hardly meet phenomenon of europanism, as new nationalism is waking up from dust again, thanks to fear of loosing their identity , possib le tornado is maybe coming. On the walls of old socialistic dreams, the fashionable graffiti of latin and cyrilic screams of Serbian oportunism are showing their teeth. Dragan s mother beked beans on pan for us and gravče na tavče, and this macedonian speciality changed taste of the day. Evening has changed usual daily shoping activity into concentrated work in the house of Stojcevski family. Later their friends brought in melodies and passion of Great Macedonian empire-promissed land, from where majority of Jabuka inhabitants came…
4.5. terrible, rainy atmosphere, bot not a single drop of water fall on thirsty, dusty-hot fields around. Today is the anniversary of Tito s death, some still remembering sadly…
We spent our day by preparations for evening event for the locals.In the cultural house was few guests , gathered by curiosity. Originnal idea to organise the event in the park outside was pushed inside by windy and cold weather. Projection, using footage from Romanian week long journey was helping to understand to our idea, and soon the atmosphere was loose enough for singing of glagolic song and backpipe player, followed by group singing.Few kids joined creation –cutting out of the foil, the letters chosen by the locals, which our cars will bring on the surface of our blue Transit, to their homeland, representing Jabuka village during our journey. We were singing, dancing and drinking together, and last action was home-made,hand-made greeting from Vojvodina Macedonians to Macedonians inOhrid lake area. Where some of them still keep their roots. Falling asleep with Jovanka song, full of sadness, memories of the day, and evening together in our heads.
Light darkness…

Jabuka and Apple MacBook.

The name of the village Jabuka means Apple….
Morning bird longer jumps, says another Czech saying, not applying to us, as we slept enough after demanding journey and thanks to full moon. We walked through village in a group, trying to orientate and realise what is where around us. We met few friends of Dragan, and soon our event was agreed to happen on friday evening, in front of local culture house. In case of warm weather it will be pleasant evening with Macedonian community, living here since Tito`s invitation. Than Dragan led us to huge stone cross, in strange disposition slightly leaning to right side, this monument seemed to fall from heaven lately, or growing from the ground for centuries. Was it `The` place again?
Where were the early Christians meeting? Or was it more a sign of the territory, border between Osman Empire, and Austro-Hungarian empire?
Till late night all of us worked on materials from previous day, as the roads did not allow to work much. Main thing was to converting the photos and sounds for DADA programme, because Masimo is leaving tomorrow back to Italy, together with his skills to use this new interactive archive software , so we decided to use the metaphoric Jabuka=Apple locality of eaten apple to convert into Mac Laboratory in Apple orchard..

Going to Jabuka

1.5..First of May, day for love, says Czech poet K.H.Mácha, remembering Czech believe to kiss under the blossoming cherry, in order to have happy life, which we did not realise, running uphill to see Saxon castle instead, where also famous Vlad Dracula was living. To be honest, it is place, washed out by turistic industry and even the atmosphere is directed by German order and system of circulation around historical buildings, because here is the borderline between Saxons, and Hungarian Sikuli tribe. Our journey to south was long and demanding, mainly because of sudden changes of the surface of the roads. It was somehow evident, that the mosaic- mixture of the nations and historical events around became imprinted to the surface of the road. Presence of Roman Empire, or better its Latin colony was supported by whiteness of the marmor fragments and also stone quarry around the road. Bysantine diversity was hanging in the air as loundry on a line. Suddenly we took off the main road ``Via Romana``walking, followed by local dog, we reached top of little hill, where white bearded orthodox monk was lit by sun, opened generously the church to us. Mosaic, of the materials, used for this local juwell signed something, yet we did not know, that we are standing on a place connected directly with Cyril and Method, who were resting here, to accumulate energy after demanding crossing of frozen Danube river and mountains white with snow. On the walls of this orthodox church were Cyrilic inscripts , hidden among icons and decorations. None of us wanted to leave this strong place. This place kept us in its hands. Our next horizons waved by Banat area, inhabited by Czech community since 1830. We were forced to separate later, as our Romanian guide Agnes was not allowed to enter the Serbia without visa? This was really sad end of our rich travel through Romania, prepared by her with sense of historic connections, but this is the reality of present borderlines, and relations inside and outside European Union. ``Kick him –Serbia-. out of the circle?.``.. says Czech game for kids. Late evening we found ourselves hurrying to Jabuka village in Vojvodina, where we were already awaited.