A Country Manor Hideout in the Serbian Wilderness

Fruska Gora, Serbia • September 2016 • Length of Read: 10 Minutes

The following story is an extract from my book We Ordered A Panda: Tales of City-Hopping Around Europe. If you enjoy it then please visit my online bookshop to uncover the full epic road trip.

As Lara showered, I set about making the coffee. The apartment smelt like a brewery and my insides definitely had enough beer sloshing about inside them to match that sub-par simile with a poorly-worded analogy. I would have loved to just lay about in bed all day, convinced that I was still too drunk to properly operate a toothbrush, never mind a motor vehicle. We were aiming to make it to Belgrade for dinner, however, and it was a 280 km drive just to reach the Serbian border.  We packed up our stuff, using the preferred method of simply stuffing everything into our bags, left the keys hanging in the lock, and tumbled down the stairs into the Croatian sun.

In the daylight, we realised that the car park we’d abandoned Ben in the prior evening was directly under the bus terminal. Grabbing some food from one of the bakeries inside, I sat on our bags at the entranceway whilst Lara paced up and down. Neither of us spoke. All the energy we had left was being focused on trying to function like normal human beings. The prosciutto and cheese toasted sandwich I was trying to digest hung from the corner of my mouth like the prey of a wild carnivore. I had no idea what the Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) limit was in Croatia but assumed that if it were anything less than ‘all aboard the steamboat’ the local authorities may have a thing or two to say about my being behind the wheel. I then reminded myself that I was sat on the concrete floor of a bus station, wallowing in my own despair like a lost child. I decided to drive anyway.

“Cause if this is what we’ve got, then what we’ve got is gold. We’re shining bright and I want you, I want you to know. The morning’s on its way. Our friends all say goodbye. There’s nowhere else to go, I hope that you’ll stay the night.”

Exiting the car park, I turned onto the E70 highway towards Slavonski Brod - the last major town signposted before hitting Serbia - and put my foot down. The paved blacktop we were hurtling along at 130 km/h is a mere fraction of an epic A-class European route that runs all the way from A Coruña in the north-west of Spain to the Georgian port city of Poti on the eastern banks of the Black Sea. That’s a distance of 4,599 km; or, two time zones. When put in that perspective, our little jaunt didn’t seem too much of a hassle after all.

Making good time, we stopped for a coffee at the last service station before the border. When the girl behind the counter gave us two cups of Nescafe instant, it dawned on me that we were indeed a long way from Italy, and about to leave the European Union entirely.

 “So, what’s this surprise you’ve got in store for me?” I quizzed Lara.

“Ah shit, I can’t find my passport,” she responded, rustling through her bag and patting down her coat.

“You really need to stop telling me that I’m the one who needs to chill out. I’m sure it’s lying in the car or in one of your other bags.” For some reason, unbeknownst to even God himself, Lara had decided to bring three different purses with her.

“Ah, here it is,” she gasped, breathing a deep sigh of relief. “Did I tell you about when my dad took us on a family holiday to Bosnia when we were younger and forgot to bring our passports? He had to talk his way around the authorities by pretending I was about to shit myself.”

“So that’s where you get your manipulative streak from?” I chuckled.

“Most likely. He once got out of a speeding ticket by pretending he was a Government official who had been summoned by the Prime Minister to a life or death meeting. And then there was the time he got out of a fine by pretending he was going through a messy divorce…”

“Eh, what?” I stared in disbelief, jaw on the floor.

“He’s really quite the character when you get to know him. The type of person who walks into a room and everyone becomes magnetised by for reasons they can’t quite put a finger on.”

“Yeah, I know the type. After our initial meeting, however, I don’t see us becoming drinking buddies anytime soon, though,” I pointed out.

“Well, perhaps not. He’s very protective of me. My sister not so much.”

“Are you trying to dodge my initial question by any chance?”

“Perhaps. But I suppose I need to borrow your phone now anyway to put plans in place, so may as well tell you. Better than stealing it. We really shouldn’t have the same password to unlock each other’s phones.”

“I can’t believe you even remember that,” I laughed.

“My family owns a country manor in the Serbian wilderness. It’s a summer home that my dad and uncle renovate together. I’ve managed to convince them to let us have the keys for tonight.”

“That is awesome,” I bellowed, so loud that the people next to us looked across to see what all the commotion was about.

“It’s only a few kilometres across the border and then down some country lanes. I’ve never actually taken anyone there before, so this is pretty special.”

I stared at the girl opposite me. Absolutely mesmerised.

We joined the bizarre queue of vehicles at the Croatian-Serbian border. Homeless-looking truckers loitered about and smoked cigarette butts, families tried to calm their impatient children belted-up in the backseat, and bus parties took the opportunity to stretch their legs. Only three of the eight possible checkpoints were open, and Lara sighed at the laziness of the customs officers. As we inched forward at a snail’s pace, she regaled about the time she once got to this border only to find that the officers had gone for lunch and completely shut shop. The place was a standstill for a whole hour whilst they tucked into their sandwiches and shot the breeze. I was quickly learning that things operated drastically differently here than back home in the UK. A pristine white BMW with tinted rear windows and a German number plate pulled up beside us as we split into two lanes, one for each of the checkpoints. The driver, a tanned guy with dark stubble and aviator shades on, kept looking over and grinning.

“I think he fancies you,” I teased Lara. “Give him a smile back.”

“I think he’s just trying to avoid looking at that billboard to the left. It’s perhaps the creepiest welcome sign I’ve ever seen.”

A large poster depicting the smirking grin of a little girl leered over the queue. Dressed in what I assumed to be traditional Serbian garments, she looked like she’d done a better job advertising a horror film than as the poster child for the Serbian tourist board. Everything about her face read ‘I am going to kill you and then haunt the rest of your family’, as opposed to the ‘welcome to my homeland’ message they were trying to convey. If it had been remotely possible, I would have turned back there and then. The only reason I didn’t was because that would have looked more suspicious than a pubescent teenager with a cleared internet browsing history.

We crept up to the front of the line, and half an hour after the BMW dude had decided to stop staring at us we had a customs official giving us the twice over. What it was about a Scottish guy, driving foreign hire car, with an Italian girl, who has a Serbian surname, which made him suspicious I have no clue. Cue ‘The Manipulator’. Lara began to babble away in fluent Serbian as I leant back in my seat. Within a matter of seconds, our passports had been stamped and we were on our way; the man giving us a polite gesture as he raised the barrier.

“What was that he just said,” I asked, curious.

“Welcome back to your homeland, Miss,” translated Lara.

“Unbelievable.”

After a further couple of hours driving, during which Lara made me almost crash the car when a wasp decided to fly through the window and hitch a lift, we made it to Belgrade. As the highway swept down into the metropolis that is the Serbian Capital, I couldn’t help but be less than impressed by the dilapidated buildings and grotty atmosphere. By the time we parked down on the banks of the Danube, however, this thought was completely reversed. Belgrade has changed hands over the years more times than the present in a game of pass the parcel and was most recently the capital of Yugoslavia before its dissolution in 2006. I am not nearly as educated enough as I should be on the complex history of this region but I could clearly see, first-hand, that an incredible amount of regeneration has been undertaken by the Government and people alike. Every day is a school day and I can only keep advancing my knowledge of the World and its fascinating cultures. Lara took me for a stroll along the waterfront, where we paused for some takeaway burgers at the river’s edge. It was lined with bars the whole way along and we sat in peace watching the eloquently dressed youth pass us by; laughing away and ready to set the night on fire.

“You know I had these ballroom dreams, that, as a child came to me.I was a boy in Grandma's arms. A mother's pride and a wounded heart.”

I polished off the food in no time and we retraced our footsteps back towards the car. With a full stomach, I felt near enough fully recovered from the prior evening’s antics. Taking a seat in a Balkan restaurant called Ambar, Lara ordered us two virgin cocktails before convincing the waiter to change her Euros into Dinar. Despite being against the law for establishments to do so, one wink from The Manipulator and he was more than happy to oblige… as long as we kept it hush hush.

Lara was keen to get out of Belgrade before it became illuminated only by the moon, so with the music blasting, we headed back across the bridge and in the direction of the border. Turning off onto a country road, we then continued for a further 15km into the heart of the Serbian wilderness. Advancing along a single-tracked lane bordered by hedgerows, there were no street lights or house lights to guide the way. Ben’s full-beams shone like beacons in the otherwise total darkness. If there was ever a place to kill someone and dispose of the body, then this was it. Turning left onto an even narrower gravel path, I slipped down to first gear and trundled up the steep incline ahead; convinced I was marching to my own death. Then, rounding a sharp corner, a crooked cottage suddenly came into view.

“That is the house of my closest neighbours,” began Lara. “They have the spare keys and are expecting us. I hope they are, anyway. Stop here for a second.”

My companion jumped out of the car and rang the bell. I kept the engine running in case we needed a quick getaway. Instead of an axe murderer, though, an old lady with a friendly looking smile answered the door. The pair proceeded to have a little natter before Lara was then handed a set of keys and returned to the car.

“Go down that hill there,” said Lara, when we were a short while along the track. The headlights of the Corsa shined towards a grassy drop-off into some trees below.

“What are you fucking talking about, ‘go down that hill’. It’s just a ditch. I don’t see any tow trucks coming by anytime soon if we happen to get stuck.”

“OK, just dump it here,” she laughed. “This is all our land anyway. Are you ready to see something really, really special?”

“Am I ever,” I grinned, taking our bags from the boot and clicking the central locking.

With just a torchlight to guide us, Lara led me by foot down the hill and into an absolute sanctuary…

Where did the word 'meme' come from?

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a huge Richard Dawkins fanboy. Along with the late Christopher Hitchens, he has dramatically empowered my religious worldview and debating skills, whilst his books have been of significant education. As an evolutionary biologist, he has been at the forefront of the gene-centred view of evolution, and his 1976 publication The Selfish Gene put forward the hypothesis that a lineage is expected to evolve to maximise its inclusive fitness; being the number of copies of its genes passed on globally rather than by a particular individual.

In addition to the DNA molecule, Dawkins explored the possibility of there being other replicating entities and wrote that ‘a new kind of replicator has recently emerged on this very planet… still in its infancy, still drifting clumsily above in its primaeval soup, but already it is achieving evolutionary change at a rate that leaves the old gene panting far behind.’ He defined this new replicator as a ‘meme’:

“The new soup is the soup of human culture. We need a name for the new replicator a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. ‘Mimeme comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like ‘gene’. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to ‘memory’, or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with ‘cream’. Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.”

God love the man. I wonder if he could have guessed that, 30 years later, this new addition to the dictionary would be best used to define un-PC .GIF images posted on social media sites as opposed to 'the soup of human culture'. But then again, I suppose in  a way these memes (a few of my favourite shown below) are extensions of our ever-developing sharing culture. The last one is of particular pertinence.

A Road Trip Pit-Stop at the Beautiful Lake Bled

Ljubljana, Slovenia • September 2016 • Length of Read: 7 Minutes

The following story is an extract from my book We Ordered A Panda: Tales of City-Hopping Around Europe. If you enjoy it then please visit my online bookshop to uncover the full epic road trip.

I was awoken the following morning by the sun blazing through the room-high window pane. The thin sheets hanging from the rail above were failing miserably in their attempt to act as curtains. Glancing around the pink room, tiny little shoes on the floor and Barbie dolls propped up on the dresser, I was initially very confused as to where I was. The sound of muffled Serbian conversation quickly brought me back to my senses, however. The death-staring father was up and about and I didn’t fancy going another round of awkward silences with him. The man had proven to be a world-class performer in hostile greetings. I was going to have to time my escape well.

I stewed in bed for a while, planning an avoidance strategy, when, to my luck, I heard Rudi starting to bark. Excellent. Lara’s dad was going to have to take the dog for a walk. I waited until the front door slammed shut and then made my exit from the sweaty prison cell.

“Morning, Lara,” I yawned.

“Morning, Chris. Why don’t you hop in the shower and by the time you’re ready to go I should be finished packing. There isn’t much in the way of food in the flat so let’s just stop for some brunch in Ljubljana.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” I nodded, pulling a fresh towel out of the hall cupboard. I didn’t know what plans Lara had up her sleeve but was happy to roll with that suggestion. Half an hour later I was plugging our trusty GPS, Tom, into the cigarette lighter. Ben had survived the night without a scratch and with a full tank of petrol was raring to go. I dropped the clutch, released the handbrake, and we were off. The adventure had officially begun.

“Grass stained bare feet. Dove in my front seat. Windshield full of road to run And a gas tank full of freedom.”

When driving in Slovenia, your car must have a valid toll sticker displayed on the windshield. These vignettes, as they are so called, can be purchased from service stations in Slovenia as well as its bordering neighbours. They carry different prices for different classes of vehicle and can be purchased weekly, semi-annually, or for a full year. Our weekly ticket cost €7.50 and as Lara affixed it, Ben took us across our first state line and into country number two.

I’d been told by some friends that the beauty of Lake Bled was unparalleled, so had made a specific request that a stop there should be incorporated into the itinerary. First of all, though, we were heading to Ljubljana, Slovenia’s capital city. Lara’s University term was to start on the following Monday, but she had yet to even begin moving her stuff from Trieste to her new student apartment. The girl has to be one of the most chilled out people I’ve ever met and has a maturity and image so far beyond her teenage years that she’s constantly being mistaken for someone in their late twenties. That’s why I enjoy spending time with her so much. She combines the energy of a youngster with the wisdom of a scholar. I can’t even begin to tell you how much I have learnt about the world from simply being in her company.

As we took the motorway exit leading towards Ljubljana city centre, I pulled up to a set of traffic lights and got my first stationary view of the country. This so happened to be of two kids playing in the street. Whilst I’m used to seeing children kicking about a football or trading playing cards, however, never before have I witnessed the pastime which I could only literally describe as ‘throwing rocks at billboards’. Now, granted, my Slovenian is a little poor, but unless they were protesting in a unique way against what the large corporation was advertising, then I’m pretty impressed with their creative, albeit limited, imaginations. Just don’t expect that game to take off in the playgrounds of Scottish schools anytime soon.

I parked Ben in a legitimate space for the first time and we took a stroll down the cobbled pedestrianised area that leads to the canal. The Ljubljanica River is the city’s main artery, and as it peacefully curved through the heart of the historic centre, throngs of tourists populated the cafes and bars which lined its sides; sipping on Lasko beer and basking in the sweet September summer sun. The problem with driving was that I couldn’t join them. At least on the alcohol part. We found an empty table under the shade of an evergreen at an establishment called Fanny & Mary. As my burger and the Italian’s salad were served, I giggled at some of the chalk-written messages on the walls before deciding to have a little fun of my own.

“Have you ever eaten fanny before?” I asked my Lara, sternly. When it comes to self-amusement I am like a little child, and love playing about with slang terms when in the presence of foreigners.

“No, I’ve not,” she responded, clearly having no idea what I was hinting at.

“Now that you’re moving here you should try it more often. The meat in my bun tastes really good.”

“Well, if I wasn’t a vegetarian, then perhaps I would,” she coyly remarked.

Settling the tab it was then back on the road. This time heading towards colder weather as Zac Brown Band soundtracked our drive north. We stopped just short of Bled to refuel and pick up some snacks. As Lara stood there in the shop, torn between ‘salt and butter’ or ‘paprika’ flavour crisps, I looked through the glass window at the large group having lunch in the pit stop café patio area. Multiple families were sharing a long table together, the adults all drinking and smoking in their suits and dresses whilst equally smartly dressed children ran around, hyper on candy. Back in the car park, Lara argued in the heat that she wanted to drive, despite the fact that she’d only held her license for 6 months and the minimum requirement was one year. Traditional music blared from the speakers of one of the station wagons as yet more smartly dressed individuals of varying generations hung around drinking and smoking. It was only when I noticed the confetti and ribbons tied around the wing mirrors that I eventually put all the pieces of this strange jigsaw together. There was a gas station wedding taking place. Suddenly the boys throwing rocks at the billboard in Ljubljana seemed like the most normal people in the world.

Passing a dinosaur park with a model T-Rex in the yard, we coasted down a narrow hill towards the glistening body of water before us. I imagined it to be what Jurassic Park may have turned out to be had the production team wasted their whole budget on hookers and cocaine during pre-production. The boutique hotels and cafes that lined the street gave way to open grassy areas and trails as the road then wrapped its way around the picture-postcard vista. As we circumnavigated this wonder of nature the medieval castle clinging to the edge of a rocky cliff oversaw our every movement, whilst the bells of the islet church in the middle of the emerald-green lake informed us that is was 2pm. The backdrop of the Julian Alps was so epic that I almost crashed into the barrier multiple times from being transfused by their beauty.

There is no free parking at Lake Bled, with everything there designed to get tourists to cough up as much money as possible. I swung into a gravel car park, where a chubby woman proceeded to knock on our window and inform us that it would cost €5 for the day. We only wanted to stay for a couple hours but, apparently, this price was non-negotiable. Either that or she was not able to do simple arithmetic. In attempting to direct us into an empty space at the back of the lot, I became convinced that she may have been a few brain cells short of a complete cranium. A few sandwiches short of a picnic, if you will; a few playing cards short of a full deck.

The tranquillity of the lake seems to have broken its banks and taken hold of the residents fortunate enough to call this Slovenian paradise home. Life was so peaceful, in fact, that we saw a woman spending her afternoon dusting the outside of her house. Not the path and porch, mind you, but actually brushing the walls of her bungalow with a little duster. I initially questioned how anyone could settle for such an existence, letting the years tick over with no other purpose. It then struck me that her look of content is one everyone is searching for, whether they subconsciously know it or not. Lara and I passed her abode and took a romantic stroll along a portion of the wooden decking which has been constructed right by the water’s edge. So close, you could dip your toe in the shimmering aqua. Gazing out at the distant shore on the other side a full 2km away, I couldn’t help but smile. Despite being a tourist trap, one million dollars couldn’t buy what I had. The perfect horizon; a beautiful girl by my side; and the pleasure of going nowhere fast. If money didn’t matter, it wouldn’t matter anyway.

A guy pulling on the oars of a rowing boat came into view. His girlfriend was sat opposite, pointing a massive SLR camera with an extension lens attached at him. She was desperately attempting to get ‘the money shot’ image of her man tensing under the resistance of the current whilst the church and castle shone in the background. They wheeled about a couple of times for second and third takes, before evidently being satisfied with the result. As they trundled back to shore we meandered back to Ben, our trusted Corsa. After a 9-point turn to get out of the car park, which had since been blocked up like it was a used-car auction house, we were again on the road, and this time heading through the Alps to Austria; cheesy music blaring from the speakers.

“Let's go crazy, crazy, crazy 'til we see the sun. I know we only met but let's pretend it's love. And never, never, never stop for anyone. Tonight let's get some and live while we're young.”

And when I write ‘through the Alps’, I really mean through the Alps. Opening just a fortnight after I was born, in June 1991, the 5 miles long Karawanks Tunnel connects the Austrian A11 Autobahn to the Slovenian motorway network. I don’t know who Kara is, or who she wanks off, but I do know that it costs a ridiculous €7.50 each way to drive through her tunnel and isn’t for those with a dislike of confined spaces. You would have thought Lara was being buried alive from her hyperventilating response to entering the darkness, and the girl managed to chain-smoke three cigarettes as a result before we exited to the sun setting over the sleepy mountain town of Villach at the other side. I parked up and we went in search of a much-needed coffee in country number three.

An Airport Layover Rambling

London Stansted Airport, England, UK • October 2016 • Length of Read: 1 Minute

Bag on, belt off, liquids in the clear plastic bag, and through the scanner you go. Anticipation rising. Nostalgia brewing of a place you still haven’t technically left yet. But airport lounges are all the same, aren’t they? Holding pens until you are released on the next adrenaline wave of adventure. Staring at the rolling departures board the world lights up in front of you: 15:10 to New York at gate 54; 15:30 to Tokyo at gate 12; the 16:00 to Amsterdam showing as delayed by 30 minutes whilst the 14:45 to Sydney taunts you with its final call for boarding. And you are off. As the mandatory safety briefing commences you stare out of the window at the ant-sized people below. You traverse countries, oceans, and continents. The only evidence being the jet trails that soon disperse and vanish.

Then you slow right down to a snail’s pace. Taking in the unfamiliar smells and cultural sounds. Trying your best to decipher the foreign tongue being spoken until you are stopped dead in your tracks. Mesmerised by the beauty of the smallest and most insignificant thing. People always try to see the beauty in things first. Blemishes and false hopes come later. Breathe. Take it in. You may not be here for long. But you are here now. And now is all we really have. You look behind. You look ahead. You realise that this won’t last forever. You are okay with that. Because this gives you the drive to keep going. To keep exploring. And with one more step forward you are on your way again. Further on up the road.

Trieste - Italy's Crossroads to the Balkans

Trieste, Italy • September 2016 • Length of Read: 12 Minutes

The following extract has been adapted from my self-published paperback travel book, We Ordered A Panda: Tales of City-Hopping Around Europe. If you enjoy this post, then please visit my online bookshop for more details.

I was sat in London Stansted Airport, minding other peoples’ business, when the noise started. A hawking blare that turned the bustling departure lounge into descending chaos. My headphones were snug tightly into my ears to give the illusion that I was listening to music, a million miles away from the happenings around me, but in truth, they weren’t even plugged into my iPod. The four lads sitting along the bench opposite were dishing out some serious banter and when they started mixing it with pieces of highly intellectual conversation I considered asking if I could join them on their trip. I do this quite a lot, the not-actually-listening-to-music thing. I don’t know if anyone else does. I’ve never been so inclined to ask. From the meaningless information that is now fed to us through tabloid journalism and reality television both day and night, however, I can’t see myself as being in a minority here. Curiosity did indeed kill the cat. The shutters of all the shops were pulled across as an automated voice of calm broke out over the speakers:

“A fire alarm has been activated in another area of the building. Please remain where you are and await further instruction. Feueralarm wurde in einem anderen Bereich des Gebäudes aktiviert. Bitte bleiben Sie, wo Sie sind und warten auf weitere Anweisungen. Avertisseur d'incendie a été activé dans une autre zone du bâtiment. S'il vous plaît restez où vous êtes et attendre d'autres instructions.”

What did everyone start to do? Freak the fuck out of course. I felt like a mind reader as passengers rushed to the gates of their respective flights already displayed on the departures board. Each brain was computing the exact same question in its native language: ‘How will this affect the ability for my flight to board and leave on time?’

Well, that’s not entirely true. There was clearly at least one person who wasn’t at all phased by the commotion and that was because she had managed to sleep through the entire thing. Although we effectively had an air raid siren blaring like there was a B-52 bomber overhead, and the old woman to my right was snoring away like she was a bear in hibernation. With a Fanny pack strapped awfully tightly around her midriff, drool slithered down her chin and stained the pink t-shirt which barely covered her droopy tits and fat folds. Whether consciously or not, the automated voice was telling her to remain calm and she was doing just that.

My flight took off on time of course and I landed in Trieste Airport fifteen minutes ahead of schedule, at 14:30 on Friday 23rd September 2016. I scooted through passport control and past the baggage carousel, following the car rental signs. Trieste is less an airport and more an airport hangar; or rather, the shed which is situated next to an airport hangar where spare parts and tools are kept. I approached the service desk and handed over my driving licence, passport, and credit card to the smiley Italian local behind the counter. Lara, the Italian princess from the book and Vienna, had invited me to her hometown. From here, we planned to commence a whirlwind road trip through the Balkan states that would eventually result in us visiting five countries, and crossing seven state lines, in one weekend.

Being that we would be mainly on her turf, I had left my road trip buddy to organise the majority of the logistics. This included sourcing a vehicle for our journey, which in hindsight may not have been the best idea when she convinced me to book a Fiat Panda because it was ‘the best deal’. Only as I was filling out the mandatory paperwork did it dawn on me that I was stupid to have gone along with this logic. It may have been the best deal, but there isn’t much glamour to be sourced from trundling along economically in the slow lane. Was a purple Lamborghini really too much of a budgetary constraint?

As this thought was festering, my partner in crime snuck up behind me and jumped on my back in excitement. We hadn’t seen one another in three months and it was a delight to finally be reunited. Ever since a sad departure in Vienna’s Landstraße train station I’d been looking forward to the next time I’d see that cheeky smile, and there it was. Her eleven-year-old sister, along with her best friend Michela, had chauffeured her to the airport, but it was myself that would take the wheel from here on in.

“Excuse me, Sir,” said the car rental guy, holding out his hand. “All the paperwork seems to be in order. Here are your keys. Have a very pleasant trip.”

I took them and started to laugh. “Thank you so much.” The keychain sign indicated that it was an Opel Corsa we’d been allocated. That cheeky smile on Lara’s face quickly faded.

“Sorry, but I think there has been a mistake,” she blurted in fast Italian. “We ordered a Panda.”

I made a slit-of-the-throat gesture behind her back and the guy at the counter seemed to get my message.

“Unfortunately there are no Pandas available,” he responded, winking at me when Lara glanced away for a brief second in disgust. “If it’s any consolation, the Corsa is clearly an upgrade, though.”

She turned to me and glared. “You changed the booking, didn’t you?”

“Not at all,” I said, unconvincingly, picking up my bag and walking with her sister to the car park. Lara shuffled along behind us, trying to maintain her best smirk but failing to do so in the happiness of having me present.

Never having driven on the right-hand-side of the road before, I got into the driver’s seat of the car and just stared in bewilderment. The foot pedals felt familiar, as did the steering wheel, but having the gearbox and rear-view mirror to my right seemed alien. I manoeuvred slowly onto the main street, following Michela’s beat-up purple Clio, and kangaroo hopped my way into second gear. It was all rather surreal, but having successfully navigated a couple of roundabouts and imagining I was back cycling my stolen bicycle around the streets of Maastricht, where I’d spent six months on ERASMUS, I soon got the hang of it. As we hit the mountainous coastal road that wound its way down towards the city centre, I rolled down the windows and let my own road trip mixtape blast from the speakers.

“Pull the sheets right off the corner of the mattress that you stole; From your roommate back in Boulder. We ain’t ever getting older.”

Trieste is a seaport city that is tucked into the North Eastern hook of Italy and occupies a narrow strip of land between the Adriatic Sea and Slovenia. We stopped sporadically along the way to admire the blue water views and catch up on life, before eventually broaching the city limits. Here I faced navigating through a maze of cobbled streets that spiral up the hillside and then back down. Most are barely wide enough to fit motorbikes, never mind hire cars driven by someone more used to a mirroring perception of a vehicle’s dimensions. After numerous laps, close calls with brick walls, and miraculously avoided encounters with other drivers, I eventually just abandoned Ben at the side of the road. I had been initially confused as to why the car had been given the name Benzina, it even having been written like a name badge on the fuel cap, until Lara pointed out that it was actually just the Italian work for petrol. I may have blushed at the time, but that soon faded. The name Ben, however, was to stick for the entire trip.

Convinced by Lara that Ben wasn’t going to be sitting on four breezeblocks when we got back to him the next day, I grabbed my bag, locked the doors, and we headed down a meandering staircase to the high street. Her flat was situated right above the Apple store on this shopping boulevard and the plan was to dump our stuff, quickly change, and then head out for dinner and drinks. Lara would be moving to Ljubljana for University the following week and this was the last time she would be seeing her hometown friends for a while. Not that an excuse was needed to party in Trieste. The place has so many bars and pubs you’d think it was run by alcoholics.

“It's Mardi Gras up in the clouds. I'm up so high, I may never come down. I'll try anything to drown out the pain. They all know why I'm getting drunk on a plane.”

I was under the impression that I’d be meeting her mother and maid, which was making me apprehensive enough, but halfway down the flight of stairs, Lara decided to drop the bombshell that these two ladies were out of town. My initial sigh of relief was cut short, however, when she informed me that her father had returned back from a business trip that very afternoon.

“I’m not meeting your dad,” I said, stubbornly. “Nope. No. No.”

“You don’t really have a choice,” she responded, sympathetically. It was clear Lara wasn’t too keen on the situation either. “He knows you are coming, but just remember that he thinks we are going away with my German friend also and is under the impression we are picking her up from Ljubljana Airport tomorrow morning. Go will that and it will be fine.”

These last four words were less than convincing. I entered the flat and immediately found myself face to face with a stern look of mistrust and suspicion.

“Hello, Sir,” I said, squeezing his outstretched hand in more of a vice grip than the firm shake I was going for. “I’m Chris. Nice to meet you.”

“Hi,” he responded, the glare in his eyes switching from that of suspicion to that of pure, vile, hatred. The sole word that came from his mouth seemed to linger for eternity.

“I hear you just got back into the country today then?” I continued, trying to clear the stale air of awkwardness with some generic shit chat.

There was further silence. Then, instead of responding, the Serbian-born man turned away and picked up a knife. Thoughts ran through my head of waking up in a dumpster the next morning with missing limbs. I instinctively checked my vital signs. All clear. I then thought he may have picked up the knife as a metaphor for how he planned to cut the thick layer of tension which had built up to suffocating levels. It was no use in hiding my intentions. The man was reading me like an open book. A book he may have wished to have ripped the pages from and throw on a blazing bonfire.

To his credit, therefore, he simply turned around and got back to chopping vegetables on the kitchen worktop. I breathed a sigh of relief, dumped my bags in Lara’s sister’s room, which had simply a cot-like structure surrounded by Barbie dolls, and we headed straight back out. Her sister was going to be rooming with her so that I could be kept out of harm’s way. I put up zero protests.

“How was the typical Balkan Father?” asked the bespectacled guy opposite me, an earring glittering next to his matted brown hair. I would have initially pinned him as gay were it not for the cute girl on his arm. “Lara told me you were coming to visit.”

I was sitting at a table outside a late night café near the main square, having just been introduced to a bunch of Lara’s friends from school and God-knows-where-else. The girl seemed to have more connections in the city than a news reporter.

“It seems like the whole city knew about my arrival,” I laughed, taking a large gulp of beer. I still felt a little shaken from the ordeal. “If I had been walking on eggshells in that apartment, then there wouldn’t be a single yolk left in the coop that hadn’t been burst. Do Balkan fathers have a reputation for being so stern?”

“You can say that again,” he nodded, taking a sip of his white wine spritzer. I again took a glance at the girl to confirm that they were indeed a couple.

“I thought he was going to stuff me in a duffel bag and toss me out to sea, only for my decomposed body to be picked apart by crows weeks later.”

“That sounds about right. Pretty much par for the course. Don't sweat about it.”

Knocking back the rest of my pint we then dispersed and headed to the bar where Michela was working. It was owned by this shifty Chinese dude and looked more like a fast food takeaway than a watering hole. I attributed this to the fact that it was probably acting as a front for some law-evading operation. I’ve seen enough gangster movies to know that this guy was far from a Mafioso, but definitely covering something up. I was being given free beer, though, so decided to just keep my mouth shut and roll with it. The owner even humoured me with some Japanese alcoholic tea when I asked why there wasn’t any rice wine on the spirits menu. Sat at the bar stool and chatting to Michela’s boyfriend, who had coincidentally done his ERASMUS at my home University, I became rather drunk. When it was suggested, therefore, that we head to a club that overlooked the sea, I was nothing but game.

“Can we go back, this is the moment. Tonight is the night, we’ll fight ‘til it’s over. So we put our hands up like the ceiling can’t hold us. Like the ceiling can’t hold us.”

Paying a fairly steep €10 entrance fee, we danced up to the bar and exchanged our free drinks tokens for beers. The dancefloor itself was literally the pier from where boats used to dock, with a raised platform at the back housing the DJ and his hired dancers. Lara spent the time bidding farewell to a number of her friends whilst I danced around like a lunatic to the mix of Latin and chart music. Knowing that we had a long weekend of driving ahead, as things started to wind down we wandered back along the shorefront, hand in hand and casting a gaze to a distant green light across the bay.

“That’s Gatsby’s American dream right there,” said Lara.

“It’s also the green light to the start of our little journey,” I responded. “Tomorrow we head further on up the road... and further away from the typical Balkan father.”