Zelenkovac, Bosnia, Thursday June 19th

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After a full day on the outside line our washing hadn’t dried and we hadn’t mastered the vagaries of the shower – scalding hot or cold. We were not fussed and since we were mostly communing with nature and others in a similar situation, we just put the same old clothes over the same old unwashed bodies and started the day. Keith was desperately behind on the blog photos – about twelve days - and I was about a week behind on the text, so we decided to devote some real time to catching up. I went down to sip tea, chat and read my murder mystery in French while Keith had a turn on our computer. We have a tiny, lightweight Toshiba laptop, purchased second hand for the trip and it is a gem. The morning drifted by with lots of progress by Keith and only a vague understanding of the novel characters and their motives by me.

At twelve o’clock we set off for a ten kilometre walk out of the camp and into the hills on the other side of the road. The forest was dense so we stuck to the road that led to the upper part of the village. It was such a pity to find an informal but regularly used rubbish dump by the side of the road, spilling down into the valley.

Everywhere else the air was fresh and there was beauty all around. In fact, it felt a little like being in a Thomas Hardy novel, since so many rural tasks are still performed by hand.

Little hay stacks were being added to by the forkful, men and women were bending from the waist weeding in the crops and the lanes were full of cow pats from small herds being walked between pasture and milking shed. The houses were mostly white cottages with red tile rooves, surrounded by rustic out houses and stables. I was thinking all this when we came to an old woman raking grass and stacking it in a wheelbarrow. She looked at us as if we were from outer space, and we wondered if we were in fact on her land rather than on a road. All the buildings could have been one farm, with the man chopping wood and the child peeping out from behind the house, since there were no fences at all. We asked her if the road we were on would lead us up the mountain, and she said something which we couldn’t understand. What to do then? Maybe she said no and then that would look silly to proceed. Maybe she said yes and it would be silly to retreat. Maybe she told us to get back to Mars and off her land. We went forward, with her amazed stare boring into our backs. It was not the road to the top of the mountain and we soon had to walk back past our informant, who stared at us again, no doubt considering us to be complete fools.

We were cheered by meeting a gap toothed farmer with whom we spoke no common language but who was able to make a friendly meeting out of using one word to ask if we were German – “Deutsch?” – and who then continued with smiles and other country and language names. He was a sweet man and a treasure, although his cleanliness was even worse than ours. Shortly we came to the start of the village proper, where it seemed that a travelling rural salesman had had great success in convincing every person to have a brightly coloured painted cyclone fence. Maybe it was a case of keeping up with the Joneses. Soon we came to a large house with beautifully manicured lawns and virtually no vegetable garden, and flowers in shaped beds. It had a bitumen driveway (and of course a red cyclone fence). We joked that it must belong to the mayor since at this point the made road also started.

The houses in the centre of the village had areas for milking, vegetable plots and fruit trees. It was very picturesque, with the hill dropping away to the church and lower village, a horse and cart winding its way past a paddock where an old man raked hay by hand and presumably his grandson was using a tractor for the same task.

Always hungry for contact with the locals, we entered the café for a drink. Two young men eyed us for a second as we entered the deserted rooms, and then turned back to the intrigues of the soap opera on the TV. We went through to the room with the bar and tables where we were briefly joined by one of the young men who took our order, served it and retreated. We were forced to socialise with each other and to admire the décor, something that combined red and orange vinyl covered furniture, a picture of a hunting scene, a set of home-made dumbbells with fruit tins filled with concrete and a moody looking black bar.

Cutting our losses, we took the low road past the church and then went shopping. It was very tempting to bait the sales woman with smiles and friendly gestures but her demeanour clearly suggested that our purchases would be cancelled if we required any change in her facial expression.

Clare was back and T was having lunch and then was busy with the barman and guests. Clare, Keith and I had a late lunch and then settled back to some photo sorting, chatting and reading. Alex joined us from time to time and when Clare and T went off for a walk to the village, I discovered that the criminal in my book cannot stand the sight of blood and always strangles his victims with a silk scarf. Such are the levels of excitement in this tranquil spot.

Keith and Clare heated up the dinner and made some fried bread. Meanwhile T and I were chatting to the people who had arrived at the bar. One man described his cousin as his brother and it turns out that the brother/sister relationship is conferred on first cousins as well as children of the same parents.

Clare, T, Keith and I had a lovely dinner together, a bit of a last supper since we knew that the next morning we would all go our separate ways. Alex was not eating with us but joined us and nibbled various items in a companionable way. He is a lovely boy, very friendly, articulate in English and a deep thinker.

All was quiet when we went to bed and now I worried that something had happened to our squirrels. During the night we heard heavy footsteps coming up our ladder. Someone opened the door to come in but Keith called out that we were sleeping there and they retreated, apologising I guess. On balance, I would settle for the squirrels any night.