September 23, 2012
Meeting Gordan: Secarij - Novi Knevejac
GORDAN CAME to see me when I stopped for coffee in Melenci, pronounced Melon-chee, a decision made solely because I saw the café at just the moment I'd had enough of more empty and featureless road.
My plan hadn't been to talk to anyone. I took a book, made a point of sitting at a separate table outside and of ignoring a man in blue overalls mending a puncture in a child's bicycle.
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But you don't arrive unnoticed, of course. The bar owner was a cuddly woman, not too tall, smiling and with blond hair. There aren't many blondes in the old Yugoslavia, even dyed ones. I found out later she was born in Sweden, although how long she had lived in Serbia, I don't know.
I'm getting to recognise the words for "You realise it's going to be Turkish coffee, don't you? And that you're not supposed to drink it to the end if you don't want a mouthful of bitter dust." What I couldn't understand is what she asked next. So I smiled and said "I haven't the least idea what you've just said but I'm sure it will work out fine."
To which a man in his late 20s turned from the next table and said, in English: "She's asking if you want sugar." And that broke the ice, of course. Enough for Gordan to come over to ask if I spoke German. I said as usual that, no, I didn't but to give it a go anyway. It turned out he had lived in Germany for seven years, many of them with Audi and at least one year as a footballer.
"As a profi?"
"Ja."
I wasn't sure if he told me he played football in Hamburg, which is a big city, or for Hamburg, which is a big club. But either way it did his knee in - he slapped his leg for emphasis - and that ended a career that started with a youth team in Melenci. He was disappointed, naturally, but "Serbia much better than Germany," he said. "Germans are cold. This village good."
He was in his late 40s, I'd say, with a lean face that showed years of fitness behind it. He had dark hair and kind eyes. Without asking me, he ordered me another drink. He was drinking something that looked like water but certainly wasn't. It wasn't his first of the session.
"Are you hungry?" he asked, offering me a meal.
I was touched but I declined. And I needed to get going. When I went to pay the blond landlady for coffee, it turned out that was on the house as well. I left with Gordan's address and a promise to keep in touch.
I rode now with the wind, through those same cropped fields but on a busier road, and I harboured ideas of crossing the border and getting to Szeged, in Hungary. But I was overambitious and, anyway, when I got to 20km before the border, two old buffers on a bench told me it wasn't worth going further because the barriers came down for the night at six.
So I found a path through a dense wood, a patch just large enough for a tent, and spent my last night in Serbia.
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