Chapter 1
I burst out of the Belgrade bus station grinning, filled with indescribable, thrilling excitement, wearing garish blue swim trunks and a tank top promoting a beach bar. Short socks hidden under brown Timberland boots complete the ridiculous look. Unnecessary items hang from clips on my fifty-liter, gray Kelty backpack, adding weight. Plastic bags dangle from side pockets. A sweat patch forms on my back in the intense summer heat. Under the daypack hugging my chest, another sweat patch sprouts. This is all relatively new and uncomfortable. I’m already a filthy, poorly dressed backpacker. At least I’m not carrying a guitar. After two weeks with friends in Croatia, I’m finally traveling solo. Expectations loom large. If I enjoy this six-week trip, perhaps I’ll work odd jobs on the road and travel forever! Then I take in my surroundings. The pockmarked, half-paved road out of the Serbian bus station is covered in tons of litter. The smell of trash overpowers my senses. Tents sit between trees in a nearby park, sad figures pacing between them. Some men wear suits. Tattered suits. Layers of grime reach past their ankles. People lie on the grass staring at the sky. Others argue, pointing in every direction. A baby wails. A woman cries out in anguish, her voice echoing between nearby buildings. I slow down, straining to listen, to understand, but the language isn’t English, isn’t Serbian. Nobody looks Serbian. I finally realize what I’m witnessing. The language I hear is Arabic. These are Syrian refugees. Before me sprawls the saddest scene of human misery I’ve ever seen. A journalist would not be shocked, but for someone in the first week of his fun little solo backpacking journey, this overwhelms my senses. It’s heartbreaking and a total buzzkill. I stop and stand there gaping. The locals aren’t fazed. They overtake me, a pushing throng, a mass of warm bodies looking for an exit from the trashed park via a gravel drive. I force myself to keep walking, and a metal fence materializes in front of me. Lost in the shoving, agitated crowd, I can’t find an exit. Then I notice the metal is cut and bent in many places. Pieces of cloth flutter around the edges of the biggest hole in the fence. I slip through the gap, feeling only a slight snag on the way out. I stagger into town, hot, confused, tired, glancing down at my iPhone periodically to navigate the narrow streets. For a long time see nothing but anger and sadness. The refugees disturb the locals, the locals sneer and curse at the refugees. Women hold babies on street corners, wailing, tears streaking down dirty faces. They shout to the sky. The misery slowly fades as I make my way closer to the center of the city. The sun beats down, I huff and puff my way up a steep hill, and I sweat until every bit of me is soaked. The blue dot on Google Maps keeps jumping around, confusing which street I’m on. At least I have a map to tell me where I’m going. I have money, I have means. I have choices. The Syrian refugees do not. I feel momentary shame that I considered any part of traveling a real struggle. Should I just stick to the parts of the world that are pleasant? Do I deserve to wander around in my swim trunks like a buffoon when so much of the world lives in misery? After several twists, turns, and some backtracking, I finally find the correct street. I push through the front door of a building, climb up a dark, grim staircase. At the top is a thick metal door with a shattered glass window. Chatter spills out in several languages. I slide it open. I am 42 years old and entering my first hostel. This is my first confession. You’re probably wondering how I ended up in Serbia on my summer vacation. Let me retrace my steps and try to figure that out too. After a romantic breakup the year prior, I found myself floundering. So much for finding a wife. What now? Wallowing in my own misery, I suddenly hated the corporate job I’d had for over a decade in television marketing. I felt bored with the trivial entertainments I’d distracted myself with for most of my life: television, games, the internet. My hobbies had faded with age, and I failed to find new ones that excited me. Basically, I had no purpose. My life had become monotonous. Of course, that’s a feeling many people get in middle age. But it was more than that for me. I wanted to escape, to change my existence. This wasn’t completely due to the breakup; this longing had crept up on me slowly, relentlessly. How can I reconnect with the outside world? I looked around desperately for inspiration. Though I hated it, I kept doomscrolling. Look at all those people in amazing places on Instagram. Look at my friends who are connecting with the world. Should I travel too? Would travel give me a new perspective on life? How long could I do it? How much money would I need? Where would I go? I didn’t know much about travel. My “trip of a lifetime” thus far had been a few weeks in Italy back in college. I thought that would never be topped. I’d taken a few other international vacations over the next 20 years, but all for just a few days. A few famous international cities, a few towns in Mexico. Like most middle-class Americans working a corporate job, I took vacations I could afford when I could afford it (and paid too much for them). Fatefully, a friend invited me to his wedding in Croatia that summer, and another friend told me he would be going to Oktoberfest in Munich several weeks after that. I pondered this coincidence. Can I make an adventure out of this? Over the next few months, I methodically brainstormed the possibility of a trip to Europe around those two events. I could go to other countries in between and find out if I liked traveling alone … and for an extended period. A “test run.” Then I got ahead of myself. I counted my pennies over and over, calculated how much I’d have left after I sold my condo, my car, my furniture. The math on long-term travel had too many variables. How much comfort am I willing to give up if I become a nomad? My brother, Mike, told me that if I was serious about traveling long-term, I’d need to consider expanding my horizons. “If you’re traveling for a long time, you should try to stay in a hostel. You’re going to get lonely staying in hotels and apartment rentals.” I didn’t warm up to it quickly. “A hostel? I’m in my forties! I can’t stay in a hostel. They’re gross. I’m too old. I’d never do that. I’m not that desperate.” But when I ran the math for the hundredth time, I realized I should consider it. So, I read about travel hacks: budget lodging, cheap transportation, backpacking, camping, vagabonding. I came around to the idea that I could see a good chunk of the world if I were willing to give up most of the comforts of home, and if I could stomach eating through a lifetime of savings, no matter how small, in the hope that a future Chris could pull himself out of a financial quagmire much later. Or maybe, just maybe, I didn’t care at that moment about being destitute in some future time and place. I can live abroad for a fraction of the price of sitting on my sofa in LA, but is this something people do in their forties? Perhaps I’d end up lonely no matter where I stayed. Would I ever maintain friendships—or romantic relationships—this way, jumping from place to place? Would I find somewhere else to settle down? Maybe I wouldn’t enjoy being a backpacker. After all, I was an introvert who’d always followed the rules of American society. You were supposed to work hard, save all the money you could, have a family, and hold off on that extended world-traveling stuff until retirement. You don’t blow everything you’ve saved and then start over again in middle age. Right? Not me. Not Chris Gattanella. Until the moment I miraculously got a six-week vacation approved using every bit of my saved vacation days, I had played things especially safe. Then I made a flurry of international bookings before I chickened out. “You won’t believe this,” Mike told a group of local women in Split, Croatia, “but my brother learned Croatian for this trip.” “No way!” said one of them. “Hey Chris. Come speak Croatian!” I walked over. “Dobra večer,” I said. “Kako ste?” I had purchased Croatian language CDs six months ago, and I’d listened to them in the car during my commute. I started reading Croatian grammar websites in my spare time. It snowballed from there. I found online teachers from Croatia, Bosnia, and Serbia who taught me over Skype each morning. It was strangely addicting to learn something so exotic and different. Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS being the clunky acronym for the language) was a Slavic tongue that hardly any travelers bothered with. I confess that I probably did this to fill some void, most prominently in my love life. So, there I was, inside the ancient stone walls of Split, Croatia, jet-lagged, excited to begin my adventure, babbling in Croatian over glasses of red Dalmatian wine, dazzling the locals and my friends. “I’m here! This trip is good! I want to travel!” “That’s very nice,” said one woman. “Where?” “Everywhere! I want to stop job.” The locals cracked up, said things I didn’t understand. “Job bad and I sell house and travel!” One of them switched to English—with a California accent, no less. “That’s totally, like, an American thing to say. You’re all, like, overworked.” My friends and I took a ferry from Split to the island of Vis where the wedding would take place four days later. Vis was spectacular in a low-key way. One main street, some gift shops, some coffee shops, a handful of restaurants, and a castle on a hill above. Life was slow. It took hours to order a coffee, or eat a meal, but nobody seemed to mind. One day, we visited a famous “Blue Cave” by dinghy (almost losing our heads on the way in) where the water shimmered beautifully. We boated to a much larger “Green Cave” and swam near the entrance. You could even climb to the top of a cliff and jump off in front of the cave. Boats continually shuttled in and out, and we learned that people regularly fell into boats and died there, especially Australians. At another cliff on another island, we were explicitly warned where to jump and where not to jump, because “A couple of Australians died over there.” At the final swimming spot, we were also warned that there were strong currents, and it was a particularly dangerous place if you were Australian. What is up with Australians? There was a beach day BBQ the next day, and then the wedding the next. During all this, I experienced a certain euphoria, and remembered how travel could be so intoxicating. Of course, I couldn’t travel like this all the time. This cost money. This was obviously a vacation. Seven of us said goodbye to friends on Vis, wished Ivan and Shelly a happy honeymoon, and took a ferry, then a bus south to Dubrovnik, Croatia. The road wound along the edges of cliffs most of the way. The bus driver took every turn at high speed, giving us continual fear-induced adrenaline rushes. Dubrovnik—another walled city—has a rich history like Split, going back thousands of years. The city’s famous walls are shown in many Mediterranean tourist websites and cruise line brochures. Ancient churches, museums, and historical buildings pepper the gorgeous and well-maintained streets. The charming narrow alleys are made to get lost in. The city celebrates a rich culture, and great food. But dominating the city when we arrived was Game of Thrones. Dubrovnik doubled as King’s Landing. The popularity of the HBO show had completely taken over the town, because every vendor obviously feared not having something related to the show. You could buy all the usual tourist trinkets, but with Game of Thrones art. You could go on location tours, dress up like the characters, and re-enact scenes. By the second day, I realized that you could spend your entire vacation doing Game of Thrones-related activities. We watched the sunset at a cliffside bar under the towering city walls. Another evening, we took a sunset kayak tour around the bay. My great vacation continued. I reminded myself to not confuse this experience with what I wanted to do, which was backpacking. Another ferry to the island of Hvar, and then another terrifying ride. This time we rode in a taxi that veered into oncoming traffic on curvy, mountainous roads with an insane war vet, but we somehow arrived alive in the main town. Those tourists who were experts on the matter called Hvar a tame Ibiza. A few bars, a few nice restaurants. Rocky beaches. We spent a lot of our time watching people dance on rickety railings over rocks with glass drinks in their hands. We had quite a few drinks ourselves. Four days on Hvar; a blur. Back on the mainland, we journeyed to Plitvice Lakes next, a park with a busy boardwalk alongside endless waterfalls. Visitors packed the park in midsummer, making it difficult to move. But a spectacular place. Finally, we went to charming Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. We spent our last few days together roaming the city, doing the usual things tourists do on vacation. When it came to an end, I confess a bit of trepidation that everyone was leaving, and now I’d be alone through several foreign countries. “We had a great time!” Mike told me when he sensed my mood. “We did,” I admitted. So why am I suddenly so edgy? “You’re gonna continue to have a great time,” Mike said. “I’ll see you back in LA.” He and my other friends flew away. My backpacking adventure begins. I sat on a bench in the town of Osijek in eastern Croatia staring out at a very modern, attractive white bridge. Bicyclists whizzed by. Couples happily pushed strollers down a path. Charming church spires soared in the distance. My first day on the adventure I’d coveted. The first day of my “test run.” I spent the day strolling the quiet, delightful little town, and felt terribly lonely. I ate dinner at a café with cigarette smoke swirling around me. I could fluently order food in Croatian now, whatever that mattered. I walked the same streets later, yawning, bored. What does one do out in the world … solo? Is this backpacking? Apparently, one reads a book in one’s Airbnb, watches Netflix, and then stares at the ceiling and wonders why he is alone in Eastern Europe. In the town of Vukovar, my bus passed a bombed out, pockmarked water tower which stood as a reminder of the ravages of the Yugoslav Wars. The bus then rumbled toward the Serbian border. The only other land border I’d ever crossed was into Mexico, and I’d done it with friends, in a familiar car, from a familiar place. My stomach rumbled, empty, and twisted into knots. I felt uneasy doing this alone. I’d read a lot about land borders worldwide, and how dangerous they could be. Why did I pick Serbia as my first solo backpacker border experience? When we reached a gate, the driver stopped and a customs official boarded, walked down the aisle. “Is anyone from somewhere besides Croatia or Serbia?” he asked in BCS and English as he checked passports. I was the only one. “Come with me.” He took me to a tiny guard post with a Croatian official behind a desk who examined my passport. The official held the passport up and examined one frayed edge, plucking at a blueish string. “This is bad,” he said in Croatian. “How long have you stayed in Croatia?” “Eighteen days,” I said. He said something I couldn’t understand. Then, in English, he said, “You are here illegally!” “No. I have an entry stamp. Just 18 days.” “You cannot stay that long.” “I was told United States citizens can stay 90 days.” He shook his head sadly. “No. Not true. And this is illegal.” He held up the passport and vigorously jerked at the one dangling thread. I know I can stay in Croatia for 90 days. Is it something about flying in and busing out? “You have put me in a very difficult position,” he said. “Well, I’m leaving anyway.” He rolled his eyes, muttered in Croatian. I looked back at the bus, saw angry, impatient faces in the windows. Does he want a bribe? I took out my wallet and made sure I showed how little Croatian Kuna I had left as I reached for my California driver’s license. “I have another ID.” The guard looked revolted. He stamped my passport and pointed at the bus. “Get out of here!” What I didn’t know at the time was that due to the Syrian refugee crisis spinning out of control, the borders were slowly closing behind me. After I crossed into Serbia, it closed to most traffic a few days later. I got lucky I didn’t get stuck. Perhaps that border guard had been told not to let anyone cross who wasn’t Croatian or Serbian. Or perhaps he wanted an old-fashioned bribe, and I had the equivalent of five US dollars on me. I’ll never know. I spent a day in a city called Novi Sad. Compared to Croatian cities, this one felt sterile, unremarkable. Every man in the city sported a crewcut, so I stood out with normal-length hair. I saw anti-American signs everywhere in both English and Serbian, but half the citizens wore clothing with American flags emblazoned across the front of their shirts. Stars and stripes lined their blue jeans. American flag hats. In the hotel bar that night, I asked an old man about this. He laughed, mumbled in Serbian. I couldn’t understand him until he waved a finger and said, “America bad” in English. “Why do people wear the American flag?” I managed in Serbian. He looked confused. “Eh?” Did they not know what they’re wearing? That’s impossible. The hotel warned they rigidly enforced a strict nonsmoking policy, but I’d never inhaled that much cigarette smoke in my life. Absolutely everyone smoked, everywhere, always, indoors and out. This held true for my entire time in Serbia. Everyone over the age of 12 chain-smoked from the time they woke until the time they went to bed. I woke up coughing that night as the smoke wafted into my room in waves, through the vents, through the crack at the bottom of the door. My eyes stung. I barely slept. This is ridiculous. What am I doing here? Who goes to Serbia alone on their summer vacation? An idiot who learned Croatian, or Serbian, or whatever, that’s who. I laughed myself out of bed. Despite a couple of boring days so far, I was still excited about this adventure. Having not done laundry in two weeks, I realized I had nothing to wear. I put on my swim trunks and a tank top, laughed again when I saw myself in the mirror. Okay, well, I’m going to a hostel now. The fun begins. Thus, I entered Belgrade, grinning like a fool, hopeful, expectant… …and that’s when I ran into the crowd of Syrian refugees. “My name is Chris,” I told the young hostel receptionist in BCS, expecting her to kick me out due to my advanced age. She tiredly told me her name, then gave me a rundown of the hostel rules in English. I didn’t remember much; just that she didn’t seem to care if I seemed older. Must be my babyface. People continually mistook me for someone much younger. My first impression of a hostel private room wasn’t good. It appeared basic, sad, squalid, and dingy to my 42-year-old eyes. The bathroom didn’t have soap or shampoo. A tiny table wobbled next to the bed. A cheap plastic chair sat in the corner, looking like it’d spent a century in a schoolyard. A window inexplicably faced the interior of the hostel’s common room, and its curtain was too short, so I had to pick which side of the window I wanted to cover. The gaudy, flower-patterned sheets smelled clean, though. After I unpacked, I explored the hostel. Young people cooked in the kitchen. A surfer-looking guy with dreadlocks slept on a couch in a room full of books and games, snoring away. Cognizant of my age, I felt awkward, like it was my first day at a new school. I went back to my room, washed some clothes in the shower, ate some snacks I’d squirreled away. The receptionist told me about the clubs lining the Danube riverbank, so I went out alone in my dirty jeans and a rumpled shirt that night. There was no mistaking where the clubs were. Loud music blared, strobes lit up the sky. I went down a series of long hills to the river. Louder, louder. Lining the river were old ferries, old pontoon boats, and floating platforms that looked like they hadn’t moved in decades. A few were simple stationary docks. I walked up and down the row of clubs, a bit intimidated by the choices. None of the music sounded great. They all looked equally smokey. I approached a random riverboat. “Who are you?” asked a bouncer in Serbian. “My name is Krisić,” I said, using the BCS version of “Chris.” “But who do you think you are walking here?” “I like to see bar. I buy something to drink.” “You are Croatian?” he asked, an eyebrow raised. “I am American.” The bouncer started laughing. “You are an American speaking Croatian?” There’s a slight difference in verb conjugation that I won’t go into, but I thought I’d done it correctly. “I am speaking Serbian.” The bouncer waved into the darkness. “Guys, come see this American named Krisić! He thinks he speaks Serbian!” They came out of the shadows, three large men with shaved heads. In Belgrade, all men shaved their heads, unlike the crewcuts of Novi Sad. “Speak Serbian to them,” ordered the bouncer. “My name is Krisić. I am an American. And I would like to drink. And I would kindly ask to dance with females.” They all laughed. One asked, “What city are you from?” “Los Angeles.” “LA! LA!” chanted one guy. The others joined in. “So, Hollywood, that’s why you think you can just walk right in?” the bouncer said in English. He pointed behind me. I turned and saw a velvet rope. Behind it a line of about thirty people waited. Three women in high heels and lots of makeup stared angrily at the front of the line. I looked back to the guys. “I didn’t see…” More laughter. “My name is Vlado!” said the biggest guy. “You can join us. This will be great.” He waved me onto the riverboat.
