Crossing the Border
June 21, 1999
Rob and Leon set out by car from Hungary to Croatia where they hope their subjects will be more forthcoming than the Serbian refugees in Budapest were. But first they have to make it through the border...
Rob's
Journal
After an early picnic breakfast in Budapest, we leave on Highway 6 towards Pecs. It starts to rain and we can only hope that the rain will make the border crossing go more quickly.
Leon and I both agree it will be best to cross the border at a heavily traveled checkpoint that is on the way to Zagreb. His passport registers him in Zagreb so we were traveling as tourists because we can’t afford the bonds for our equipment. I am not happy about this risk because I know there will be trouble if they check the car since we couldn’t really declare anything. But we have no other option.
I pray for safe and easy passage. When we reach the border at Bracs, the Hungarian border guards are only concerned about our rental car, but on the Croatian side it appears to be a different story. It seems to be standard practice to check foreign and rental cars as they enter Croatia. Sure enough, after our passports are checked, we are told to wait at the stop sign so they can check us out. Now I am worried. To come all this way only to be turned down at the border, the thought makes me sick.
Leon seems nervous too and we pull over at the stop sign just beyond the checkpoint and try to act naturally. I go to exchange some currency so Leon can talk to our border guard in his own language. But when I come back, the car is still sitting where it had been. We wait some more outside of the car. Another car comes through and stops right after the border gate.
It is then when Leon realizes he has made a mistake and has pulled over too far ahead of the border checkpoint. Leon heads back to apologize and say he can gladly pull the car back for the guard to to check it. After thinking about it for a minute, the guard just tells Leon we can go on. Was this a sign from some higher power? We laugh at our good fortune and give thanks.
After traveling miles out of our way to cross at this border crossing, it is close to 5:00 pm and we have to make up for some lost time. Fortunately we are minutes away from a town where Leon’s fiancee's cousin lives. We don't have an address, but we both agree that it would only be right to stop and pay her a visit. It's a small town where people probably know each other so Leon decides just to ask someone on the street. Amazingly, the first person we ask works at the local tourist center. He doesn't know the cousin, but he reopens the tourist center and helps us call all the relevant names in the phone book until we find the right person.
The cousin meets us for coffee and immediately starts lecturing us on the dangers of our journey. This is not lost on me, as several army trucks happen to roll by the cafe. This is a big change from Hungary where we traveled all through the country without seeing such a military presence.
Soon we say our goodbyes and are on our way out of town. "No photograph" signs are posted as we pass by army installations. Then we enter the countryside where the trees and brush grow thicker than anything I have ever seen in the United States. I quickly realized how entire villages and army platoons could disappear from sight for however long they wished.
We drive through several small villages and each and everyone showed the scars of war. Burned and shelled houses, bullet holes riddled in churches. Everywhere I looked in Croatia has been touched by war. Leon asks me if I could imagine traveling from village to village during the war never being sure which side controlled what, as he had done when he was helping British journalists during the war.
The rain from Hungary seems to have paid no attention to the border either. We press on through steady and often hard rain and finally stop at a village along the way to buy the last two loaves of bread at the market. We are so hungry and the rain is so hard that we make a wrong turn somewhere and end up driving through a totally destroyed and deserted village. It is so eerie that my body is covered with goosebumps.
Suddenly the rain slows to a drizzle and the sun breaks through briefly as we double back to film this place that appears nowhere on the map. The silence of the village pierces our souls as I videotape the houses that had all been destroyed. We don’t dare go off the road because Leon tells me they could still be mined or booby-trapped. At the edge of town, we see the tortured face of a plaster statue standing guard over a cemetery. A Croatian flag flies, but it is not clear if there is anyone left to see it except the ghosts of the dead beneath.
It is then that I catch a glimpse of the village's last survivors. A pig crosses the road. It still has a farmer's tag in its ear. Several untagged piglets follow behind. They almost look more like wild boars than pigs. The image brings to my mind the euphemism "collateral damage" -- a farmer no longer alive, a village no longer in existence, a pig long forgotten.
Then just as suddenly as the skies had cleared, the heavens open up and the rain begins to pour down. We can't even see the road ahead with our wipers at full speed. Water is beginning to leak into our car and make puddles on the floor. With this kind of weather, I realize how difficult it must have been for NATO’s planes to fly during the war. I also take it as a sign for how difficult our job ahead may be.
It all seems too strange. Why did we make a wrong turn and happen upon this village just as the weather broke before the sunset? We have several maps that we follow religiously, and yet we didn’t realize our mistake till much later. I don't think I will ever forget the look on that statue’s face or the gait of those pigs.
A strange beginning to a strange journey. Having seen the material remains of war, Leon and Rob have yet to r
ecord on camera the human legacy. They have an appointment to meet a Bosnian friend who may have some contacts in Brkco, so they head towards the Bosnian border.
