we survived guca. [friendship, memories, travels, good things, music, endurance, scribblings and much more]

 We survived Guca. The significance of this sentence has changed immensely since its first utterance. Almost instantaneously I knew that those three words expressed more than just a mere feeling of relief, they express the essence of a friendship that I had come to value more than anything else and here’s why:

A few months back, we were laying on the ground near our tent in the makeshift sun-shelter early in the morning. We had long given up the hope on building something more permanent than the always almost-collapsing umbrella, that we bought in the tiny Serbian village, and over which we threw our dusty towels in an effort to make our shelter more opaque to protect us a little better from the burning sun. We did not have the energy, nor the inventiveness necessary for a more ambitious project. The fortunate few who woke up before everyone else crawled out of their tents - which were already much like saunas by 7.30 in the morning – now occupied the sparse spots which provided solid shadow. They were asleep again, enjoying the escape that sleep offered from the heat, from the dust and the general madness that was: The Trumpet Festival in Guca.

Exhausted from traveling through the Balkans in old buses without air-conditioning, looking for camping places where people were clearly not used to the concept of camping, and eager to avoid the masses of insane Serbian tourists at the coast of Montenegro we thought we might as well already head towards Guca, even though the festival would not start until later that week. When we arrived at the bus stop in Cacak at around 4 or 5am we were so tired that we just unpacked our sleeping bags right in the middle of the city park and when we woke up among joggers, people walking their dogs and old people chatting away in their wheelchairs we were only too enthusiastic about the prospects of the comfort of a camping site with showers, a toilet and maybe the possibility to wash our clothes. We then randomly bumped into a man who introduced himself as Jason and who was, as it turned out, employed by the owners of the very campground that we booked a few days earlier. He was in charge of organizing the transport of festival visitors to and from Guca. He took us to his place in Cacak, where we played with two tiny kittens in the backyard and drank coffee – good coffee for a change - and generally felt like in heaven. Little did we know what expected us in Guca…

When we arrived there, nothing was quite finished and we enjoyed walking through the little town, observing the locals getting ready for the festival. We set up our tent, took a shower, recharged my cell and were incredibly grateful for the woman who offered that we could throw our clothes into her washing machine.

After that everything that I remember from the following days is insane heat, grilled meat everywhere (the smell was almost unbearable), drunk people, loud people in quantities that are difficult to fathom, and what seems like millions of little brass bands roaming the street with their ear-drum-tearing music. For a vegetarian, now vegan, who does not drink and does not like big crowds this was definitely going to be a challenge. In retrospect, I ask myself why we even wanted to go there… However, there were also incredibly beautiful moments that I will forever cherish. There were so many little moments we thoroughly enjoyed; like dying of laughter whilst carrying the tent with all our stuff in it from one campground to the other in the dead of night so as to avoid the insane guide; talking for hours, because there was just nothing else to do; admiring the amazing spectacle of all the spontaneous jamming sessions with people from all over the world at the couch surfing campground; bumping into friends from Canada, the US and Germany in the midst of all the dancing people on the busiest little square in town and so much more.

However, they pale in comparison with the big one, the one why we stuck it out there in the first place: Goran Bregovich’s concert. It was magical, simply amazing, and made everything worth it.

If we only wanted to hear this one concert though, we could have left and returned just for the concert but by the middle of the week, the phrase “we  survived guca” has already been established and assumed a broader sense. It was almost a dare, a challenge and so many other things from our lives became entangled with it. It was basically the feeling that we can do anything in the world, if we can just survive this thing right now. It connected the dots.

I mentioned above that I feel like it expresses the essence of a friendship. When I met Jess in Newfoundland, we decided to travel across Canada together. She had just finished university and I, well, I was just glad I could prolong my desperate escape from everything back home and so we started hitchhiking from one coast to the other. Now, traveling with someone else, I found, is not always easy but traveling with Jess just felt like the easiest thing in the world. She was full of energy when I was not, she took the initiative when I was unsure of something and the other way round. Over the years, when I was back in Europe, we did not very frequently hear from each other and when I visited her in Vancouver, it felt as if we were living parallel lives and we were both in a weird place in our lives, ignoring important questions. However, I always felt that the deep friendship never ceased to exist. What makes our friendship special is that it somehow is an enabler for both of us. We are craziest when we are together and are encouraging each other by unconditionally standing behind each other, having each others backs. In Serbia, I felt more strongly than ever that we both have to fight many battles still, but we survived Guca and therefore, we will survive everything.

Our friendship's strength lies in our reminding each other of that. 

As Tim Cahill once stated, "a journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles" and I certainly have found a friend I wanna go on lots of future travels with and experience tons of adventures with in the coming years. 
Also, Mark Twain said, "I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them." Well, we have traveled around together quite extensively and we're already planning yet another journey. 
That says it all, I think.