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.
