Yugoslavia
We choose to take the motorway through the centre of the country. That may not have been the best choice. It was not a motorway as we knew it. It was an ordinary road, one lane in each direction. It was busy, very mixed traffic, so there was lots of occasions where we were faced with a vehicle on our side of the road, quite close, as it overtook a slower moving vehicle. Sometimes these were very close before they returned to their side of the road. The effect was not made any easier by the fact that the truck was right hand drive. Overtaking for use was a joint effort between Pete and I with the driver watching to others face as you pulled out into the oncoming traffic.
The road was littered with car wrecks, left just to the side of the road, perhaps as a warning to others. Frequently they had been turned into shrines, where a loved one had died. We noticed that sometimes truck drivers would act as if the whole length of the truck had completely cleared whatever they were overtaking as soon as the cab was passed, pushing the other one off the road, with nowhere to go. The technique is to anticipate that that is what is going to happen and break sharply as they pass, then you stay on the road. The further East we went the more the driving deteriorated.
Another thing we noticed was that big is mighty, and mighty is always right. The biggest truck always has right of way, and always wins. Adapt diving methods to accommodate local methods! And don't have an accident, even if it is not your fault. Have you heard this one before? "You are the foreigner. If you were not in our county there would not have been an accident, therefore it is your fault." Maybe not Yugoslavia, but definitely some regions.
It had the air of a fifties movie
Yugoslavia was probably the first experience of a significantly different culture. West Germany and Austria still had a Western European feel to them even if the language was different. Quite a few people could speak some English, so communicating was not a major obstacle. You can get by. Yugoslavia was different. It was communist for a start. It had the air of a fifties movie, a little stuck in time, unable to move forward, apart from isolated pockets. It was also very rural. There were towns and cities of course, and we drove through a few of them. But the lasting impression is of countryside, with farming still being part of the horse drawn era, with the occasional innovation of a small tractor. Perhaps a simpler idyll, or just a harsher existence.
We stopped at a very small village, a little away from the main route. Sometimes we would cook for ourselves, and sometimes we would allow somebody else to cook and wash up for us. We tentatively went into a place that may have been a bar / cafe. Yes, it was, and it was crowded, Full of the noise of happy people talking to each other. We ordered something to eat by the newly acquired skill of pointing to somebody else's plate. We were happily eating, when something very strange happened. It suddenly went quiet. Nobody had rung a bell or anything like that. just everybody stopped talking, and then they left. All of them. It was 8:00pm. We were left on our own with only the staff left. They did not try to chase us out as if it was past closing time, and we did not feel threatened by the circumstance. However, it did feel odd, so we finished our meal and left. Then back to the truck and our beds, on the floor.
Now, I know that it is wrong to make assumptions or generalisations about anything based on a single experience. But it did seem a bit like the communist state was involved. We will never really know but it was if it was an edict than between ?:00, maybe 7:00 and 8:00 you shall go out and enjoy oneself, but at 8:00pm you shall go home an get on with living you harsh existence. Produce for the common good an we will allow you an hour of happy chat. Yes, I know it is all more complicated than that.
