Don’t Go There: From Chernobyl to North Korea—one man’s quest to lose himself and find everyone else in the world’s strangest places

by Adam Fletcher

  I’d become hooked by the world of micronations. They offered so much promise and the chance to reinvent yourself. I was interested in reinventing myself. Maybe I was presidential.

  Usually micronations’ daft little flirtations with statehood don’t get very far—a bombastic press release; quick bit of media attention; some memorabilia for sale—before everyone moves on to the next great potential sovereignty. Every time I checked in on Liberland, I expected their attempts to be fizzling out, but that never happened. The land they claimed became 50 percent less contentious when Serbia declared it wasn’t theirs, leaving only Croatia to convince. Fifty thousand people applied online for Liberlandian citizenship, in case they managed it. The New York Times sent a reporter to spend ten days following Mr President around. They created Liberland Merits, their own currency. Ambassadors were appointed in forty countries. Four hundred thousand people applied for citizenship.

  Were they serious about this? Might they even pull it off? Would they accept this pre-Renaissance man if they did? It was time to meet Mr President and find out.

  My first email to the Presidential Office of the Free Republic of Liberland went unanswered. But then, on a wet Wednesday evening, I received the following message:

  “Dear Adam, I am thinking about going for lunch with you on Tuesday. What do you think? Where do you suggest to go?”

  It was President Vit himself, coming to Berlin. Not only was I in contact with a head of state, he wanted me to suggest where we could meet for lunch! I mostly ate at döner kebab stalls inside subway stations. These places were not presidential. So I broke into my piggy bank and suggested we meet at a Russian-themed restaurant in Berlin Mitte called Gorki Park. I thought the irony of taking a libertarian who despised government and taxation to a restaurant celebrating Soviet socialism was just too good of a chance to miss. A few days later, below murals of Russian peasants carrying apples and Sputnik memorabilia, I found three men in suits waiting for me. President Vit and his entourage were certainly dressing the part. I looked down at my creased blue shirt and dirty black jeans—I wasn’t. I was dressed as if I’d just finished fixing some troublesome bathroom plumbing. To further undermine my credentials as a “journalist,” which was what I was pretending to be, I’d also forgotten my wallet. While extremely embarrassing, this at least saved me from the inevitability of opening it to discover it had no money inside.

  I found Mr President at a corner table, perusing the menu. He was heavyset, had a squishy, warm face, cheeks like pockets, and a neat blond goatee. His entourage moved to another table so we could talk privately. I began the interview by accidentally insulting him: I called Liberland a micronation.

  “We’ve got four hundred thousand people applying for citizenship.” He tilted his head. “If we accept them all, we’ll be larger than Iceland. So are we still a micronation?”

  We’d not even ordered drinks yet, drinks I couldn’t actually pay for, and yet I’d already questioned the man’s sovereignty. I tried to soften my approach. Not that he was being defensive or aggressive. He was calm, friendly, charismatic. I liked him.

  I leaned forward. “Well, obviously you know this better than me. To me, it looks like there is a border dispute. Serbia is saying ‘It’s not ours’ and Croatia is saying ‘We’re not sure whose it is, but it’s certainly not yours.’”

  He frowned. “Croatia says it’s theirs. But then if it was, why would they stop us going there? Since we wouldn’t have to leave Croatia to do so?”

  I wasn’t prepared enough to answer. I wasn’t very well prepared, in general. I thought I was just meeting some crazy opportunist who wanted to get some press for himself, sell some T-shirts, and be able to travel the world introducing himself as Mr President. The intensity of his gaze and the size and professionalism of his entourage convinced me that this wasn’t the case. They were serious.

  Vit wasn’t just some Internet chancer either; he knew his way around politics. He’d been an elected official in his native Czech Republic, but had grown disillusioned with public office there when a former KGB agent was democratically elected as the Czech finance minister. “People vote into power the people who steal the most from them through taxation,” he lamented.

  “But he was democratically elected, right?”

  He scoffed. “Hitler was also democratically elected. There is no virtue in democracy.”

  I’d always assumed democracy was, as Winston Churchill had once quipped, “the worst form of government, except for all other others.” People went to war to spread it, didn’t they? Sacred cows were being slaughtered in front of my eyes.

  The food arrived. Blini. It was delicious.

  “The concept of one or two people attempting to create their own country, usually it never gets beyond those one or two people,” I said. “Why do you think Liberland is so much more successful?”

  He considered it between mouthfuls of his borscht, a typical Eastern European soup. “A lot of people believe in the ideals of Liberland. Any nation is only as strong as the people who believe in it. When I was arrested for going there, the chief of the Croatian police came to the court to argue for a longer sentence for me. He said, ‘Liberland is just in your head. It’s just an imagination.’”

  Vit laughed, as did his (not-listening) minders. “I told him, ‘Croatia is also just in your head. It’s just an imagination.’ That really pissed him off, of course. But that’s the reality.”

  Croatia—imaginary or not—had armies and courts and jails that could be used to convince the doubtful of its existence. Vit had a flag, a website, and a lot of emails from interested people. It didn’t seem like a fair fight.

  “Maybe it won’t work.” He shrugged. “Who knows? All we ask is that they let us try it.” This sounded pretty reasonable to me.

  My chance to visit came a few months later, during the country’s first anniversary. They were holding a libertarian conference on the Croatian side of this controversial piece of marshland. After a three-and-a-half-hour bus ride from Belgrade, Serbia, I arrived in Osijek, Croatia, the nearest city to the conference and a very pretty historical one at that. Unfortunately, no one was waiting to meet me, as had been agreed. I called the organiser, Damir. I was angry. These people wanted to start a country? They couldn’t even arrange a shuttle bus. They were kidding themselves. “Boris is waiting out front,” Damir said. “He has curly hair and an estate car.”

  I doubted it. I doubted it very much. Boris? People aren’t really called Boris. Characters in movies are called Boris. They’re either good with IT, or they’re hitmen. Out the front of the bus station, a man with tight black curls of hair to his shoulders approached me, his hand outstretched.

  “Mr Fletcher?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Boris, your driver.”

  He didn’t look as if he would be good in IT, so I decided it best to behave myself. The other passenger in the back of the boxy grey car was a tall, lumbering man with puffy cheeks and floppy hair parted in the centre. His head sat atop his body like an overinflated balloon pinned to a lamp post. He introduced himself as Gregor. He smelt of alcohol. Perhaps unaware of the consequences of crossing a Boris, Gregor was not on his best behaviour. Over the thirty-minute journey, it became clear that Gregor was a man who enjoyed the sound of his own voice so much that he didn’t deny himself any opportunity to hear it.

  “I’m an investor,” he said. “Real estate. You know, Guangzhou, New York, Korea, Florida. Whatever. No big deal.”

  It clearly was a big deal.

  I smiled. “Are you a libertarian?”

  “Well, you know, it would be good for some investments, but I’m aware there are some problems with it. I told Vit that when I met him one-and-a-half years ago. I met him, you know? Yeah, no big deal.”

  It really was.

  He stuck out his chin. “He came to my house and everything. Sure. Have you met him?”

  “Yes, in Berlin. He didn’t come to my house though.”<
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  “Oh, well, whatever. Who cares? Right?” He patted me limply on the shoulder.

  Gregor cared.

  We stopped at the conference site, a hotel in the middle of nowhere, which seemed like such an inconvenient location for a hotel I can only assume it was in the middle of something really tremendous that I never found because it was too well hidden. In the car park, a bombshell had just been dropped: President Vit wasn’t coming. Damir was frantic. “They stopped him at the Croatian border! Which is obviously illegal since he’s an EU citizen.”

  “What? Fuck,” said Gregor. “I’ve got some big deals lined up.”

  “Yes,” said Damir. “I’m sorry.”

  Gregor hung his head, kicking a stone out from under his shoe. “Man, Serbia is the Wild West, but Croatia isn’t much better. Here, they just pretend at being diplomatic.”

  Inside, the buffet was underway. I got a plate of food and approached a table with one empty seat. “Can I sit here?” I asked. The two men already seated looked at each other, then laughed. “This is Liberland,” one said. “Just take it.” I took it, put my plate down, and headed to the bar to get a beer. When I returned, someone had taken the chair from me. He’d simply moved my plate of food into the middle of the table and sat himself down. Was this what it would be like in Liberland? Dog eat dog? The person didn’t apologise, so I was left to awkwardly lean over him, pick up my plate, and move to another table. At the next one, I asked if I could take its empty seat.

  “No, our friend is going to sit there,” said a man in a flannel lumberjack’s shirt.

  Diplomacy was getting me nowhere. I needed to take a page out of President Vit’s book and just put down a flag and declare any seat the Free Republic of Adam’s Ass. The people at the third table did let me join. They were right in the middle of an impassioned conversation about gun rights, the main thrust of the argument being that there weren’t enough. A two-man keyboard-and-acoustic-guitar band began playing classic rock covers at the other end of the hall. They began by strangling and setting fire to “Don’t worry, Be Happy.” I felt quite happy amongst this group of affable eccentrics. That might have been because I was drinking (liberally) Liberal Ale—Liberland’s own beer. “I got it directly from Vit’s apartment, this morning,” said the squirrelly man who had presented it to me. All those I’d spoken to were keen to emphasise how they were Best Friends Forever with President Vit. The band molested “One Love” by Bob Marley next. At least I think that’s what it was supposed to be. If there was love in this room, it was reserved for the president-in-exile. I turned to talk to a computer programmer from London. “How are you enjoying the conference so far?” I asked him.

  “It’s very low key,” he said. “No one’s even been arrested yet.”

  If anyone was going to get arrested, it would be Gregor. I found him a few tables over, wasted on red wine and flirting outrageously with a pretty Turkish woman eating birthday cake. They were discussing a private social network for rich people.

  “My mother had money, so what, doesn’t matter. I don’t care about money.” Gregor was balancing his chair precariously on its two rear legs. “I want to be with quality people. Come on, let’s go sailing? You know? No big deal.”

  The woman looked bored. He ploughed on regardless. “Sometimes you eat tuna, sometimes caviar. You know?”

  She smiled politely.

  “Relax,” he continued. “It’s a joke anyway, right? Who cares?” The girl didn’t appear to care.

  “Envy, whatever,” he continued. “It’s been a big factor in my life. Probably in yours too. I don’t care about other people.”

  She put down her fork. “Me neither. They can talk behind me, I don’t care.”

  “I like you, you know,” he said, reaching for her arm. “You’re really great.”

  She pulled her hand back. “I’m going outside to smoke a cigarette.”

  “Yes, let’s go,” he said, jumping up enthusiastically after her, his chair crashing to the floor behind him. I picked it up. Gregor was like every bad real-estate investor cliché rolled into one. Yet, he was the only openly noxious person I’d met so far. The rest were smart, open, happy to talk about their beliefs. They bristled with conviction and certainty that all this—country, state, and governance nonsense—was about to collapse. When it did, well, they’d be there with their ideas. It would be their time. A time for libertarianism and something called anarcho-capitalism.

  In the meantime, well, they were going to take turns kicking the current system while it was down. The band lynched “Stuck In The Middle With You.” It was ten thirty. I made murmurings of my desire to leave. “No problem,” said Damir. “I’ll arrange a car for you. Five minutes.” Thirty minutes later I wandered outside. I found Gregor in the car park, attempting to embrace the Turkish girl, who was attempting, mostly, to avoid said embrace. By now his eyes were bloodshot, and his puffy cheeks had taken on the soft pink hues of excess.

  “Have you had fun?” I asked him.

  He scoffed. “Here? With these Nazis and crazy guys and people with beards?” I hadn’t met anyone who came even close to the accepted description of a Nazi. I can attest that there were several people in the room with beards, including me. I’ve always found people with beards quite agreeable. “Pfft, I’m not interested in that, man,” Gregor added. “I’m here for investments.”

  An hour passed. We went back inside to find our own willing chauffeur. We failed. Gregor complained loudly about this until Anton, a calm, stoic Austrian with wild, unkempt hair stood up from his table. I think keen to spare everyone Gregor’s loud, drunken blustering.

  “Let’s go,” Anton said.

  Unfortunately, Gregor came with us. “Fifty-five euros for two bottles of wine?” He ranted from the back seat of the red estate car. “Fuck. And I had to go inside! I mean, come on! I had to pay for it and go in there and get it? Inside? And pay for it? Seriously?”

  I shot Anton a look of apology from the passenger seat. I was used to Gregor by now, but Anton’s baptism of fire was happening in an enclosed space that he couldn’t escape. Anton smiled back calmly. He was the anti-Gregor.

  “My best friend is the prime minister of Croatia!” Gregor growled, a hand on the back of each of our seats. “I mean, come on.” There were a few seconds of silence. I hoped he’d fallen asleep. No such luck. “So you know Vit then, do you?” he barked. Neither of us answered because we didn’t know to whom the “you” of the question was aimed. “THE DRIVER,” Gregor added, impatiently, having forgotten Anton’s name. “I’m asking THE DRIVER.”

  Anton, THE DRIVER, breathed in deeply. “Yes. I know him.” His voice was that of meditation tapes. Of summer BBQs with friends. Of apple orchards. Of first loves. Of a world that made sense. A Gregor-less world. “Oh, do you?” said Gregor sarcastically, “Well, I think my relationship to him is a bit closer, no offence. He was at my house and everything.”

  There was a pause. “Okay,” Anton said, stoically.

  Gregor started up again. “He wants my embassy? Pff. Whatever. I’m going to give it to him. For money, of course. A lot of money. He was at my house once. No big deal.”

  I’d prided myself on liking nearly everybody. Sometimes it took some creative mental accounting, and moral-flaw overlooking, but everyone had at least one redeeming feature. Until Gregor. Gregor defeated me. I’d have to be saving a lot of tax to be his neighbour.

  The next day the conference would begin. I had thrown off my social-democratic shackles and was frolicking with a new world view—libertarianism. I found it much less taxing. Fuck the system! Fight The Man! Burn it all down!

  I went to bed excited. The 9am pickup came exactly as expected, just not when. In many ways I thought it had been falsely advertised, being that it arrived not at 9am, but at 10:30. As Damir pulled into the car park of the conference hotel, we found a Croatian police car and two men in suit jackets (wearing plastic earpieces that disappeared into their collars) flanking the building’s ent
rance.

  “Croatian secret police,” said Damir. “Here to try and intimidate us.”

  We took our seats inside. “I will now give the floor to Mr President, the founding father and president of Liberland,” said our host, only an hour later than the advertised start time. Above us, on the wall, the face of President Vit Jedlička appeared. “Hell—ooo,” it said. The video froze. “Ev—vvvvv—errry—one.” The sound dropped out, came back, dropped out. “I’m ve—rrrrry happy to seeeeee—”

  “Please everyone disconnect from the Wi-Fi. We need the bandwidth for Mr President,” said the stressed-out moderator. A whole country? Seriously? From scratch? These people?

  Sure, this was rural Croatia’s fault, not Liberland’s, but rural Croatia had a twenty-five-year head start over Liberland, and look how rubbish it was at providing simple services such as Internet connections speedy enough for Skype. Once the conference did get going, the content was extremely interesting, despite its shabby and chaotic wrapping. We learned more about the area, and why the local government had such a problem with Liberland. We heard from a Croatian politician who summarised it well: “My grandmother has never moved and yet has lived in five or six different countries. It’s no surprise people fear change around here.”

  He wasn’t exaggerating. The region, called Slavonia, has a very troubled past and has often found itself as the subject of disputes between nations, including the brutal four-year war of the early nineties, fought against Serbia following the collapse of Yugoslavia. Today its struggles continue, evidenced by the new direct bus line to Germany—the region’s population decreases by fourteen people per day. There are few jobs, few opportunities, and, from the conversations I had with locals, little hope. Remarkable, considering it’s a place of such abundant natural beauty and resources. It is still Croatia’s main wine-producing region.

  Between conference sessions, everyone mingled on the large sun terrace. It was surprising how many of the hundred attendees were in suits and had given themselves fancy-sounding bureaucratic titles. They dispensed business cards to each other as children might stickers. For a group who wanted to overthrow the system, they were dressed and behaving remarkably like that system. Which made me wonder if they truly did want to overthrow it or just recreate it somewhere new where they could have its power and make its rules. I was suddenly having doubts. The anarcho-capitalist utopia of my imagination would be stubbornly business-card and Executive-Vice-President-to-the-Ambassador-of-the-Attaché-Investment-Management-Consultant free.