1000 Days of Spring: Travelogue of a hitchhiker

by Tomislav Perko

  We would place ourselves at the counter and talk about the local gossip.

  “I grew up in Maksimir,”[1] Mongoose started, “and back in those days everyone had a nickname that came from a zoo animal. So, one day as I was checking out what was going on, I stretched my neck and turned my head around and one of the older boys noticed it saying that I reminded him of a mongoose – and that’s about it.”

  I listened attentively to his stories about how it felt growing up on the streets of Zagreb, messing around with your buddies, being at the legendary football matches of Dinamo Zagreb, experiencing and surviving such things as your closest friend’s overdose, and how he was saved that day when he met Martina with whom he went to Ireland.

  They remained there for five years.

  I found it interesting to hear his story: it was funny how someone who had grown up in the same city as I had, had a completely different childhood. Compared to his, my childhood was so innocent and careless that I often thought if I were ever to write a book about my life it would open with the following sentence: I grew up in a fairy tale.

  I remember the days in which my family would move from one apartment to the other and the days spent playing in a park in front of the building. My brother and I weren’t allowed to leave the park so that our mother could always keep an eye on us. I remembered how I’d spent time in the school playground playing football or basketball with my best friends when I was going to the elementary school. I remembered all those video games that were popular back when I was finishing elementary school, which were the reason for my spending so many hours in front of a computer screen, lost in another world. I remembered how I was never one of those guys who smoked, drank, fought or chased girls. My first kiss was on my last day in the elementary school and I only did it so that I wouldn’t leave the elementary school without having the memory of a first kiss. Perhaps I should have. I remembered Katarina, with whom I spent three years in high school, three years of spending every recess together, three years of walking her to the bus stop. I remembered enrolling at the university and nearly dropping out after the first lectures.

  I was still a kid, barely out of my first serious relationship, without any vices, without any friends, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with myself or who I wanted to be one day. Consequently, depending on the people I hung around with, I passed through different phases.

  First, I was into fast cars despite the fact that, at that time, I was driving my brother’s old VW Golf. I started going out: sometimes I would simply hang around in a park with a bottle of beer in my hand, and sometimes I would go out to fancy places. I gave playing the guitar a try because I wanted to win over a girl who had a beautiful voice and she played guitar very well. I gave it up about at the same time I gave her up. One Saturday I went to Maksimir stadium to the north stands, among the Bad Blue Boys[2] because the brother of my girlfriend at that time was a passionate supporter of Dinamo Zagreb.

  Even though Dinamo was playing some unimportant match, when I heard the roar of the grandstand and the synchronized rhythm of the drums, palms and a couple of thousand voices - that was it. Just like that, I had a new hobby, a new place to which I belonged. I didn’t miss a single match at Maksimir stadium, and I would usually go on my own to the matches. The game itself and the score usually didn’t matter, all that mattered was never to save your voice, support the team on the field, be the twelfth player and feel the great energy in the stands.

  Soon I started going to away matches. Twenty-eight hours of suffering in a bus to France, during which I witnessed the biggest drug consumption ever, even before we reached the Slovenian border. I witnessed gas stations being robbed and the ravage through the city looking for the supporters of the local club. Finally, I found myself on the stand reserved for the supporters of the guest team, among the guys from the bus, who were using chairs and flares to fight the cops. I, coughing from all the tear gas around me, was texting my mother telling her that I was okay, safe and sound.

  I also went to Norway, by myself, where, after a couple of days spent travelling and a considerable amount of beer, I slept through the whole match, in the bus in front of the stadium. I think I am the only supporter ever who managed to do something like that. I also witnessed one of the greatest victories of my club: the one against Ajax, in the middle of Amsterdam, which marked the end of my travels following Dinamo.

  Dinamo will be playing against Ajax: the match that will decide who makes it to the UEFA Cup – the headline was on every Internet site. I left everything I was doing at that moment and sent a group message to the guys I thought would definitely be attracted by going to Amsterdam, as I was. It was a beautiful city, with rich history and culture and my friends definitely wanted to see that.

  “Sure thing,” they answered unanimously.

  We watched the first match together, in the north stand at Maksimir. We cheered the team on hoping for a positive result so that we would be left with at least a glimpse of hope for the return match. The match was marked by the beautiful pass by our player Schildenfeld to an Ajax player, who set the final score, 0:1.

  Already accustomed to the terrible results of my team when it came to the European competitions, I wasn’t that devastated by the defeat. I was still looking forward to the return match even though I knew that I would only be watching my team losing another season in the UEFA cup. “Whether they win or lose, we’re always here” was one of the Bad Blue Boys mottoes. Still, it appeared that, after all, I would be alone. My friends, one by one, kept on finding excuses not to go. There was less than a week until match day.

  Pussies.

  “Why don’t you go on your own?” Nina asked me. She was the one I usually went to in the situations like that to whine a bit.

  Nina is my colleague from the university. In fact, she is much more than a colleague. She is the person who accepted a spoilt, stubborn and narrow-minded human being and, by asking questions, leading by her own example and by giving unconditioned love, made him observe the world in a different light, in a more open way. She is the person who started making a person out of me.

  “On my own?” I gave her a look of panic. “What would I do there on my own?”

  “Trust me, you’ll have better time than you do when you go with the others.” She answered self-assuredly. “Anyway, if you always wait for the others to do something, you’ll never do anything.”

  I was sure she knew what she was talking about. During the first of the lectures at university where we sat together, she showed me some of the photos from her journey to India, Brazil and Portugal. She was a couple of years older than me and very different, but despite our differences, or maybe because of them, we got along very well. I could see the excitement, unpredictability, and adventure – all those things that were waiting for me if I decided to go on my own – in her eyes. It was wonderful. And a bit terrifying. I was afraid of being alone somewhere out there, far away, left on my own.

  “How about you go with me?” I was giving her a puppy look.

  “Haha, no way,” she said briskly, “it’s your journey, don’t go looking for an easy way out. When you do something on your own, without anyone’s help, the feeling is much better.”

  “I can’t wait to see the look in your eyes when you come back.” I could still hear her last sentence while I was waiting in line at the main train station to buy the ticket to Amsterdam, while I was buying a large backpack and a sleeping bag; and also while I was waiting in line in front of the stadium to buy the ticket for the match. I was ready to go.

  I didn’t have to wait for a long time for the adventure to begin. As I entered the train I spotted two guys who were, just like me, going to the match. They treated me to some wine, while I offered them with some bread from the student restaurant. As soon as we got sober again, the German conductor, with the help of the local police, threw me off the train, somewhere near Duisburg, saying that my ticket was “falsch.” However, after a few hours I finally arrived in A�
��dam. I moved into Jeff and Andy’s place, two guys I’d come across CouchSurfing, a social network I’d known for only a few months. During the following few days I lived in the very centre of the city, in an apartment that was situated above a store owned by Jeff and Andy that sold more than 300 types of beer, wine and liquor.

  As a true local, I had my own bike. I went sightseeing around the beautiful canals and observed the houses that looked very lively even if you weren’t high. I met a couple of new friends, borrowed a guitar from a street musician and played in front of an unknown crowd for the first time in my life. I witnessed a match in which my team won 3:2, which was one of the biggest victories in the history of the club.

  Still, the moment I will remember for the rest of my life happened just after the match. I was at the apartment, thirsty, hungry and exhausted. I had 120 minutes of clapping and yelling behind me, especially since we weren’t allowed to bring drums inside the stadium. And I had fried crispy chicken, salty French fries with ketchup and a bottle of Fanta in front of me. I dug in as if it was my last meal. At the peak of my hedonistic experience I took the lid of the plastic cup off and realized that the liquid inside of it was black. They gave me Coke instead of Fanta.

  My entire world crashed.

  “Ok, the situation is like this” – I started a monologue after a minute of shock – “you’re dying of thirst and you despise Coke. The nearest supermarket is a galaxy away. There is nothing interesting in the fridge. Is there any chance that just a for a moment you try to imagine that the black liquid in front of you is, in fact, the most appealing drink in the world and try to enjoy it? Huh?”

  I shushed the spoilt brat within me, closed my eyes, concentrated on the action, pulled the cup and took a sip.

  It worked.

  While I was chewing the chicken wing and drinking the soda I asked myself one thing: if I can make myself love something that I normally don’t like with the power of my will, what else can I change in the same way? Do I have to put everything I’ve learnt, everything I’ve experienced so far into question? That included the opinions I’d been building all those years – should I start all over again? Could I see life with different eyes, taste it with a different mouth, with a different being?

  That moment was the peak of my journey, and after that trip I didn’t want to travel with Dinamo anymore, but instead I wanted to look for other enlightening experiences, no matter that I might have to endure many banal experiences to find them.

  “Tom, my friend,” Mongoose interrupted me, “you can learn all sorts of things when you travel. Fuck school, fuck university: life is the best teacher you can ever have. Life is outside our borders: geographical, moral and traditional. When you travel, you’re forced to forget everything you’ve ever learnt, you’re forced to recognize the illusion created within you by society, family, school, church and tradition. When you travel, you’re completely free: there is no one to judge your actions, only you are the judge of your actions. That is the one thing you will find when travelling: the true you. You will find your answers once you accumulate enough life experience. You can read books, watch documentaries, have serious conversations with your friends in the smoky back room of The Jazz Club, but it won’t mean a thing, not until you head off and start learning by creating your own examples and making your own mistakes. Remember that.”

  Day 794.

  No matter how many times I told my Amsterdam story about Coke and Fanta, nobody seemed to understand it. They found it incredible that the most important thing from my first trip on my own, after a couple of days spent in a city like Amsterdam, after witnessing one of the biggest matches ever, was the simplest realization that I could easily change something I’d learnt.

  Because of this, I kept the most important story to myself. I was the only one who could perceive it in the right light.

  “About at the same time I started working at the juice bar I started hosting people via CouchSurfing...”

  “What is CouchSurfing?” Daniela kept on interrupting me.

  “CouchSurfing is an online community of people who host other people in their homes.”

  It would be impossible to describe in a single sentence my countless experiences with CS. How can one retell the years that I spent with people in my or their homes exchanging stories, jokes and deep conversation? How can one retell the nights spent hanging out together, sleepless nights, nights during which I connected with the people on the next couch?

  “So, basically, you offer someone a couch to spend the night on it?”

  “A couch, bed, place on the floor, depending on the space you have.”

  An image of a guy sleeping on my kitchen floor surrounded by twenty bottles of beer and a few empty pizza boxes flashed in front of my eyes. The good old days.

  “So, they get a place to stay and a meal?”

  “A place to stay, yes, and sometimes a meal, a drink or something else. That depends on the situation. The thing about CouchSurfing is not that it's free, it's about making new friends and meeting the culture you're about to explore from the perspective of a local. In that sense, I've been host to more than one hundred people. During the last year, year and a half I’ve started travelling myself. One day I went to Sofia...”

  Day 186.

  “Good day.” The postman entered the juice bar one sunny afternoon. “Does Hrvoje Šalković[3] live here?”

  We were cleaning up the mess left by the customers during the lunch break. Martina, Mongoose and I exchanged confused looks: we didn't get it. Only a few days ago I'd given them a copy of the book that this guy wrote. Nina had given it to me, couple of weeks earlier, and it made me wonder, already after the first chapter:

  In the deep space there is a tiny bluish planet called Earth. People, mammals that like to call themselves rational beings, live there. The planet Earth revolves stringently and strenuously around its axis. People revolve stringently and strenuously around their habits. They are born, they grow up, they grow old and they die never giving up on that routine. During that journey some important stuff happens to them: they love, make mistakes, chatter, get involved, lie, fornicate, write, repent, have guilty consciences, forget, are afraid. However, most of the people are just born; they grow up, grow old and die. Most of them take these events for granted, as something that should necessarily happen in that sequence and they do not even think about it. Most people live their lives just to get it over with without taking a moment to think about life.

  In the deep space there is a planet Earth and people live on it. Some of them have dreams. These people spend their lives searching endlessly for their personal piece of tranquillity. There is only a handful of these people and not rarely are they despised and lonely. They call them dreamers. They say to them that it's high time they grew up and stopped acting as if they were still children. So, most of the dreamers end up with their dreams crushed and they give up their search for tranquillity. Only the most strenuous among them never give up because deep down they know that no government, no law, no authority should stand between them and their dreams.

  I read the whole book in one fell swoop. So I started thinking about it. What would be my way to tranquillity?

  I was still thinking about it when the postman entered the bar and asked about the author of the book that made me think about the whole thing in the first place. A coincidence? I don't believe in coincidences.

  The postman informed me that this writer lived nearby so I decided to use that information as soon as my shift was over. I buzzed on his intercom.

  “Who's there?” I heard the voice.

  “Let's go grab a beer.”

  “Who is it?”

  “You don't know me, but I know you. I've read your book, I’ve come across your address by accident so I've decided to invite you to have a beer with me.”

  “So, just like that, you’ve decided to invite an unknown man to have a beer with you?”

  “I read your book, you’ve done some crazier things
than this.”

  “Hmm, that’s true.”

  “I need your help in finding tranquillity.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothing. We can talk about it over a beer.”

  “Look, I appreciate the invitation, but at the moment I'm not in the mood to have a beer with a stranger. Also, I have some problems at home, so...maybe some other time.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  I didn't find the author of my favourite book that nice anymore. As I saw it, he should've run down the stairs, burst into laughter, give me a hug, congratulated me on my courage and gone to get wasted with me.

  “If I ever happen to become a successful writer I will never reject an invitation for a beer,” I said to Martina and Mongoose the following day, after I told them about my failed intercom conversation. I sounded like a hurt teenage girl.

  “What could he possibly say to you that you don't already know?” Mongoose asked me while preparing a freshly squeezed orange juice. “You've read his book and you liked it. If you really think that you've found yourself in that book, do the same thing as its protagonist did. Just go. How many times have you told me that fucking story about the Coke and Fanta in Amsterdam? And you still don't seem to get the point. All that talk doesn't mean anything if you don't DO something. Don't go looking for excuses, advice or courage. You'll find it on your way, just like you've read in the book.”

  “How can I travel if I don't have any money?” – I started with the excuses – “it was easy to go to Amsterdam when I still had all that money from the stocks. Now, I can barely pay the rent and bills. Don't get me started on debt...”