Here it goes then...and I'm still lost for words and thoughts of how to make any sense at all of the last 3 weeks.
It's a jumble,
it's a mess...and a hell of a mess at that.
The contrasts are stark and raw!!
Filthily rich next to tear-jerkingly poor.
Audi A8s next to packs of boney stray dogs/pigs/goats/cats/chooks/ horses/ old men and women scouring the local tip, right at the main roads' edge....not even a rusty fencing wire in between.
Fights over life-prolonging scraps at the top of the rubbish heap.
Whole families huddled, jam-packed on the back of horse-drawn carriage on canvassed tyres on their way into the next town, covered in filthy blankets full of holes....with a brandnew concrete+ glass Office building as a backdrop.
The crumbling grandeur of neo-gothic, ex-communist Government Palaces of 1100+ rooms, the rendering sliding off in 10x15m sheets overnight around the back-walls.
The cable-TV guy with all his gear (and monitor!) in the front basket of the old, rusted pushie with its squared and wobbling wheels, leisurely cutting through all oncoming traffic at the wrong side of the road....waving at a young mum going the same way pushing her pram.
The perfectly smooth singlelaner band of tar snaking its way across the bare, alpine mountainsides of the Dormitor National Park, the skyline choked with incongruously shaped Montenegrin mountain peaks and deep, sheer valleys....or the blind lefthander ending in a subsided road section you can hide a cement truck in (not a SINGLE warning sign!!)....or the patch of old roadwork spanning the whole lane mid-corner, marked off by some loose, concrete curbing stones 6" high, laid in a square on top of the remaining asphalt around the gravelly patch.
"Working girls" all dolled up and painted, spruiking for business along lonely country roads....
Wrap the above into a single 30 second snapshot...
....and multiply by 3 solid weeks.
Then try to make ANY sense of ANY of it...
Those...and many, many more....are coming your way in words and pics.
Balkans...don't forget the Essentials!
It's a jumble,
it's a mess...and a hell of a mess at that.
The contrasts are stark and raw!!
Filthily rich next to tear-jerkingly poor.
Audi A8s next to packs of boney stray dogs/pigs/goats/cats/chooks/ horses/ old men and women scouring the local tip, right at the main roads' edge....not even a rusty fencing wire in between.
Fights over life-prolonging scraps at the top of the rubbish heap.
Whole families huddled, jam-packed on the back of horse-drawn carriage on canvassed tyres on their way into the next town, covered in filthy blankets full of holes....with a brandnew concrete+ glass Office building as a backdrop.
The crumbling grandeur of neo-gothic, ex-communist Government Palaces of 1100+ rooms, the rendering sliding off in 10x15m sheets overnight around the back-walls.
The cable-TV guy with all his gear (and monitor!) in the front basket of the old, rusted pushie with its squared and wobbling wheels, leisurely cutting through all oncoming traffic at the wrong side of the road....waving at a young mum going the same way pushing her pram.
The perfectly smooth singlelaner band of tar snaking its way across the bare, alpine mountainsides of the Dormitor National Park, the skyline choked with incongruously shaped Montenegrin mountain peaks and deep, sheer valleys....or the blind lefthander ending in a subsided road section you can hide a cement truck in (not a SINGLE warning sign!!)....or the patch of old roadwork spanning the whole lane mid-corner, marked off by some loose, concrete curbing stones 6" high, laid in a square on top of the remaining asphalt around the gravelly patch.
"Working girls" all dolled up and painted, spruiking for business along lonely country roads....
Wrap the above into a single 30 second snapshot...
....and multiply by 3 solid weeks.
Then try to make ANY sense of ANY of it...
Those...and many, many more....are coming your way in words and pics.
Balkans...don't forget the Essentials!