Every year tens of thousands of poeple descend on Guca, about 120km south of Belgrade, for a Balkan brass band competition and festival
The origins of Balkan brass bands is locals getting their hands on decommissioned military brass instruments. Brass instruments having the advantage of being more hard wearing, easier to keep in tune and much louder than traditional local instruments.
The three day festival includes formal concerts, parades and the competition itself. But all day and all night the bands also tour the streets of the town playing for money at the cafes and in the streets
The music aims for the euphoric bordering on the ecstatic with the big drum and the euphonium providing a revved up oompah base for the trumpets to skitter, quivver and blast all over
At night the small central grid of village streets can get chaotic with bands wondering about through the drunken throng until the early hours.
Can get wild but the euphoric nature of the music stops anything turning aggressive
One moment that sticks with me (not the one pictured - though it has similarities) is in the you tube video hyperlinked later. There's a lot of heavy looking guys around the festival - maybe gangsters - maybe not. Taking it all in one night and two big middle age heavy guys pay for a band to play around them in the street. It's all going slow motion for them with the music and the beer. They sit in the street, stripped to the waist, entirely happy, moving like aimiable bears. Pouring beers over each others heads as the sonic waves break and peak over them. Like it couldn't get better than right here, right now. The girlfriend of one of them looks embarassed and then decides not to show it. The fat guys hug in the centre of a circle of trumpeteers and on-lookers, before slowly setting off unsteadily down the street leading the band and spectators behind them. Later I see one of them semi-naked - in a state of bliss - on the top of a 4x4 as it lurches slowly down the street. Conducting the crowd and the band.
When things really get going the bands crowd round the table that's paying for them - often playing right into their ears. To get another hit of it the punters slap notes on to the sweaty foreheads of the musicians, or push the notes into the instruments
The footage I took is at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSZ0AqnWkw0
After a while you get a feel of the different styles of music - the southern Serbian Romany style can border on Miles Davies-style Jazz. The white Serbian style is more crowd pleasingly straight forward
Dancing on the tables
Sleeping it off the following morning
A panoramic shot of Guca from the hill above the village
Not a good place to be a vegetarian - in fact near to impossible. The Serbians like their beer, their cigerettes and their meat! This was a common site at Guca, as well as great frothing cauldrons of meat
Not surprisingly there was some nationalist feeling around the edges of the festival. As well as war criminal t-shirts on sale - although not many goons were wearing them fortunately.
Stayed in the house of local people where our friendly and hospitable hosts made sure the local Raika (cherry brandy) was available with all meals including the home cooked and extensive breakfasts. This is the view from the house.
And this is the house
Went with an organised tour spun off from Songlines magazine which made things a lot easier. If you wanted to do Guca for less it would be possible to do the house stay thing I think by booking via a Serbian travel agents. But doing it with Songlines took any hassle out of it and the tour was well organised and the people on the trip were good company. In retrospect I think if I'd had more time to plan, and been more confident of what to expect, I would have re-structured the trip so that instead of going back to Belgrade after Gucu I would have gone to Zlatibor for the National Park (think it would be bus-able with out too much trouble). Then gone from there by bus to Bosnia for Sarajevo and then back to Belgrade by rail for rest of the trip North to Budapest. Would have been good to have a Bosnian dimension to the trip as well as the Serbian. But there you go. Trip I did was still good and going with Songlines got the whole thing started right.
No trumpet festival is complete without a spin off beauty contest. Here are some of the competitors for the title of Miss Guca.
One of the many tasks the competitors had to perform was to dance up a storm to a random tune belted out by the brass band on the left. The middle aged male judges are settling in for a long arduous afternoon
Also part of the event was a recreation of a wedding in the folk style
And parades...
er, a man with a cockerill on his head. I just take the photographs!
Part of the wedding ceremony singalong
Call them now - this was a good band.
We never did find out what this was all about - a sign near a roadside cafe on the road back to Belgrade
Back in Belgrade the Songlines tour came to and end and the tour group broke up. From then on I solo. I liked Belgrade. Not a pretty place - not a host of must-see sites (and quite a few of them closed for restoration) but a lived in, energetic place. Balkan crossroads. The monumental but unlovable Cathedral is in the backdrop - the black tower in the foreground took a NATO missile attack in its stride
A dilapidated paddle steamer on the River Sava. Not all the moored boats are like this. Belgrade's river frontage is celebrated for its strips of bars, restaurants and cafes on boats and on the riverbank. But where's the fun in taking pictures of those!
A Tatra Tram crosses the Sava
As a Balkan melting pot that's passed from empire to empire - and was bombed three times in the Twentieth Century - Belgrade's architecture is a bracing mish mash.
In my day of wandering around Belgrade the best place I visited was the Nikola Tesla museum. Born of Serbian parents, he was a relentless inventor and pioneer in all things electric. He invented the neon light tube and the radio for example. His inventions were a mix of things that seemed fantastic at the time and have since become integral to modern life - and the science that were never realised other than through its infiltration into the collective imagination. For example he got so far as building a tower which would have been part of a system for sending information and power for free through electro magnetic waves through the earth - a combined internet and wire-free electric grid. In the 30s he also advocated his particle ray weapon ideas as defensive shields to make War impossible. The fascination was in the fuzzy edges between the sparking coils of his experiments that ultimately became part of everyday tech and those inventions which didn't come off but leaked out in the form of science fiction
One half of the bombed out former Yugoslavian military headquarters. The only major building (I think) in Belgrade not restored or replaced since the NATO bombings
The other half of the Yugoslavian MoD which must have been linked by a walkway across the main road to its sister building. This half of the building was taken out by a separate missile.
Strange to see the effects of precision bombing in a modern European city. While life goes on around it and the surrounding buildings ignore it - untouched
Putin is watching you. What do I know but there's a sense in which some of Serbia is flirting with allying itself with Putin's Slavic bloc. But at the same time the EU has free movement and the economic advantages of EU citizenship as a more powerful incentive. Sense too that the young's patience with the burdens of Balkan identify politics snapped. Why cling to the past when an amnesiac consumer capitalism is waiting - no questions asked. What you do come across a lot though is a weary frustration with frozen attitudes abroad to Serbia that assume the country's mentality and safety is much as it was assumed to be during the conflict.
Serbian railways are afflicted by a terrible malaise which is typical of a railway in deep trouble. Filthy trains that take an age to stagger to their destination. Staff for whom contempt for the passenger is a practised artform. Sketchy schedules but ludicrous overstaffing. For example on the main line from Belgrade to Budapest two wheeltappers emerge at every major intermediate station to tap the wheels to make sure they are ok. This is job that disappeared years ago on most railway systems - but even if was still considered necessary - two wheeltappers at every station?! The only reason why anyone would use the local trains is the fares - which are a quarter of the far more efficient coach alternative. Of course I didn't heed the guidebooks as I'm predisposed to rail anyway so I took the local two carriage, loco hauled train from Belgrade to Uzice for the bus to Zlatibor. Though having said all of that the outward journey was an enjoyable if protracted potter through the Serbian countryside.
Nature draws a crowd Zlatibor is a ski resort enjoying its Summer peak as Serbian families descend on mass. The plus side is plenty of facilities though the lack of any walking maps or guides was frustrating. That's what people should be here for isn't it? But follow the crowds beyond their natural range (5 minutes from a tea stall or car park) and...
...they largely disappear and I found a track to the summit of that modest mountain in the background for a panoramic view of the attractive rolling hills that make up the national park
Not so far away is the other draw in these parts which is the Sargan 8 railway and the village of Drvengrad. There were no local buses from Zlatibor and the taxi drivers only offer was a 30 euro trip with 3 hours at the destination. I defied them and eventually came up with a cunning manoeuvre involving relocating to the nearest major town/rail hub at Uzice and then doing a daytrip on the local bus the next day. One nil to me over the taxi drivers! Anyway the Sargan 8 railway is the most spectacular surviving fragment of a narrow gauge main line linking Belgrade with Sarajevo and beyond. The mountains were a major obstacle so the eventual solution was to spiral the railway through them - as can be seen here.
Because of all the tunnels and spirals the passenger is constantly disconcerted to see views and perspectives reappear confusingly and unpredicatably. It's possible to photo the train at one station then go up a short steep path to a halt at a high level and photo it again going past you in the same direction about ten minutes later. Looks like quite a bit of post-war reconstruction cash has gone into this project given the high spec station facilities.
Feels like a typical Austro-Hungarian Empire eccentricity and doomed conceit to be building narrow gauge mainlines with ornate and charming spirals between major population centres well into the Twentieth Century. At one time you could travel 700km by Narrow Gauge from Belgrade all the way to the Adriatic Coast. There's more at http://www.penmorfa.com/JZ/intro.html
Another sunny day bleaches out the light on this picture. It was well into the 80s on most days on this trip.
Peugeot car/train
Close to the Sargan 8 station at Mokra Gora is the village of Drvengrad built by the Balkan filmaker Emir Kusturica. From a distance it looks like a traditional village but up close there are numerous quirks
Wouldn't be a bad place to stay - a number of nice vegetarian friendly cafes and restuarants
From Mokra Gora got the bus back to Uzice. Went on a photographic spree and fugue. One of the locomotives from the narrow gauge system (which was only fully replaced following the completion of a standard gauge main line in the seventies) is marooned outside the former narrow gauge station (now a bar) and hemmed in by a petrol station
Detail of Uzice fire station
Got infatuted with Hotel Zlatibor while I was there. Like some moonshot rocket frozen in a moment of launch pad exuberance and then struck in concrete.
Light had already faded badly so had to retrospectively get busy with photoshop substitute to try to do it any kind of justice. I love all the detail on the building - the wings, hoppers, window inlays. But none of it fussy or showy. All of it playing off, without detracting from, the power of the central block.
Ziggurat detail of the Hotel Zlatibor
Space age Yugoslavia - basically optimistic. Frozen at lift off. One day all hotels would have been like this.
I love this hotel
'Commies love concrete' P J O'Rourke
Had a late arrival and early start at Hotel Zlatibor - so unfortunately I didn't get a chance to explore the place properly or get more daytime shots.
Once inside it's all striated concrete interiors and tubular fittings. Because its a relatively narrow tower - rather than a fat stub like many modern hotels - you get more windows on more sides. Making you feel more like a bird on the side of a cliff face. Especially when the barriers to prevent you from falling out of the full length windows are less than waist height! Not helped by the fact that I'd been listening to a 'This American Life' podcast about sleep disorders earlier in the evening - including about someone who threw themselves out of a hotel window. I never sleepwalk but I was still paranoid that I would tonight - tried not to think about it and jammed my bags up against the window just in case!
Shame the original radio(?) isn't there in this Commie glamour bedside table fixture. Orange phone looks the part though
Set the alarm for shortly after 4am as I had a cunning move to get the 05.00 to Belgrade to give me a connection for 'Romantica' steam hauled excursion service to just short of Novi Sad (my next destination). However, was thwarted by godawful Serbian railways. Arrived at the booking office at Uzisce station (two sleeping staff at the booking office windows of course) who said I couldn't get on the 0500 Belgrade train as it was sleeping cars only. Why advertise it as a departure then? And why have two booking office staff there as well as platform staff? This meant I had to wait for the six something train - which turned out to be the dreaded local service - an electric unit with a grim interior which finally crawled into Belgrade well after the Romantica had left and just as the am 'fast train' to Novi Sad was pulling out. Bought a ticket for the next train to Novi Sad - but naturally enough this ran every day but Saturday. At which point I gave up and got the coach! Ran every ten mins - efficient, friendly
Novi Sad has a laid back city centre with acres of pavement cafes which is famous for hosting the Exit music festival. The festival itself takes place in the massive Petrovaradin fortress which lies on the opposite bank of the Danube to the city itself
Solitary travel perhaps makes you more subject to obsessions and increases your sensitivity to place. I developed a mild obsession with the fate of the bridges over the Danube - all three of which are replacements for those which were destroyed by NATO air strikes only ten years ago. And how now you wouldn't know what had happened just by looking at the city. Ten years ago hyperinflation and bombing and now young and old promanading down the cafe'd streets in standard issue European casual wear. Everywhere as peaceful, crime-free and complacent as anywhere else.
At the time I supported the NATO action as it seemed like the only way to stop Milosovic from repeating the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo that he had already carried out in other parts of the former Yugoslavia. What's the point in having a miliary if you can't use it to stop genocidal bullies acting out their fantasies right in front of you? But harder to say when you are walking across a bridge in a civilsed modern city. The idea of NATO bombing bridges and oil refineries in a modern european city seemed surreal at the time and it does here.
Memorial to Oleg M Nasov who was killed on the Varadin Bridge age 29. I was playing Neil Young's 1971 Massey Hall concert on the IPOD a lot - and Ohio lyrics kept rolling around my head Gotta get down to it Soldiers are cutting us down Should have been done long ago. What if you knew her And found her dead on the ground How can you run when you know?
Near to the memorial plaque for Oleg Nasov is another statue. Seemingly positioned as an ironic comment on the follies of war. Infact a tribute to a locally famous 'tamburitza' (the instrument he is holding) musician and band leader
The juxtoposition of the plaque and the statue
Next station down the line is Subotica - a wholly charming town on the endless Pannonian Plain. This is the water fountain in the station carpark. Typical of a town which in the early years of the twentieth century become intoxicated with art nouveau (or 'secessionist' as its known in the ex Austro Hungarian empire)
Detail from a former Bank on the art nouveau main street which leads from the station to what must be one of the world's least pompous and most extraordinary town halls
Detail from the frontage of the library
The fabulous town hall. There's a daily tour inside to the spectacular council chamber and up the tower. Everyone is smiling on the tour - it's a building that makes people smile.
Detail from the Town Hall foyer. Subotica is a border town now (very close to the Hungarian border) and it has a substantial Hungarian population. It's always been prey to the wider maneuvering of empires - swapping ownership numerous times.
The Town Hall only took two years to build and two years to decorate. There's a sense that in the first years of the twentieth century the town was swept up in some kind of muicipal euphoria where every florid architectural excess was a spur for more. A suddenly flowering oasis from the horrors of history past and yet to come.
Detail from the Council Chamber
Detail from the Town Hall roof
The second most celebrated building in Subotica after the town hall is the Raichle Palace (Palace is equivalent to Villa) - a family home near the station - and now an art gallery with a sprawling cafe bar in the back yard. There's a touch of the organic and the Gaudi about it Subotica is a very easy town to spend time in - off the beaten track, relaxed and with its own lake resort (with equally outlandish and elegent architecture) a short bus ride away at Palic
Frontage of the Raichle Palace
It's always a mistake for a town to get rid of its trams. No more so than in Subotica where trams rattling down the art nouveu streets and out to the lake would have been the icing on a particularly sumptuous cake. A couple of the trams survive as shells for local businesses and a reminder of what was
The Synagogue was built in the the same exuberant and exotic style
But the Nazi's diabolic plan to empty the telephone book of Jewish names was as successful here as it was across many such towns and cities across Europe. The Subotica guide puts the current Jewish population at just 89. However, the Synagogue is slowly being restored.
One of the books I was reading on the trip was W G Sebald's Austerlitz - a man who was sent as a Jewish child refugee from Checkoslovakia to Wales and who suppresses until late in life all his memories of his childhood and his family in Prague. And when he cracks, following a nervous breakdown, and the memories come, back he starts to excavate his past and to try to trace what happened to his parents. There's a sense from the book of the way in which the dimensions of the crime that was committed are too enormous to hold in the mind. The way that it stains both the present and the future. And also of the necessity of the excavation. The restoration of detail.
An apocolyptic crack down the front of the Cathedral. It's been there since the end of the 19th Century.
I trecked out to the graveyard to find this gravestone which was pictured in the townguide. The grave of a musician called Ferenc Gaal
When you die who wouldn't want to be buried beneath such an angel?
I like the way in which the feet look so natural like the angel has just alighted onto the pedestal.
From Subotica there is a train to Moscow that should have got me to Budapest with three hours to spare to get my flight back to Manchester. However, I didn't trust Serbian Railways to get the train to Budapest in time so despite the disgust of the booking office staff I took a local train which went across the border to Szeged where there were a number of expresses to Budapest.
The one carriage Hungarian train tottered across the fields to the Border at a comic pace - you could have overtaken it on a bicycle. As the border came nearer I was approached a number of times by women trying to sell me spirits and cigarettes. However, a passenger who spoke English explained that they didn't want to sell me the spirits and fags, they wanted to pay me a small fee and for me to take them as part of my allowance through customs. No chance of that so eventually the women started unscrewing parts of the train's interior in order to hide the contraband within the vehicle. Some of it also appeared to disappear into the driver's cab. It was all light hearted, small time stuff rather than some kind of aggressive criminal gang enterprise. The border guards made a show of checking the train - but really everyone must know whats going on. As soon as we were in Hungary the train sped up and we were back on a real railway network again!
