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  1. The People who Populate our Travels: Notes from the Field Thursday, November 05, 2009

    Josh McManus, CreateHere’s Co-founder and Creative Strategist, recently returned from a 25-day tour of seven European cities through the Marshall Memorial Fellowship. With two feet on American soil, Josh sends us this dispatch about a far away place from recent memory: Belgrade, Serbia.

    The first chill of fall was in the air as I awoke in Serbia. Having arrived late the previous afternoon, my colleagues and I were still travel-warn and bleary-eyed. Filip, our host, had made the most of our time so far, proving he was more organized and efficient than the previous two coordinators. As a result, I was feeling more and more comfortable with Eastern Europe, a place I came to rife with preconceived notions and anxieties. On this day, Filip would be joined by a support staff of three, including a tour guide, driver and host. Their stories warrant retelling here.

    Chirra was our tour guide.

    By all descriptions, he was a normal, middle aged guy, with dark hair and round features. His English was fantastic, and to say his knowledge of the nuances and layers of Serbian history was impressive would be a vast understatement.

    Chirra made his living as a tour guide, saying his lifestyle offered him the opportunity to save money and travel in the off-season. That alone would have been enough to place Chirra high on my list of “mad props.” But he was very modest: the entire trip might have passed without me know more of him had it not been for a conversation we had over lunch, conveniently held in a fortress some 2,000 years old. In that discussion, Chirra told me how he had been part of student demonstrations during the Milosevic regime. He would regularly leave school with a group of classmates in the months leading to the overthrow, and during these organized demonstrations, he would take commands from a powerful dissenting structure. Chirra was on the ground for 89 days in Belgrade, during which NATO bombing came in regular intervals for the purpose of infrastructure lockdown and psychological combat, often during periods of calm, in the middle of the night. In fact, he was part of the group that stormed the federal government building just as the regime fell.

    Images of this same dissenting group were seen around the world, and I distinctly remember being in my living room for that epic moment in Chirra’s life, watching, not knowing I would eventually meet this man and that history would become real, visceral in fact, in that conversation.

    But he never mentioned it until I asked.  I’m sure that he could have made bigger tips from foreign tourists wanting to vicariously experience the horror and strife of violent transitions.  He spoke of this time in his life as a part of him that had come and gone, and I was honored that he shared.  What’s more, I was humbled to stare a man in the face and realize how privileged my life had been and how but for a place of birth, his story could have been my own.

    Dragon was our driver.

    Dragon didn’t speak much English, though I could tell from his eyes that he understood much more than he let on. Flat-footed, he stared me in the eye: making him about 6’4”. He had the square jaw and menacing stature of the communist soldiers in movies from my childhood. And yet all this was in opposition with a gentle spirit that brought me pause at the instant my mind raced to prejudge.

    I would learn that Dragon had once been a prize-winning boxer, a fact that his broad shoulders and long arms confirmed. He was a fan of Serbian brass music, which fascinated me on my visit, especially in the blue grass tones I heard, or wanted to hear, underneath. The music is a blend of raw metal sounds and rhythms, sounds that have drifted across generations.

    What I’ll always remember was how Dragon watched over us. It was as if he felt the burden of all future Trans-Atlantic relations on his shoulders, and accordingly, he watched us as a shepherd does his flock. He knew we were in a place that was strange and he had lived to see the cruelties that we had only heard of, and that position left him with a great deal of responsibility. He lectured cab drivers that took us to individual appointments with a giant, shaking fist. I can only imagine what he told them, but I know a few things: we were cordially delivered, our drivers had turned ashen-faced, and we didn’t have to pay for our lifts.

    On the final night of our visit, we convinced Dragon to join us at our going away dinner.  He sat at the head of the table and watched us in fellowship and revelry as if we were his own.

    Chirra and the Dragon led us to Jeremiah.  

    Jeremiah was of average build, in above-average health for a man in his sixties. The shock of white hair around his head gave way to a neatly coiffed beard, à la Abraham Lincoln. We first met him on a tour of his labor of love, the Museum of Bread. Jeremiah’s talents were many, but it seemed that his paintings of traditional Serbian landscapes and scenes had gained him international notoriety and resources to preserve traditions and artifacts through his museum.

    The wonderfully hand-crafted structure was all built by Jeremiah, and served as a display place for hundreds of artifacts used in the collection and processing of wheat and the baking of bread. The entire collection was amazing, but I was most drawn to and original McCormick and Co. reaper that worked with mule assistance. Jeremiah had also gone to great lengths to preserve the tradition of bread-making, beyond just the tools that make production possible. His artwork and pottery showed various examples of how bread was used for the celebrations and sorrows of all major life events, as well as explored the spiritual contexts for bread, and Jeremiah was especially interested in how bread related to the body of Christ.

    What was more striking, however, was Jeremiah’s character, which drove his admirable vision. He brimmed with energy and ended our tour telling us stories about everything from plane crashes to beautiful women. We laughed ourselves to tears, and washed down his tales with homemade liquor. It was an experience in grace, and an unforgettable one.

    As I think about these three characters, and the many more that I met and traveled with across Europe, I realize that the landscapes and cathedrals of my journey are blending together in my mind. Now, I’m left with people, and happily so: a journey of mere images and artifacts would have been worthless. What left a mark on my soul? The small moments of connection with other individuals. These moments serve as subtle reminders that our paths are all different, and that we all have a story (or two) to share.

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