Where to begin but the beginning? Yes, our names do rhyme. We met at a friend's bar. My dog was wearing a knit sweater and Wanja had a man-bun. These were both things we thought we weren’t into. He remembers the words, “we can make each other happy” come out of my mouth (I don’t). We spent our first date convincing one another of our independence and not to expect anything from one another. Wanja cooked us what I now know as his pasta "bololusion" (meatless) and I thought he might want to have a threesome with my roommate (he didn't). We both missed the many early signs of love, but somewhere around the fifth or sixth day of seeing each other, we caught on.
We met at the same spot the first few times we came together, in front of my mom's old high school, on a very specific bench. Setalište leads up to it. Wanja's bus from Blagaj (11, 12, or 13) would drop him off there and he'd wait for me while I very self-consciously wondered what I looked like or practiced calming myself so that I'd show up as very cool and calm and collected. The first time I saw him there, I remember he was writing in a small notebook and I remember thinking it was a beautiful thing, that he writes. We'd walk through the city and end up above it on a hill, behind the Serbian church and cemetery. We'd smoke weed, drink wine, and hold each other's hands so tightly. Wanja once said to me there, "would you like to hear a poem I wrote about you?" and my whole heart felt like it was covered in butterfly wings in flight. Dropping back into civilisation always felt like trying to integrate yourself into society while coming down from mushrooms--like we were now back in the world but this time, in a large pink bubble that everyone could see. We sat across the street from Musala, on a bench with two pitas and two cups of yogurt, watching the moon rise. The moon. A whole new perspective.
Wanja was visiting Bosnia for what should’ve been a three-month stay, and we met towards the end of it. His 'harbor' was in Hungary, and both of us agreed that sometime in the summer, we’d meet again and stay curious about the possibility of an "us." Then, COVID-19 happened—or, in other terms, life had other plans while we were busy making ours.
With border lockdowns and hourly regulation changes, Wanja wasn’t traveling, and with quarantine lockdowns, we weren’t separating. There we were in the zygote stage of getting to know one another and already came the question of whether or not we'd be moving in together. We chose the latter. Opting for a lockdown outside of four walls and computer screens, we spent March to May together in a borrowed tent at a local camping spot in a small and magickal town, Blagaj. It was the fast faster track to getting to know each other.
Once the swirling panic around us cooled down, we moved into my apartment in Mostar and then began to carve out ways to get back to Hungary together. For the first time in my privileged American citizenship existence, I was the one who wasn’t able to cross EU borders. But by time, Wanja was. Some sweet man working for the American Embassy in Budapest eventually told me I had the option of applying for special permission to enter Hungary through a police portal. In less than 24 hours, I was given the green light to enter. Life pushed forth, and fast.
We crossed the Hungarian border by foot—an act we weren't sure was even possible. Passing by a seemingly never-ending line of air-conditioned cars with both dogs on leash and two badminton rackets poking out of our travel bags, we luckily came across the happiest border guards we'd ever experienced. Both of us were slightly on edge because we knew that times were uncertain and who knows but—we trusted—and all passed. Once on the other side of the border, we sat down on the sidewalk and took out two crystal glasses and a bottle of homemade walnut liqueur we brought from Mostar and toasted to our arrival, all doubts dissipated. After a few ignored raised thumbs on the side of the road, we took a bus to a nearby city, had beers at a bar where the owner insisted on photographing us for his wife, slept outside on top of a parking garage, and took several trains and buses the next morning to get to Döröske. Arrival was ethereal. After spending the past 6 months hearing all about this place, I felt like a cocktail blend that was 2 parts anxiety and one part excitement. Could I make it in the countryside? Was I worthy of being here? Would I cause all of the plants in the garden to wilt with my ungreen thumb?
—-and that’s where this newsletter begins!
Comments