Tuesday, 1st of September, 2020.
Cane drops me just nearby the Hospital where I will collect my Covid-19 PCR test result. It is positive or negative? I am so nervous. I have no symptoms at all but it is said that many people do not show any.
I am the first person to arrive (of course it is not even 7 o’clock in the morning and the results will start to be distribute at 9) but the spot where I am waiting is not the right one (even though it is the place where, yesterday, the nurse said I should go) so I move to the right place. I am still the first one. I am using my Che Guevara headband as a mask and a nice man who works there, at the entrance, gives me a “surgical” one. About 3 or 4 people give the workers our recovering papers. I am not the first one to get my result back, which afflicts me. Finally, a male nurse gives me my result: “It is negative, you are fine!” – he says. I almost cannot believe! I am so happy! Now I just to manage to cross Bosnia & Herzegovina in 1 or maximum 2 days and I will be fine.
Since I have to walk to my hitchhike spot, I am happy that is not too far. And I do not even check if it is the same one which Cane drop me at, last time I was in Bilje. It is not. I do not know why Google Maps always like to fuck me up! Anyway, it took some time but finally Jaro stops for me. He does not speak English at all but want to help. So he drives me to this toll gate, which honestly it is not a very good hitchhike spot, and there he calls a friend. The friend confirms what he is already trying to tell me: it is shorter and better to cross through Serbia than Bosnia. He writes down the travel time and make some drawing to make me understand. I already got it but I decide to keep following my plan so I tell him I cannot cross Serbia and will keep trying through Bosnia. I guess, for the first time, I should have listened the locals instead of keeping with my plans. But for the first time also I did not. Big mistake.
The next guy who stops for me is Tommy. Tommy it is a very charming man, who’s wife is a teacher, has 3 kids, sells cars and hitchhiked before. He loves to travel too so whenever he can, he takes his family for a trip. And nice ones! He drops me in Osijek, just at the place where, now I know, I can walk to the border. He try to give me some money, and when I refuse, he says: “It is not for food, it is for beer!” So I take it.
I walk to the border. I am a bit nervous but not worried a lot. I leave Croatia without them asking me any questions at all. I walk to the Bosnia border, quite a walk. I give my passport and papers to the officer. In a very bad mood he gives me my passport back and says: “Brazilians not allowed”. Or something like that. I try to talk to him, to explain that I read just a few days that I could, and just need the PCR test. I show him the PCR test and when I try to say that I am not coming from Brazil, he comes out of the cabin and start to be very aggressive, saying that I need to go back. I am shocked! Why is he acting like that? Why he cannot simply listen and talk to me in a normal, civil way?
I walk back a bit and try to reach another police officer who is coming. He listen to me and look at my papers and passport. But he keep asking for my Schengen Visa. I keep repeating that as a Brazilian, I do not need a Visa for Schengen. Of course that what he means is that I need to be Schengen (because just EU / Schengen people are being allowed to enter) but his English is poor so…
He goes back inside the cabin and the other officer, the angry guy who talked to me first, come back again. He keeps yelling at me and showing the direction of Croatia, saying I need to go back. I remain calm, trying to talk to him and show my documents. All of sudden, he takes out his handcuffs of his utility belt and threat to arrest me. I mean, that it is the obvious thing to think, right? Because since he does not speak English, I have to assume that is what he is saying. Oh, man, that breaks me down. I just walk back, saying that I did not mean to disrespect him (which probably he did not understand either) and take my way back to Croatia.
What a hell I am going to do now? I did not expect that.
At the Croatia border, a female officer talks to me. Trying to explain to her what happen, I cry a little bit. I do not know if it is because of that or what, but she is very kind and patient with me. She suggests that I take a bus to the South-West border with Bosnia and further with Montenegro. She said that the Bosnians up here in this area are too difficult to deal with it, but South there, they probably will let me in. She stamps my passport back and wishes me good luck.
I walk to the Mall and after washing my face and calming down, I get the email of the Brazilian Embassy in Bosnia. Another advice of the nice police officer from Croatia. I send them an email but for emergencies there is just a phone number. When I was coming to the Mall, I passed for a few houses and I see people there. I know by experience that, at their houses, Croatian people can be very welcome and friendly, so I decide to ask them for help.
I see a lady, walking her baby in the trolley, so I decide to try with her. She is very friendly and we talk for a while. After I explain everything to her, she invite me to come over her house and use her phone.
Ivanka is a lovely woman, who leaves in a very nice house with her husband and her 3 kids. She loves to be a mother, and in the opposite of most of her colleges, she has not gone back to work, so she can spend more time with her children. Ivanka is a very kind person and we talk for a while. She gets surprised with my adventure trip and ask for my blog so she can read more about it. She is the one who tells me that starting from today, the first of September, Bosnia changed the rules for entering the country. That is why that jerk officer said I was not allowed to enter. Since I just checked the rules a few days ago, I did not know. That is all he needed to say to me, explain that the rules had changed starting today. But he rather be a completely asshole. And believe that it has something to do with the language barrier. As we can see in the brilliant movie from Denis Villeneuve, Arrival, when it comes to languages and what you can or cannot comprehend of a foreigner (“alien”) language, people can get very aggressive. And I do think it all has to do with pride / shame.
When I call my Embassy, a friendly woman says I should write both embassies and try to explain that I am just crossing the county, like in transit, so they probably can do something, like issuing a note so I can cross. At the beginning I even believed on her, but then later I realized that it was a bit suspicious. So I search about Serbia and figure I can enter with the PCR test. I already knew that Kosovo is open and not asking for anything, so I make plans of how to cross through Serbia and Kosovo. I get directions for hitchhiking and say goodbye to Ivanka and the kids.
First I decide to check for buses and trains. Fuck it, I still have some money and I do not want to waste the 93€* I had paid in this fucking PCR test. But there is nothing at all going to Belgrade, so I go to my camping spot (it is too late to hitchhike) and tomorrow morning, hopeful very early, I have the whole day to enter, at least, Serbia. Their tolerance for the PCR test is the 48 hours.
I have to walk quiet a lot thought. I am exhausted and starving when I get to make the camping. The place is not so bad but the grass is quite high and it is all wet already because it rained a bit. I eat the pasta I had prepared and manage to sleep.
*How did I get that money? Well, call me bad, but after what Renata did to me, I decided not to pay her back for the screen of my computer she had lent me the money for. I was planning to do that with the money I owned looking after the cat. But one thing we have to let it clear: she was refusing to take the money back anyway. According to her, I owned that money in Habitat because I was working by myself at the beginning and over working many hours. And hell that is right! I was over working a lot at the beginning and even after, when the other girls came over. But I was doing to help her as a friend, and that is why I did not want to get any money from her, and I planned to pay her all back. When she turned out to not be a friend anymore, she was just a host who was asking me to work more than the agreement, so she paid for it.