...Then an old man walks in, he's tall, sports a fantastic moustache, he's wearing a jacket that looks a bit big on him, dust covered black trousers and a baseball cap. The owner tells him my story and he starts talking back to me in French. He explains he can talk Yugoslavian, Macedonian, French, Italian, German, Polish and a host of other languages I don't recognise. His only English phrase is “ Very Good, Very Very Good”. He starts to tell me the best way to my next destination. He catches me admiring a Zevesteva 750 car over the road. My new favourite Yugoslavian car. A bit like an old Fiat 500 but a bit bigger. This particular one has racing stripes painted on it and some numbers just to complete the racing look. It's seen better days but it still makes me smile. It just so happens to be the old man's. I ask him how much he wants for it. £150 he says. A Yugoslavian souvenir. The keys are in the ignition and he turns it over. Yugoslavian he says, very very good. It does sound ok actually. The numbers on the car are something to do with an aeroflot plane that came down but I can't quite make sense of that story. We go back into the shop and I apologise to the owner for taking his hospitality and then disappearing with the old man. The owner explains that the old man is his Father and I then notice the facial resemblance. The old man beckons me outside to talk about more Yugoslavian based hilarity and asks me if I would like to stay for dinner with him and Mika, pointing to the house over the road. Kafe, essen, schlaffen he says, Mika, pointing. Although it's a few hours away from finding camp I accept his offer and we disappear behind a garage into his garden. We climb some roughly finished concrete steps that lead to a platform above a flooded basement. We then have to descend into the garden by means of a rude wooden ladder made out of old pallets. The old man skirts down it like he's younger than me. I soon realise that Mika is his name. He lives here alone and I'm not sure if the wife is somewhere else or dead. I say alone but he does have some companions. Three mongrel dogs: Donna, the eldest and biggest, Bonnie, champion hunting & sniffing dog who will be my personal Policzja for the night and Zsuki the smallest. The garden hums a bit of dogs and cats. I didn't mention the cats did I? Later on, at one of the many feeding times I count 10! Kittens, old ones, young ones, mainly pure white but a ginger tom and a few smokey ones in there for good measure. Both dogs and cats seem to get treated with equal parts of harshness and love. One minute he is doting on them, the next he is clipping them round the ear. We sit down at a table outside and drink our beers and he disappears into a garage and returns with a briefcase. From the briefcase he produces various colour photos of him with some “glamourous” Yugoslavian lady or gent. Some of them are former Miss Yugoslavias, some of them singers, TV celebritys etc. He looks a lot younger, but still with grey hair. He says he's 39 in one, but I think he looks older. He certainly looks quite the Lothario though. Always with a brown leather briefcase in his hand and the celebrity usually looks more like the person who wants to be photographed, he just acts cool in all of them. Mika explains he was a TV producer when times were good back in the former Yugoslavian days. Some of the photos of the woman are verging on porn. There is just too much showing! I'm guessing this is 80s/90s period. He then goes on to show me his business cards and his metal stamp that used to accomapany his invoices. Then he gets out various flyers and ticket stubs of concerts and events he put on. Obviously for me and my background this is fascinating. He says he is retired now, but still helps out with the odd thing if it comes along. He has two mobile phones which he immediatley gives me the numbers to. Also rather hilariously he gives me his landline number, which in Serbian is called the Fiksu (Fixsee). Then he shows me some flyers and something to do with him and the church. Perhaps he arranged events at the church. He beckons me inside the garage to look at something on the wall and I see that this is actually his house. He has a single bed in the corner, a small wardrobe without many clothes, from which he offers me a suit jacket to keep warm at night, and a cooker, a fridge and a TV. The other room in the building houses a rude toilet made of concrete (not porcelain) and a large collection of cardborad boxes. Outside in the garden there are a few rotting apple trees, a pump where he pumps his water and an old Mercedes open back truck full of rubbsh with two of its what! That is if his way of life is anything to go by. Who knows, he could be loaded and choose to live like this. Either way, he seems very happy. Inside his room the cat and dog smell is quite overwhelming and when he suggests I sleep on a camp bed in here with him, I kindly decline and say I will be quite alright in my tent in the garden. My adventure level clearly has a long way to go. After a few more beers and crisps supplied by Mika making regular visits over the road to his son's shop, skirting up the ladder and holding onto a fence - which I fear will give way any minute - to help him up. It starts to get dark and some ingenious light bulb repairs are carried out by the old man. Although I can't know the full story as to why the son has a thrieving builders merchant and corner shop business over the road and his dad lives like this, I suspect that Mika thinks anything fancy is not worth it. I come to this conclusion after the story of the fridge. He has a fridge in his room but another outside. On top of said fridge are two cardboardboxes joined together with a small hole in them, with some bits of wood on top to hold the box down in the wind. The fridge broke, it turns out, and his son said he should just throw it away. Mika said rubbish it's got another 30 years in it yet and said he would repair it and get it working. He bet his son 200 euros he could do it. The bet was made and you guessed it, he got it working. I dont know if Beka, his son honoured the bet, but the fridge now works, not very well and that is why he uses it for the cats' and dogs' food. But most important are the boxes on top. When it gets dark he picks up all the kittens by the scruff of the neck and plops them in the box. The fridge gives off a bit of heat so it keeps the kittens warm at night. I hope you're smiling, I am. (I'm writing this sat in a field half way up a mountain and for the first time in nearly two months I have not heard a dog bark in over 8 hours...err where was I?) Oh Yeah...so the kittens go in in one box, the cats in another Bonnie gets put on a chain and pole outside my tent and Donna and Zsuki put in the toilet room behind a pallet. This in case bandits try to sneak in in the night and tempt the dogs with pieces of meat to keep them quiet. From inside the little room the dogs will sniff and hear the intruders first before they get in and wake Mika up if he has fallen asleep. He does not go to sleep when I do though. Every night he stays up hidden behind the garage until 4'oclock in the morning. He has a loaded gun, to which he shows me a bullet that he produces from his jacket pocket. His son's builders merchant has been raided by bandits, (Serbian mafia he reckons) and so now he keeps guard. When I ask him if he has had to shoot anybody he says just in the leg and then he calls the Police. So here I am taking in these incredible tales from this utterly compelling old man wondering quite what to maker of it all, I'm just about to go to bed and a voice calls out from the top of the ladder and Mika goes over to him in the dark. Then in English the voice says come here. I go over and try not to shine my head torch in the guys face. I meet Mika's grandson. He is 20 and off out clubbing tonight and invites me along. I decide, however, that this is probably not a good idea as I'm falling asleep already. Jovan the grandson then asks me if I'm hungry. Unfortunately I am as the promised dinner of crisps and bread has left my cycling person with room for more. He goes off and picks us up a Serbian burger of some description from a shop and delivers it back. When I ask him about grandad sitting out here with a gun, he replies oh yeah, every night. We were robbed. He asks If I'll be around in the morning to have breakfast with and says he will be back around 10. I say I shall try to stay. I wish Mika good night and thank him for all his hospitality and disappear into my tent, not quite able to comprehend all the stuff whirring around in my head. I hardly notice the rancid smell of cat piss.
I rustle around in my tent when I wake up, delibrately trying to sleep in so I can catch Jovan in the morning. He speaks good English so it would be nice to ask some more questions. From outside the tent comes a voice. Mein Feund. Meine Freund, I reply, very very good, and pop my head out of the tent see a cat half suspend from each of Mika's hands. Kafe? He asks, Ja Ja Zehr Gut, I reply. He beckons me into his room which is toasty warm, which is nice as the temperature outside is remarkably chilly. He closes the garage door and gets the coffee on. The TV is on the news channel and Mika gives an account of each politican that appears; Mafia, Money Money rubbing his hands, or good man, very good man. The weather forcast is for 25-28 degrees all over the Serbia to which he points and says sonny in a German twang. In front of the 2 bar fire keeping the us warm lay 5 big cats and a kittern hides behind it as it doesn't seem high enough up the pecking order to get a place in front. Another sits in an old jumper on top of the wardrobe. Coffee is Turkish style which I have now got used to. I have decided that my quality Italian mocha pot is now too small for my caffeine addiction and must try to find myself a long handled coffee saucepan on my travels. As I am a fairly recent convert to coffee I was interested to see how he made it. The water goes on the boil in a small long handled high saucepan, then when the water boils he takes it off the heat and adds a big spoon full of coffee. Then the pan goes on the heat again and when it's come to the boil he almost instantly takes it off, done. He then spoons out half of the froth from the top into each of our cups and pours the coffee in. I add an absurd amount of sugar to mine and 10 minutes later I feel high as a kite. It's the perfect solution to packing up the tent, and it takes the edge off the rancid piss smell outside. I likewise “pisch” in the corner of the garden as instructed, as the dogs are still in the toilet room, and all is well. Mika appaers as if by magic, shimmying down the ladder with four loaves of bread. One is for breakfast to go with the hot dogs and tomato ketchup, which happens to be a little guilty pleasure of mine back home, so I'm most delighted with this. Another loaf is for me to take with me for lunch along with a tin of sardines and ¾ of a big bottle of lemonade that we didn't finish earlier.
Although it looks like he lives in quite squalid conditions I have no problem accepting his offerings as he just goes over to the shop and gets whatever he wants when he wants.
When I pitched my tent the night before he was worried about the dirty ground or the cold night or both and disappeared into the cab of the old truck, reappearing with a smile under his big tash and a piece of silver backed something or other, I think you put it behind radiators to reflect the heat into the room. We put this on the ground under the tent. In the morning when I m packing up I pick this up and tell him zehr gut zehr gut. This was always going to be a mistake. Off he goes up the ladder and over to the builders merchants and comes back with a big sheet of a similar material only like bubble warp with a silver side. Insulation, he says in German or Serbain, I know what he means anyway. He cuts it to size for the tent and I roll it up with my tent. His son had told me yesterday that when I get to the mountains in Bulgaria it will be a lot colder, so this may well prove to come in very handy indeed. I have packed up as slow as I can but no show from Jovan. Mika has texted him a couple of times and keeps getting the reply of twenty minutes, but we both know what that means from a 20 year old who has been out clubbing the night before. At 11:30 I decide it's time to go and we go and take some photos outside the shop. Some of his friends are outside the shop having a beer or two and try to get me to join them, but I know where that will lead and with mountains ahead I decide to try get in proper shape for the climbs ahead. Sporting a new baseball cap, trousers and shirt today, the amazing crazy old man Mika waves me off telling me to come and stay whenever I want. Moustache twizzled to perfection and a big grin on his face. I hope I've entertained him a fraction of what he has entertained me.
