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Part I.
Once upon a time, a man named Oscar Wilde wrote a book that transcended all limits of time, space, and physicality to wind up in the mind of Cheesy Magenta. The book was called A Picture of Dorian Gray. In the book, there was a character named Lord Henry, who was by far the most intelligent fictional human being Cheesy had ever come across. Lord Henry said something, or Oscar Wilde wrote something, that Cheesy thought about often. It went something like this: a good artist puts all of his energy and creativity into his work, and as a result, has a personality that is totally empty and dull.
In Trieste Cheesy had met a couple of Germans hitchhiking from Central Europe to South Africa. The girl became a bit of a fascination to Cheesy. She was tall, blonde, broad, and silent. She ate a lot. She carried around a backpack that nearly doubled her size. She had rosy cheeks and straight white teeth. She reminded Cheesy of health and stability, so let's call her Stable Sally.
Stable Sally had gone on all sorts of fabulous adventures. Cheesy couldn't even remember half of them. The one that stood out was Stable Sally's month of hitchhiking alone in Mongolia. There were no roads in Mongolia and no cars. People got around on horse. Later on, in Zagreb, Cheesy would find out that there is also a beautiful culture of throat-singing in Mongolia. Stable Sally, a young blonde girl from a quiet German town, integrated herself into all of this without ever speaking a word of Mongolian (or whatever they speak there).
But the strangest thing, Cheesy thought, was how silent Stable Sally was. A true adventurer was supposed to be bubbly, reckless, and aloof. Like Steve Irwin, the crazy Australian crocodile-hunter. Stable Sally was, well, kind of boring. Where was all the adrenaline? Where were the strange creatures hiding in Sally's backpack? Where were the dirty teeth and crooked haircut? Then Cheesy thought of Oscar Wilde. Maybe Stable Sally had directed all of her inner insanity into her journeys, and had nothing left to perk up her personality. Maybe Stable Sally was the traveling analogy of a great artist.
Part II.
Cheesy most definitely did not feel at home in Serbia. Maybe that's why she liked it so much. After leaving Italy, everything had changed. She had begun to see all sorts of things, some of them more like Montreal and some of them much less. The biggest change was in the colours of Eastern Europe. She saw streets entirely covered in graffiti art; she saw orange churches, green palaces, and yellow houses; she saw pink platform shoes, pink coats, and pink hair (and YES! Cheesy desperately missed her pink hair too). Eastern Europe was all about people. History, politics, architecture, and nature were all secondary.
Cheesy's host was a typical-looking Serb. He had big, deep-set gray eyes like the tete-a-claque cartoons, and full pink lips. He had a wide jawline and a bristly beard. He was short and stalky. He ate fried meat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Cheesy hadn't seen him eat a single bite of fruit or vegetable. He was the worrying type. He was small and awkward, which sort of reassured Cheesy since she often felt that way herself, but sometimes she also felt awkward that she made him feel awkward. Awkward is contagious. And it's a really awkward word if you say it enough times.
Cheesy's host took her to his hometown of Novi Sad, a bit north of Belgrade. They were hit by a monstrous snowstorm and didn't get home until two days later, at 3 a.m., burnt out and hungover and grubby. But Novi Sad was gorgeous – half quaint and half commercial, like many Balkan cities. Zagreb was that way, too. There are zones of wide roads, blowing wind, and concrete. Then there are zones of blocky residential buildings, sometimes looking cramped and neglected. Finally there are the "pretty" zones with statues, markets, and cobblestone streets. Okay, so that makes three halves, but that's just how great Eastern Europe is.
Sometimes Cheesy was nostalgic for her kitchen back home. She had secret pangs of longing for broccoli, soy sauce, and bran muffins. She was holding up alright, although she couldn't stop her stomach from turning when her Belgrade host would wake her up to breakfasts of deep-fried fish burgers, sliced ham, fried sausages, and chicken wings. On the other hand, she had made a life-changing gastronomical discovery in Croatia and Serbia: rakija! It was usually translated as "brandy," but in Cheesy's opinion, rakija couldn't be equated to anything else. She especially loved the ones made with honey, called medica or medovača (pronounced "meditsa," "medovacha"). Her host in Zagreb had made a big pot of his own medica, made with lemon and cinnamon, and they had drunk it by the bottle-full. In Novi Sad Cheesy and her host went to rakija bar where they drank rakijas made from quince, raspberry, and walnuts. And it was dangerously cheap…
Cheesy was also working on her language skills. After finally buying a book about Serbian/Croatian, she had uttered her first whole sentence to a stranger in Serbian: "Ne govorim srpski," which of course means "I don't speak Serbian!" Also, she had met a guy at the fortress in Belgrade who spoke nothing but Serbian. They had managed to exchange phone numbers. Since then, the guy kept sending Cheesy text messages in Serbian, which Cheesy would frantically try to decode and then answer with the help of her book. Needless to say, misunderstandings were common… for example, he had asked her what time she would be coming back from Novi Sad and she replied that she hoped it would not rain (it snowed, anyway).
Part III.
In fact, Oscar Wilde wouldn't have been the only one to agree on the analogy between traveling and art. Cheesy's good old friend Albert Camus wrote that art was the ultimate existential hobby: the artist constantly creates in order to bring meaning and magic to life, although in the end his efforts are pointless. Similarly, every city brought something wonderful into Cheesy's life, which she would then have to leave behind. If Cheesy was going to dedicate her life to meeting and then abandoning great people, she was going to have to build a bit of a backbone. Or just go back again and again, trying to re-create the initial magic. But should she risk the disappointment? Should good things stay in the past?
Should good things stay in the past?
