A summer of fast friends, fake identities and flimsy frocks in the former Yugoslavia

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This was published 6 years ago

A summer of fast friends, fake identities and flimsy frocks in the former Yugoslavia

By Andrew Taylor
Updated

It took a week for my white lie to be exposed.

Happily, the Bosnian-Croat boy soldiers, whose chain smoking and experience of wartime atrocities during the break-up of Yugoslavia, had aged them beyond their teen years did not hold it against me later.

A fantasy land of lakes joined by waterfalls and ringed by hiking trails and forest, Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia had few tourists following the end of the Yugoslav Wars.

A fantasy land of lakes joined by waterfalls and ringed by hiking trails and forest, Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia had few tourists following the end of the Yugoslav Wars.Credit: iStock

But they sounded mightily angry when they stumbled upon the game of Hot Potato that I and a couple of fellow volunteers were playing with a hand grenade found by the side of a road.

Whether they thought poorly of our hand-eye coordination or our idiocy in tossing around an explosive device in an area that had been occupied by the Yugoslav army remains a mystery given my mastery of the Croatian language barely extended beyond da (yes) and hvala (thank you).

Who wouldn't exaggerate their Croatian ancestry to spend time among the beauty of Plitvice Lakes?

Who wouldn't exaggerate their Croatian ancestry to spend time among the beauty of Plitvice Lakes?Credit: Fairfax Media

But then I may have exaggerated my Croatian ancestry.

I may also have overstated my proficiency in German and ability to pull weeds to land a volunteer gig, with food, accommodation and excursions provided, in one of the loveliest parts of Europe – Plitvice Lakes National Park – that had been off-limits to visitors during the wars in the former Yugoslavia.

But I excelled during those three idyllic weeks in the summer of 1996 in drinking the Balkan paint stripper otherwise known as rakia and joining in the hedonism of a country that had escaped the worst of the atrocities that devastated other parts of the former Yugoslavia.

A university exchange student in Sweden, I had three-months of holidays and no money to enjoy the European summer when I discovered an advertisement inviting young people to the newly independent Croatia and offer their labour to clean up the national park.

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It had only been 12 months since Yugoslav soldiers had deserted the area, leaving behind a treasure trove of poorly sewn army fatigues that provided Christmas gifts that year.

My services were accepted along with a couple of dozen other teenagers whose families had escaped Tito's dictatorship for Britain, Canada, the United States and Australia.

No doubt many were surprised to find a Croatian Taylor, but were too polite to point out my suspect genealogy.

A fantasy land of lakes joined by waterfalls and ringed by hiking trails and forest, the national park's beauty went largely unnoticed by tourists in 1996, leaving us free to explore the park and make excursions to Zagreb and the coastal city of Rijeka.

Our days followed a familiar pattern. We swept and weeded in the morning before the sun reached its intense heat. Long lunches of unidentified meat in grey gravy with boiled potatoes were followed by languid afternoons spent exploring the park and swimming before drinking rocket fuel late into the evening.

One memorable evening we crossed into Bosnia-Herzegovina to celebrate the end of the Croatian War of Independence.

In a picturesque village square, lit up with lanterns and filled with bonhomie, we drank, sung and watched as locals fired machine guns into the air.

We celebrated our last night together in fancy dress – flimsy frocks with spaghetti straps and hemlines too short to hide unshaven legs – and inches of makeup that clung to our faces like plaster to a brick wall.

It was a fitting end to summer even if I I looked more like Chewbacca than a Croatian beauty.

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