The Hills of Western Serbia

The far west of Serbia is a glistening bluegreen zone of rolling wooded hills that seems to defy the very idea of borders. Not so very long ago this region stood at the geographical centre of what was then Yugoslavia — the pastoral heartland of a nation blessed with inventive, passionate people, ample natural resources and, for those of an optimistic viewpoint, an ever-bright future. This was the region that in the fifteenth century battled hard against Ottoman control before it finally submitted to Turkish subjugation. Five hundred years later it was at the heart of the struggle against Fascism during the Second World War.

The serpentine River Drina circumscribes the region’s western border and marks the political boundary between the republics of Bosnia- Herzegovina and Serbia. But the cultural frontier is not quite as clear-cut as might be imagined: the part of Bosnia-Herzegovina immediately west of the Drina is the Bosnian ‘entity’ called Republika Srpska, where Serbian dialect rather than Bosnian is spoken, signs are in Cyrillic, Serbian currency is welcome in the shops and you might be hard pressed to find many supporters of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s national football team. Even the nightingales that warble in the bushes on both sides of the river do so with a distinct Serbian accent. Cultural boundaries are fluid even where political frontiers are not, and this region feels more like the deep heart of an ancient land rather than the border hinterland of two separate republics.

West Serbia is a largely rural region that has its fair share of the visual clichés associated with old-world Balkans: wooden houses with steeppitched roofs, fruit-laden orchards, haystacks in meadows, tightly clustered villages next to fast flowing rivers. The sole exception to this bucolic charm is Uzice, the region’s only city, which possesses a pragmatic, workaday feel about it and is as close as it gets to a concrete jungle in these parts. Indeed Užice (formerly known as Titovo Užice in honour of the Partisan leader), was for a brief beleaguered time — an embattled 76 days — a defiantly independent republic in the centre of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia.

The city is often claimed to be the ‘Serbian Hong Kong’ but this is quite a stretch of the imagination, if not plain hyperbole. True, Uzice has more than a few high-rise blocks that seen from the right angle might give an impression of cheek-by-jowl urbanism but, if truth be told, the city is more reminiscent of a middle-sized urban centre in the north of England. Uzice was once one of Yugoslavia’s most prosperous industrial cities and an unglamorous, hard-working atmosphere has prevailed into the years of Serbia’s independence. Although far from beautiful — its river, the Đetinje, reduced to little more than a drab concrete culvert that winds unceremoniously through the centre — the city’s setting is undoubtedly attractive. Despite a preponderance of high-rises, there is an open fresh feel about Užice that keeps it rooted to the bosky landscape of hills and valleys that surrounds it.

The most iconic of the highrise buildings that spike the sky in the city centre is the Hotel Zlatibor. The hotel, erected during an inspired late period of brutalist Yugoslavian architecture in the early 1980s, brings to mind a squat space rocket built out of recycled car parks. Locals refer to the building as Sivonja (‘grey ox’) and this also makes sense when I approach it for a closer look. The hotel doesn’t really look open for business as most of the lobby lights are switched off, but I spot a shadowy figure lurking within behind the reception desk. Soon I hold the keys to a room on the partially refurbished 17th floor from where the view over the city is quite dizzying.

Seen from above, the city’s central square appears windswept and over-large. It is as if something is missing. And there is. Back in the days when the city went under the name of Titovo Užice (Tito’s Užice), Partisan Square was dominated by a five-metre-high statue of the erstwhile Yugoslav leader. It was the largest in the country. But in 1991, as a post-Tito Yugoslavia started to slide into civil war, the statue was seen as something that pandered to the past and so was subsequently removed — the prefix Titovo followed a year later. Since then the statue has been loitering unceremoniously behind a wall at the city’s National Museum just east of the centre.

A view of history

The museum is a low-key affair and it takes a while to find anyone who can sell me a ticket and let me in. Someone is eventually found with the appropriate keys and an iron gate is unlocked in the cliff wall behind the main museum building. This leads to a pair of deep underground chambers, one of which has been repurposed as a lapidarium for Roman artefacts found in the region. The other has oddments of machinery scattered about and grainy black-and-white photographs of Second World War munitions workers in outsized flat caps who pose heroically for the camera. This was where the short-lived Užička Republike (Republic of Užice) manufactured arms and ammunition to combat the might of the Axis forces that more or less surrounded the territory in the latter part of 1941.

A wall plaque stoically lists everything which was manufactured here during the 76 days of the independent republic, an unglamorous inventory of modern warfare: 2,700,000 rifle bullets, 30,000 hand grenades, 300 ‘trombone bomb carriers’ … the list goes on. Elsewhere, gun barrels and other small arms components have been fashioned into pieces of wall sculpture — the symbolism is all too obvious.

Outside, next to the reinforced cliff that holds the tunnels, stands the Tito statue that formerly graced the city’s central square. A handful of cellophanewrapped bouquets swaddle the leader’s feet, their blooms now long wilted. The statue depicts Tito at his most sombre, wearing a grave facial expression and clad in a greatcoat that resembles armour plating. Once a fitting monument for an embattled city that fought bravely against all the odds, now it is hidden away as if an embarrassment, a manifestation of a modern republic looking to the future, turning its back on the past.

Taking the train

For a more sanctioned version of the Serbian (and Yugoslav) past it is necessary to travel out of the city, west towards the frontier with Bosnia and Herzegovina where villages like Kremna (Кремна) paint a very different picture of old-fashioned rusticity. Further west still, close to the border, is the attractive village of Mokra Gora (Мокра Гора) set in a deep valley beneath pineclad hills. The village is probably best known as the terminus for the Šargan Eight railway, a quirky and intriguing line that connects Mokra Gora with neighbouring Šargan Vitasi (Шарган Витаси) by means of a sharply twisting track that frequently changes direction to gain height — the ‘eight’ relates to the shape described by the track when seen from below.

Mokra Gora station is the western terminus of the Šargan Eight Railway (photo © Laurence Mitchell).

Buying tickets for the railway at Mokra Gora station I make the acquaintance of Angela, a Bosnian Serb who has been living in South Africa for the past four decades. When she was last here, Tito was still at the helm and there were no borders between the constituent Yugoslav republics. Now, she tells me with only a hint of pathos, Mandela has replaced Tito as the father figure in her life.

A large school group has arrived before us and snaffled all the available seats, and so the only tickets left for the afternoon train are unreserved standing. This proves to be no great hardship as we manage to secure a position looking backwards on the last carriage of the train. The outward journey to Šargan Vitasi takes about forty minutes — a gloriously scenic switchback descent through conifer forest and numerous short tunnels. The air is redolent with pine resin and snatches of forest birdsong filter into the carriage amidst the rumble and squeak of the bogies and the laughter of the schoolchildren, who scream loudly whenever we pass through a tunnel. Coming back takes longer as we have to climb steeply uphill, and the train stops several times to cool down briefly before continuing. At Jatare, a neat little station with lovingly tended geranium baskets, there is just enough time to climb the hill behind the platform and take a photograph before the train whistle summons us back on board.

Back at Mokra Gora I bid Angela farewell and start walking up towards the hilltop ‘ethno’ village of Drvengrad (‘Timber Town’, sometimes also called Küstendorf or Mećavnik). The purposebuilt village is a project initiated by the film-maker Emir Kusturica who constructed this cluster of traditional Serbian houses as a film set for his 2004 film Život je čudo (‘Life is a Miracle’). The village now serves as an artistic retreat and the headquarters for an annual film festival.

Seen from below, the traditional wooden buildings of the village appear genuine enough — a vision of how rural Serbia might have looked before the onset of the modern age. Viewed close up, it is less convincing: unashamedly quaint and not a little self-reverential, more an artistic folly than a museum piece. The ‘streets’ bear the names of film directors and Kusturica’s cultural and political heroes — Federico Fellini, Novak Djokovic, Joe Strummer and Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara among others. The main street is named after the Bosnian Serb writer Ivo Andrić, who hailed from nearby Višegrad (Вишеград) just across the border in Bosnia and Herzegovina (for more on Višegrad, see a feature in hidden europe 43). Parked in the square is an elongated Zastava car from the Tito era — an ironic take on the stretch limo with a distinct Yugoslavian twist. But Drvengrad isn’t so much a case of Yugo-nostalgia as an idealised vision of old Serbia, and pride of place goes to a tiny wooden Orthodox church dedicated to St Sava that stands at the end of the square overlooking the valley below.

The return to Užice

A rough track takes me back down to the main road at Mokra Gora where I wait for the early evening bus back to Užice. Before this arrives, a car stops to offer me a ride, which I accept. We stop to pick up another passenger in Kremna and shortly after make a diversion along a farm track to an isolated cottage where the driver loads a sack of onions and several cases of home-brewed šljivovica (plum brandy) into the boot. It may be pure coincidence but I cannot help noticing the sign at the next village we pass through — Šljivovica. Where better to stock up on fruit-based alcohol?

We arrive in Užice safe and sober and I am deposited right outside the entrance of my space rocket hotel. Hungry, I take myself off to a restaurant for ćevapčići, srpska salata and pivo (kebab, Serbian salad and beer) and whilst eating reflect that the car trip back from Mokra Gora taught me more about everyday Serbian life than any visit to an ‘ethno village’ ever would. In just two days I had experienced two distinct versions of the past in fast succession: quotidian Užice with its Second World War Tito associations — its recent history not so much airbrushed as hidden in the attic — and theme-park Drvengrad with its idealised rusticity evoking a romanticised past that never quite happened. Both told a partial truth; both were a little misleading.