August 14th was when it was confirmed that I would come to Varazdin for three months. If I have to be honest, I didn’t know where it was exactly. “Close to Zagreb” I would say when I asked and then I would continue explaining that it was really close to the border with Slovenia, that even the airport in Graz was close. Facts that I gathered after reading the information that the Eurodyssee program sent us two weeks before our flight. But, being honest again, I didn’t realize where I was going to be “in Europe” until a week later, when I announced to one of my friends in Slovenia, that I was gonna be able to visit her sooner than expected.
Datum je bio 14. kolovoz, kada je potvrđeno da dolazim u Varaždin, na tri mjeseca. Da budem iskrena, nisam znala gdje je to točno. ‘Blizu Zagreba’, rekla bih kada su me pitali kamo idem, a onda nastavila objašnjavati I da je vrlo blizu granice sa Slovenijom te da je aerodrome u Grazu također blizu. Bile su to informacije koje sam prikupila iz podataka koji su nam poslani preko Eurodysee programa, putem kojeg sam i stigla ovdje. Ali, da budem iskrena, nisam zapravo znala da ću biti ‘u Europi’, sve do tjedan dana kasnije, kada sam to rekla mojoj prijateljici u Sloveniji, objasnivši joj da ću ju posjetiti i ranije nego što je možda očekivala.
“Hey, I will be in Croatia from September to December”, I told this friend of mine in Slovenia, when it was definitely confirmed. “Cool, but where?”
“Varazdin”, I answered. I could have gone to some other place, farther away from the border and the possibilities of a visit would have been more difficult. It was then when I realized exactly where I was going. Varazdin is less than 100 kilometers from Zagreb, the Slovenian border is around half an hour away and Ljubljana is just a bus ride away. Hungarian border is at the same distance, Budapest is a reachable by train and even Austria is close by if you take a look at the map.
The ride to Ljubljana was almost four hours, making a stop in Zagreb. It was dark and nothing could be seen through the windows and I wonder if there’s any difference in the landscape when we cross the border, one hour after leaving Zagreb. I’m only there to spend the weekend. Friday, Saturday and Sunday and I have enough time to cross another border, this time to Italy, just to be able to go back to Slovenia to drive around following a river through the Alps.
It’s a curious thing, geography. We know (or at least should know) where countries in Europe are. In our minds we keep the image of a map where the borders are black lines and each country is colored differently. It’s clear for us that countries exists, our awareness of what happens in each of them is a different matter. For instance, even if I know what is going on in Spain (I know about the fires in Galicia or the independence process of Catalonia), I perceive it more as if it was a movie, something really far away that stops when I don’t read about it.
Croatia has always been here, squeezed between the Adriatic Sea, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Hungary. People have always walked around, events have always started a little later than what they should and even if I was remotely aware of things happening somewhere here, it wasn’t until September, when I finally arrived here, that some sense of reality came to me. For me the world started working here a month and two weeks ago, when I got off the bus at the bus station in Varazdin.
Here borders are so close. Countries are so close to each other. Maybe it would fascinate me less if I lived somewhere in Spain close to some of our border, but from where I am from the closest country is a plane away or seven hours drive away. Maybe that’s the reason Varazdin feels like a right start point for a lot of stories, also for a lot of hours sitting in a bus wondering if the view will change (or not) while crossing the borders, maybe even changing currency and language.
> Varaždin je odlična polazišna točka za mnoge priče, granice su ovdje tako blizu
