Descriptive Journey

I was born in Belgrade, Serbia and moved to the United States when I almost reached the age of three to escape the civil war within the Balkan region, particularly with Kosovo. Throughout my life my parents have made sure that I do not lose touch with my Serbian roots so we have gone back to visit relatives and family friends three times since our move to the United States. Habitually, each summer we visit my mother’s sister and her family in Antibes, and now a town away in Cannes since they moved. This past summer, however, we dedicated a week to making the drive from the south of France to Belgrade. My mother drove with my aunt and a back seat full of luggage in her fifteen year old Opel Corsa without air-conditioning while my father, my younger sister, my cousin, and I stuffed ourselves in my uncle Vlada’s ’97 Navy Mercedes C-class.

            We drove from Cannes through Turin, Milan, and stopped in Venice, Italy. My sister, cousin, and I sat shoulder to shoulder in the back seat with our ipod’s in, heads glaring out the car window, attempting to take in as much scenery as possible. Particularly by the time we reached Italy there were vast hilly areas, painted green with as much tonal variation existing in a Van Gogh. The roads were curvaceous it seemed we were winding up mountain after mountain which seemed to grow to almost reach the pale sky. The minute houses, which looked like they had been cut and paste out of a drawing by a toddler using only basic blue, red, and yellow, were drowning amidst the voluminous green hills.

            We arrived to Venice by nightfall and my father and I managed through our exhaustion to take a walk down a few streets as the rest of our family hibernated at the hotel. Venice at nighttime could easily have a lonely feel with its empty neutral toned tile walkways, however, the reflection of the city lamps and moon on the water bring it a certain splendor.

            The next day we continued to make our way through the Alps of Slovenia covered with similar greens we encountered throughout Italy. The natural rhythms of tires racing up hills and passing thick populations of trees seem to be stained in my memory. The uneasiness of the tight car situation was easily released, as I would open my window to smell the crisp feel of the air close to a godly cleanliness. We were no longer preoccupied with ourselves and our things, our mistakes, our differences, but we were traveling among the nakedness of the environment, its shadows, its vibrant, honest colors, and I realized at some point within that journey, that somewhere hidden among the patches of wild flowers and effervescent bodies of water, stood a truth of the world and our existence within it.