Month 1 – A Slow Goodbye

What’s a month?
Is it a lot? Is it too little? Is it enough?
Before leaving, it seemed like a very busy, yet rather slow, time. There were Mondays, Thursdays, Sundays. And then the -29, -16, -9 at the start. In the general routine, sometimes it feels like an infinite amount of time. Today, so many names and numbers already take on a fainter meaning. Sometimes they disappear, slipping into the closet of memory; sometimes they return, perhaps because there’s a game on. Or a room to book.
And it’s only a month.
If I really had to give it a time, I think I’d give it space. Or a direction. It’s going downhill. Not because it wasn’t easy or simple, but because it went quickly, and in the meantime, a lot of things happened.

After a four-way hug—the whole family, with the dog a little further down—teary eyes accompanied me through a few curves. The road I’ve taken a thousand times with my bike unloaded. A horn honking. My sister and Anubis (the dog) passing me. Thoughts, thoughts, thoughts. And then Piazza Maggiore and Andrea. A dear friend leaving with me.

The first few days went like this. My body, not very well trained, trying to figure out what to do. Friends, because from the very first evening another one joins us, at our sides. Or more often, lighter, in front. Greetings, laughter, a hundred “What are you doing? Tell me!”
And so comes the first night, in a playground on the Lungo Po, where some children ask us if we’re YouTubers.
“Are you famous?”
No, we’re just excited.

So on to Padua, where we’re hosted at Jadah’s house. A friend who has 13 roommates and, including us, 5 guests (check out her traveling short film festival sonoacorto). During the night, we meet the mysterious Guido, after a swarm of beers and small villages (here’s the story: https://reporteronbike.com/padova_notte/). Time to laugh and dream, then set off again, with the taste of alcohol still in our mouths, heading for Treviso. Here’s his brother Federico, a former roommate from our days in the Marche region, when they taught us how to tell stories at the Jack London school.

Italy disappears shortly afterward, all at once.
We turn at a crossroads and it’s gone. Then we really start pedaling, because the Po Valley and its trucks are already a thing of the past. So the first climb of the trip, under a Caribbean sun, reminds me how much I truly love bars. I think they’re truly magical places. Often the true heart of a country, where you can see its wrinkles and rhythms, its courtesies and sins. And we love all these things.
A beer after such a hard ride, then…

Andrea, known as Peppe, accompanies me to Ljubljana. Alessandro, known as Betta, had already left in Padua. Still time to discover the silent capital of Slovenia, where you wonder if someone has accidentally hit the mute button in the streets. And yet, people are there.
The Balkan meats begin and the search for noise begins, which we find on the first night at Metelkova Mesto, the city’s anarchist social center (here’s its history https://reporteronbike.com/metelkova-mesto/). A night that ends with an unpleasant surprise, the kind that makes you thankful for the presence of a dear friend.

With Andrea, the sun also goes away.
So, the first day of traveling alone is a long shower. Water is everywhere in my head. My thoughts drown in a torment of doubts, the daily motivations are too deep to contribute anything on the surface. Pedaling is incredibly hard.
Up to the Bosnian border, everything is complicated in fits and starts.

What the hell am I going to do?

The green, silent Slovenian landscapes give way to Croatian stray dogs. As the eighth one runs after me, enormous, I almost have a panic attack. I almost vomit. I feel like crying.
The border area is almost distressing.
32 hours without speaking to anyone. 40 hours locked in a tent in the pouring rain. Until a lady who saw me brings me a hot tea, which warms my heart more than my belly.

There’s a silent, suspended tension.
With the bad weather not helping, I feel the atmosphere of war. 13 km away is Velika Kladuša, in recent years one of the main barriers against which migrants from the Balkans bounced. Today, it remains one of the most militarily guarded areas in Europe.
I go the other way, and at customs they smile at me: “Good luck, Emiliano!”

A snail has almost reached the top of the canteen. It’s time to get up.

The days in Bosnia are starting to pass quickly. Unlike Slovenia and Croatia, there are people everywhere. Some are tilling the land, some are at the bar, some are leaving mosques, some are fishing. There’s almost always someone there, and that reassures me. My smile returns.

I pass through Novi Grad, Prijedor, and Banja Luka, the capital of the Republika Srpska—the Serbian territory within Bosnia and Herzegovina. Here, I am hosted by Dragan, with whom I have my first real conversation after five days of meditative silence. I begin to discover the hospitality of these people. Whether they are Serbs, Croats, or Bosniaks, it makes little difference: the kindness is the same everywhere. I meet environmental activists in Banja Luka and a family who lived in Vicenza for many years, and who host me for a full day the next day. They are proudly Serbian, but with hearts tied to Italy, and they pamper me in every way.

As I write these lines, Jin, a Chinese girl, is trying to understand Asif, a Pakistani. At 64, 44 of which have been spent traveling the world, he exudes philosophy: “Remember when Emiliano came in and we met him? That’s another universe. Those are other universes that no longer exist. Now we’re in another, in another time.”

I arrive in Tuzla, an industrial city that attracted me for its anti-nationalist history and the workers’ movement and rebellions. The heart of industrial Yugoslavia. The entrance, for several dozen kilometers, is one of those that hurt. Pipes, gigantic factories, rusty monsters, smoke, chimneys: you feel like you could get sick just by passing by. Certainly, your soul is suffering.
The gates of Tuzla are the enormous reactors of the thermoelectric plant. (Read the article here: https://reporteronbike.com/tuzla-la-citta-immersa-nel-latte/)

Northern Bosnia alternates beautiful roads with nightmares of traffic and tar. In the often unavoidable stretches of wide plains, it’s painful. Along the side roads, peaceful valleys open up. Through one of these, on a long dirt road, silence blows above the wind. A few people here and there, a world still. In a small village, in the kingdom of peace, an elderly lady sits in front of a soccer field. A formation of sheep, in a butterfly formation, is scattered across it. She watches the clock. It seems like a monument to patience. She waves at me.

Plans take me to Belgrade, but I’m going to Sarajevo. I’ve discovered that a very dear friend is there for a few days. I can’t miss him.
Meanwhile, Bosnia continues to hold surprises for me. While I’m eating two peanuts in Banovići, a small industrial town built on a coal mine, two icy eyes stare at me from just over a meter away.
Light-haired, a man, talking on the phone.
I don’t have time to realize he’s already invited me to lunch. Then to coffee. Then to have two take-out sandwiches made. I refuse a shower and a bed for the night. During all this, he also tells me that at his bar he managed to save €2,000 to send to Gaza for aid. In Italy, with the same salaries, they’re worth double. Damir, a heart of gold.
He says goodbye, he has to run. It’s Friday, and it’s time for prayer at the mosque.

After a night in a tent at two degrees Celsius, in a truly surprising May, I’m now in Sarajevo. The days here with Paola and Giovanni pass quickly, in a city that doesn’t want to forget the war. Many scars have been left, many are even emphasized. Forgetting is not wise. And the peace is too beautiful to risk jeopardizing.
Paola, known as Pola, is here for a few months. In three weeks, she’s already built a remarkable social network, so we follow her casually through suburban markets and hidden little bars. (Here’s the story: https://reporteronbike.com/sarajevo-anarchica/).

These days are almost like a vacation, as are the ones I spend in Belgrade.
I reach the great Serbian capital by bus, while I unleash one curse after another about being on four wheels. I miss my bike, far too much.
Eight hours there. Eight hours back. In a minibus connecting two capitals, squeezed in with a group of people packed in like cattle. In Belgrade, however, there’s Kaća, a friend I haven’t seen in seven years. I’m welcomed by a heart of gold. Unfortunately, our time together will be very short; she has a lot of work to do. However, she lets me have her apartment, practically the entire place. Her roommate is also always out.
On my first day of exploration, my spirit is much like the city itself. Gray and crowded. I have to put on headphones and listen to a lot of music to cope with both. Little by little, though, I discover small places, pleasant corners. A plant-covered bar, a saxophone, a park. The Danube, majestic and aching. Like me, it’s searching for the “mute” button they have in Ljubljana. But when I think about where it slipped to get here, I almost get chills. I’d like to hear it flow, but there are only horns honking.

Belgrade is just a taste, because after just three nights I’m returning to Sarajevo. I’m back, Novella.

Among the many things I will discover and rediscover, there’s definitely “freedom.” Easy to say and think about. Yet you have to get used to that too. Savoring it is something slow. Unlike a person, it has no face. It’s hard to recognize.

Asif, as soon as I meet him, tells me: “It makes no sense to earn ten thousand euros and drink twenty coffees. It’s better to drink just one and enjoy life more.”

At certain moments, unexpectedly, the clarity comes that makes me say, “Do you realize you can do whatever you want?” I still struggle to believe it.

If I had to imagine a town in Bosnia, I think I’d draw Konjic.
Mountains covered in forest, larger peaks bare of rock, small houses and minarets, a few crosses, a river crossed by an old Ottoman bridge. A few factories.
It’s here that I meet Jin and Asif. They offer me food.
The entire dinner is a monologue. Asif cares deeply about the meaning of life, the power of God, our duty to others.
Jin doesn’t understand. I remain silent and force myself.
“Man can build a table. But not wood.”
The muezzins chant as night falls, filling the air with something ethereal.
“I don’t believe that after death we will live in another body, made of a different material.”
I swallow another spoonful of broth.
“I know! Because believing means supposing, but this isn’t a supposition. It’s a fact!”
Jin complains: “I think we’re living in a movie, that we’re all performing.”
“You mean? Are you watching the movie or experiencing it?”
Silence.
After a while, the girl stands up: “I don’t understand anything! But I like nature, that’s why I want to travel. It makes me feel at peace.”
Asif shakes his head. He looks at me: “That girl works the same way as her cell phone. They’re identical!”

The Neretva River accompanies me from Konjic to Mostar, where I’m closing out this first month.
Its crystalline waters deepen as we proceed. We enter a deep gorge. On either side, majestic mountains plunge sheer into the river, which often resembles a lake.
There are several human interventions in this valley. Dams, mostly, that widen the river basin. Everything, however, remains rugged and fascinating, like the cliffs that surround me while trucks whistle across the asphalt.

During the night that closes the first month, Novella, my grandmother, appeared to me in a dream. We embraced. We are on this journey together.

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