Travel fan - episode 1

Hi, my name is Rastko and I would share with you my life experience of travelling.

It ain't easy , cause travelling is a product of needs, different ones.Migrations long ago and nowadays are defined by various motives: better life,survival,climate conditions,work,interchange of cultures, meeting people,discovering lands etc...In short a philosophy of life.Some people never go from home.

Others find ways and ressources to move arround.That's why it is an individual option.All the results of a trip are a bunch of  personal reactions to a changed environment.There are the travel cliches ,Pyramids of Egypt,Easter island statues,Chateaux de la Loire,Machu Picchu,Grand Canyon,Alhambra,Borobodur,Taj Mahal,Tibet,Mount Everest,Hawai,Sierra Leone rain forrest,Scotland's hilands,Greek islands,Cote d'Azur, but nonetheless they print in your subconscious and conscious part of mind for quite a long time.There is no magic formula how to start and to end the journey,but the rewards are personal rich till the end of memorable time.

If you finish in a desert island nobody can take away from you your rememberings, they are your wealth for a life time and not measurable with any material goods.Whatever you shared with somebody from these experiences, will produce a specific attachment with these persons forever.

So let's start from the begginning.Summer 1958 my first trip to the coast,Dubrovnik then Yugoslavia,now Croatia.First air trip with a DC 3 .My grandmother took me there,I was barely conscious and only two years old.One would say no way you could remember anything,and that's correct,but still I cannot explain how this flight, landing on a rudimentary airfield,Gruda near Dubrovnik,had a decisive impact on my whole carreer and life in general.

Till the age of six I travelled with my grandmother to the Adriatic coast with a narrow railway train through Bosnian mountains,a beautiful landscape and quite a frightening experience a that time,for it lasted two days for 650 km.and spending a night at a small station constructed by the Austro-hungarian empire in the middle of nowhere with a moonlight from a full moon above the wild trees listening only to the animal world .That was quite an experience for a young boy.

The reward was the infinity of the blue horizon,enabling you to dream and cultivate all kinds of expectationswith the rythm and sound of the wayves.What lies on the other side of the Ocean.Columbus surely had the same wonders.

Every one has his own dreams ,nourished by a unique combination of life experience and expectations that cannot be duplicated or applied to anyone else, although very similar and to some responsding to prefabricated cliches.Today after more than fifty years of reflexion I might pull some conclusions out.Then it was just an animal sensation translated in a strong need.

My father was assigned as a hydraulic engineer to study and describe the underground rivers on the Morrocan -Algerian desert border in the 1960.He went first to Ksar es Souk behind the Atlas range of mountains.Only three european families lived there and he got a house on a former cemetery from the french Legion etrangere. These international military volunteers served under the french army and protecting the french interest in the sahara.Morocco was independent but Algiers not yet at that time.My mother and I joined him after the summer heat in September via a flight to Munich and overnight in Paris.My first visit to Paris was quite an unforgettable one.Just the Eiffel tower and the small hotel room in a grand boulevard are the only details I keep in mind.

Different is for the first flight on a Caravelle brand new aircraft and state of the art technology at that time.We were supposed to fly directly from Orly to Rabat but in the middle of the flight after a nice dinner they just announced us that we shall land at Casablanca ,a 100km south of Rabat.

It would not be a problem today ,but then...My father was waiting for us at Rabat airport,no mobiles and no phones at all,lack of communications and informations with a scarce traffic at that time over night hours made it quite difficult and strange to travel.As soon as we realised that nobody is waiting for us at that airport,my mom decided to find a way of transport to Rabat .The only available was a local bus where we were the only foreigners,the rest were berbers with galabias ,traditionel dresses covering the heads and carrying their big silver knives nicely ornamented but pretty scary looking in the middle of a night.The driver spoke french and arabic most of the other the schleuh dialect,all of these were.. not our mother langage serbian.In silence the trip took two hours and more stopping several times a long the road all the windows were open for the heat in the night was substantial in aeptember that year.I was holding my mother very tight.It was my first aknoledgment of Africa ,dangerous looking people in the middle of the hot night .From the bus station before dawn we took a taxi,called petit taxi as they were used in cities only ,the grand taxi was an intercity transport ,carrying 8 or more people inside sitted on small wooden banches.No taxi meter inside as the fare was unique ,one dirham to any destination.Arriving at the hotel Balima in the biggest avenue Mohammed V,some sort of Champs Elyaees in Rabat,they proceeded us to our appartment but no trace of my father sofar he was still at Rabat-Sale airport waiting for the next arrival from Paris.

The anxiety disapeared in the early morning when he appeared at the room door.The breakfast done we followed the trip to sahara our final destination.The whole morning we drove in a mild and green scenery to Meknes,one of the imperial cities of Marocco and the center of the vine region.Passing the ruins of Volubilis the roman capital from ancient times we climbed with our land rover green old fashioned,at that time brand new and state of the art technological innovation.Moyen Atlas or anti atlas as they call it is a mountain range between the small atlas on the mediterrenean slide and the high atlas finishing beyond Marrakech.Beautiful lakes surrounded by cedar trees the only ones out of Lebanon,were the swiss scenery in north africa.The town of Ifrane was a ski center with awsome chalets Alps style.It belonged to the wealthy french landlords not only from Marrocco but also from neigbouring Algeria.

The winding mountain road suddenly changed the scenery,the green valleys were changed in red rocky paysage.We were going down towards the river Ziz valley,a beautiful palmeraie just till Ksar es Souk the gateway to the desert ....

To be continued in episode 2.