Imagine the relief (after driving through the mountains of Bosnia for hours searching for a hotel) at meeting some young men in a parking lot who say, actually yes, there is a hotel in the woods a little ways from here, and we’ll take you there. You follow their car to a junction and they get out and tell you solemnly to continue for exactly fifteen kilometers up a dirt road but make sure you don’t turn right or left until you reach a river.
And imagine the relief when you’ve driven that dark little road with your eye glued to the odometer, and crossed that river and came face to face with a hundred lit up windows of a hotel.
The man at the reception stands up to greet you in a blue, pressed shirt in his subdued kind of way and hands you the keys that end up being the wrong keys but who cares, and you get into your hotel room and the bed is filled with ladybugs but who cares!
Down in the restaurant, the servers are sitting at a table smoking. When you come in they all stand up without smiling. The first takes your order, the second brings you your wine, the third brings you your food, a bowl of grey veal soup and grey ćevapčići. They sit down again and continue to smoke.
After awhile, one of them disappears and returns with two slices of birthday cake. A party, he says, nodding in the direction of a back room, where an accordion begins to play. Someone begins to sing the loudest, saddest song you’ve ever heard and behind a curtain you see people dances slowly, in circles like drawn out shadows. They go on like this for an hour or so, when the power goes out.
Nobody seems especially bothered or surprised. The waiters stand again. The first brings over a candle, the second clears away our plates, the third brings over an ashtray. Then they all sit down again. The accordion continues, and the song continues too. It is dark, dark except for Andreas’ face and the three red circles of the waiter’s cigarettes.
