Kladanj // The New AM

Love is a paralysing combination of crippling self-loathing and life-affirming joy. I’m not sure if the abyss of the former is worth the sparkle of the latter.

What’s that? You thought we’d ease into an article about Kladanj with some throwaway history and comments about parks? Maybe some failed attempt at being respectful to industry? I’ve gone easy on you for too long, dear reader. We’re jumping in the deep end with both feet here.

What is love? Baby, don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more. Well done, John, you remember the ‘90s, want a biscuit? No, I’m not a biscuit person. You can shoehorn as many references into this as you like, it isn’t going to create any clarity with the central theme. What is love? When people come to Bosnia and Herzegovina and say they love it, what do they mean?

I don’t want to be cynical, but I am, so there we go. If you come to Bosnia and Herzegovina, visit Sarajevo, Mostar, maybe Blagaj, maybe Počitelj, then yeah, you’re going to leave all excited about it. Rightly so! Beauty, everywhere! But love isn’t about beautiful moments. You’ve got it confused with lust, with desire. There is no way to love Bosnia and Herzegovina (or any country, for that matter) without finding the less heralded parts and embracing them. The Monroe quote is miscredited, but it stands. If you can’t be doing with me at my dorkiest, you won’t get to enjoy me at my most delightful. In a travel world dominated by heavily edited photographs, the concept of ‘love’ has never been in more jeopardy.

What does this have to do with Kladanj? Well, I’m not going to stick my flag in either the ‘pretty’ or ‘ugly’ side of the ledger, but it clearly isn’t Blagaj. To be honest, in a world of heavily manipulated photography, Blagaj isn’t Blagaj anymore. To love Bosnia and Herzegovina is to embrace Kladanj, Gornji Vakuf, and Posušje. Any dork can come here and find Mostar beautiful, but Mostar’s beauty isn’t going to wipe the tears from your eyes when everything falls apart. Mostar’s beauty will be too busy flirting with surfers. Romance is disappointment, but love is a cup of tea when disappointment hits.

This isn’t Kladanj’s fault. Once the largest town in the Tuzla region, today it is another in a long line of Bosnian settlements that don’t exactly come with a sparkling endorsement. Why? Because people are shallow. No, John, stop it, people are not shallow, but people are maybe afraid of being seen to like something that isn’t objectively beautiful.

Make no mistake about it, Kladanj is not objectively beautiful. Subjectively? Maybe. I can’t answer that for you. The Drnjača river is the anchor around which it was built, but the recent rains had rendered its waters muddy. The river gives the town its name in a roundabout way, and I’m sure there is a joke in there, but I can’t quite get a handle on it. The Ottomans blustered into this place but had to find a way across the river. The solution? A klada. A log. They built a bridge of logs to cross the Drnjača and conquered the town, using their combined creativity to call the place Kladanj. Was that a sign of disrespect, of dismissive disinterest, or am I projecting biased opinions on conquerors from centuries past?

As long as your name is on my lips, your story written in the choruses, then true death couldn’t get you.

Kladanj was first mentioned in 1138, although this was a passing mention at best. The history of Kladanj touches on the usual flourishes in these parts, a period of slow development sped up by the Ottomans and then fundamentally changed by the Austrians. The 20th century brought industry and quirks, followed by neglect and degradation. The town is best known for the gimmicky Muška voda (men’s water), thought to give dudes super dong powers. Yeah, that will get its own story in time, but don’t expect me to use the term ‘Super Dong Power’ again in this lifetime. Kladanj? An important traffic junction, a settlement for forest workers, once home to a large Thursday market (the Ottomans called this placed Četvrtkovište),

These details are utterly useless. They didn’t help me as I walked around Kladanj, that’s for sure. The compromised chemicals that made up the spaces in my cerebrum and cerebellum couldn’t focus on slim pickings from history textbooks. Those chemicals needed to be cared for. How can anyone get anything done when they are distracted by romance? How can anyone get anything done without the divine inspiration offered by romance?

I want to meet you in every place I have ever loved.

Kladanj was sleepy as I wandered around, but expecting anything else seems disingenuous. Men sat sipping coffee, people quietly went about their business, stopping here and there to exchange pleasantries with friends, acquaintances, and passers-by. Don’t expect anything else from travel. Life is elsewhere. Life is normal. Life is, by its very definition, incredible, but that can only be manifested in reality if you accept the vast majority of it is, well, okay. Embrace the ordinary, and the extraordinary will take care of itself. Yes, I got that from the internet.

There was fire everywhere that I stood.

In its most honest form, love feels like the way ‘The New AM’ sounds. At the nucleus of it all, love is sweet, childish. It isn’t confident, it can’t be, because confidence tinges everything it touches with arrogance, and there is no place for arrogance in the corridors of love. ‘The New AM’ sounds like hope, and love is built on hope. We can never know how other people feel. That in itself is a beautiful thing, albeit a crippling one. We can’t, but we will still expend masses of energy trying to work it out. ‘The New AM’ is the sound of hoping that maybe, just maybe, today will be the day that you wake up and feel safe to love me, although the contradictions of that are clear as the sky about Kladanj. But maybe, just maybe, maybe today will be the day I make sense to you. Love is ‘The New AM’. It doesn’t take into account the marshy land of the PM, but we’ll deal with that when we get there. We just need to get there.

Okay, John, that’s enough. Gertrude Stein said that’s enough.

I got back on the bus, a spluttering vehicle moving in the direction of Tuzla, with Živinice standing between where I was and where I would be. It began to rain.

If this is the new AM, I don’t mind waking.

Bijeljina // We Are One in Everlasting Peace

Banja Luka // Job Found Himself in the Sun