Bosanska Krupa // The John Bills Escape Plan
A snowy day in Bosanska Krupa © John Bills
It is either a joke or a warning. Possibly both, but more probably neither. If I dye my hair blonde and book a flight to Greenland, that means you are never going to hear from me again. That was the plan, although referring to it as a plan suggests some sort of desire and intention. I possess neither, not in sufficient quantity. While I do like the idea of vanishing into thin air, I believe that desire comes from a place of bitterness and disappointment rather than bravery and conviction. I’d like to disappear, but I’d also like to hide around the corner to see who cares. Attend your own funeral, that sort of thing. A convincing Richey Edwards impression with a guaranteed safety net. It doesn’t get much more cowardly than that.
Still, the threat remains. I can’t explain the hair dye aspect, as I don’t think there is actually anything to it. At a push, my logic is that as I won’t be seeing anybody I know, I could start again with blonde hair. Nobody in Greenland would see me and exclaim “woah, Billsy, the fuck have you done with your hair?” To them, I would just be a guy with dyed blonde hair. Move along, nothing to see here. The previous owner of this face would be long gone.
Why Greenland? I’m not sure. It hasn’t always been Greenland. When I first struggled with the very concept of my own existence within a social environment, it was Vladivostok, because private mythology requires an edge to the map and it isn’t challenging to imagine the scenery held up by scaffolding. I figured I’d find a way to get out there, where I’d find the end of the world. The Truman Show wall. I’d smash into it, walk up the steps, say something quirky, and head off into my actual life.
A snowy day in Bosanska Krupa © John Bills
Over the years, Vladivostok drifted north and became Greenland. Myths aren’t loyal to their coordinates. I was on a bus travelling from Sanski Most to Bosanska Krupa in late February, and the weather was brutal. Not quite blizzard territory, but as close as Bosnia and Herzegovina is getting to a blizzard. It was hurling down, and the bus was making slow progress over the hills. I had received some bad news before getting onto the bus in Sanski Most, so my mood wasn’t the best. I wasn’t about to make an appointment to dye my hair in Bosanska Krupa, but I wasn’t feeling particularly chipper. A good mood hadn’t made it to the station in Sanski Most.
Moods come and go, and there is likely a bus joke in there somewhere, but I wasn’t in the mood to work it out. The weather worsened as we climbed into the forests of Grmeč, and the blanket of white made defining the landscape moot. The outside world was white static. By the time we sidled into the station at Bosanska Krupa, the snow was falling heavy and sideways. It was piled high on the pavements, creating another barrier between me and my accommodation. Bosanska Krupa seemed to consist entirely of snow. Not picturesque snow, either. This was professional snow. Working snow. Snow on a mission to find every space and settle in, leaving necks cold and socks soaked. A five-minute walk stretched to 15, and things only got worse with every passing second. It was, for want of a better phrase, fucking terrible.
And with that, Greenland quietly disappeared from my own personal mythology.
A snowy day in Bosanska Krupa © John Bills
It wasn’t the most stable of plans, one built more on comedy and absurdity than reality. I’m not the disappearing type, and even if I was, Greenland wasn’t going to be my safe place. It’s a frozen wilderness, one with a polar tundra climate, where average temperatures in winter run to around -18 degrees Celsius. Yes, there’s a minus there. Snow covers Greenland for three-quarters of the year. In my fantasy, Greenland didn’t contain wet shoes, numb fingers, or the peculiar wretchedness of dragging a suitcase from bus station to hotel in driving snow. The weather was cold in a way that required focus. The John Bills Escape Plan might yet be built, but I wasn’t going to be dying my hair blonde and boarding a flight to Nuuk International Airport. Ideas are frictionless, beautiful things. The real world is beautiful but defined by friction. Handsomely brutal, brutally handsome. I needed a drink.
My next visit to Bosanska Krupa was in polar opposite conditions, and I’m going to claim that was intentional. The brutal white of winter had been replaced with the shimmering green of summer. The Una, a mirror of slate in February, was impossibly turquoise in late May, meshing exquisitely with the town that surrounds it. Make no mistake about it, dear reader; in terms of beauty, Bosanska Krupa is a top five town in Bosnia and Herzegovina, possibly top three, maybe even top two. The Una flows with confidence, the cafes are bubbling with enthusiasm, people are outside, everywhere, making the most of this majesty. The Zeleni Otoci (Green Islands) make for one of the best town centre walks in the country. The misery of wet socks and dampened moods was reduced to a memory under the weight of summer’s optimism. All it takes is a little sun and the ability to walk without contemplating the end. Places don’t exist in memory. We remember conditions and feelings, but places are more real than memories.
And what a joy it is to walk around Bosanska Krupa when the sun is shining. Few cities are as rewarding, with small climbs adding fulfilling aches to the sumptuous views. I went off in search of a monument I had heard about: a small iceberg-shaped memorial to four men from the Bosanska Krupa area who had boarded the Titanic in 1912. That’s not a sentence you read every day, unless your job is reading about the four men from the Bosanska Krupa area who boarded the Titanic in 1912. Their names were Ejdo Rekić, Husein Sivić, Ćermin Balikić, and Redžo Delalić, and they found themselves on the world’s most famous ship on a journey bound not for glory, but work. A Bosnian community had already taken root around Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Rekić was already there and had returned home to bring the other three back with him. History intervened. All four may have had imagined visions of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, maybe thinking happiness existed somewhere over the horizon, if only they could reach it.
Titanic Memorial in Bosanska Krupa © John Bills
Now, I’m not trying to draw a line from my experience in Bosanska Krupa to the fate of the men on the Titanic. I’m full of myself, but there are limits. Still, it is easy to dismiss the idea of imagining happiness on the distant horizon, until you realise you’ve been doing that same thing. For some, the horizon is the United States. For others, it might be Greenland. For many, it is merely home. A Caretaker-soundtracked mix of Hiraeth and hope.
Unfortunately, Bosanska Krupa had punctured my bubble. One snowy evening was enough to persuade me of something that I was already fully aware of. Arctic living is not for me. The John Bills Escape Plan needs to be rewritten, or abandoned entirely. My dream ended, but the impulse was undeniable. We imagine salvation as a point on a map, but every destination must become real.
And if you want to draw a line between these fates, you can take the iceberg angle. It had to come from somewhere, right? I'd spent years imagining Greenland as a place where a different life might begin. The four men from Bosanska Krupa lost theirs to a piece of Greenland that had decided to leave home first. My imaginary refuge had apparently been quietly drifting through the North Atlantic for months before I was born. None of this is an accident, but everything is an accident.
