Are We There Yet?

Why this is probably not my last column.

“At least we survived.”

PULA, Croatia, August 5 – On a rainy early afternoon in this Adriatic paradise, the Belgrade plane departed 10 minutes late. That trivial delay turned out not to be trivial at all.

It was an uneventful journey for the first hour and a half. Vicious storms had swept through nearby Slovenia, with destructive winds and widespread catastrophic flooding. But our flight was smooth. I was able to make some progress on a book I’m writing about Serbia, tentatively titled Republic of Neverland: My Curious Travels Through the Historic, Dysphoric, Most Misunderstood Country on Earth.

Even with its long, vastly unfortunate and undemocratic history, I do love the place and have adopted it as my …

… wait. Jesus. As we descended from 25,000 feet in the 18-row ATR-72 turboprop into some plump cumulonimbus cloud cover, the turbulence started.

The lightweight passenger aircraft started to jerk up and down, to and fro. These were not subtle gyrations. I’ve flown thousands of legs over 50 years. But this was like John Travolta’s mechanical-bull ride in Urban Cowboy. My knuckles turned to scrimshaw. I was flying with my wife, who is nominally Serbian Orthodox, but more Commie than Christian. She was crossing herself like a Sicilian mourner. Passengers throughout the cabin were pale — and vocal — with terror.

As I say, this was in the fluffy layer of clouds. As we hurtled downward we hit slate gray. The plane kept dropping as if into 100-foot ditches, surfing the winds and flopping side to side as the cabin shook. That sensation of your stomach dropping out from under you, the one some people find so thrilling and fun on a roller coaster, is less entertaining at, I dunno, 8,000 feet. I’d go so far as to say significantly less entertaining.

Finally, the captain changed his mind about landing. As he ascended, we went through exactly the same experience. It was brutal. The tight safety belt cut into my hips. If this were Gilley’s cowboy bar in Houston in 1980, Travolta would have been thrown in seconds.

My wife could not tear herself from the window, where she scanned the wild yonder desperately for blue. Back at altitude, as the cries and whimpers died down, patches of white-veined blue did finally peek through the storm clouds.

It was a very hairy 10 minutes. Then, after settling at an altitude of relatively smooth air, the pilot gently circled around to try the same fucking thing again.

And … ibid. Only much worse. We held on for dear life, in horror and disbelief, that the lunatic would attempt a second approach. We were like a fork in the garbage disposal. We twisted, we bounced, we sank, we grinded, we shouted. It seemed as if it would never end, at least not with any of the 80 passengers and crew alive. But then, for a second time: escape.

After another 20 minutes of circling and, presumably, dithering with air traffic control, Air Serbia Flight 225 headed 230 km south to the city of Nis, second largest in Serbia, where the very same storm was en route. At last, at about 2:30 pm, we landed at Constantine the Great International Airport. I suppose Constantine was indeed outstanding. Air Serbia, though, performed at somewhat less than average.

We sat on the apron for three hours, hostages to their idiotic plan to refuel and head right back for Belgrade. This idea did not sit well with the lives-just-passed-before-our-eyes faction of passengers, who expressed — in heated fashion and in various languages, to the irritation of the put-upon cabin crew — OVER MY DEAD BODY. Alas, that seemed to be Air Serbia’s plan A.

Finally, they conceded to the majority’s will. Because they are good listeners? Because they are rational? Oh, please, no. It was because their cabin and flight crews had exceeded their daily limit of work hours. Aviation law had forced their hand. So the decision was made to hire a bus and let Belgrade passengers motor north if they wished.

We all 80 of us huddled in the steamy heat in an entry portal to Constantine’s Great Aerodrom, waiting to get through passport control and be on our way, leaving the driving to someone presumably lacking the urban cowboy mindset. But we were stuck there, too, because Air Serbia had no employees on duty at the, you know, airport. The one soul scheduled for that Saturday afternoon had taken the day off.

Finally, after 20 more minutes of pathetically pressing our traumatized faces to the door glass, so that the immigration cops might take pity, a random tarmac worker came to the rescue and let us in, where the lot of us had the good fortune to officially reenter Serbia on foot — versus plummeting.

As we cleared customs, I ran into the pilot and asked him why he flew twice into the teeth of the storm. The first answer was that the 10-minute delay leaving Pula got us into the Belgrade landing pattern just as the weather coalesced. Then he explained how he went about his procedures, which I deemed immaterial. Then he told me that, “In my 30 years of flying that was the worst turbulence I've ever experienced.”

Ok, but why? Why not just fly immediately to Nis? Or anywhere? Landing in those conditions is the pilot’s decision, and his alone. He did not give me an answer, though — immersed in the country's culture as I’ve been the past number of months — I was pretty sure I knew what the truth was. But the pilot merely shrugged and walked past me, offering his final words on the subject: “At least we survived.”

On that subject, we passed on the free bus ride home. With Belgrade reportedly eviscerated by the vicious storms — and with those storms now headed south, directly in our path — we chose to try our luck with a taxi, which we calculated to be at least marginally less vulnerable to high winds. Belgrade is only 230 km away, so the fare was, what, like $1 million.

And, no, the adventure wasn’t over. Once again, it all began smoothly enough. I made small talk with the driver, a fellow named Aleksandar. As I’ve discussed with many a Serb in my book research, I inquired if there is such a thing as a Serbian mentality. Yes, he said, whereupon he invoked a word I’ve not only heard many times before, but over the past few hours have very much had on my mind.

“Inat,” Aleksandar volunteered. “If we decide to do something, even if it’s against our benefit, we still do it.”

Going back at least 800 years, as I’ve discovered, inat — the marriage of stubbornness and self-destructive spite — is a bona fide cultural trait, in many ways influencing the tides of Serbian history. Almost always for the worse. The Serbs are world leaders in, as the folk saying goes, “Cutting off your dick to spite the village.”

“Even you?” I asked.

“Yes. Yes.”

Within a few minutes, we were inundated with blinding sheets of rain. Lightning fractured the night sky as if from God’s Tesla coils. Near zero visibility and a scary patch of hydroplaning. Aleksandar cruised close to the bumpers of the cars ahead of us, speeding up to pass left again and again, conditions or no. It was Air Serbia of the highways.

Against our benefit, you might say. Inat meets déjà vu.

But you're reading this, right? I suppose, once again, at least we survived.