To stop the cop is never nice. Never ... but let the poly-Bosnian serbs of the Republic of Srpska do it while you are in an independent territory not recognized, that your guide tries to bribe them, that surprisingly (according to the guide) they refuse, that the old couple of police officers Believe that you are a spy of the CIA for not carrying your documentation, that threatens to hold you on the road for hours until you prove who you are, to fulfill its threat while the poor guide tries to convince you that the Italian, the Spanish and the two Dutch people who accompany him are lifelong friends ... That is a complete misfortune.
We have imagined what our guide could have written (great, everything is said), in his diary, after that long and atypical morning ... here goes "his" chronicle:
09:00: I wait in the office to be all, this morning I have been touched by a couple of Dutch who seem to be like two cowbells and an Italian-Spanish couple who seem more normal. We got in the car and started the tour.
11:10: We cross a flock of sheep in the middle of the road, this is a sign that something bad is going to happen, my Serbian grandmother already said it, or was it my Bosnian grandfather? No, I think it was my Croatian uncle.
11:23: Anyone who had been was right, the cops I see in the distance with the face of few friends will bring me problems.
11:24: Obviously they stop us. I stop the car and show my best smile and my face of good (and especially innocent) person. I look in the mirror and I see that the four that I have on the tour also correspond to their best faces (seriously, is that your best face, Italian?)
11:26: I can't find the papers that the old cop is asking me with the face of few friends. Why am I getting nervous? Ok, I know where they are, I give them to them and I hope they let me go.
11:30: It seems that everything is in order, but I fall for everything when the cop asks for the documentation of everyone in the car. And I want to die when I discover that nobody has the documentation on them. And I say NOBODY.
11:40: I have a plan, I walk away with the old cop and try to find the solution, maybe 20 frames are enough for them to forget about it.
11:47: "He sneaked guys, we mysteriously found your documentation." The Dutch understand what I mean, the other two are a little breaded and seem to cost them more. Let's see, I wink at you ... ok, I think they understood me. I take out a couple of bills and ...
11:51: Now I have screwed up. The young cop who goes as a defender of the country refuses to accept the money. The worst part is that he has persuaded the old man and now they are totally convinced that these four are from the CIA. But are these people crazy?
11:57: Ok, the thing is serious. The cop says that he is going to call his inspector and that nobody moves from here until he comes and takes care of my "friends."
12:17: Time passes and I try to reassure the Italian, the Spanish and the Dutch, who are already imagining between the bars of a prison in the former Yugoslavia.
12:48: The inspector arrives, another pimp. I explain the situation, which is none other than my four traveling friends are making me a visit and that I am taking them for a walk through their territory that is very interesting and beautiful, and of course, they are not paying me anything at all. And obviously, they are NOT from the CIA.
12:58: I think they haven't believed a single word, how strange does it sound? Stranger it sounds to be standing an hour and a half by the police of the Republika Srpska! In the end they accept the driving meat of the Dutchwoman who will take care of the whole group. I get discouraged when he asks the other couple not to make it brown in the days they pass through here. What a good face.
12:59: I get discouraged less when I realize that in a few months I will have to go to court again and that to avoid it I need to pay 5,000 marks. Again! I think I'm going to quit my job. As the Dutch uncle has said several times ... "WHAT A DAY"!
Sincerely? We had no idea what noses was the Republika Srpska, it seemed strange to us to see flags of Serbia kilometers and kilometers within Bosnia, but we would never have thought that it was an independent self-proclaimed territory, with its constitution, its laws, its institutions and of course, YOUR POLICE!
If you want you can know more about this territory in wikipedia. And click on the link if you want to learn more about the Bosnian War.
And this, dear ones, is the story of the day we were trapped in the Republika Srpska!
