helmet because I knew that I would
have to stop again.
He believed me. He took his cell
phone and called his son to ask him to
bring six litres of "benzine". Ten euros
- he told me. I wouldn’t have paid any-
thing to get to the next gas station.
Half an hour later, his boy who
brought with him a funnel arrived
and poured gasoline into the tank of
La Más, smiling and repeating all the
time Maradona! Maradona! When he
finished he wanted to take a picture
with La Más and me. I didn’t know
how to thank them. I offered them
money and they did not accept, so
I remembered I had brought forty
Snicker chocolates, and they accepted
two for each one.
I arrived at the border with Bosnia
where I met a nomad who travels in
a small Volkswagen Golf with plates
from Slovenia, in which he had adapt-
ed to hold a bed inside.
He offered me Turkish coffee, we
drank it sitting on the side of the road
while we waited in the queue to cross
the border. There were six trucks in
front of us, so we could enjoy the cof-
fee with tranquility, chatting about
the "for what" of the decision to trans-
form ourselves into nomads. Then we
wished each other luck.
Passport, Green Card, Registration:
Welcome to Bosnia!
Then it started to rain again, tor-
rential, as we crossed a wonderful
landscape between valleys and moun-
tains. It’s incredible how much beau-
ty I have seen these days. When the
rain stopped, I parked on the river-
side to eat my first salami Milano and
a piece of Gruyere cheese in months
(I was travelling from Kas, Tukey). A
few minutes later, a goat herder came
to accompany me. We cross words
the way two guys who do not under-
stand anything, but: MARADONA! –
again! A smile emerged, a touch on
the shoulder and a handshake.
Anyway...
I arrived in Mostar where I stayed
TRAVERSE 38
for two nights and then left for Croa-
tia in the direction of Split-Rijeka, and
then crossed the border with Slova-
quia and entered Italy through Trieste.
Lots of rain but no problems. Beauti-
ful landscape, good curves and La Más
behaved beautifully until we stopped
in a "rest area" a few kilometers from
Venezia where the unpredictable hap-
pened. Those things impossible to be-
lieve.
With the motorcycle still running
and hoping to enter the parking lot
of the restaurant where I'd planned
to have a coffee and rest for a while,
before starting the last stretch of one
hundred and fifty kilometers I needed
to cover in order to reach Stienta, the
driver of the truck that I had been be-
hind at a distance of six meters began
to back slowly without seeing me.
My desperation grew watching the
trucks bumper approaching, unable
to get off or do anything, just hitting
the horn, screaming (inside the hel-
met) and trying to back up, which was