I always knew that I could rely on John, that I could literally trust him with my life (which I did more than once) - because he was John. Back then, it was my emotional way out - my tactic to get back some meaning in my life. Make no mistake, we were no heroes: from today’s perspective, we were just stupid. But that didn’t stop us - him and me - from sitting in the car and travelling across half of the country, talking to multiple armies on the way. Back then, that was crazy, lovable and bat-shit dangerous at the same time. He didn’t know the difference between Biograd (a small town on the Croatian coast) and Beograd (the capital of Serbia). I soon discovered that John sincerely and honestly wanted to help. One day, this crazy Englishman who speaks seven foreign languages and plays damn good piano and decent guitar just popped into our office in Croatia saying he wanted to help.
And I’ve had some pretty good times since - so it must mean something.īack to John. Twenty-something years later, as I see it now, those two years from autumn 1994 to autumn 1996 were probably two of the most meaningful years of my life. There I was, 20 and crazy enough - or not caring enough, which is probably the same thing - to be travelling through the front lines in war-torn Bosnia and Croatia. My luck was that I was a ‘computer boffin’ (what John called me) and that I could speak decent English, so I managed to get a transfer first to the civilian authorities, and then, some months later, I started working with a German protestant humanitarian organisation.
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