The Morning It Started

by Elizabeta Žargi

That summer I was travelling through Europe on an Interrail ticket — a month of trains and no fixed schedule beyond a language course waiting in Ljubljana. I had already spent a week in Malmö, made a delayed stop in Hamburg after sleeping through it once, then gone down to Geneva to visit Milena. Eventually I returned to Vienna, where I was staying with Gregor and Sandy. They were also planning to attend the course in Slovenia.

I was meant to leave on the 24th of June so I could be in Ljubljana the next day for Slovenia’s declaration of independence. It sounded ceremonial when I first planned it — something historic but contained. A country declaring itself. A flag raised. Speeches.

A few days before I was due to go, Gregor suggested I wait. They were planning to travel down several days later and thought it would make more sense to go together. I agreed without much resistance. Waiting felt easier than moving.

The morning it started, Gregor burst into the room.

“We can’t go. We can’t go.”

I was barely awake.

“Where?” I asked.

“To Slovenia. There’s a war.”

He said it plainly. War. Not protests. Not tension. War.

It didn’t settle at first. The word floated above the room like something theoretical.

I called my father.

He told me to go back to Ljubljana. That I would only die once. That this wasn’t a real war.

He said it in an even tone, almost impatient.

When I repeated this to Gregor and his parents in the kitchen, they stared at me as though I had mistranslated something obvious. My father offered to wire fifty Canadian dollars.

Fifty.

I had one traveller’s cheque left in my bag. The rest of my money was in Ljubljana with my cousin. My return airplane ticket was there as well. If I wanted to leave Europe, I had to go back first.

For a few days I stayed in Vienna.

Sandy and I took short train rides out into the countryside. We sat in cafés. People ordered pastries. Newspapers lay folded on tables. The city appeared untouched. But in the evenings the television carried images of tanks and barricades. Each day the distance between Vienna and Slovenia seemed shorter.

I began to feel that waiting was its own kind of decision.

I decided to leave.

I packed early, quietly. No one tried to argue with me this time. The mood had shifted. It was no longer about practicality or travelling together.

I took a train to Graz. The carriage was half full when we left Vienna. No one spoke much.

From Graz I boarded another train heading toward Spielfeld, near the border. Fewer people got on this time. More got off. The closer we moved to the frontier, the quieter it became.

By the time we reached Spielfeld, there were only a handful of passengers left.

I stepped onto the platform and heard something I hadn’t expected to hear clearly — distant explosions. They were irregular, spaced out, but distinct enough that there was no mistaking them. The sound seemed to travel across open land.

A border guard stood near the carriage I was about to board.

He watched me hesitate.

“Sind Sie verrückt?” he asked.

Are you crazy?

His tone wasn’t angry. It was incredulous.

I didn’t answer him.

The train moved forward across the border.

The carriage felt hollow. I sat by the window, backpack beside me, trying to measure how far it was now to Ljubljana.

After the crossing, newly appointed Slovenian passport officers entered the carriage. Their uniforms looked almost too new. They checked my passport carefully, methodically, as if performing the gesture mattered more than its necessity.

They moved through the carriage quickly.

Then one of them looked up, briefly confused.

There was no one else to check.

I was the only passenger on the train.