Tim Page: Why I quit New York for the Balkans

….One afternoon, when the anxiety grew too much to bear, I bought a one-way ticket to Belgrade, Serbia. Just like that — called up and booked it, as though ordering a pizza. And now I will be leaving on Friday night, with plans to return sometime in 2021, although that, like everything else these days, is subject to change.

Why Serbia? I could tell you many stories about the glories, tumult, beauty and sadness of the Balkans – all true and vividly present – but my choice finally came down to pragmatism and convenience. Belgrade is still open to Americans right now, and there is a flight that will effectively take me from passport control to passport control, with no changes of plane in the middle of the night, which I could no longer manage by myself. It is presently the only non-stop flight to Europe where American passengers can leave the airport immediately after the formalities.

I’m off.

*

The nights since I arranged for my travel have been clotted with terrifying dreams. In one, the plane had been transformed into a bumpy emergency ward, with my fellow passengers, reclining mummies, wheezing and coughing to the accompaniment of mysterious beeping machines. Another scene was set in a blinding snowstorm, and I was marshaled into a line of frozen-footed, ragged asylum seekers sharing a rumor of an admitting bureaucrat thousands of people ahead of us and around a corner. But the line was not moving and I knew I was doomed.

And yet, as I shook off the night and banished my nightmares, the venture seemed at least plausible, potentially exciting, and maybe even renewing, no small matters at the age of 65.

I finished packing my carry-ons and took a last look around the apartment where I had lived on and off since my early 20s, wondering if I would ever return. Had I been younger, sentiment would likely have softened me and I might have stayed. But I’m more courageous now: my car was waiting, the flight was due to take off in four hours, and I set out to JFK, leaning forward.

I hadn’t been in an international terminal in almost a year. There were more guards than travelers: everybody was reduced to a pair of suspicious eyes above light blue COVID masks. The airport looked like an abandoned shopping mall and it was almost impossible to believe that a branch of the Palm steakhouse – stuffed with vigorous, juicy young people spending too much money on meat and lobsters the size of small pets — had once operated somewhere in the dark, behind the dingy plexiglass.

I welcomed the release from gravity as we lifted off from New York. I ate a little, pushed my seat back, took an Ambien, curled up and tried to be comfortable. And then there was oblivion, followed by a relieved sense of waking up alive and far away, amidst bustling flight attendants serving morning coffee. looked over green German fields as we flew south from the Arctic. It’s a new day and another world down there and I am pleased that hours have now gone by during which I have not understood a single phrase.