We Do Adventure

Never before have I seen hangman generate such enthusiastic participation. Given that the setting was a youth club running an evening for 11-14 year olds the response was staggering; hilarious at times too. It was a team-based head-to-head competition. Rowan and I were in a team although I don’t think we helped much. We know our Bosnian alphabet alright but were pretty sure that the letters you’d pick first in English were unlikely to win the game here. Our hesitance didn’t hinder our team, who emerged victorious after six or seven rounds. There were screams and squeals, hugs and high-fives. I’m sure that if we were up on our local slang we’d heard the equivalent of ‘bring it on’ or ‘you think you’re all that’ as the banter flew between the opposing sides. There were prizes for the winning team. One young lad returned to a FIFA-two-thousand-and-something soccer match we’d paused during the competition brandishing a small, flat-packed, polystyrene airplane he was clearly happy with. Fun...

Tonight Klub Novi Most re-opened for the autumn. It was out first night. This was the acid test. Would we feel completely out of our depth; would we struggle to connect? The answer is, of course, no! Young people are young people and despite not understanding the banter we could communicate enough to exchange names and play games. Ligretto is a favourite here. I'd never played it but was soon up to speed, although not winning enough as I'd have liked! So why the title? Well, it was noisy; youth clubs always are. But during the entertainment section it got really noisy. The floor was covered in pieces of A4 paper with a letter of the alphabet on it. On the count 'tri, četiri, sada' the young people had to rush across the room pick up a piece of paper and be the first to reach the staff member on the far side, shouting a word starting with the letter on the paper. Their eagerness necessitated the cry 'uz za zid, ziiid...ziiiiiiiiid!' (The i's are pronounced li...