Trading Paris and Geneva for a Fairy Tale in a Herzegovinian Village

Editor’s note: This story comes from the HEDONIST archive. It was first published in 2020, in the second issue of the print magazine.

At the end of the village, in a house reached by a narrow gravel track through the forest, Laurence found her peace, her pleasure, and a new life. She also acquired a new name: Lola.

“I lived in Paris, then in Geneva, but I always came here in the summer, because I needed this pleasure, this nature, this air,” she says. “I told myself that one day I would live here. So I decided, and I came.”

Lola is a physiotherapist by training. It was her only job in Paris and Geneva, and she hasn’t given it up in Zovi Do. In Piragići, a hamlet tucked into the rugged hills around Nevesinje, she has built a place that is part workplace, part paradise, and she believes that one day it will become a spa.

“This is my therapy center. I do all the massages myself, and I have a pool and a sauna. I do exercises with my patients, but people also come here simply to unwind, if they are stressed,” she says.

News of her skills has spread in Nevesinje, and Lola already has regular patients. Others come only to enjoy the stillness and the silence, and the blue of the small patch of sky visible between the hills.

“I’ve been creating this place for two years. It isn’t finished yet. I plan to fix up the yard and do plenty more,” she says.

The few residents of the village didn’t believe that a French-born woman would stay. But when she began laying the foundations of what she calls her paradise at the end of the world, everyone rushed to help. Her neighbors don’t live close by, but they mean a great deal to her.

“My neighbors say it’s wonderful that I’m here. They’re glad that someone is living here again. I’m very grateful to them for helping me, and for still helping me,” she says.

For half a century she traveled to Zovi Do on holiday from France and Switzerland, she adds. Now it is the other way around. She is certain that she would never trade the hills of Nevesinje for Swiss ski resorts, the lights of the Eiffel Tower, or the beaches of the Côte d’Azur.

“All of this took courage, but now it has become pure hedonism,” concludes the Frenchwoman from Zovi Do.

Her Companions, Her Paradise

Lola isn’t alone in Herzegovina. She introduced her company with pride: a horse named Indijanac and a mare named Lasta stroll gracefully around the pool and sauna, a dog and a cat are inseparable, and then there is Igor the rooster, with his hens. Lola has planted everything that can grow in this rocky karst. Zovi Do lies more than 15 kilometers from Nevesinje.

“I go into town only when I have to, once or twice a week at most,” Lola told HEDONIST.

• By: Bojan Nosović / HEDONIST
• Originally published in HEDONIST 02, 2020.