Путовање – животна опција Милорада Рајчевића
Travel – Milorad Rajčević’s Life Option

Summary/Abstract: Milorad Rajčević/Raïtchevitch (Mala Drenova, 1890 – Lübbecke, 1964), the first Serb “world traveler”, travelled for twenty years, tak­ing four big journeys – to the Far East, from Europe and Siberia to Palestine and back to Belgrade. His second journey (1913 – 1914) took him to the Americas, travelling from Alaska to Cape Horn. On his third journey (1923 – 1924) he travelled extensively throughout Africa. During his fourth big voyage (1933-1934), he found himself in India again, and then Australia, New Zealand, he made a stopover in Fiji and Hawaii, and also America. His travel articles were pub­lished in Mali Žurnal (The Little Journal) and Balkan (The Balkans) newspapers, and his travelogues were published in Serbian, French, and Spanish. He made a bet that he would visit Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas over a two-year journey on which he set out on March 15, 1910, and that he would cover 120,000 km. This, at the time, was indeed a rare feat on a global scale, and not just in Ser­bia. He was only twenty years old when he decided to embark on a trip around the world. (Before, as a young man, Rajčević went on a journey for four years, becoming fascinated by travel, and learning several languages.)He always travelled alone and proudly wore the national tricolor on his left arm, making every effort to “walk with his head high, as a newspaper correspondent and a gentleman”. He was proud that he could “carry for the first time the national tricolor through foreign countries”. His dignified demeanor left the impression that his was a “nation of high culture and nobility”. He spoke several languages fluently – German, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Greek, Italian and half a dozen other languages. Rajčević published several books, his first book Biografia e impresiones de los viajes del mundo a través del famoso Milorad de Raitchevitch Explorador Mundial Publicista Serbio was published in Spanish in 1918 and his last book Biographien und Autogrammem Staatsänner und anderer Persönlichkeiten des 20. Jahrhunderts was published in 1960 in German. He was decorated for his virtues by His Holiness the Patriarch of Jerusalem with the Cross of the Holy Sepulcher, which gave him the right to the title “Chevalier de St. Grave”.Rajčević, like other authors of travelogues, pointed to the cultural differences he encountered. But, although he was a benevolent in­termediary between the two cultures, he was also prone to accepting certain stereotypes. For Rajčević, the journey itself was more import­ant than writing. Travel gave purpose to his life, the opportunity to see new countries, but at the same time to represent his own. For him, travel writing was both a way to immortalise his own existence and to contribute to readers’ knowledge of other cultures. He tried to be the best mediator possible, mediating between his country and culture and other, mostly little-known, countries and cultures of the world.

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