When you leave the A2 motorway at Ljig, southwest of Belgrade, and take the A22 highway to the southeast, you come to Holywood. You can’t miss it: the huge lettering made of square, white metal letters dominates the valley and is illuminated at night. But how do the eight letters get here? And what do they have in common with the nine letters from Los Angeles?

There is no one in sight who could explain this to us. We park our car in an empty parking lot bordered by a closed restaurant and a pottery shop that is also closed. Then we follow a sign that says “Srpski Holywood” which shows us the way to Serbian Holywood. As we climb the forest path, only a small car with an Italian license plate comes towards us. There are tin figures at the side of the path: a laughing knight with a long nose, a young woman with wings and a crown next to a rainbow spanning the path. Finally, another sign announces that we are in the land of the Wizard of Oz. It becomes more and more mysterious long before we reach the letters.

A yellow submarine on the side of the road

However, the metal companions don’t seem particularly magical. They come, as we will later learn, from the same man who put the Holywood sign on the hill: Ivan Jakovljević, whose stage name or nickname is Zar Ivo. Unfortunately, neither of the two Internet addresses containing his name lead to a functioning website, neither the one on a sign on the side of the road nor the one on the “Ivo Car” Facebook page. In any case, this one seems to have a sense of lightness and positivity: the side of the road is also decorated with an overturned silo that is vaguely reminiscent of a yellow submarine and has the corresponding inscription: “If all your ships are sinking, make it a submarine, and on we go.”

In any case, we continue with the climb up to a steep ramp, where we wonder whether the small Italian car made it up here. Walking the route was definitely a good idea. Behind the ramp rises a huge entrance portal made of thin sheet metal. It is unoccupied, we dutifully put a bank note in a box. We leave the Hansel and Gretel House on the left, as well as various other signs, huts and other shenanigans at the end of the path that continues to climb. Because on the right you suddenly see the huge lettering that had not been visible during the walk.

Not a holly forest anywhere

An interesting inner restlessness becomes noticeable. We want to immediately approach the metre-high letters with the angular edges, but then move away from them again in order to be able to see them completely from the front and then from the side. We wander around it, looking at both the white front and the rusty back side, including the wooden cross supports hidden there, and looking for the headlights that provide the ghostly illumination at night. It’s not easy for us to say what makes this lettering so attractive. Its sheer size ensures that it remains elusive – and at the same time captivates us.