2-28: "Oh Look, Someone's Robbing the Embassy" and Other Evening Musings

Today was a bit of an exhausting day, and it's already past midnight. So, hypothetical reader, I think I'm going to make some observations and let you piece together the narrative of my night. Take that, traditional storytelling!

Pictured: Striking a blow for lazy writing everywhere.

1. The Irish pub down the block from the Russian embassy is absurdly crowded for a Thursday night. Upon relating this to host-dad, he laughed, said "Every pub is crowded every night," and went back to reading the paper.
2. The Sava River is freaking gorgeous by moonlight. Something about the curve of the river, plus the running of the bridge, and the reflection of the lights of Novi Beograd, just add up into a veritable living painting. I advise walking along it some time.
3. Hearing alarms go off by an embassy rarely heralds good news.
4. The Japanese have a word that encompasses the awareness of the transient nature of all things. Ever think that we're doing it wrong when it comes to English?
5. I have officially mastered enough Serbian to navigate my way through ordering in a restaurant. Shame they won't be serving food at tomorrow's test.

Srpski reć dnevni: Veš (веш)-Laundry

2-27: Sam Walks the Highlord of Beograd

I'll admit it: I missed walking dogs.

I haven't walked a dog in almost a month, and haven't done it alone (using the term "alone" relatively; I guess walking a dog without the dog is just carrying a leash around the block) in years. And you know what? Dogs are smarter than we will probably ever be, with the possible exception of Buddhist monks and the definite exception of children.

Go ahead, take a walk around your block. What will you see? Probably a few buildings, some cars. If you're lucky,  maybe something pretty if a bird flies by at the right time or you catch the sunset. You know what the dog sees?

1. Dude! Dude! There's a tree! It's huge and it smells like five-hundred other things, kinda like nature!
2. Whoa! What?! There's some grass next to the tre--NO, WAY. WHAT. IT'S SURROUNDING THE TREE! IT SMELLS LIKE RAIN AND DIRT AND IT--
3. THERE'S A CURB?! OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD, IT'S A TOTALLY DIFFERENT SET OF SMELLS! PEOPLE SMELLS!
4. THIS ROAD, IT'S NEXT TO THE CURB, AND IT'S EVEN BIGGER THAN THE TREE! I'M GOING TO RUN IN A CIRCLE!
5. WAIT.
6. WAIT.
7. I SMELL...ANOTHER DOG. DEFCON 1, GO! HOLYCRAPHOLYCRAP--
8. HEY, ANOTHER TREE! 

...and so on and so forth, until we get home. And I have to say, I can't think of too many things that I wouldn't trade to have that kind of excitement and enthusiasm from a simple walk around the block. Are we missing something? Wouldn't surprise me.

Long story short, I walked Muvi yesterday. This is Muvi:

Pictured: Go ahead, don't fall in love. I dare you.

Muvi is an excitable little ball of fur who--fun fact--actually owns Beograd. Seriously, Muvi is the undisputed Highlord of all lands from Kalemegdan to Ada Cignalia and all who dwell within. Fortunately, Muvi is a benevolent dictator who is perfectly content with inspecting the palace grounds, urinating on cars and taunting other, far inferior dogs. God save the king, baby.

Also of interest was this:

This would be several units of riot police guarding the members of a vigil to the victims of a train hijacked by a paramilitary unit (Croatian, I think, but don't quote me on that) perpetrated twenty years ago today. The CO of the unit alone was given ten years for the crime, but considering the confirmed murder of three and "disappearance" of the rest, nobody particularly considers this acceptable. I think that's a common theme in this conflict--well, every attempt at reconciliation on a nationwide scale, really--the notion that "justice has been done", and everybody knows that it isn't enough, but those in power refuse to open back up the old wounds. Perhaps it's an attempt to placate tensions on the many sides of the conflict, maybe it's an honest attempt to move forward--or hell, maybe it's just good old-fashioned corruption. Whatever the reason, it's a bit of an eye-opener to see what must have been over thirty riot policemen, standing vigil over the vigil.

I also saw some other stuff today:

1. Okay, first of all, big props to Tour-Guide-Nenad (not to be confused with Nenad-Nenad), who gave us a tour of '90s war monuments two hours after the birth of his son. The next time you want to call out of work for a runny nose, think about that.
2. In my desk drawer right now is 50$ in Serbian currency, a passport, a burner cell phone, and several SD cards. I've had sketchier drawer contents, but not by much.
3. Yesterday morning, I stepped out of the apartment building and saw a fucking six-wheeled military assault vehicle parked on the sidewalk. I started to move for cover until I saw people begin to pour out from the back--not our aforementioned friends in riot gear, but construction workers, beginning their day on the job at the in-renovation building across the street. Oh, this town.
4. Speaking of which, cops drive on the sidewalk in this town. Not with sirens on, and not with any apparent haste, just in preference to the road. Sure thing, buddy.

Srpski reć dnevni: Topla (Топла)-Warm (as in "it is not")

KABOOM! or Sleep-Debt is Universal

Today, I blew up a bus with my mind. More on that later, though.

For starters, I think my fellow SIT-ers will agree that sleep-deprivation is no different in Serbia. Same incoherent thoughts, same pretty lights, same consequentially lazy blog posts. It happens. Such is college.

So imagine my amazement when I come downstairs at eight in the morning...and the coast is clear. Host grandma is AWOL (most likely off feeding the poor, clothing the naked, and smiling her way into the hearts of hungry Americans across the land). I can guiltlessly eat breakfast! I swagger over to the breadbox, open it up...

And find four slices of bread, neatly arranged next to the butter.

Pictured: Well, shit.

I tried. I really did. Guess I'll have to get up at 7 next time.

I went in today, business as usual, then went to the Belgrade Center for Security Policy, which hosted an interesting discussion about the prospects (or lack thereof) of integration by Serbia into the EU. I think at the very least, I've found a starting point for at least one of my possible ISP topics. It also made me realize that this project is going to be a hell of a task. I look forward to it, though.

So in walking home from a cafe afterwards, we happened on a discussion of how the weather had dropped from a sweet 55 to roughly negative-Scotland in two short hours. I, in sleep-deprived carelessness, invoked the word "Belgrade" combined with an ominous, low accent. Big mistake, apparently.

Alright, time for a thought-experiment. Pretend you just tased a bobcat.

 (I'm not going to Google Image that, you sick bastard.)

Are you imagining the ensuing sound? Because roughly half a second later, the trolley (in this town, this corresponds to a bus that's powered by an overhead rail system) let out a sound that I can most accurately liken to a wild bobcat receiving a few thousand volts, and went screaming off of its track into another traffic lane, accompanied with a brief but rather impressive shower of sparks. I'm not entirely sure what happened, but I'm a reasoning kind of man, so I'm going to go with the most rational explanation here: nascent telekinesis.

Right. Sleep. Needs to happen.

First, some other stuff:

1. The weather in Beograd is a cruel mistress. Seriously, it was a sun-shining 55 degrees today, maybe even more, when we stepped out of SIT after language class. I was all excited to walk home with my hands out of my pockets, maybe even with my eyes up. Then it started to rain. Then came the gray.
2. That last sentence sounded much more like the prologue from a high-fantasy paperback than I meant it to.
3. I'm on a bit of a music trip at the moment. In the last hour, I've gone through Irish folk, solo piano, and Dead Can Dance (which I maintain just straight-up defies genre). I wonder if this is easier to do while tired?
4. Why the hell is Tool touring in Australia? I mean, Australia's all well and good, but they need to get their asses to Beograd. I may be biased.
5. I could probably, without altering my route home, stop for a drink at a different cafe in this town every afternoon until I leave for Bosnia or Kosovo or wherever I end up. Or, for that matter, stay the extra month and probably do the same. The trick is finding the well-hidden ones tucked away above bookstores. This place is fantastic.
6. One of these days, the dramatized claim I make within the first paragraph of my blog post is going to be completely and utterly un-exaggerated, and I really will have fought a bear or drag-raced an Albanian or something equally batshit-insane. Just you wait.

Srpski reć dnevni: Telekineza (телекинеза): Telekinesis (Hey, sometimes they're cognates. Get over it.)

2-24: You're My Boy, Vuk! (or A Day in the Life)

The adaptation-level phenomenon, according to that intro to psychology class I was theoretically awake for two years ago, is the ability of the human psyche to adapt to conditions and treat both difficulties and stimuli for happiness as relative--for instance, an investment banker who has to worry about the account and its portfolios (or whatever it is grown-ups worry about) doesn't inherently consider life any easier or harder than does a Mongolian yak herder who gets up at the crack of dawn for the long day of bare-handed wolf-boxing ahead of him in defense of his erstwhile flock.

Pictured: Look, I tried, I really did. But there are just currently no pictures out there of yak herders throwing down with wolves mano el pata, and although I think I can see myself making it my life's mission to correct that, for now I just typed in "fuckin' epic" and posted the first thing I found that wasn't a demotivational poster. Enjoy this picture, and I appreciate your understanding.

My point being, I have a paper due tomorrow. It is five pages long. In preceding semesters, I used to sneeze five-page papers. Literally, just *Inhale--BAM* and there it would be, a brief on tuberculosis in Russian prisons. I could do them in my sleep. I could knock them out in hours prior to a class. I could knock them out laughing brashly, dictating them to my second as I fought duels in the SRC over small matters of honour (the "u" is entirely necessary).

Pictured: Your number-one reason to join Goucher Fencing.

I think that not having written any papers in two months has altered my perspective. Perhaps it's the sleepiness of a Sunday, or the lure of the entire city out there (despite the indolent roar of the koshava), waiting to be explored, but for whatever reason, these meager five pages are the last thing I want to take on right now.

So I thought I'd give you, in relatively chronological order, things that I have discovered, experienced, or realized throughout a day of "doing my paper"

1. Calves take a while to get sore after you really dig into them, but believe you me, you will wake up the next day and feel it.
2. I sneaked into the kitchen and almost made it to the breadbox before host-grandmom appeared behind me like an eldritch shade. Before I could protest my self-sufficiency, she had cut me three pieces of bread. I think I'll try abseiling from the roof next time.
3. I sat down to type my paper. Metallica happened.
4. While we're at it, we've decided that James Hetfield is entirely too cuddly to be the lead singer of Metallica. Seriously, Google image "James Hetfield smile". I'll wait.
5. "Distitofication" is not a word, regrettably. All the same, I think we need a word to describe how Yugoslavia lost Tito.
6. I had chicken cutlet and yellowbeans today for lunch. Not kidney beans, I mean like greenbeans, but yellow. Tasted about the same (e.g. delicious), but left me rather confused.
7. Metallica happened again. Shit.
8. It's getting darker later! Tangibly! Civil twilight hit at around 5:45, which is about 35 minutes later than my first day here.
9. I'm torn between two books: On Combat, a well-researched treatise on the psychological, physiological, societal, and emotional stresses of combat, and Gods of Mischief, the fascinating memoir of a reformed con who spent three years of his life infiltrating the psychotic Vagos MC in an effort to bring it down. Kindle, you're busting my balls.
10. Call me patriotic, but there's something about these whiny little European sirens that just doesn't provide the menace of the spinning cherries on top of an American Crown Vic.
11. Serbian profanity is creative and vicious. We English-speakers really need to step it up. Here are some choice translations, and keep in mind that these are the family-friendly ones:
1. "May your mother recognize you in a hamburger"
2. "May your mother kiss your picture on a traffic light (read-may you be killed in a traffic accident)"
3. "Graze on my balls like a priest would on cold cabbage rolls"
4. "May God give you to search for your children with a Geiger counter"
12. Applause is a democracy. Think about it.
13. I kind of have the urge for a motorcycle again. Although if I do it this time, it'll be smarter and after school. I can be patient, I swear!
14. Tool's "Lipan Conjuring" slowed down by 800% is actually really good to do work by. Don't ask.
15. About halfway into this paper, I realized the latest two paragraphs were basically posthumously scolding Tito's Yugoslavia. Awkward rewrite, engage!
16. I experienced a marked increase in productivity when I moved from my uncomfortable chair to my bed. It's amazing how tanked your mental processes become when you twitch to get more comfortable every thirty seconds.

And that's when I decided that I had wrung out my thoughts as thoroughly as I could for tonight, and decided to make any edits necessary tomorrow morning, as the length is good. I think it'll work out alright, and in the venerable words of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, "Fuck this shit, I'm watching Cowboy Bebop and going to bed."

Okay, I may have taken artistic license with that quotation, but I'm sure Vuk agreed with the sentiment after making all 'dem letters.

Srpski reć dnevni: Odugovlačenje (одуговлачење): Procrastination (what were you expecting, "hard work and diligence"? Sucker.)

2-23: Running With the Koshava

Today I looked out the window and saw that all the snow had melted. Cool!

Then the wind started up, and I realized that I would most likely be picked up and transplanted to Oz within the next five minutes. Oh hey there, koshava.

Pictured: YAAAAR!

I woke up with a slight headache, so I sat and spent twenty minutes meditating it away, which was kind of cool now that I think about it. I headed down and got grandma'd (which is, let's face it, really the only verb that fits when it comes to having breakfast in Serbia), then resolved to head out for a run today.

Now I think it's time I establish a perception here: the Serbs think I'm crazy. At the very least, my host family does, because I seem to deal with the cold a lot better than they do. And by that I mean I'm perfectly comfortable around the house in a t-shirt, while from what I can tell my host family is preparing to stock whale blubber in case the gods curse them with an especially cruel winter.

I'd thought my home-situation a peculiar one, but despite the fact that even with the koshava it segued into the balmy low 50s, when I left for my run today in a t-shirt, I received roughly 242,859 strange looks that broke down in roughly the following way:

• 40% thought I was homeless (I was on the #2)
• 30% thought I was crazy
• 17% didn't give a flying fuck
• 2.9% were runners/athletes and got the gist
• .1% were, by the smiles on their faces, intrigued, but also probably thought I was crazy

I arrived at Brankov Most (Branko's Bridge), ascended to the top, and began my run. Thankfully, I was doing much better this time around--cardio had improved, and the wall that I'd hit last time was nowhere to be found. On a whim, I pulled a right at the end of the bridge instead of a left, and started into Novi Beograd along a pleasant park trail. My goal was four miles; I made it two miles out, and turned around to start the two miles back.

Oh right, the koshava. Giving me a 30+ mph headwind. In the face.

So at the very least, I am happy to say that I didn't stop moving during my run. The quality of my pace is a different story. I'm also starting to realize just what a number my knee injury over the fall did to the conditioning of my feet. It's going to be an interesting few months.

Tonight wrapped up with a fantastic film at the 41st annual International Film Festival in Belgrade. The film, Circles (translation to be found below), centered around a number of families tied together by an incident of violence during the Bosnian War in 1993. I could ramble about it, but it's late, there's a lot to ramble about, and it wouldn't do the film justice anyway. Find a way to track it down and see it.

Observations:

1. The ride over Old Sava Bridge at night is really, really beautiful. It's much more beautiful if you can see through the crowd of 50+ people crammed in there like sardines, but I digress.
2. Speaking of which, Sava Centre is awesome. The part of the theater we were in seemed more suited for concerts than films; my language teacher says that the very hall we were in was the site of the very first conference of the Non-Aligned Movement during the Cold War.
3. "Running With the Koshava" will also be the name of the first album by the Serbian 80s style metal band I will inevitably form.
4. For that matter, "koshava" sounds like some kind of monster, the way it's used by the locals. Considering all the howling it's doing outside my window, maybe it is.

Reć srpski dnevni: Krugovi (кругови): Circles. Seriously, I can't stress that enough. See it.

2-22: Ti Hočeš Hleba?

Making today's a short one, as tonight we go clubbing.

Pictured: Serious disappointment upon my arrival at the first club.

This morning, dear host-grandmom bested me in a battle of wills:

• "Dobro jutro!" (Good morning!)
• "Dobro jutro. Hoćeš xleba?" (Good morning. Would you like bread?) *begins slicing bread.*
• "Da, uh...dva? Molim vas?" (Yes. Uh...two? Please?) *She is halfway through cutting slice #3* "...tri?" (...three?)
• *Turns slowly--still holding bread knife--and smiling widely.* Četiri. (Four.)
• "Da. Četiri." (Yes. Four.)

I invite you to note the lack of question marks on host-grandmom's side. Hell hath no fury like a Serbian grandmother.

Also, today was our last day with Vladimir, which entails naught but sadness. He gave a pretty epic speech, though, which slowly but surely turned into an endorsement for his political party. It's pro-Kosovo and, from what I've read, has its head out of its ass, which is more than most of the parties can say. So, although it would entail several forms of international polling fraud, they've got my vote.

1. Day two of snow here in LeninBeograd. As per usual, drivers, pedestrians, businesses, stray dogs, and sidewalks give not a single fuck, regardless of petty constraints like friction or visibility.
2. Milošević was a rotten bastard, and don't let anybody tell you different. Although to hear it said, his wife is much worse.
3. Serbodynamics (n.): A set of observed characteristics governing the behavior of situations of/concerning Serbs/Serbia that differ from the States in wacky and/or awesome ways. Expect elaboration in future posts.

Srpski reć dnevni: Stranka (Странка): Party (as in "Communist", not "raging". I'll tell you the latter tomorrow!)

2-21: Death Cab for Katić

I went downstairs this morning and had my first real, full-fledged conversation with my host grandmom today.

Pictured: Awwwwwwwwwwwwww yeah.

Was it about six, seven sentences long? Yes. Were two of those sentences "Hello"? Yep. Did it end in bread? Of course it did. But I'll be damned if it didn't have verbs, nouns, question marks--looks like somebody just graduated Serbian first grade.

Also, and I want you to read this to yourself in the most world-weary, stereotypical Eastern European accent you can think of: Winter has come to Beograd. I looked through the window this morning and saw it coming down (indeed, a key cornerstone of my eloquent verbal repartee with host-grandmom was "I like snow"). There's something about snow in this city that just clicks. The texture of the flakes mixes with the buildings, acts like a translucent curtain and gives these wide-open expanses like Knez Mihailova and Trg Republike a mirage-like quality. Snow sucks in some places. Beograd is not one of them.

That said, our cab ride to the Political Science Faculty (ФПН) was like a tour through a winter wonderland. And I mean the term "tour" in the sense that one says "two tours in Vietnam". Our cab driver was a laconic captain helming the Good Ship Skoda, a battle-scarred vessel that, but for the distinct lack of the faculty of speech, would most likely sputter profanity amidst consistent screams, its nerves long since shot from decades of near-flight through the streets of Beograd. The only thing more impressive than the new lanes we invented, the Ronin-esque passes we initated, and the nigh-contemptuous disregard for anything approaching traffic laws was that our driver--who I'm almost certain didn't blink the entire trip--could only see a vague outline of the road through the slowly-defrosting windshield. Chalk one up to echolocation.

The reward of this trip was a much-needed crash course in the Serbian political scene, followed by a fascinating education on the nightlife of Beograd. Turns out I'm right at home on the club scene--everybody dances as awkwardly as I do! Score.

1. Slavija Square is a circle. Which isn't news, it's just been bugging me for a little while.
2. It really just hit me that I'm headed to Kosovo in under two weeks. I'm not too sure what to expect, although the abundant anti-Kosovo sentiment from just about every non-SIT-affiliated person on this trip makes it seem much worse than I think it will really be.
3. I'm starting to really piece things together on Serbian jeopardy (called, awesomely, Slagilnitsa). It has six stages, and as far as I can tell they go something like this:
1. Piece together the biggest word possible with ten random letters
2. Try to reach a random number by mathematically manipulating other random numbers
3. Try to figure out a word based on provided clues
4. Try to guess a 4-character sequence of card suits
5. Trivia questions
6. Word association. The overall winner gets a dictionary. Which is kind of like a cash prize.

Reć srpski dvevni: Slagilnitsa (Слагилница) Freakin' Serbian Jeopardy! And the host is way more attractive than Trebek. Which, to be fair, isn't exactly a high bar.

2-20: The Bourne Commutation

Some days, the tram is uneventful. You board at Point A, you get off at Point B (of course, depending on the line you take, you may pass Points C, D, H, J, V, Ф, $, and Đ in between, but hey, it's public transit), and that's all there is to it.

Some days, however, you look down the block to see that the tram is only 200 meters from your stop and closing fast. So you sigh, and resign yourself to waiting in the rain.

Nah, fuck that. You engage in a Jason Bourne-esque dash through the city streets, cutting through alleys, leaping over trashcans, and hauling ass down the main drag because you know that if you miss that #2, the next one's a long way off and it's a long, uphill walk to Karađorđović, and there's a bomb in the passenger compartment.

Pictured: My morning commute.

Okay, maybe I totally bullshitted that last part, but I have to admit, I felt pretty badass dashing into the main road out of a shortcut just as the tram pulled in, mingling with the crowd (I even remembered to calmly straighten my lapels), and calmly stepping on board.

Some days, too, you sit down, remove your headphones (You Know My Name by Chris Cornell may or may not have been playing--no judging.) and find that the tram is yelling at you.

At least, that's what I assumed when I heard the hoarse, non-stop yelling in slurred Serbian; I looked for the source of it, but couldn't see more than a foot for all the people packed into that little sardine can. So at least for the first ten minutes of my ride, I kind of accepted that it was the #2 tram, yelling its grievances to the world: "Why do you all smell like cat urine?!" or "I've been running in a circle for fourteen years!".

Turns out, as the crowd diminished around Trg Slavija, that our loquacious orator was an immaculately-shaven bum, passing a flask of vodka among some friends, jovially espousing what I can only assume is the meaning of life in between generous belts. I felt enlightened as I got off the tram.

The day progressed, business as usual. Want to know some fascinating things about Serbia and her language?

• R is a vowel in this tongue. No, seriously. A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes R. Fuck Y. (Although, to paraphrase Dave, the language I study can't even write an "R" correctly, so I don't have any room to talk here)
• Want to know the difference between "I like you" and "I love you"? Well, for the next three months, neither do I. Volim vas, drugi.
• We're seriously wasting the potential of our national parks on that whole "family-friendly" thing.
• "Kamen, list, makaze" beats "rock, paper, scissors" any day of the week.

Last but not least, I went on my first run since going wheels-down in this country, and realized...well shit. I haven't run in waaaay too long. I'm also (warning: boring physiological conjecture ahead.) having trouble keeping up with mass growth--my cardio is good, my musculature is actually doing better than I ever thought it would thanks to consistent bodyweight exercises plus massive caloric/protein influx owing to local dietary customs, and body fat is diminishing at a fantastic rate thanks to the healthy and relatively uncompromised foods (National GMO ban, baby!). However, this all amounts to a 200+ lb. Sam--not a bad thing at all, considering my positive BMI--but that's 30 more pounds than I'm used to carrying on a run. (We now return you to your regularly-scheduled blog.) The short of it is this: I've got a lot of training to do.

1. Futbol: I'm intrigued. I just watched Milan stomp Barcelona on TV, and I definitely got swept up in the fervor with my host-dad and brother. Too bad going to a soccer game here apparently registers you with a fascist party...
2. I really have to get on board with the whole "chilling in a cafe" concept. I'm used to restaurants rushing you the check and maximizing space/efficiency, even if there isn't a line. I'm excited to spend a while with a good book and a quiet little place before class, an idea espoused as awesome by a few friends. Hey, when in Rome (well, Beograd)
3. The verb system in Serbian is fascinating. Multiple verb use entails separate conjugation, not just one conjugation then the next one's infinitive. Coupled with the accusative, it makes (relatively) complex sentences a breeze
1. That said, this "gendered third-person plural" madness has to go. Although linguistic egalitarianism is fine and dandy (and I think a term I totally just made up), it doesn't need to be that complicated.
4. On another (less tedious) linguistic note, the word mandriati roughly translates into "for a river to flow"--e.g. a word that specifically describes the action of water flowing in a river. That's kind of beautiful.

Reć srpski dvevni: Prst (Прст): Toes/fingers (Because why differentiate? We're all orangutans here!)

Keeping all this stuff going on at Goucher in my thoughts. Everybody stay smart, and try not to lose your heads. However this all went or goes down, remember that we're rational and compassionate beings for a reason.

2-19: Richard Burton, You Lovable Drunk!

First, an epic shot of Kalemegdan, because I see absolutely no reason not to start off a blog post like so:

Pictured: Minas-Beograd

Okay, two awesome things today:

Firstly, I walked through the door today and sat down. Three seconds later, my host-father crashed through his studio door, came to stand in front of me, and asked "are you hungry?". I sort of stammered out an answer, and was fed instantaneously. I ate a metric-ton of pasta as he told me stories about the Yugoslav film industry.

The second thing was that I got a question right in Serbian Jeopardy. Know the frustrating/cool thing about Serbian Jeopardy? If you guessed "it's in Serbian", you should congratulate yourself on your firm grasp of adjectives.

Go ahead, take a bow.

I was doing my usual schtick of mouthing through the onscreen Cyrillic like a second-grader (as opposed to my standard English reading comprehension of a fourth-grader), when I saw "Мануел Антонио Норијега" and "земља". My keen vocabulary (currently consisting of literally dozens of words) knew that "земља" is Serbian for "country" and "Мануел Антонио Норијега" is Serbian for "Manuel Antonio Noriega".

Pictured: Probably not a Serb.

However you cut it, I put two and two together in my head and blurted out "Panama", and was treated to the likewise correct answer on the screen. I was also treated to the immensely surprised looks of four host-family members (one of them being host-grandmom, who doesn't speak English, and the dog, who probably doesn't speak English). I, of course, shrugged it off like the "nbd" moment that it was.

Hah, that's total bullshit. I grinned like a lunatic and proceeded to get the next twenty-seven questions staggeringly wrong. But you know what? You've gotta start somewhere.

Observations:

1. The Yugoslav film industry is a fascinating subject that I literally had never even heard the first thing about. Do yourself a favor and check out the movie Cinema Komunisto. The Yugoslavs went balls-out when it came to film-making, and you wouldn't believe some of the high-rollers that got to rub elbows with Tito.
2. One of whom was none other than Richard Burton, the drunkenness of whom I now have hilarious, anecdotal knowledge of.
3. It's really kind of chilling to see the words "Radovan Srpski Junak" ("Radovan: Serbian Hero") spraypainted on an alley wall on your block. Radovan Karadzic is a war criminal currently on trial for, among other things, massacring 8,000 civilians during the war. But again, the entire point of study-abroad is to take the material from textbook facts to real-life reality, so I welcome the experience.
4. I've been on a poetry kick ever since I found that so many classics are available for free on the Kindle. I've been captivated by Oscar Wilde lately, but if anybody has any suggestions, please feel free to throw 'em out. I can't wait until the weather's nice and I can read outside.

Reč dnevni srpski: Reka (река): River

The word of the day is relevant because I start running tomorrow! It's a river trail, taking me along the glorious banks (read--gray sloshy spillway path thing) of the Sava River. It also takes me over two beautiful bridges. Wish me luck, ya'll.

Also, my stats show that I have one view from Spain and several from Israel. Hi! Thanks for tri-continenting this!

2-18: Albanian Blood Revenge (or Mondays in Beograd)

Two things of interest today, folks. Firstly: Albanian blood revenge.

Let's say you've killed an Albanian.

Pictured: You.

Well, turns out that Taken 2 actually didn't go far enough in how apeshit-crazy the consequences are. According to custom, the family of the murdered man removes his shirt--still bloodstained--and buries him. They then hang the soiled garment at the edge of a precipice. Over time, the wind, rain, and sun will wear at the shirt, until the blood is bleached or washed away. When the last trace of the murdered man's blood is gone, the family is then honor-bound to avenge their fallen kinsman by in turn murdering the one who put him in the ground.

Well, shit.

And that's how we started language class today. We were tossing around words we'd learned over the weekend, and I had misread the subtitles of Centurion and thought I knew the word for vengeance. When corrected, our language teacher took great delight in telling us that charming little piece of culture above.

The second event of note today was much more cheerful! On the #2 (a.k.a. my pimpmobile), one stop from my own, the ticket checker came aboard the tram. The two girls in front of me looked at one another, stood up, and moved towards the door behind me--clearly they don't have tickets, and from what I can gather from their speech, they barely have money for the fines. So she's going through, checking people, and for their sake (because I love an underdog), I take my time getting my card out. But she scans mine through, then turns to the girls. They try to talk their way out, but to no avail.

That's when the homeless guy I'd been sitting across from (who, by all appearances up until this point, may have been a goddamn corpse) sits up and starts talking to the ticket-taker--from what I can tell, about damn near anything. She begins arguing with him, but he's off now--my broken comprehension picks up rants about the overpriced bus tickets, about how everything was better before, and a comprehensive telling of how he came to be riding the #2 for a living. And this guy is still going in full form as the tram pulls into the next stop, and the girls (who, like myself and anybody within earshot, are grinning ear-to-ear by now) slip quietly off of the tram, avoiding a 500 dinar fine each. The ticket checker looks up just in time to see them disappear into the crowd, and the bum smiles and goes back to sleep.

Oh, this town. Obs, yo:

1. Everything in Serbia has peppers. I have no complaints.
2. Air-drying takes its sweet time, but between the environmental advantages and the benefit to the clothing, I'm beginning to like it more.
3. I'm a huge fan of Vladimir the history professor, but there's a bit of a problem when his style and enthusiasm makes you grin while he's delivering a lecture on the Srebrenica Massacre and similar instances of ethnic cleansing.
4. Mondays are not very observant days for me.

Reč dnevni srpski: Osveta krvna (освета крвна): blood revenge (because sometimes my word-of-the-days ARE violent and exciting!)

I may go to a flea market tomorrow. Fingers crossed that I don't buy anything cursed!

2-17 Again: "Sausage and yogurt go together like...sausage and yogurt."

In an exciting and controversial move, Beograd was graced by a cameo appearance of the sun today. Although the sun could not be reached for comment, I'd like to think that Beograd is starting to embolden its image as a legitimately enjoyable place to spend time, and the sun is a welcome guest. In any event, it put the temperature at a good 6 degrees today (that's 43 in non-Commie-speak), which was a fine figure to walk around to. As I made my way through the lukewarm streets to a lunch meeting, I got to thinking how wonderful this city is going to be when the temperature jumps into the double-digits.

We met up and headed to the restaurant, and I would like to take this juncture in the story to introduce ćevapi.

Seasoned with the tears of your local PETA advocate.

Ćevapi is a Serbo-Croatian word meaning "cat". No, that's horrible, don't write that down. Ćevapi is a sort of sausage made from pork and/or beef, but the cool thing about it is that it's skinless. Personally I despise the casing on your average American sausage (get your mind out of the gutter), but through some kind of engineering feat, biochemical advances, or hoodoo-shamanic witchcraftery, ćevapi maintains its delicious composition without any of that teeth-sticking gristle that comes with the cased stuff. Cooking about a half-pound of this at a time and serving it on a sandwich along with just about every vegetable that grows south of Novi Sad means that I will probably have eaten my own weight in ćevapi by the time I leave.

So at lunch today, I saw ćevapi on the menu and somewhere in Serbia, a cow looked up in fear. I ordered a share of it, and when it came time to add the toppings, I inexplicably refrained from my usual tactic of pointing at the whole damn salad bar and nodding like a maniac. Instead, I selected a few things, the names of which I at least partially remembered, save for the last, the nomenclature of which I had no idea but I vaguely considered to be sour cream. After a few bites into my wonder-and-perfection sandwich, I realized that they had put a dollop of yogurt on my ćevapi. A few bites more, and I realized I was actually okay with that. Does that mean I'm adapting culturally, or will I just eat anything? Interesting.

1. I can't help but cock my head at the horsemeat scandal going around right now. They sell it by the half-pound in a stall at Zeleni Venac. Take it for what it is.
2. I forgot that an enormous aspect of language immersion involves humbling yourself. I'm working on it, I swear.
3. I'm practicing guitar a bit more here, which is the last thing I thought I would be getting better at upon coming to Beograd. Similarly, I'm also getting a lot of pleasure reading done--I had, I suppose, abstractly realized that I wasn't taking another 18-credit semester, but the reality of having time to work my way through the Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft by Kindle is quite a different thing.
4. Don't fucking read the Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft by Kindle at night! Christ. Guy was cracked in all the right ways.
5. Fascinating conversations with my host father today expanded to include the Russian meteor event. We bonded over our shared fascination that humanity and our history are no more than a constituent spark in a small flash in the cosmic pan.

Srpski word of the day: Sad (Сад)--Now (Also the abbreviation for the USA, which is kind of sad if you think about it.)






(No, I will not apologize for that one. Good day.)

2-17: The Fast and the Swerviest

The #2 tram (a.k.a. my whip, yo) swerved to avoid a car yesterday. This is impressive, considering that a tram car in this town is mounted securely on tracks:

Pictured: The antithesis of maneuverability.

Nevertheless, as the small Volkswagen came hurtling across the intersection past Trg Slavia at hilarious speeds, our own driver pulled the closest thing you can come to a Crazy Ivan with Beograd public transit, and our entire bulk seemed to shift a foot or two sideways. Whatever it was she did, it gave us enough room for the brave (crazy) driver (pilot) of the Volkswagen (Mitsubishi Zero) to careen past us and on down Knez Milosha, doubtlessly headed off to see if they couldn't bust the Kessell run in under twelve parsecs.

Disclaimer: Author is not responsible for any nerdgasmic overdoses caused by the references in the preceding paragraph.

Anyway, my weekend was a strange affair. In lieu of something ridiculous like linear, coherent storytelling (psh.), I'll let my observations speak for themselves:

1. Beograd nightlife is crazy and fun and ridiculous and quite frequently all three. Don't let anybody tell ya different.
2. Host-grandmom made me dinner today. I asked her what it is (in Serbian, bitches!), and she managed to communicate that it has potatoes and eggs and some other stuff but by that time I couldn't hear her over the sound of my wolfing down everything on that plate. It was like piranhas going at a cow.
3. I took a several-hour long walk along the river yesterday planning out my running route, and came to the conclusion that I will forever resent any run that doesn't take me on an epic bridge over a gigantic river. There's a chance this city has spoiled me in that sense.
4. The Sava River is nasty. Like, Schuylkill nasty.
5. "Diamonds in the rough" is a cliche that fits this city like a glove (speaking of cliches). I spent today meandering the warehouse district of the city (which shall henceforth be referred to as Sketchgrad) until our guide came upon what she was looking for: Well...a warehouse. But we then learned it was actually the home of an underground theater movement started by dissidents under the Tito regime, extinguished during the war, and brought back in semi-secret in its current form. Then we went inside and found the absolute coolest little cafe, full of oddities, blasting classic blues, and featuring a pet turtle. This city epitomizes finding wonderful things in unfamiliar, even foreboding places.
6. The same serendipitous discovery can be said of good friends.

Srpski word of the day: Krompir (кромпир)-Potatoes (Seriously. Potatoes. Eggs. They tasted like little pellets of goodness and there was a freaking gigantic plate full of them. I think the plane crashed somewhere over Munich and I'm in Valhalla.)

2-13: At Least We're Not in Finland

The dog is laughing at me in Serbian. Stay with me, here. I promise I'm not dropping acid.

Pictured: My bedroom wall.

Day two of the koshava, here in Jotunheim. Naturally, we opted to take a field trip today to the Muzej Istorije Jugoslavije (Museum of Yugoslav History, if the cognates weren't a dead giveaway), which is, in terms of altitude, just about on top of the city. Of course, like most experiences here in Beograd, despite my bitching it was a fantastic time that I think I would like to do again. You see, the museum is a pretty rampant shrine to Josip Broz Tito, Marshal/President/Don of Yugoslavia. Today I gleaned several interesting impressions about Tito:

• The "crackpot Commie despot" that we tend to write him off as is not even a remotely justifiable perception. Say what you want about his ideology or methods (and I'm not saying I'm in his fan club); he managed to secure an economically and militarily sound nation, and not on the backs of his people. How many leaders can you say that of in the latter half of the 20th century?
• The man networked like a boss. His funeral was attended by delegations from every nation but six. Or eight. Or maybe seven. Me and numbers don't agree.
• Tito was armed to the teeth. Seriously, the museum sports two full rooms of weapons. Straight-up medieval pig-stickers, flintlock rifles, throwing knives, wakazashi--Tito was clearly that kid who always came back from vacation with a new pocketknife he bought on the boardwalk. Only, y'know. He went on to lead Yugoslavia for thirty-five years. He scaled his pocketknife collection accordingly. 

We returned to the city proper, where I persisted in my quest to eat the Balkans. My colleagues seemed confused by my appetite. I stand by my conviction that between athletic metabolism and a mild defiance disorder that considers the food-oriented lifestyle of the Balkans a direct challenge, my attempt to consume the better part of Knez Mikhailova in one sitting is to be expected.

Pictured: Me, prior to/during/directly after lunch.

Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed.

Pictured: Cooler heads prevailing.

Instead, we proceeded to language class. Good news and bad news. The good news is, the collective intelligence of 12 keenly educated minds succeeded in reaching the conclusion that we are not in Finland. I say this because the class has reached grammatical case. Having seen the light (read-been beaten over the head with nominative, dative, genitive, accusative, locative, and instrumental), I welcome case. It's a bitch, but it makes language easier. It is, however, an obnoxious concept to adapt to. But we have a leg-up on the Finns here in Serbia, in that while this language tops out at seven cases (I know, vocative? Classy, guys.), Finnish allegedly possesses fourteen different grammatical scenarios. I think after nine, it's time to subside into grunts and pointing.

Speaking of grunting and pointing, the bad news is that my grammatical progress has failed to impress the dogs of Serbia.

Pictured: Stoicism incarnate.

This (not so) little fellow, a resident and possible partial owner of nearby Cafe Britte, as well as my gracious host-dog Muvi, persist in giving me this exact same look whenever I string together a sentence in Serbian. You know the look. Dog owners, you've given this look to your dogs. It's the same long-suffering look you ruefully cast their way when they do something like drop a deuce on the carpet and look up at you like it's a trick, hoping for food. Because I think that to the dog, that's basically what I've done. Although my host grandmother is of an entirely different opinion. Today our conversation went something like:

• "Lampa?" *she points upwards at a light fixture.*
• "Ne, hvala. Ja dobro." *I grin, hoping to indicate contentment.*
• "Da. Hleb." *She brings me toast.*

I think I'm growing to like it here.

Observations:

1. The trams run on devil magic here in Beograd. Every once in a while, an inexplicable explosion of multicolored sparks will burst forth from the otherwise calm wires that power the tram system. This would not be terribly strange, except for the fact that it happens when there isn't a tram in sight.
2. Speaking of the trams, today our tramcar came screeching to a halt at a junction. The driver scowled, grabbed a hooked pole, got out of the tram (that part happens with alarming regularity), and poked the track junction until something made a tremendous "crunch" noise. He nodded, apparently satisfied, climbed back in, and we went on our way.
3. My host family's (and, I've found, many Serbians') way of speaking English fascinates me. My host-mother asked me the other day "Do you enjoy yourself?". I stopped and pondered for a moment. Do the things I do bring me enjoyment on a meaningfully regular basis? Is that a priority in the way I conduct myself? Is happiness truly a more important goal than my place in the rat race, or is what I do accumulate simply a serendipitous byproduct of my actions? Then I realized that it wasn't a holistic existential inquiry, but "how ya doing?" with different wording. Then I felt like a dork again. My host-father's observation of a glass perched close to the edge of the table tonight struck a similar chord. He walked by, observed for a moment, then looked me in the eye and said, "that will fall.". Language is a funny thing like that.
4. Good lord, #3 was long.
5. Israeli girls are hilarious, and more often than not, unintentionally so.

Srpski word of the day: Otvoreno (отворено): open (because not all words of the day can be hilarious, violent, or badass. Some people have vocabulary quizzes to study for, dammit.)

2-12: Sam Eats the Balkans

This morning I woke to the sound of Father Odin throwing out his back.

Seriously though, I learned something about Beograd today. Every city has its quirks. Quick, kids: What is San Francisco famous for? Hills. London? Fog. Newark? Stab wounds. Well, Beograd has something called the koshava. That's what it's called when the troposphere and the unique orthography of the Carpathian Mountains go on a bender and send the bill to Serbia, resulting in a fairly perpetual wind that drops the temperature by an almost cartoonish amount. The only thing that's missing is a few bad Schwarzenegger puns and an uncomfortably anatomic Batsuit.

Anyway, I took note of that, got up around 7, and headed out for a morning walk.

Hah. Seriously, though, I flipped off the window and the winds outside, pulled another blanket close, and watched the second part of a BBC documentary on the breakup of Yugoslavia. It was a very concise account and a good refresher, but considering the redundancies of the prerequisite reading the only brand new information I received from it is that Macedonia is currently run by Vasil Tupurkovski, and we should all be very afraid for the people of Macedonia.

Pictured: a small woodland creature (center-left, under Tupurkovski's nose); Tupurkovski (everywhere else)

Speaking of class (the non-gloriously-mustachioed kind), class today featured one of my favorite people in the Balkans: Vladimir the history professor. I have always had enormous respect for professors who give a damn--whose enthusiasm and engagement with the material engenders in the students a legitimate and vested interest in resolving the questions posed in the course of the class. It's that spirit that made my APMEH teacher take us outside in February to illustrate why invading Russia in the winter backfired on Napoleon and Hitler, that spirit that made my freshman year Latin-American history professor such an inspired storyteller. And it's that same excitement for the topic--or maybe just life in general--that makes classes with Vladimir a fine way to round off the day.

That said, coming home to a happy Serbian family that immediately offers you a small cauldron of delicious pasta is a great way to continue it. This is exactly what happened to me this afternoon, and I couldn't be more pleased with such a greeting. I've understood academically for some time now that hosts in this part of the world will insist that you eat far more than you are physically capable of ingesting (or, as Dave more effectively phrased it, "they force-fed me Choco-Tacos."), but, in the spirit of this semester as a whole, knowing and experiencing are two very different things.

But you made a mistake, Serbia. You didn't know whose stomach you were messing with.

Pictured: My spirit animal.

In all seriousness, this is kind of awesome in that the caloric intake in this place coupled with a strict regimen (e.g. stepping up the bodyweight and nailing down running routes) should give me some fantastic results. It's in the back of my mind that my next Tough Mudder is only eleven days after I step off the plane back into the US, and I know that my jetlag coupled with however little sleep I get in Frankfurt (twenty-hour layovers are rarely restful things) will have me at a disadvantage, so I need to buckle down and get some real training done in-country. It's reassuring to know that I won't want for protein. And carbs. And deliciousness (it's a vital part of any balanced diet).

On a slightly less cheerful note, I was watching the news with the host family when this image came on the news:

Pictured: Your tax dollars at work.

If you're curious, that's the bombed-out remains of the former Serbian intelligence headquarters. It's located right next to the skeletons of the Army headquarters and I believe the Serbian equivalent of the State Department, all targeted and (evidently) destroyed during the NATO air suppression campaign in the late 1990s. Was I conflicted with that story? God, yes. I don't support the methodology used in the conflict. I'm now friends with people who have lost loved ones directly because of the actions of my country. But I was also six years old when this happened. I couldn't even spell Serbia (I mean, I sucked at spelling as a youngin', but that's neither here nor there). I suppose it's good preparation for the kinds of perceptions I'll be experiencing as an American on this trip, and it's past time to start considering the responsibilities that that entails. Overall, though, because the only words I could make out on the program were "memorial" and "dialogue", I kept my mouth shut and tried thinking Canadian thoughts. Then I made some observations:

1. Analysis of research methodology is tedious in any country. Necessary, and eventually interesting, but tedious. Surprise of the century.
2. I had another one of those surreal nostalgia conversations today, this time with my host-brother. Turns out the games that scared the shit out of me as a kid (read-17 year old) scared the shit out of him as well. I don't care what language you're playing in, when Father Grigori jumps ship in Ravenholm and all you've got are two shotgun shells and a crowbar, you'll be turning on some lights as well.
3. I also had a much deeper conversation with Bane about guitars and the role of music in our lives, and from there the perks of artisinal work versus mass production. I'd rather not share any of those stories on a blog, but suffice it to say he's got some good ones.
4. I got a knowing nod of greeting from a Serbian guy with crazy eyes before boarding the tram today. Infiltration commencing.

Srpski word of the day: Koshava (Кошава): Lit. "Great Jotun's balls, I can't feel my face!"

Pictured: DEEEIICEAAAGEEEE!

 

2-11: Fistful of Dinars

Today on the trolley, I was Clint Eastwood.

No, don't listen to that. It's not half as exciting as it sounds. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Today I woke up with the best of intentions, and found to my dismay that my bed is entirely too comfortable for my own good. It's a cozy little cubby that defied even the inadvertently-imbibed caffeine's attempts to keep me awake last night, but the flip side of that is that getting up is something of a struggle. I dragged myself out of bed and hit the floor. Literally. Pushups are getting easier and easier, and I'm hoping to break 50/set today. I've also dusted off the family pull-up bar (like I said, I love it here) and am getting my back...um, back...into shape. Shower, breakfast, conversation with Bane, and I headed out.

I would like to take this time to introduce you to what I've come to dub the Yugovator:

Pictured: Yugovator, aka Little Bertha, ak(incorrectly)a The Sovietblaster

It does not go back further. It is roughly the size of a phone booth, and sounds about as smooth. I am so incredibly taken by the Yugovator that I legitimately look forward to my trips from the fourth floor to the ground. It's the real McCoy, too--two closing glass doors, visible shaft walls as you move through the building, grinding noise as you approach the bottom. I'm riding in a piece of history.

From there I walked to the metro stop and boarded the #2--a trolley (on tracks; makes about as much noise as the Yugovator). The #2 is unique in that it goes in a circle. In theory, one could ride the #2 as long as they wished, and in practice, the city's homeless frequently do to escape the gnawing cold of Beograd. I sat down across from a sleeping homeless man who nevertheless had nicer shoes than myself. Good on you, sir.

We rounded Трг Славиjа, (Trg Slavia--seriously, just give up on vowels. It's not happening.) an enormous roundabout of which I have heard said "take a car through the Trg three times without injury or death. Only then are you inducted into the higher secrets of driving in Beograd". A student boarded among many people at this stop, and out of my periphery I see this fellow staring me down.

This is where I went full Eastwood.

I looked up, and he looked away. But I held that shit. Stared him right back down. Eventually, he looked back and we made eye contact.

This is when Ecstasy of Gold came on my MP3 player.

Jump to 2:21 for the gist of it, but suffice it to say that somewhere, Clint Eastwood is smiling (probably to a chair, possibly lovingly, but that's beside the point).

That's when I remembered that eye contact is a norm on Beograd public transit, and felt like a dork.

A lucky dork, punk.

Observations:

1. I came home to my host family watching on their TV the surveillance footage from the front of the building. Make of that what you will. 
2. A good half hour conversation with my host sister about how we by-and-large grew up with the same cartoons, which I think is really cool.
3. The first person singular conjugation for "to be" ("I am" in English, if you were wondering) is "sam", as in "Ja sam". Ergo, ja sam Sam. Furthermore, "sam" with the accent on the "a" or thereabouts means "alone". So: ja sam Sam sam, or "I am Sam alone", a phrase which Dave believes could be turned into a bitchin' folk song, our language teacher thinks is hilarious, and I believe reinforces my earlier Clint Eastwood conviction.
4. KC Grad is still awesome. Borgo is my bro.

Srpski word of the day: Izlaz (Излаз)--Exit (the marking of which doesn't seem to mean much when public transit is concerned)

(Gmail decided that it had enough salting my wounds by resending the same late emails. Props on doing something right!)

2-10: My Slow Day at Home, and Boring Linguistic Stuff

I woke up (un)pleasantly late today, and owing to the several inches of snow outside decided to forgo my run. I settled for a light bodyweight routine and am hoping that a day of non-activity will help me wake up a bit more--I feel that since disembarking at Nikola Tesla, BEG that my body and mind have been a bit sluggish (doubtlessly that's shown through in my writing =P ).

The view from my room as the snow falls on Beograd.

So for today, I felt content to sit in the living room for a chunk of the day, reading with my host father Bane (BAHN-yeh, short for Banislav--contrary to popular belief, I am not rooming with the masked musclebound anarchist mastermind attempting to implement pseudo-Hobbesian designs for Gotham City). We're both very introspective people--while passing one another late last night in the kitchen looking to get a glass of water before bed, we accidentally talked former Yugoslavia for an hour and ended up jamming some acoustic Pink Floyd until one in the morning. I think I'm going to love it here.

I'm sitting in my room now, working on translating introductory words through three different languages while listening to the full Metallica/San Francisco Orchestra, an album that I believe emboldens the capabilities of classical music to younger generations and dispels myths about hard rock and heavy metal to older ones, and that should be mandatory in school, right up there with a holistic interpretation on the Second Treatise on Government and ad nauseum instruction on the correct use of turn signals. Here's a few observations:

1. I am one lucky son of a bitch. Which isn't particularly news, but is always a good thing to remember when you have the privilege to do the things and go to the places that I have.
2. Either the Serbians or the Russians dun goof'd when they adapted Cyrillic. Considering Vuk Karadzic's divinely-inspired insistence on the phonetic "one letter per sound" policy when standardizing the Serbian language, I'm looking at you, Russia.
3. At the same time, I'm very excited about my cognate collection. Plenty of words are different here (most irritatingly that "why" in this language is "what" in Russian), but among the many cognates, verbs feature most frequently. Here's to (words about) action speaking louder than (action-less) words!
4. For a third perspective, however, I am slightly concerned about my Serbian and Russian mixing into some unintelligible Slavicstein as I struggle to use my far from complete knowledge of the latter language to bridge into the former. I would ideally keep them separate; I would be okay if my Russian took a hit in order to learn the language here and now, as I can always work to correct it next year; if I failed at both, I would be sad. Possibly even Novi Sad (ignore that awful Balkan geography joke. This is why I need an editor, and possibly a new amygdala.)
5. This city is, as far as I can tell, wonderfully safe. My host family heedlessly walked through neighborhoods the likes of which I wouldn't touch in Baltimore or Philly well past midnight.
6. I found out yesterday that Kosovo means "field of blackbirds". Considering some artistic decisions I've been making recently, I think it's a good sign. I don't know why, but I feel fascinated by Kosovo.

May or may not make a post tomorrow. Minimal time on the computer is kind of liberating.

Srpski word of the day: Mredza (мрежа)-net (as in "fishing", "basketball", or "Inter-"

2-9: "Belgrade is F&#*ing Huge!" and Other Understatements

Just got back from an hour of wandering. Going to the theater and headed out after, so I'll just go with some  observations for today:

1. Beograd's roads keep the same names while turning, change names while going straight, and occasionally just melt into nothingness. Act accordingly.
2. The stray dogs and the people here form wonderful relationships. Our tour guide said that the little bear of a husky who followed us around helps "guard the group" when they go to Kalemegdan.
3. Beograd has been destroyed over 40 times and occupied over 60. They're doing pretty well for themselves, all things considered.
4. I was attacked on the street today. I owe my survival to my formidable combat skills, my intimidating visage, and the fact that my attackers were seven and nine years old respectively. Persistent little guys, regardless.
5. Italian food in Beograd? Surprisingly good.
6. Tour guides are another one of those constants--the good ones are knowledgeable, sassy, and oversharing.

We're seeing a play called Born In YU tonight. Although we don't have classes for another day, I'm excited to get the thematic ball rolling with this show--all about what identity means when the country you were born in is no longer...well, a country.

Srpski word of the day: Venac (Венац): Market(place)

2-8: I have a Wise Serbian Grandmother!

Host family meeting day today coincided with the conclusion of orientation, which was good news--despite the fantastic job done by the SIT staff, orientation is nevertheless orientation and by nature takes its sweet time wrapping up.

We sat around the table at SIT headquarters, anxiously awaiting our placements and trying (with mixed results) to commit a few pleasant phrases to memory. I managed "drago mi je" which translates to "nice to meet you". Incidentally, the fact that it is culturally acceptable--nay, expected--to say the word "drago" within seconds of meeting somebody reaffirms my conviction that this language is awesome.

Jelena (Yeh-LAY-nah), the home-stay coordinator/professional ray of sunshine/generally wonderful human being, called me into her office and informed me that I would be staying with the Stepanoviches, a mother and father of a daughter my age and a son slightly older, and a dog. They are, to quote her, "not the average Serbian family. Very artistic". With that information in mind, I sat back down, practiced my Serbian, and waited.

We moved down to the lobby before too long, standing outside the cafe within which our families waited. In a spectacle worthy of the Academy Awards, Jelena brought us in one-by-one. In retrospect, considering the chaos of 13 families assembling at once, this makes sense. I was led in about halfway through, and sat down with my host mother and father. She is a doctor; he is a painter; they are, for lack of a more adept description, simply wonderful. And to my immense satisfaction, Grandmother is staying in the apartment until March. I met her. She allegedly says I am a very polite young man after I told her her stuffed peppers were very delicious in Russian. I tried not to grin too widely.

I'm sitting in my bedroom now after their two-ish hour walking tour of Beograd Central. My host father told me...well, just about everything, as far as landmarks and historical information is concerned. I'll fill in details once I set a routine, but for now, my observations:

1. There was a chicken foot sitting on the sidewalk this morning. No chicken in sight. I know not what to do with this information.
2. There is every kind of stray animal in Beograd. Dogs, cats, rabbits. The peace between them is tentative, although the birds are open season (see item 1).
3. In addition, it appears to be required by law that any kind of cafe, bar, or diner has to have a cat or dog meandering, lounging, or otherwise interacting with the patrons. These animals give zero fucks. In Serbian.
4. Orangina. Remember Orangina? The delicious, faintly sparkling orange juice with the pure taste that comes in the classy glass bottle? It's EVERYWHERE. And cheap. And I am going to stock that shit like Djokovic hordes donkey milk.

Srpski word of the day: Trg (Трг): Square (a la a city square. Possibly a quadrilateral. Too lazy to look it up.)

Curling up in my heater-side bed now. A little pissed at Gmail for dropping the ball, and picking it up with terrible timing. If you're reading this, Google Robot, you did a bad thing. Go and think about what you did, and no bandwidth for you tonight.

2-7: Orientations are Also the Same (With Minor Differences)

Heading out to KC Grad momentarily, which sounds like a tire factory but is actually a nice little bar. Just a few observations and lessons learned:

1. It is easier to obtain an exit visa than it is a bus ticket. The ticket checkers do not empathize with your difficulty.
2. Serbia is a "meat culture", which are the two sweetest words in English, or Serbian, or really any other language. That will not stop me from buying very many apples for very little money.
3. Serbian ~= Croatian ~= Montenegrin ~= Bosnian. Four languages for the price of one. Don't tell the locals.
4. "Soccer match" is code for "fascist rally".
5. Although I do not wish to test this theory, I feel relatively confident that if a Yugo (car) ran into me, the most dire consequence would be my having to pay for damages to its bumper.

According to Kornilija and Borgo, KC Grad has some sweet live music. I very much hope to verify that this weekend. Meeting the host family tomorrow. Wish me luck that I don't get sold!

Serbian word of the day: Pekara (Пекара)--Bakery.

2-4: Cats Are the Same Everywhere

Today began like many others. It ended with my having crossed several thousand miles, met numerous new friends, walked the streets of an exotic city, and began the transformation from academic onlooker into an immersed participant in a country I'd since only read about. But more on that later.

Much more importantly, I've discovered for myself that cats are a universal constant, and that is wonderful.

I'm writing this from the couch of Mr. Walter's Hostel, a cozy hideaway on the fifth floor (or so; one tends to lose count with lack of elevators and heavy luggage) of a ragged building in the New City. Before me are Jellah (Жела?) and Toothless, two tiny cats whose antics persisted in making a group of jetlagged college students coo our brains out for several hours. And as obvious an observation as this may be (see aforementioned jetlag), I realized that although I have gone so very many miles, to a very different place, with so many strange things, I think it's indelible proof that cats and their consequent adorability care not for such trivial nonsense as ethnic divides or geographical boundaries.

(Okay, as I was typing that, Toothless bounded into my lap, proceeded to rub against me, play with my finger, and commence purring like an engine before curling up and falling asleep. He has since bailed and crept into the paws of another sleeping cat without waking him. Clearly, they are also capable of telepathy and mad ninja skills.)

Anyway, some observations for today:

1. For everybody who seems to think Serbia is a frozen hell, I hasten to point out that today's average temperature was 9 degrees warmer than that of Philadelphia. Tomorrow has a high of 53. For those of you who counter with the assertion that Philly is an even frozen-er hell, I leave the floor open to debate.
2. Serbia has Mexican dive bars. EVERYWHERE has Mexican dive bars. They're not bad here, though.
3. Many people here look angry. 90% of the time they turn out to be damn friendly.
4. That said, dickheaded posturing to try to impress a girl is the same in every language.
5. The graffiti in this town is awe-inspiring in its beauty and subject.