3-14: Spilling the Beans

I just finished dinner. Stumbling out of the kitchen having eaten half of the face-sized pan of beans, I was treated to a frantic "Sam, why didn't you eat anything?!" by my host father. Ah, this country.

But another country of a bit more prevalence on my mind right now is Bosnia & Herzegovina. Today's string of lectures made me aware of several things:

• I need a hug. Holy crap, Bosnian history.
• The term "country" only loosely applies here--EU-administered kingdom fits much better. Bosnia is administered by three governments, two of the constitutive "republics" and one overall government for the whole shebang. They're all subject to the review Office of the High Representative, which sounds like something Emperor Palpatine would call himself. Also, it is somehow a confederation with a strong central government. Go ahead and figure that one out.
• The aforementioned constitutive republics are divided in a crescent-shaped convex/concave fashion, with a crescent-shaped concave one on the right and the (loosely) triangular convex one on the left. So one of them is Bosnia and one of them is Herzegovina, right?
• Wrong! The one on the right is Republika Srpska, and the one on the left is the Federation of Bosnia & Herzegovina. Most of it is Bosnia; Herzegovina is a few cantons of the Federation of Bi/H towards the south.
• Also, there are no Bosnians. Except that there are, just not in the sense that there are Serbs or Croats. Except that there totally are in that sense as well, but those Serbs & Croats aren't necessarily living in Serbia or Croatia. In fact, a good chunk of them are living in Bosnia. Where the Bosniaks aren't necessarily living.

If you're not confused yet, you're doing it wrong.

I'm also offended on a personal level by this snow. It was about 50 degrees this morning. When I went out on my semi-daily Orangina/Kit-Kat run, I had to wade through a small blizzard. Stvarno, Beograd? Stvarno?

1.  I just realized that opening my apartment's main door is a lot like picking a lock. Using the key requires the perfect compromise of tension along cylinder vs. jiggling the pins. It's like using a customized rake combined with the tension wrench. Which, now that I think about it, is basically the definition of the key. How about that.
2. It actually snowed sideways today. Which was weird, considering the relative lack of wind. I can understand it being blown that way in a fierce gale, but it all seemed to be headed west. Which raises the question: if snow flew south for the winter, could the birds stay put?
3. We have a new pope, which single-handedly renders all of my papal Star Wars references obsolete. Sad day. On the other hand, he's the first non-European elected to the office in 1000+ years, so I guess it can be said that the Catholic Church is theoretically doing something right.
4. I'm meeting a bunch of small Serbian children tomorrow, because Nikica decided that we should at long last meet with our linguistic peers. I anticipate witty repartee, possibly involving name-calling.

Srpski reć dnevni: Dagadagadaga (Дагадагадага): Helicopter (No, that's total bullshit, don't write that down. The actual word is just a straight-up cognate, helikopter)

Pictured below is regrettably not the Pope:

Pictured: Honorius IV. Look up Honorius III and be amazed.