4-28: "Your Grated Nerps Will Be Your Undoing", or Sam Gives a Booklist

I could use this post to update you on the "progress" of my ISP (hint: I still haven't solved human trafficking). I could use it to tell you all about the wonders of Sarajevo, numerous and unceasing as they are. I could even use it to explain the vaguely ominous, question-raising title of this post.

Pictured: Another hint.

Instead, I'm going to talk about some books. I realized that I ended up doing a pleasantly surprising amount of reading during my time in the Balkans, thanks in no small part to pre-class downtime and the wonder that is the Kindle. So here, for your enjoyment and entertainment, is the unadulterated list of Sam's Book Club. Join now, and receive a free sense of steadily spiraling lunacy!

• The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant: Okay, so this one was actually started and finished the month leading up to my departure, but considering all the anticipation and preparatory work for the trip, I certainly feel like it deserves inclusion. The Tiger follows two intertwining stories occurring in 1997 in the Primorye region of Russia, a beautiful, unforgiving expanse of coniferous jungle vast enough to be considered by some environmentalists to be one of the "lungs of the earth" (the second being the Amazon, but I digress). The first story is that of Yuri Trush, then-head of Inspection Tiger, a unit dedicated to maintaining the delicate stasis between the human and tiger population; the second is that of a particular tiger, wronged by poachers and out for chillingly-targeted revenge. It's a very well-written reminder of just how conditional our seat at the top of the food chain is.
• Medicine Men: Extreme Appalachian Doctoring by Carolyn Jourdan: I started this in the Philly terminal fresh after hearing about the five-hour delay on the connector to Boston. Carolyn Jourdan was a Wall Street...analyst? Broker? Something that involved upper six-figure salaries, caffeine IVs, and flexible moral compasses. Then her country-doctor father suffered a stroke, necessitating her return to her eastern Kentucky home to help care for him and work as a receptionist/assistant in his clinic. In doing so realized that the good she did there far outweighed any benefit of her previous lifestyle, and she made the change permanent. The book is a short but sweet collection of anecdotes pertaining to the general hilarity that ensues when one man with a pick-up truck and a medical school degree has to look after hundreds of rugged miles with nobody but his family to help him. Another eye-opener, but by no means a downer.
• Becoming the Iceman by Wim Hof and Justin Rosales: This was one I'd been meaning to pick up for a very long time. Wim Hof is a Dutch athlete who has trained himself (and trains others) to resist extreme cold and heat, and has 19 world records to prove it (one of which consists of climbing Mount Everest in socks and bicycle shorts). Justin Rosales of State College, PA, to put it simply, was not. Together, the two write a book of their original, separate goals, their eventual meeting, and the former's steady but successful instruction of the latter, eventually training him to the point of breaking a world record of Justin's own (the best 3k time in sub-freezing temperature, wearing only shorts, if I remember correctly). I'll state it plainly: neither are writers. Wim's sections are direct to a fault, occasionally skipping details that would be much better said, and Justin's are pretty scantily edited and can be awkward to read. That said, it serves to affirm my faith that I'm not being bullshitted--these are two athletes giving their honest accounts of their training, not two salesmen trying to dazzle you into buying a book. I've tried a few of these techniques, namely the establishment of resistance with cold showers, and I've met with success. Even beyond that, the philosophy of pursuing success espoused by both guys is reason enough to read it.
• H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Collection By Englebert Humperdink (no, really, it's by H.P. Lovecraft): Did I read anywhere close to all of these? No. This is literally everything ever published by Lovecraft, in anthologies, in novel form, in serialized pulp magazines--the man's goddamn shopping list might very well be in here. And how much did I pay for it on the Kindle? $2.99. Shut up and take my money. I jumped right to Call of Cthulhu because it's Call of Cthulhu, then dug into At the Mountains of Madness, reading it over several cold nights in front of the wood stove at the host family's. The man wrote suspense like it's nobody's business, and he presented more detailed scenery with three paragraphs than some movies do with their entire FX budget. And it's $2.99! Go!
• Gods of Mischief by George Rowe: So you're shooting pool at a bar with a friend, when three or four tobacco-chewing, hulked-out, leathered-up, pissed-off bikers from the Vagos Motorcycle Club step through the door. Their leader eyes up the table and decides he wants it for himself. You, valuing the attachment of your balls to the rest of you, step back, but your friend won't stand for that kind of bullshit. Fifteen minutes later, he's beaten half to death on the floor. Three days after that, he's found in the desert, beaten the other half. What do you do? If you're George Rowe, forty-year old hardass jailbird-gone-straight, you come to the ATF offering to go undercover in the Vagos, rising through the ranks and gathering enough information to take the Vagos all the way down. The conversational tone of Rowe's writing doesn't preclude its quality and depth, and the man tells one hell of a story that's well worth the read.
• The Religion of the Samurai: A Study of Zen Philosophy and Discipline in China and Japan by Kaiten Nukariya: A brief history and overview of Zen Buddhism, covering meditative practices, application to historical perspectives, and comparison with other sects of Buddhism. Written in a laconic fashion that simply does not cater to those who don't want to learn, Nukariya's piece is a fantastic read for inquisitive minds.
• Barefoot Running: Step-By-Step by Roy Wallack and Ken-Bob Saxton: Despite the veritably endless ridicule I've gotten from just about every non-runner I've talked to on the subject, both the unearthed research and personal progress I've had have gotten me enthusiastic about barefoot/minimalist running. I picked up the guide by the guru himself, Ken-Bob Saxton, and had mixed feelings. On the one hand, he supplies plenty of information with steady, reliable support from the scientific community at large, and he readily acknowledges the points of detractors with due and fair diligence. On the other hand, I'm a bit off-put by his insistence that there is no healthy/safe middle-ground between shod running and barefoot running (as the proud owner of a pair of Vibrams, this alarmed me at first). With that in mind I posit that the book itself, if taken with a grain of salt, is a fantastic resource, and if taken just as a memoir, is a pleasant and playful read detailing the growth and development of the most unique athletes I've ever heard of.
• Sympathy For the Devil edited by Tim Pratt: I'll put it bluntly: this is a collection of short stories about Satan. Ignoring the obvious implications for my mortal soul, it's actually a spectacular read, with some world-class names from the worlds of horror, fantasy, and sci-fi writing (Neil Gaiman in particular contributes a brilliant little piece). Some of them are downright terrifying, others hilarious, others completely baffling, but just about all of them are loads of fun. I couldn't approach selecting a favorite, but up there are Sold to Satan by Mark Twain, Metaphysicsby Elizabeth M. Glover, With By Good Intentions by Carrie Richerson, We Can Get Them For You Wholesale by Neil Gaiman, and about half of the other stories in the book.
• Confessions of an Idiot by Chris McDougall: This...was bad. No two ways around it. I searched for a memoir on BASE jumping and saw the name Chris McDougall, who I mistook for Chris MacDougall, author of Born to Run. Let this be a lesson to always read the free sample. I bought it instead and made it ten percent of the way through the book before realizing that "Confessions of an Idiot" was not an ironic title. The entirety of the book seems to be stories ending with (often literally) the words "yeah, we were dickheads back then" regardless of how long ago the story actually took place. I wrote like he does in this book when I was in eighth grade. The good news is that every once in a while, he talked about BASE jumping. The bad news is that apparently every BASE escapade is carried out in a stupid, irresponsible, reckless way. If you're doing it recklessly by the standards of freaking BASE jumping, you know you're doing it wrong.
• On the Decay of the Art of Lying by Mark Twain: Although this is not a book, and in fact was an essay delivered to the Historical Club of Hartford for a thirty-dollar prize, I'm putting it in here as possibly the funniest thing I've read to date on my Kindle. I won't try to explain it, just go out and find it online. Totally worth ten minutes of your time.
• Forty-Seven Ronin: A Novella of Japan's Most Legendary Tale of Revenge by Dimetrios C. Manolatos: Although it's not winning any literary prizes, or even any praise, anytime soon, Manolatos does succeed in retelling the phenomenally under-told (and allegedly true) story of the 47 Ronin, former samurai who infiltrate Edo (Tokyo) to avenge their slain master and regain their honor. Although it features some of the most painful dialogue and unnecessary carnage I've read since middle school, he relates a great story relatively intact and gives a fun time in 150 pages, so I've got no problem with it.
• The Undiscovered Self by Carl Jung: One of Jung's more influential works, The Undiscovered Self functions as a crash-course in the idea of the shadow-self, the summation of the parts of yourself that you'd rather not deal with, so down you push them until you think they've gone away. Jung relays the concept much better than I just did, and then runs with it, bringing up ideas of projection and the harm that suppressing and denying the shadow can bring about. Finally, he postulates that the rejection of the shadow has put us where we are today (as this was written in the late forties/early fifties, Jung, like the rest of the world, had just witnessed the largest immediate loss of human life in history with the dropping of the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and was understandably alarmed at the state of humanity). A groundbreaking piece even today, I think everybody could do with a quiet room and half a day to work through it.
• Nocturnal by Scott Sigler: Modern horror at its finest. Nocturnal tells the story of Brian Clauser and "Pookie" Chang, two San Francisco cops who stumble onto a century-old conspiracy that goes all the way to the top after being forced off of an investigation involving a growing number of ritualistic slaughters. As they probe deeper and deeper into it, one of them begins to realize that he's far more involved than he'd ever thought, and not necessarily on the right side. It's gripping, it's suspenseful, it's genuinely chilling at some points. I first heard about it when Sigler went on Joe Rogan's podcast. The man knows what he's doing at a keyboard, definitely pick this one up if you've got the chance.

And that takes us to here and now. Next on the docket, ISP-related readings aside, is Infected by Scott Sigler (yes, I'm hooked), and probably Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams by Carl Jung. Then maybe I'll fuck off and watch a TV show or something, who knows? Stranger things have happened.

4-24: An Afternoon With the Evil Horde

Okay, so three main things: I learned to cook, I hung out in one of the tallest buildings in Sarajevo, and I had a run-in with The Evil Horde.

Pictured: Sadly not the same Evil Horde.

Let's do that in order.

Guys, somewhere between Belgrade and Sarajevo I learned how to cook. I'm a bit concerned by this. I'm considering several possible causes, and the front-runners are either demonic possession (see previous post) or some kind of Manchurian Candidate-esque hypnosis, except replace the Dragunov sniper rifle with a spatula. I support the latter, solely based on the fact that I would be assuming the role of Frank Sinatra, which is definitely an item off of the bucket list.

Well, whatever the cause, I have no complaints. Yesterday's creation was Cajun-style lacho with spicy fried potatoes (Thank you Sarge, wherever you are, for the inspiration). It took about an hour to make, there was some chili powder involved, and overall everybody was happily full at the end of it. Tonight, considering it was just the two carnivorous men eating, we went with a rigatoni in tomato/pepperoni meat sauce, with garlic and bell peppers. For something done on the fly, you could do much worse. Overall, I've got no complaints.

That's not true, I do have one: today there is one kind of pepper in this country, and that is a green bell. Although I'm told that just two days ago the big store down the street had red and yellow as well, yesterday I scoured half of the Old City and all I found anywhere were green peppers. I'd like to think that somewhere in Sarajevo, some toque-wearing maniac is roasting a vat of peppers the size of my apartment building, cackling madly as he backs up a tanker truck full of oil, but I'm not holding my breath.

Anyway, today I had my interview at OSCE. I entered the massive, sleek glass skyscraper (one of two identical structures), walked through the mini-mall at the base, and came to OSCE check-in. Two guards stared me down as I stepped to the receptionist's bulletproof glass cubicle and promptly butchered the name of my contact. That, plus the acoustically hostile nature of bulletproof glass in general, merited a few tries before she finally dialed, glaring at me in the process. I turned to the intimidating guards instead, one of whom succeeded in dialing down the tension by a few notches by humming the theme to Serbian jeopardy under his breath. Well-played.

My contact came for me and escorted me through several keyed doors, heading up an elevator and guiding me into an office with the most spectacular view of Sarajevo I've yet had, which is saying something. The interview itself went fairly well, and I managed not to make a complete ass of myself (although I do not look forward to transcribing it).

I returned home, and then I remembered that Dave had tickets to an FC Sarajevo match at 5. We flagged down a cab, the kindly old driver of which inexplicably knows our program director (and figured it out from talking to us). Clearly, we've med Bosnian Sherlock Holmes.

We did a lap around the stadium, entering (and almost getting roughed up by security for not knowing the Bosnian word for "pat down") and finding seats close behind the goal. We proceeded to kick back in the almost completely vacant stadium. I say almost because of the smattering of fans in the bleachers, enormous security presence, and players on the field. Oh, and these guys:

Pictured: The cheering section for the orcs.

"Horde Zla" translates into, I shit you not, The Evil Horde. Which is hilarious in and of itself, before you add in the fact that for ninety minutes straight the Evil Horde chanted in unison, either for FC Sarajevo or possibly to appease the blood god Khorne. Respite with their own drummer, pounding out a cadence to their eldritch intonation, we started taking bets on how many ballboys would be sacrificed during halftime.

Pictured: Halftime.

Fortunately for the surrounding villages, FC Sarajevo won 1-0 and there was no pillaging to be had. Although the field looked ready for it--I've never seen a soccer pitch with its own moat before. It swallowed a couple of soccer balls.

Look, you're observant people, so observe my observations smattered around this blog post and enumerate them if it floats your boat. Big day tomorrow, so I'm off. And remember...

Beware the Evil Horde.

4-22: Dave Exorcises Sam

There are days when the gods of narrative smile upon me and I can put out something cohesive, something phrase-turning, and eloquent, and entertaining enough to merit interested reading. Then there are days when lists happen. Today is the latter. Take it or leave it.

1. So I'll be home in under a month. This is terrifying. And exciting. And saddening. And relieving. All of the above. I'm not looking forward to expensive (read-reasonably priced) sandwiches, and crappy public transportation. I am, however, looking forward to driving, and lifting, and seeing a whole bunch of people that I haven't seen in entirely too long.
2. I'm halfway through the Bosnian Ministry of Security's 2010 report on human trafficking and I'm fairly certain it was run through Google Translate to get to where it is right now. There are articles where there shouldn't be and structure of the sentence that makes use of the word "of" like using it in a fashion reminiscent of this is a part of regular parlance of this language. <---that, for 75 pages.
3. Made carbonara last night, and you know what? No casualties! I definitely goofed on the consistency, but considering we're making cream out of milk and butter and no measuring cups, it's a bit of a challenge. Pink sauce is next!
4. Don't ask me how we got here, but AskMen has an article on how to perform exorcisms and I'm pretty sure I busted a gut laughing. Played totally straight.
5. After persistent email pestering, I secured an interview with OSCE (Organization for Security Cooperation in Europe) on Wednesday, and I think I have one with Human Rights Council Helsinki (BiH branch, of course--Finland is a bit out of my way) in the works. This whole project is starting to grind along.
6. This may be the first paper I've ever written that feels like it has a purpose to it. Will it probably just get shuffled away into the SIT archives? Sure. But maybe being here conducting my own cold interviews and living in the place where it's all happening has that kind of effect.
7. The day I got here, a protein powder store opened up a block away. Coincidence? I think not.

Off to do battle with the forces of evil, pictured below:

4/18: Sam Knows a Guy

I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that I did not light the kitchen on fire. The bad news is that I blew 7+ hours on a bus yesterday and didn't get an interview. More on both in a minute.

Okay, let's try to piece together the last two days:

Yesterday: I got up at fuck-all-thirty to head for the bus station. The plan, according to my adviser, was to jump a bus to Tusla, to jump a bus to Bijeljiena (go ahead. Try to pronounce it. I dare ya.) to meet with members of an NGO she's friends with. It was to be, in her words, "an adventure". So I got out of bed and suited up at around 7:30 (middle school flashbacks abound) and trekked out into the brisk morning dew, bound for the traffika for a tram ticket. I picked it up and stood at the stop, waiting for the number one to come along.

The three comes.

The two comes.

The three comes again.

It's been about four threes, five twos, and a five now, and it's about 8:10. The bus to Tusla departs at 8:30. Shrugging, I hop on the next three and hope for the best.

I get off at the junction outside the castle-like US embassy, and start the walk to the train station (which was about three minutes long, really rendering the number one an exercise in laziness). I manage to find my way to the station, pick up a ticket to Tusla, and get on the bus four minutes before it departs. So far, so good.

On the road to Tusla, I determined a few interesting things:

• This section of Bosnia looks like Coal Country, PA, or maybe VA, or KY, or really anywhere they've ever blown up a chunk of mountain to drag out coal. There's some serious dilapidation, pieces of a freshly-deceased industry starting to decompose and return the space to nature, that resonate pretty strongly with places I've seen on the road to Pittsburgh or Charlottesville.
• The villages in between these rotting plants and quarries are phenomenally isolated little patches of life--almost what you'd expect to see if those industrial scars had never been inflicted. Terraced farming, patchy little herds of sheep, and hard work on both dominated the hamlets we passed, and in which we occasionally stopped. That fascinated me, as well--for a big-city Sarajevo to (sort of) big-city Tusla, we had a lot of stops. I wish they'd do more things like this on MegaBus or BoltBus back home--it'd make life easier for a lot of people.
• There wasn't a chance in hell I was going to make it to Tusla on time.

That third one being the most salient detail, I arrived in the bus terminal at 12:30 (four hours, compared to the supposed two) and tried to order my ticket. I gave him my best Bosnian (which, according to others, is at least coherent), and after several attempts he gestured to get out of his line, muttering something about "fucking Russians". That...was strange. I guess my accent's still on the "chyeh" vs. "teh" side.

I soon figured out at least part of his frustration (I guess somebody pissed in his Froot Loops this morning to compound it)--the next bus to Bijeljiena was at three--an hour after my interview. It was then that I discovered that I had no cell phone reception. Combining all of these factors and my assured lack of desire to sleep under a bridge in Bijeljiena or Tusla, decided to head back. For impressions as to what that was like. start from the end of bullet #2 above and work backwards. 

I was exhausted at the end of the day, but decided to not make it a total loss and got some further bearings of the city by knocking out some errands. Stumbling back to the apartment, I recuperated by lounging around the house, doing some research, and enjoying some wonderful cooking. I'd say I rounded off the day pretty well.

Today: I got up, ran, shot around some emails, and went out for lunch where I impressed a shop owner by knowing how to say "cabbage" in Bosnian, which let me tell you, is a blazing hallmark of some seriously advanced skills in this language. Five whole letters, man.

Much more impressively, I, Samuel Rapine, displayed my cooking prowess by making myself and my roommates bananas foster. What's more, I did not kill anybody, be it through rum-turned-napalm or instant Type VII Diabetes (that's the kind that looks like ebola)! Although I'll tweak the recipe next time, I'm proud to say that everybody enjoyed it and I did it without measuring cups. Job well done.

1. One of my roommates brought home a Jaeger knockoff. I think it's called Jaegerdulan. We're scared.
2. That said, it's hardly the scariest thing in the freezer. The previous residents here left several lovely items in the freezer, such as half of a tomato, a calcified loaf of pita (it didn't crack when I took a hammer to it), and a suspicious bag with a picture of a chicken on it and some kind of stump that I didn't stick around long enough to identify coming out of the opening. I'll stick to the fridge, thank you.
3. Speaking of bluntly packaged hazards to public health, they also sell Jack Daniels in a can here, with the label "the perfect mix of cola and Jack!" Given the content of the rest of that shelf, I'd stake money that it's pretty much an even ratio.
4. Our balcony has a light. I can't accurately convey the sense of peace I felt reading a book, feet up, with the moon shining off of the river as the city twinkled all around me, but maybe I'll get better at it because I'm damn sure doing that on a regular basis.

I'm off to bed. Full day tomorrow! Hopefully I'll survive any latent poisoning/bad hoodoo from the bananas foster.

4-16: A Guided Tour of My Home (or Check Out My Swank-Pad)

I'm home!

Well, it kind of feels like that. I'm absolutely enthralled with Sarajevo, even more so than I was the last time I was here. The spring certainly helps, but much more than that, the idea that in the last three days alone, I've gotten a more nuanced understanding of the place--I can get around on public transit if I really have to, I know where some important landmarks, and of course, I know where to find good ćevapi. Maybe it's living without a host-family or program to hold my hand, or maybe I'm just getting better at working with foreign cities. However you spin it, Sarajevo fits like a glove.

As far as the new apartment goes, I'm turning to my old fallback of bulleted lists, because who needs literate structuring when dots will do the trick?

On the plus side, the apartment
-...is huge, with multiple bedrooms, a spacious living room (with a comfortable couch), an absurdly well-stocked kitchen, and a shower with a shower curtain and nozzle mount. For those of you who don't understand the significance of that, imagine trying to shower with half a hand. Or, you know, without a mount for the shower-head. Whichever one makes more sense to you.
-...has a beautiful view of the river, flowing around the bend near the national theater and giving the (somewhat wrong) impression that it runs all the way into the distant mountains. Also easily seen is the gorgeous collection of buildings along the banks on either side.
-...has a fantastic landlord. Nihad, you rock.
-...is decorated with care, making it feel less like a month-long rental and more like somewhere to which I can come home and relax after a day of researching all kinds of unpleasantness. Of particular pleasantness is the impressionist art lining the walls, the well-maintained (or possibly plastic) plants scattered tactfully about, and of course, the (presumably mock) flintlock pistol on the wall.
-...is wonderfully located, being about 300m from the (relative) center of the old city. I can see the place where World War I started from my balcony. How cool is that?
-...totally has a balcony. Need I say more?

On the other hand, it
-...is lit up like a Dutch brothel by the 12,000 terawatt spotlight shining on the synagogue next door throughout the night. Although eventually we were able to jury-rig a blanket/curtain over the most salient points, it's still a bit unpleasant.
-...is a bit loud, considering the tram going by throughout the night just across the river. Although this ingrains the nighttime tram schedule into my brain, so that's kind of cool.
-...is clearly haunted, judging by the goofy noises, flickering lights, self-closing doors, and this little fucker:

Pictured: The face waiting for you in the deepest circle of Hell.

So, with that image freshly branded into your retinas like a flashbang, I present to you the tour of my digs.

Pictured: Nom central.

The kitchen, in which I make eggs, sausage, pasta, store a fridge full of spinach and bananas, and burn just about anything else. Although I'd like to think I'm getting better. I leave preparation of anything past 11:59 am to more skilled hands than mine.

Pictured: Bond. Apartment Bond.

The living room, and entirely sleep-able couch. This is where the highest amount of swank in my swank-pad is concentrated, and you can clearly see why here:

Pictured: It's like the riviera, but half as pricey and a quarter as pretentious.

I had a picture of Dave's room (ft. Dave), but I'd imagine he'd object, so in place I present this:

Pictured: Same principle, different details.

And finally, THIS. SHOWER. WITH A BRACKET.

Pictured: WOOOOOOOO!

So yes, this place is awesome. Be jealous. Or come visit.

Observations:

1. Sarajevo is just friendlier than Beograd. Hey, it happens.
2. It really is prettier, too. Even though it's much more war-torn, and in parts dilapidated, and there's definitely a definitively hood part to it (which Beograd interestingly, notably lacks), between its natural beauty, its majestic layout, and the general innovation of architecture and urban planning, it comes together just right.
3. http://thoughtcatalog.com/2013/the-marathon/ <---this.
4. I OD'd on sunlight yesterday. Don't get me wrong, I've come a very long way from the days of second-degree burns because of bare shoulders. But after half a year of pretty much perpetual grey, a long walk in a t-shirt through sunny Sarajevo followed by a few hours of reading facing the sun on the porch, I think the vitamin D influx hit me like a truck. I spent a lot of last night with a splitting headache, and most of today in a chaotic mood (read--like a coked-up chimpanzee). Hope it levels out, but it still beats the grey.
5. Sarajevo public transit sounds like a spaceship. It also moves with the alacrity and grace of a dead yak. Mostly this is because the main tram line runs alongside (in the middle of, really) the largest road in the city, and therefore has to stop every fifty meters to let some asshole in a Yugo pull a u-turn.
6. Yes, there are Yugos here.
7. But there are also an ENORMOUS number of sport bikes here, which really just makes my day.

Thinking of Boston (seriously, click on number three), enjoying the sun (when it's not overwhelming me), and slowly but surely becoming a connoisseur of fine ćevapčići. Stay safe, everyone!

4-13: Vidimo Se, Beograd!

 Today, I leave Beograd forever.

Yeah, not really. But I'll be in Sarajevo until May 10th, which at this point almost feels like forever. I know, I know, it'll fly by when I'm actually there/moving through it. Especially because the weather's nice, and I'm doing something I care about/believe in, and I'm living with some of my favorite people on this side of the world. So naturally, the time is liable to pass like a snap. That, in my opinion, is an excellent excuse to make the most of it.

Belgrade...what can I say? Oh right, this:

The Bad:

• You occasionally smell like potatoes gone very, very wrong. It has a tendency to go hard when it does, too. You taste that stuff.
• You can't really make up your mind on this whole "weather" thing, except when you resolve to turn my balls into ice cubes with a three-day long wind running at about Mach 3.
• Color has been barred entry to the city gates, which is strange, because the rest of this country is a veritable artist's palette.

The Good:

• You are absolutely beautiful at the strangest times. Not in your average, Bruges-like European fairy-tale city way, but in your scars, your being, your propensity to stand back up and stoically go about your day after being knocked down.
• You are delicious. Sarajevo gets the rap for good ćevapi, but they don't know how to serve it like you do. What a shame.
• Your people are plucky. Maybe not always outwardly friendly, or even outwardly tolerant, but plucky. Which is much more endearing if you ask me.
• YOU MAKE SENSE! Layout-wise. Okay, maybe your streets will occasionally, inexplicably change names once or twice or five times in their run, but that's to be expected in a post-communist country. Beyond that, it's logical, it's well-arranged, public transit goes damn near anywhere, and the layout is rational!

Is this an exhaustive list? Hell no. But it's been on my mind, so I figured I'd share. Observations:

1. Yesterday, I visited a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Okay, that's not at all a fair epithet for the Chinese market, but I justify it with reasons twofold. Firstly, it's a Star Wars reference. Come on. Secondly, the Chinese market, located deep in the heart of Novi Beograd (New Belgrade), is renowned as somewhere you can go to find just about anything that you need. Raw octopus? Easy. Obscurely-sized screwdriver? Done. Remote control for a VCR from the Yeltsin era? Got it. For all (read-both) of my Pennsylvania readers, think Zerns, but stacked up two stories high, plus many fewer Republicans and many more Chinese people. It's entirely possible I just saw the entire Chinese expat population of Beograd while I was wandering around looking for a button-down shirt. They seemed nice.
2. I was served rakija in a kaffana yesterday in a small vessel that I quickly identified as a crackpipe. My friend told me it was shaped as such to keep people from drinking it like a shot, as apparently in kaffanas they serve "the good stuff". I have my suspicions concerning other reasons, which mostly concerns how the band managed to play so fast.
3. Post-kaffana, we spilled out into the beautiful night and headed to a park, to carouse in typical Serbian fashion. We quickly discovered the playground and proceeded to rapidly regress to childhood. I am officially awesome at jumping off of swings.

I'm off to catch the bus to Sarajevo. Updates about my bitchin' swank pad are soon to follow.

4-10: Sam Never Sleeps Again Ever

Hey folks. So a little friendly advice: when your academic program is relatively lax for nine weeks, and week eleven marks the beginning of the independent study project with a marked decrease in rigid scheduling, rationale dictates that week ten is going to be an uproariously cluster-fucking shitshow of a time.

Do not ignore rationale.

Yes, this was that week. But after hundreds of read research pages, a dozen pages of topic proposal, half a dozen revisions, and at least 24 hours of stolen sleep, I am pleased to announce that beginning on April 15th, I will be living in Sarajevo to study domestic and international law-enforcement responses to human trafficking in post-Dayton Bosnia & Herzegovina. It should be...well, heartbreaking, really. But I'm thrilled for the opportunity and hope to get the ball rolling on a topic that needs much more coverage than it's getting.

With that in mind, I'm kicking back in the next two or three days. I have to pack, clean up around here, formulate a game plan--all the fun stuff. In the meantime, the world has been an observable place. Bear in mind, in my relatively sleepless state (I fell asleep as the sun was rising twice this week) linear time kinda crapped out around day two. Nevertheless, here we go:

• So. Spring. Where the hell were you, buddy? I thought you showed up about two weeks ago, then you flaked out, and now you come crawling back. And I...oh, who am I kidding. I can't stay mad at you. Seventy-degree weather and chirping birds, you can come around any time you'd like. Just don't bring the hayfever.
• Let's talk about public parks. Let's talk about beautiful views of half of the city from the precipice rising a hundred feet above the sparkling river. Let's talk about the seasonable purchase of ice cream from vendors (caramel cream. Be jealous, punks). Let's talk about seeing kids on a class trip playing a pickup game of soccer. Let's talk about stray dogs friendly enough to let you scratch 'em behind the ears. Let's talk about how spring gets two bullet points because goddammit, this season is beautiful.
• Speaking of nature, I got bushwhacked (forgive the pun) by a tree the other day while coming home from a run. I was walking through a green crosswalk when BAP. Right on the back of the head. I turned, arms coming up, and saw my assailant: half of a tree branch, laying defeated on the ground (I guess my ferocious battle-cry of "nrnrrrghh, FUCK" as I spun to confront it was enough to scare it to death.
• After two and a half months of Yugos, Trabbies, and B-grade Volkswagens, I saw a cherry-red Audi R8 cruising along Makedonska yesterday. Where has that guy been hiding?

Hopefully I'll be back on track over the next few days. That said, there's gonna be a bit of moving turbulence, so don't set your watch by these posts. Also, if you are setting your watch by them, then your watch is probably FUBAR by now.

4-5: Spring In Your Step

Alright, let's open it up with a disclaimer: Last post was totally, 100%, chem trail-grade bullshit. April Fools, guys. Although in all fairness, the odds of me finding myself in Serbian prison aren't exactly laughable, so I guess the lead-in makes it understandable.

Spring has arrived! At least for a day or so. I heard birds, there was a blue sky, and the gray buildings were positively...well, still gray. But a brighter gray, which was nice.

Kids, it's been quite a long week, and I'm still a bit off my game in terms of this whole "articulation" thing, so hey, look, some observations!

• Perhaps you recall my post a few weeks back talking about the occasional explosive sparks coming from the overhead trolley power lines. Hey, no big deal. This is Beograd, bitches! So I thought nothing of it when a particularly big spark blew out above me (it's Friday. Maybe the trolley was excited). Then, about three seconds later, I saw two ragged, slightly singed feathers float gently down to land at my feet. Poor fella never stood a chance.
• I got on the relatively empty bus and saw the open backseat, slightly elevated. I climbed the small step, picked the middle seat, sat down, and realized that I had a goddamn throne. Or perhaps the Kirk seat on the Enterprise. However you roll it, it was freaking powerful. Good way to start your day.
• Fastforward to the end of the day: I grabbed dinner and the guy forgot my order. Without thinking, "I ordered pljeskavica with cabbage and onions" came out of my mouth in solid Serbian. At least solid enough to be understood. Right on.

Srpski reć dnevni: (I may be totally butchering this, as my half-asleep host-dad told it to my also-half-asleep self): Imanjak--a person who shares the same name as another person, e.g. Samuel L. Jackson is my imanjak. Which is a sweet feeling.

4-1: The Thing About the #2

Hey, folks. Pretty busy day. I'm a bit rushed, so I'm going to bulletize it. Here are the cool parts of today:

• Only just made the #2 this morning. Had to sprint down the street, dodge out of the way of a Skoda, and legitimately jump for the door. Driver was a bit pissed, but hey, they generally are, and it felt pretty damn cool, so I've got no regrets.
• Got into class today and found out from a rather ecstatic Mirijana that my ISP proposal to do an immersive study of hardline nationalist groups in Serbian prisons got approved! To be honest, I'm a little bit concerned--on the one hand, it's going to be a hell of an experience; on the other, I'm not exactly shiv-proof. Hey, it'll be an experience.
• Language class today was interesting. Nikica finally caved and agreed to teach us profanity. That's some seriously fucked-up stuff. Gotta love the creativity of Slavic languages, though.
• I'm pretty sure I'm getting married to a beautiful girl I met here. Her name is Dunja. She doesn't speak much English, and I don't think she knows my name, but try to be cool about it, guys. She needs the green card and that ecstasy isn't going to run itself.
• Last but certainly not least, I got the tattoo! It burns a bit, but I'm not worried. The place was clean enough. Check it out:

Srpski reć dnenvi: Апрелили: I'll let you figure it out.