Bosnian Groundhog Day.

I push the glass door open, and Kimite is behind the desk. I know what is coming.

"Dobro utro!"

"Dobro utro," I answer with a smile. We both smile. Then we laugh. Another day in Sarajevo.

Kimite, the middle-aged Bosnian woman who works at my hostel in the Ottoman sector of this ancient city, gets such a kick out of my childlike earnestness in learning even a bit of her language that I almost feel our mutual dobro utro is the highlight of her morning. She knows full well that -- despite progressing from nada to knowing all pleasantries and the numbers one through ten -- I have already slammed into the wall: A wall which separates hvala's, dovidenja's, jedan's and deset's from the real meat of the Serbo-Croat/Bosnian tongue.

I may pick up a little something here and there -- from now until the time I leave the Slavic world -- but my rate of return has effectively flat-lined.

That doesn't take the joy out of our daily encounters for Kimite, who speaks fluent English, yet nonetheless takes immense pleasure in pretending that I am one of her people.

"Kako ste?" That's always the second thing she says to me.

"Dobro, dobro." Good, good. More smiles. And then I hand Kimite another 20KM note -- roughly 10€, give or take. I'm set for another night in Sarajevo, a place from which I just don't feel like leaving yet, though I have seen more than there is to see for a tourist.

But I'm a traveler, not a tourist -- a fact I have insisted upon to my Bosnian Muslim friend Adisa on countless occasions, though always somewhat tongue-in-cheek in my resolve to be seen as "different" from the herds of other wanderers whose frat house mentality so often makes me sick to my stomach.

Sure, with my Nalgene bottle, backpack and complete lack of fashion-sense, I look like any other tourist. But I doubt any of the other people in my hostel have made friends with many Sarajevo natives. And I bet even moreso that they don't have half the interest that I have in learning about the history of this place and its surrounding regions. This Bosnian Groundhog Day -- a euphemism for "boring" to a tourist -- is just fine with me, as long as I feel that this is where I should be, right now, in this moment.

I've got plenty of books; I've got plenty of time; I've got plenty of money -- more than four months after taking off from George H. W. Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. I could pick up and leave Sarajevo tomorrow, bound for another part of Bosnia and Hercegovina; or I could push open that glass door once again, and say good morning to Kimite: Ten more euros out of my wallet and into the hostel's coffers.

No ties, no reservations, no deadlines, no responsibilities. It's all about how I feel when I wake up in the morning, every day, until I land back at Intercontinental.


But while I'm in Sarajevo, what you see above is what awaits me every morning when I walk outside.


And once I venture out, if the rain has fallen hard enough, the river runs red in the city stained by the blood of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the countless victims of the Great War that followed his assassination in Sarajevo by a Bosnian Serb named Gavrilo Princip, and the thousands upon thousands of victims -- Muslim, Serb and Croat alike -- who perished in the four-year siege of this fish bowl between 1992-95.

Recollections of the three months I spent in Western Europe are, for me, like struggling to remember a dream I just had, but trying to do so hours after having rubbed my eyes in recognition of a new day. You know what it was about; you remember the main parts; but the vividness of the experience has been jaded. A myriad of stimuli has bombarded your senses: Dobro utro's in the morning; then coffee; then a little journal-writing; some aimless wandering; a few chapters of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon; a charming reminder of the complete lack of shame inherent in Gypsies, showcased when a Roma couple brazenly sends its foot-soldiers known as "children" to squeeze money out of softies like myself; a stroll along the river... what was it again that I dreamed about last night?

I can remember, faintly, but it's like it happened a lifetime ago.

So it is with thinking back on my travels through England, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, France, Italy, Spain, Denmark and Norway. My experiences since then -- first in Hungary, then in Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Hercegovina -- have taken my consciousness captive.

"Bosnia? Wow," my best friend said to me on the phone last night, when we spoke for the first time since saying goodbye to one another in the Amsterdam train station. That was on June 23 -- I think. Hunter's three-week Germany World Cup trip was coming to an end. My indefinite trip to God knows where was only beginning. It was a lifetime ago. "What's it like over there?"

A hard question to answer.

"I don't know," I said, buying time while I searched for an example that would express my thoughts. "I think, after a while, your senses begin to be dulled as to what the standards are like back home, back in Western Europe," I tried to explain. "You get on a bus, you see busted seats, grafitti, cracked windows, and you don't bat an eye. In America, in France, in Germany, you'd be like, 'Damn, this bus is crappy.' But not here; here it's just the way it is, and you aren't even phased. It's almost more appealing, in a weird sort of way. It makes life seem more real, less bleached.

"Another thing is the way people speak to one another here. They always look like they're yelling at each other. Arms are flailing, voices are being raised, emphatic expressions are always being used ... but the thing is, they're not yelling. They're not even arguing. They're probably talking about the weather, for all I know: 'I tell you what! It sure is NICE today! I mean, I thought it was GONNA RAIN when I walked outside, but it has been EXTREMELY PLEASANT!' 'YES! I completely AGREE!' I don't know dude," I said, "it's the Balkans. I love it. I can't explain."

But I had explained. I had nailed on the head how I feel about "Central Europe" (Hungarians are extremely sensitive about not being grouped in with the East) and the volatile collection of nation-states known as the Balkans. It's why Budapest, to me, was so much more attractive as a city than anywhere I came across in Switzerland, or Holland, or Denmark. Those places in the "tamed" world are great; but they feel like museums. EU integration has sucked all the drama out of things. Everyone, for the most part, gets along. It's not polite to yell about the weather. Tension has been relegated to the football pitch.

The Balkans -- and Bosnia and Hercegovina, in particular -- have held an incredibly mysterious allure to me ever since I read Balkan Ghosts, a travel/history book by Robert Kaplan, back in June, when I was all over the place with my two-month Eurail pass. Try to apply Frederick Jackson Turner's "Frontier Thesis" to a post-grad trip around "Old" and "New" Europe, and you'll begin to understand. I resolved in the middle of Kaplans' book to make the former Yugoslavia and its neighboring countries an extensive part of my journey. And I have done that, though I am not sure whether I will see Romania, or much of Bulgaria, or even Macedonia. It's all up in the air. It's all about how I feel in the morning, when I wake up ... and on my money and energy.


But wherever I am, I will learn how to say dobro utro, I will learn about the local history, I will admire the tenacity and shamelessness of Gypsies, and I will have many new versions of Groundhog Day in many new places.

It's what you do if you want to remain a traveler, and not a tourist, after all.


Dovidenja.