"I feel like it's the end of summer camp or something," I said as I looked around the room and saw faces that had become all too familiar, but ones that would soon be out of my life, maybe for forever. "Except that we've been drinking pivo and going out until five in the morning every night."

But late nights aside, lumpy mattresses and water pressure as weak as a cup of decaf are as summer camp as summer camp can be. Add in the looming sense of sadness that comes from being separated from friends which have become family, and all that was missing in that moment were trunks and flashlights.

Neither Nadine nor Carmel, who come from Down Under and the island next to the Down Under, respectively, had ever been to camp. But they had been woken up out of a peaceful sleep, less than two minutes earlier, by me, so that they could get a taste of what it might have been like.

And they pretended to be upset.

"I cawn't beleeve you woke me up!" Carmel semi-yelled in her unmistakably Kiwi accent, making a real attempt to seem put off. Nevermind that she had been a no-show around the hostel for two nights in a row, ever since she met Tica, her "Almost Famous" Serbian rock star boyfriend, and had promptly turned into Kate Hudson. The groupie was pretending to be mad at me, when she should have been happy that I was so excited to finally see her.


Nadine, who wouldn't open her eyes lest she admit that she was awake, grinned from the bed directly beneath mine. She knew I wasn't going to let her be, especially when she had made plans to leave for Novi Sad the next morning.

"Let's stay up allllll night!" I yelled in a teenage girl voice.

Carmel groaned; Nadine pretended to be back in Dream Land. And the only unfamiliar face, Nick -- whose first glimpse of this obnoxious Texan had come just a few moments before -- seemed blown away at the chemistry of our group.

Ironically, at 3 a.m., the one who seemed to be the least annoyed of all by my antics was the new kid.


Maybe it's because the new kid -- who plays in a bluegrass band and has been to over a dozen Phish shows -- is the freaking man.

"So Nick," I said to my new friend from Salt Lake City, trying to ask the question as politely as possible. "I'm sure you get this question a lot, but are you..."

"No," he said, cutting me off before I could say the word. "I'm one of the rare ones."

And so came into our family the newest member: "The Non-Mormon Bastard Child of the Black Hole," as he puts it. A member of the family because Nick slid right in without a hitch; a bastard child because he showed up on the doorstep so late in the game, not having come from the same mother as his siblings.

I knew Carmel would be staying another night, though not in the hostel, to see Tica and his band play a gig right around the corner. But Nadine, who had learned from Gricko's departure that yes, it is possible to leave Belgrade, was putting up quite a defense.

"No, I'm going to Novi Sad," she kept saying, over and over and over, turning her back to me and still refusing to open her eyes. She knew if she did open them, she would be staying in Belgrade another night. "I'm leaving," she said into her pillow.


As you can see from the photo taken last night, Nadine didn't make it to Novi Sad. She had opened her eyes, and that was it. I jumped in her bed, fully clothed, and simply refused to get out until she promised to stay one more night.

She tried to be annoyed of course, but an annoyed person doesn't smile like that. She knew our family -- even without Gricko -- needed one last night together.

You can't always get what you want -- we've got to leave Belgrade at some point. But if you try sometimes, and wake people up at 3 a.m. to force them into staying just one more night, you get what you need. And what we needed was the last hurrah, last night.

It's fitting that, after a few hours sans Kate Hudson at an apartment-warming party for one of Mladen's former guests who simply couldn't leave Belgrade, followed by seeing Tica's band play with Carmel by his side, I woke up this morning and headed to the train station to see off my sisters .... with an enormous hangover. That sums up my time in Belgrade, I would say. Relationships intense enough to pull me out of bed after six hours of sleep, and a pounding headache as a reminder of the fun I had the night before.

And fun it was. Sadly, now I've got to make new friends; new temporary family.


But for the next week, I'll have the real thing: Elizabeth is coming to see me in Istanbul.

Life's tough right now, I have to admit.