"Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came...."
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When the Man with a thousand names closes a door, He opens a window. And if He shuts the gate, there's always hostelworld.com.

Flash back to last Sunday. I had been in Belgrade for two nights. The Hotel Astoria, which was like a 1960's time warp, had been my home since I arrived from Budapest with my friend Attila, when we had sought out the cheapest place on the market to find refuge from the cold. Fun times, Friday and Saturday night had been, but having forked over 17 euros a night for a place that really wasn't all that sweet, nothing was falling into place like I had planned. For weeks -- nei, months -- Belgrade had been synonymous with I got the hook up. But no one was hollering, even if they could hear me.

"Uuuhhhh," I groaned, as I sat down at the Astoria's computer to find out if there was a better place to stay.

What had happened to all my connections?

If he's trying to have a good time, at each stop along the way, there are two "musts" for the solo traveler. One is a good place to stay; the other is to have good people to chill with. For months, I thought I had had both waiting for me in Beograd. But now that I was here, it didn't seem to be working out.

When you live out of a backpack for as long as I have, the word "luxury" becomes a relative term. "Relative" like my relatives wouldn't believe. For a kid born into the leisure class, "conspicuous consumption" used to mean trips to Jamaica, Telluride and the Rose Bowl ... all in the same Christmas break. But since hitting the road in June, if I can wipe my butt with soft toilet paper, snag free WiFi signals, find a cup of coffee for a buck fifty, dry my clothes without having to hang them on a line or find a shower head that isn't "low flow," four words come to mind: "Lah dee FREAKIN' dah!"

That's why I had been talking nonstop about Belgrade to every traveler I met since leaving Chez Knapp, my home base in Switzerland. Breck, the home base's patriarch, had put me in contact with a friend who lives in the White City. His friend is from Houston, and he is the manager of the Hyatt Hotel.

"Sure," Breck's friend said in his reply email to me, sent back in the days when I was lounging in Budapest for two-and-a-half weeks. "You can come and stay here for two or three nights for free, depending on what kind of space we have."

That's one, two, three, four, five stars for the viewers counting at home.

Three free nights in a five-star hotel ... for me, the guy who sometimes has deodorant, and sometimes doesn't. I'll take it.

Now, all I needed were people to chill with.

"Bob, your son will have a problem if he comes to Belgrade," the broker for Collier's International's Beograd branch said to my dad early last month. They had just met in Chicago, at the annual conference for the worldwide real estate firm both work for, and The Bob had informed his Serbian counterpart that his son would be making a pit stop in his part of the world soon. The "problem" wasn't really a problem: "He will not leave. The girls are too beautiful."

"He says that he sent an email to the office in Belgrade," The Bob wrote to me while I was in Sarajevo, "telling them to be on the lookout for an American traveling through Serbia. Apparently, there are a lot of young people working in the office there, so you'll have some contacts to connect with once you arrive."

Place to stay -- and a five-star spot at that -- check. People to chill with -- and girls so beautiful that it would prevent me from ever leaving, at that -- check mate.

Belgrade, here I come.

And there I was, sitting in front of the computer at the Astoria. I figured I'd wait until Monday to start worrying about the fact that I hadn't heard back from The Bob's friend, but still no response from Breck's friend? This was troublesome.

When Attila and I had arrived on that cold Friday night, everyone we stopped on the street had said there was no hostel in Belgrade. Lonely Planet seemed to back up their claims, but since when do I trust Lonely Planet? No hostel in the largest city in Yugoslavia? Impossible.

But still, it took me two days to check online. And when I finally did was when the real Belgrade experience began.


The Three Black Catz Hostel, quite frankly, is the coolest hostel OF ALL TIME.

It's like chilling in your buddy's room back at school. When I say "hostel," I really just mean this dude Mladin's apartment in Belgrade, with two rooms holding a total of five bunk beds. Add in a tiny kitchen, a table always full of half-full, 2-liter beer bottles, dirtied ash trays and dirty dishes, and you've got the place that I have called home since I got on that computer in the Hotel Astoria.

Oh, and it's the cheapest place I've stayed in yet.

Pinch me.

My first night in Belgrade, Attila and I met two Serbian girls at a bar called Cafe Red. Marija, who sat to my left, was one of "those girls" -- the ones who would say "Omigod" if they spoke English. But she did say something that has stuck in my mind: "While you are in Belgrade, you musn't miss out on the fun," she said. "Fun, fun, fun!"

The Three Black Catz made sure that I didn't miss out on any of it.


You can probably tell by the fact that my eyes are red and strung out. That tends to happen when you throw up (two times) the morning after staying out until 5 a.m. and catching a mysterious "bug." I've never even done coke, but I have looked like a coke head, and that is now, in Belgrade, the city of "fun, fun, fun," where "you can sleep when you die."

"Sleep when you die" is the motto of the only seven-footer I can call a friend. Joe is a Kiwi who is basically energy personified. He tried to leave Belgrade once, and ended up staying ... for two more nights ... at the Three Black Catz ... which is like a black hole if you are someone that likes to chill and have "fun, fun, fun!"

The Three Black Catz ... sometimes, you wanna go where everybody knows your name.


And they're always glad you came...

...As long as you're cool, which is far from a given at youth hostels in Europe.

But that's why this place has been so amazing. There have been no "Whoo! College!" idiots; there have been only real, genuine, true people.

"I love this place," I said the other day to one of the other guests. "Hands down, coolest hostel I've ever stayed in. I mean, nine euros?! With free coffee and free Internet?! Plus, have you ever noticed that it feels like you're just chilling in your friend's room at college? You just sit around the table, drink, chill, talk, and are friends with everyone.

"And that includes Mladin, who is the owner of the hostel!"

Picture a scene from Braveheart: Mladin is a bigger badass -- physically -- than the redhead who threw the rock at William Wallace. But he wouldn't hurt a fly. Mladin, who hasn't asked for a dime for the entire week that I have stayed here (that would NEVER happen at any other hostel in the world), is the man.

"These last five or six days have been a real good group of people," Mladin said tonight, once Joe was finally leaving for real. He was smiling. We had only known Joe for a few days, but it was kind of a sad moment. "It's rare," he continued. "It doesn't happen but every three months.

"But it's good to live at those moments."


It is, indeed. Mladin isn't the only staff member of the Three Black Catz who I view more as a friend than employee at a place where I'm staying. Dragana, who is a Balkan woman through and through, is the longest-running worker at my buddy Mladin's apartment. She, too, is my friend ... even if I do piss her off from time to time with inappropriate jokes.

I don't know when I'll leave the Three Black Catz, but when I finally do, I can guarantee one thing: It will be the first time I will give the owner of a hostel a hug goodbye.

Fun, fun, fun, indeed.