The cats here in Istanbul pretty much just chill. It's what they do.



Kind of like Gricko (greets-go, a Serbian word for someone who snacks a lot), my friend from the Three Black Catz in Belgrade, who tells everyone when asked on the street that he is from Serbia. He chills, too.

And then there's this guy.

"You are Bob Marley? Hahahahahah," he said when Gricko walked by. How he got Bob Marley from a Japanese dude "from Serbia," I have no idea. Maybe it was the fact that he had an afro of black hair. But what is undeniable is who this guy looks like.

"And you?" I asked. "You're Ron Jeremy, right?"

Wow.

This is an all too common sight for me in Turkey. I average about ten cups of Turkish tea a day.

This, on the other hand, is not so common. The last two hair cuts I have had were given to me by my sisters: A buzz cut the day before leaving in June, courtesy of Garland and her friends, and a trim job to remove my Mel Gibson/Lethal Weapon 2 mullet that had begun to grow out of the buzz. The only problem was that Elizabeth missed some spots, I mean a lot of spots, and let me clean up the mess.

But man, do I look good or what!

Whoever said that pigeons were stupid clearly has never been to Istanbul.

The Eighth Wonder of the World: Istanbul's Law-Abiding New Mosque Pigeons.


The New Mosque (which, having been built over a century before the birth of my country, does not seem so new to me) is a perfect example of what I am talking about. It is incredible. There are more pigeons in this tiny space than there are cats in the greater Istanbul area, yet they are almost trained in regards to when they are and are not allowed to eat.

Notice the old people above and below selling bird seed. They are selling bird seed. As in, seed that BIRDS EAT. And what do the pigeons do? They act like there is an invisible force field around the wide open plates of free food. They don't even make a move towards it! They actually wait for people to go up, buy some from the old folks, and then scatter the seed on the ground.

It's like, hey pigeons, JUST GO UP TO THE PLATES WHEN THEY'RE SITTING RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU! Why must they wait for the seeds to be scattered on the ground?

"They probably have learned from experience that when they steal the seed from the tables, they get punished," Elizabeth said, her mouth unbelievably not agape by what was unfolding in front of our eyes.

"I think you're overestimating the ability of pigeons to learn lessons like these," I said. Some things defy explanation. Like a group of pigeons -- pigeons who don't speak Turkish -- understanding unwritten social rules. The Eighth Wonder of the World: Istanbul's Law-Abiding New Mosque Pigeons.

I just couldn't get enough of it. The old Turkish people who pass by the New Mosque every day are either used to the spectacle by now, or simply take for granted the idea that groups of pigeons are capable of adhering to a social contract. But I had to actually turn around and go back for more pictures of this phenomenon at work.

Thank Heaven .... for little brothers
Istanbul.

"So, you've never smoked anything, ever, whole life??"

The answer never changes. "No," Elizabeth says, exasperated that I continue to pose the question. Somewhere out there, the creator of D.A.R.E. must smile, the president of Phillip Morris must cry, and Marion Barry must be like, "Why not? If Frito Lay fires you for it, you could always be mayor of the District!"

But even if Elizabeth did want to become the next Bill White (which would never happen in our hometown, since her last name is not something that falls in line with the recent "surname has to be a color to become mayor of Houston" precedent), she "just can't stand smoke."

So of course, seeing how much she likes to eat (scroll down to the next post), the little brother in me decided to feed Elizabeth a big smoke sandwich when we went to a Turkish nargyle bar during her visit.


Trust me, she's somewhere behind the cloud.

My senior by just 14 months in age, but 14 centuries in maturity, was here in Istanbul for eight days. Weeks ago, Elizabeth let me know I wouldn't have to be alone for Thanksgiving, since she had decided to take time off to come visit me. The only thing she needed to know was where to book the flight.

Hmmmmmmm.

I made that noise for about a second, and already had the answer.

"Turkey," I replied immediately. It was a no-brainer. "For the blog pun material alone, it's gotta be done. I mean, we've got to eat turkey in Turkey, don't you think?"

Apparently, the answer was no. Which is why I didn't feel all that bad about filling her space with hookah smoke.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All that I asked of her was that she bring a turkey. That's it.

Okay, and maybe some stuffing ... and a pumpkin pie, if she had extra space in her carry-on. But I told her those were optional. Turkey was the only mandatory item.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I didn't want to get arrested, that's why!" Elizabeth, jet-lagged and hungry, snapped at me, as I peppered her with why-didn't-you's less than four hours after she landed. We were back to the good ole' days already.

"Arrested?!" Elizabeth. Weak. "For what! It's a freaking turkey! Even if you had been questioned in customs, it would have been hilarious! Can't you see that?"

"Quit yelling at me!"

"I'm not yelling!" I yelled.

"I'm not gonna bring a goddamn turkey all the way to Turkey just for a stupid little joke," she said, clearly not understanding that it was not a stupid little joke. This was a hilarious, big joke.

I stewed.

"All I asked was this one thing!"

Now I was pouting.

"Thanks a lot, Elizabeth. Thanks."

"There's nothing we can do about it now," she said, her nerves on edge. "Why can't you ever just DROP IT?"

I looked off into the corner. Our kebap dinners -- which every restaurant in Istanbul seems to cook at some satellite location, before bringing them from across the street on a big tray for you to eat -- still hadn't come. We were both battling "food stress." Silence.

"I still don't understand.."

"SHUT UP!"

Silence. Our trip was off to a wonderful start.

She rolled her eyes. "Listen, we can try to find an American hotel on Thursday, okay? Maybe they'll have some sort of Thanksgiving meal or something."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was Thanksgiving morning. Elizabeth was propping my laptop on the window sill of our hotel room, trying to find a place for us to eat a proper turkey dinner.

"Well, that's out," she said.

"What?" I asked, pulling my head out of my book about travels to the Middle East, Eastward to Tartary.

"Well, at the Four Seasons, there's a dress code," she said, implying that there was a weak link in the group, and that it wasn't her.

"I have pants!" I said. She wasn't moved. "And a collared shirt!" Still not moved.

"You have AH pair of pants, and they're not good enough for the Four Seasons. We're just gonna have to go eat at that nice kebap place," she said.

If only she had brought that turkey.

The "nice kebap place" was definitely nice ... to sit in. The portions were miniscule. The prices were exorbitant. But we definitely got to sit on pillows on the floor, which made it A-OK with me.

Plus, my sister and her big corporate paycheck made sure I only had to throw in a few bucks. A happy Thanksgiving, all around -- even without a turkey.

But that's because Elizabeth got to share it with me. It was a great eight days to spend with her, someone I don't see nearly enough.

Even if she does think I'm a little weird, I know she misses me.

But Elizabeth, since you didn't come through on that turkey, all I want for Christmas is an autograph from a certain Major League pitcher you know...

Oh, and I checked in with the Topkapi Palace grounds crew ... they weren't happy about the Christmas presents you left in their bushes.

ELIZABETH LANGSTON PARSLEY.

MAN, CAN THIS GIRL EAT!!!

Byzantium.
Constantinople.
Stamboul.
Istanbul.

Whatever you want to call it, that's where I've been for a week and a half.



I have plenty of stray cats to keep me company -- by my estimates, there are at least eight million of them in this GINORMOUS city of around 12 to 15 million (the exact figure varies, depending upon who you ask). Istanbul spans two continents and three landmasses -- and each chunk of the city is large and in charge.

If there was one phrase I'd use to encapsulate the place, it'd be water, water, everywhere ... but make sure you don't have a drink, because you're apt to get sick. The Sea of Marmara, the Golden Horn and the Bosphorous keep the fish sandwich vendor cartels going strong, and the dirty tap water pumps money into the bottled water industry.

But once you venture inland a bit, and the sea gulls begin to dissipate, make sure you don't ever tell someone to "meet you by the mosque." They are EVERYWHERE.

And beware of raki. Gricko, my Japanese friend that I met in Belgrade, did not heed that advice. And he paid the price.

Just an aside: I could have sworn the lesson of Vietnam was to quit, before getting sucked in too deep? I guess George must have dozed off during his "Lessons of Past Wars" briefing, because we all know that the president who has publicly boasted that he "isn't much of a reader" didn't pick up that lesson when he was boozing it up at Yale.

He'd fit in well on the streets of Istanbul if that boast really is the case. Trying to eyeball headlines from sidewalk newspapers on display here, if done for more than three seconds, is going to generate an automatic "Buy it or keep moving" comment from the angry Turkish vendor.

Going for the "don't wanna pay flip-over" is entirely out of the question.

Though I've been surrounded on all sides by all things Istanbul for ten days now, Beograd (not to mention the Balkans in general) is still often at the center of my thoughts.



It's like daydreaming about a girl you've met -- and thinking about nothing other than when you will see her again. It's been over a week, but I still dote on my darling Belgrade.

This might not make much sense to most people. Isn't Istanbul supposed to be the most beautiful city in the world? It is pretty damn close. Isn't Belgrade supposed to be Communist Central? In a lot of ways, yes. So what the hell is going on with this kid? To understand, you've just got to experience Beograd nights and the Three Black Catz way of life.

The issue here is about living, not sight-seeing. Wringing the sponge dry, rather than saturating it beyond capacity under a faucet of Lonely Planet "musts" and bullet points from a to-do checklist. I guess it's the difference between traveling to travel, and traveling to say you've traveled, but in Belgrade, I felt alive every single day -- even the ones where I felt close to death, my face even closer to the toilet.

My Balkan education began in Croatia. There were some exchanges with Jure and Zila in Split, and some time spent with a pair of Dubrovnik heads, Krešo and Denis. But my first few twists of the Yugoslavian Rubik's Cube came mainly by flipping the pages of history books, not by really reading deep into the minds of Croatian people. It was but a scratch on the surface, but it was a start.

After a two-day dash into Montenegro -- admittedly made just so I could say I had traveled to the world's newest nation -- I came to Bosnia-Hercegovina, all and all still my favorite country yet. BiH captivated me in a way no place had ever done before. The stories of human survival that I heard there were inspirational. Sure, I continued to build a base knowledge of the problems these people had experienced by reading about the war, and by reading about Yugoslavia in the more peaceful times of the 1930's. But the continuance of the Balkan education I received in Bosnia-Hercegovina came from a hybrid lesson plan: Facts from books and wisdom from people, with visuals such as Mostar's destroyed buildings and Sarajevo's "Roses" reminding every second of the day that stories are things which first must happen in the flesh and blood.

After a two-week break from the Balkans, I returned, and landed in the heart of Serbia: Belgrade. In my 12 days there, I read maybe 12 pages in total. But it didn't matter, because the final chapter in my Balkan education wasn't printed in a book.

It was written on the eyes, heard in the voices, and felt in the energies of people like Mladen, and Zivko, and Zoka, and Dragana, and Marija, and all of the other people I spent countless hours talking to until the late hours in Beograd, the White City.

Aesthetically, it's clear who would win in a pageant between Belgrade and Istanbul. And as fascinating as Serbian history is -- you have no idea, guys, trust me -- it's got nothing on the legacy of Byzanti.... I mean, Constantino...... I mean Istanbul. In a city coveted by three of the greatest empires mankind has ever known, you can get a headache just trying to decide where to begin your self-education. Ancient Greeks? Constantine? Justinian? The Schism? The sack of Byzantium? The rise of the Ottomans, or the fall? The Young Turks? Ataturk? Modern Turkey's identity crisis between East and West?

And still, with all the beauty and history that is around me, I miss Belgrade. This should come as no surprise to anyone that knows me. I have always had a problem with forcing myself outside of my comfort zone, once I find something that fits with me.

• In college, my favorite waitress at my favorite restaurant quit asking me at some point what I would like to eat -- she started to asked simply if I wanted a menu.
• I have one pair of pants -- Carhartts whose color depends on the amount of time they have gone without washing -- that, if you count the original pair waiting on IR in case something goes wrong with their replacement, I have worn every single pant-weather day since August 2003. (Okay, fine, I had some sweatpants in college that got some occasional play, but you catch my drift).
• Since that same summer, whenever it got hot, I had a single pair of hemp shorts that got the same treatment.
• Don't even ask about the variety of music on my iPod -- there isn't any.

I know what I like, and I like what I know. Is that so bad?

So why don't I just return to Belgrade right now? Other than the fact that I would have to be back here Dec. 27 to meet my parents and little sister, there is nothing holding me back.

But it is exactly for the reason that it would be so easy, so comfortable to return to what I like, and what I know, that I am staying in Turkey for the moment.

I miss my life -- even if it was for only a week-and-a-half -- at the Three Black Catz. I promised my friends there that I would return, though without an idea of when. I intend to keep that promise. But Lord, like Robert Nesta said, I've got to keep on, movin'.... even if the streets of Istanbul don't feel as much like home as my beloved УЛИЦA ЧИKA ЉУБИHA, whose blue-and-white sign greeted me every time I left the Three Black Catz. But when I'm on those Istanbul streets, I will have plenty of friends: Thousands, if not millions, of stray black cats.

Reminders of the friends that I have waiting for me in a town called Beograd.

Editor's note: With all this talk about expanding horizons and pushing out of comfort zones, I have no plans to:

• buy new pants
• ever order anything other than the buffalo chicken sandwich at The Virginian
• go into reggae rehab

Some things that I like, I know a little too much; and somethings I know, I like a little too much to change.

Is that so bad?

With the hurdle placed in between me and posting photos now, thanks to Google and its brilliant scheme to bring a product to market before making sure it's ready to go, I have to resort to a "flip the monitor" approach in order to put photos on this deal.

"Flip the monitor" refers to my first year of college, when TK, Drew and I were trying to watch "Pulp Fiction" on Boo Boo's computer. When we pressed play, it turned out that through some sort of code error or something that has to do with computers, the movie was being fed out upside down. The sound still worked; the footage was fine -- it was just upside down.

The Boo Boo solution, of course, was the best one in the long run: Fix the problem, start typing in code, take a few minutes to make it better in the end. But TK and I weren't trying to sit there and wait -- we just wanted to watch "Pulp Fiction."

"Just flip it!" we both yelled over and over, as Boo Boo ignored us, knowing that we would be glad in the end that he took the time to actually fix the root of the problem. "Just flip the monitor!"


Ever since I switched to this stupid Beta Blogger BS, I haven't been able to post things with pictures in the way I normally do. And honestly, who wants to read about my trip without pictures? I don't even want to re-read about my trip without pictures. But I don't know anything about computers, and no one at Google seems to care that they have screwed everyone over. So I am flipping the monitor, going back to the old school way of putting pictures online.

If you are reading this, you will know that flipping the monitor worked.

I hate Google and their stupid Blogger Beta whatever it is.

It was harkened as a huuuuuuuge improvement over whatever the original system was -- the system that WORKS. The system that I used for my entire trip up until last week. And the system that I wish I never would have left.

This is the reason that I never order anything different at restaurants when I KNOW there is something on the menu that is good. It's an unnecessary risk. Why get anything other than the buffalo chicken sandwich at The Virginian when you aren't sure how the hamburger will taste? And why switch to Beta Blogger when you aren't sure if it will allow you to post anything?

Hey, Google. Thanks for ruining my blog. Now I can't post photos or anything at all. I really appreciate it.

"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. 

Sad but true. I am leaving Belgrade tonight.

What goes up, must come down.


No more late night, drunk burek pick ups.


No more Nadine, "the nice sister."


And no more Carmel, "the mean sister" -- or, "Caramela, Caramela, Caramela, Do you want some MILLLLLK??" as Gricko says.


We're leaving the sign -- and Caramela's excellent drawing of Gricko simultaneously saying, "Tomorrow! Sofia! Tomorrow! Yes, Sofia!" and "I be here 17 days" -- as a memorial to the days when our family was stuck in the One Black Hole that is the Three Black Catz Hostel.

Vi di mo se, Beograd. 

 

Party time at the Three Black Catz.



If you can't find a girl in Belgrade, and have to resort to a horse, you've really got some holes in your game.

 

I'd take death by firing squad in a heartbeat over death by a Turkish impaling.



Nicolae Tesla: A Serb from Croatia who did his work in New York. But there are two Tesla museums in Belgrade.


Roma. How are these people all the same, wherever you go??

 

Not exactly the environment a camel is used to.



"There are no hostels in Belgrade," the first Serbian we stopped on the street my first night here told us. "But I do know a cheap hotel. It's called the Hotel Balkan."

Right..... looks like a budget place, if you're Donald Trump.


1389 was a rough year for the Serbs.

 

Can you tell I like the Kalemegdan?

I have spent as much time there as the Turkish and Austrian armies combined....




 

More Kalemegdan.




 

The Kalemegdan




 

GRICKO.

He chills.


And uses his Gricko-ness to pull.


And then chills some more.


And is always Gricko.

 

"Gricko, Serbian name." That's one of the go-to sentences for my Japanese brother from Tokyo.

Sometimes, you can have a real conversation with him. But that's only when he feels like it. Most of the time, he simply nods his head when you say something, acts like he has registered its meaning, and proceeds to repeat the key word from your sentence.

"Gricko, are you leaving soon?"

"Leaving," he says, head nodding. "Leaving." But that doesn't mean he's leaving.

"Gricko, are you trying to go eat?"

"Eat, eat." Head nodding. But that doesn't mean he's hungry.

"Gricko, what are you doing today?"

"Gricko, Serbian name." He takes a drag from his cigarette, hardly taking his eyes off the screen of his Apple laptop. "Gricko." But that doesn't mean he's really listening to you.

I wonder if he ever really knows what's going on, or if he just pretends that he doesn't know what's going on ... when he doesn't feel like talking to you.


"Gricko" is pronounced greets-go. In the Balkans, it refers to someone who snacks a lot. The name was given to him by Mladen's neighbors, well before I arrived at the Three Black Catz.

My first day at the hostel, the two of us went to see the Partizan football game with Johannes and Anna, an Austrian and German who departed back in the days before I realized what the Three Black Catz would become for Gricko, myself, and the other members of my new family: The Black Hole. He immediately confirmed the stereotype of the Japanese tourist.

"Give me your camera," he said, sounding like Mr. Miagi, once I took it out to snap some photos of the game. And then he began snapping pictures of me in the stands, all the while looking like a kid in a candy store. For him and every other Japanese tourist I have met, a camera is like a lollipop in that candy store.

I knew then -- by the childlike smile on his face as he snapped those photos -- that Gricko was going to be a character.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Gricko is so strange," says Mladen's neighbor Nena, who hangs out at the Three Black Catz full time, either in her bathrobe or in her I-am-ready-to-go-to-the-Roxbury get up. "He is not someone; he is something. I love Gricko. He is soooo funny."

That explained why, when the four of us got back from the game, and Nena saw him, she immediately grabbed his head and buried it between her breasts, all the time cooing at her wild-maned toy and purring his name over and over again: "Gricko! Grickooooo!"

I knew then that Gricko was going to be a real character.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

I don't even know what Gricko's real name is. He wrote it down as "Genna," but when I started to call him that after a few days of going with his "Serbian name," he said, "Genna is not my name."

"Then what is your name?" I asked, amazed that I still didn't know after almost two weeks of sleeping in the same room as the guy.

"Name, name, yes." And he keeps smoking his cigarette, not looking up from the screen. Dragana calls him "Suzuki," but Suzuki isn't his name, either. While he is in Serbia, Gricko is Gricko.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The dude is like our family mascot, or the family dog. Everyone loves the dog; everyone talks to the dog with a smile on their face.

He is quite possibly the strangest -- and most definitely the funniest -- person I have ever met. Like a Japanese Pigneri, Gricko amuses (exponentially) simply by existing. He doesn't even have to make an effort. Inhaling and exhaling is enough for me to lose myself in a fit of laughter whenever I am with him.


I mean, just look at his hair. Are you beginning to get the picture?


God knows Grickok -- in pure Japanese style -- is always getting a picture.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some people just have a .... vibe. An energy. An aura.

Gricko is one of those people.

Like the Black Hole he lives in, Gricko sucks everyone and everything into his realm. It doesn't matter if someone can't even speak to him, if they know only Serbian, or bits and pieces of English that don't mesh with the bits and pieces of English that he knows. Everyone that meets Gricko becomes Gricko's boy.

Take the other night, for example. The four kids in our family -- Carmel, Nadine, Gricko and I -- all went to a bar called Anna & 4 Pistolja. But soon, our Japanese brother disappeared. And he didn't come back for a long time.

"Where the hell is Gricko?" I asked my sisters after he had been missing for a good half hour. "Is he still here??"

That was his cue; Gricko returned almost as soon as the words left my lips. But he had some new ... friends.


The sight was classic Gricko. Three Serbian dudes, none of whom had probably ever even met an Asian person, come rolling up to our small group, arms draped around their new friend.

"Grickoooooooooo!!" they all were yelling over and over, stumbling drunk and laughing hysterically at their new boy. "WE LOVE GRICKO!!"

"Oh my God," I said to the others. "Look who it is."

They were obsessed with him. He was like a toy. Or a mascot. Or a dog.

Or a Japanese Pigneri.

Like Pigneri, people understand -- implicitly -- the brilliance of what Gricko represents. Pigneri is Pigneri; he's larger than life; he's a concept, an idea. Gricko, too, is Gricko; larger than life; a concept, an idea.

And that's why, just as everyone loves Pigneri, everyone loves Gricko.

The Japanese member of my new family illustrates better than anyone just how hard it is to escape from the Black Hole. He came with the intention of being here four days. That was 17 days ago.

As long as he stays, it makes me feel okay about staying so long. As far as I'm concerned, the kid is like Yahweh: He Is Who Is. He is without beginning and without end. He's Gricko.

So when he threatens to leave, the whole foundation of the Three Black Catz begins to crack, and I feel my own shelf life in Belgrade nearing an end.

"Gricko!" I began yelling at him last night, as his latest threat to leave "tomorrow" for Sofia began to really seem serious for once. "It's fine! You're staying, okay? You got it, Gricko, it's okay. You'll just stay, and it will be cool, and then you go to Sofia the next day."

"Sofia, yes. Sofia." Key words again. Gricko didn't feel like debating.

"But you just got here!" I lied.

"I be here seventeen days," he answered.

Gricko. I will miss him. 

The Three Black Catz; The Black Hole; The Hotel California -- whatever you want to call this place that I have called home in Belgrade since the Sunday before last, one thing is clear: These people are my family now.

All the characters are there: Dad (Mladen, the owner); my sisters (Carmel and Nadine, a Kiwi and Aussie, respectively); my Japanese brother (Gritsko, which is Genna's Serbian name); the crazy neighbor from next door (Joe, the seven-footer); the uncle (Zivko, who was visiting last week); the hot babysitter (Dragana, who has worked here longer than any other employee); there's even a grandfather character (Mladen's dad came and visited for a few days, and got my help in teaching him how to set up a blog of his own).


We eat as a family; we drink as a family; we go out as a family. We are a family.


And when someone in the family tries to escape from The Black Hole, we all laugh. "Right," someone invariably says. "You'll be back another night."

And almost every time, they're right.


But even though all good things must come to an end ...


... blood is thicker than water. 

Beograd nights.



TK, move over as tallest friend I've ever had. Joe, the Kiwi who could have been in the NBA had he applied himself, is a true blue seven-footer.


Here's a tip for any aspiring sketch artists trying to hawk their drawings at Belgrade clubs: When I tell you I don't want the piece of crap you've just drawn voluntarily, and you reply by asking me where I'm from, don't proceed to yell, "F*** THE USA! AMERICA EXPLOITS THE WORLD!" and then say, "So how much do you want to give me for it?"


It's not going to work. 

Light :: a black hole as Bayless :: the Three Black Catz Hostel.

It's not that I don't love my sister. It's not that I'm not excited to see her in Istanbul November 18. It's just that I wish I had told her to meet me in Belgrade.


Every night is a party in this city. Even the nights when you stay in.

I just .... don't ......... want .............. TO LEAVE! How many days has it been already? I don't even know -- but what I do know is that it hasn't been long enough.

Best time of my life -- I know that, too.

"Are you from here, also?" What a surprise it was to meet yet another gorgeous girl at Mladen's place when I emerged from my room this morning. As if I wasn't already bummed enough at having to leave Belgrade, now I had another reason to mourn.

"No, I'm from Poland, actually," the mystery girl said.

"Poland!" Another place that I have not been, and regret not having done so, especially at the sight of a hot, heady girl like this. "So you're just traveling, too?"

"No, I study here actually." Which is what I want to do, too.

"So how long have you been here?"

The mystery girl -- later identified as Natalia -- kind of smiled, because she knew what kind of reaction her reply was going to generate.

"Well, I came about a month ago, and stayed here for three nights. But after such a short time, I met so many people, had such good party, that I didn't want to leave." Inspirational. "So I started to look for an apartment."

Mladen then came in the room, and Natalia asked him if he was going to be able to make it to her house warming party tomorrow night. I had already planned on leaving tomorrow afternoon, just so I didn't have to make the 30-hour trek to Turkey in one shot.

But leaving the black hole isn't as easy as saying, "I'm leaving the black hole."

"What about you?" Natalia asked. "Are you going to be at my party?"

Ireallyshouldn'tI'vegottogotoTurkeytomeetmysisterokayfineI'llbethere.

"Well that was easy," my new Australian surrogate sister Nadine said, laughing.

Welcome to the Hotel California.


As much as I would love to get stuck in the black hole permanently, the fact is that I must leave soon. Sure, I could always come back -- but I say that about every place that I leave, and I know that the odds aren't good.

Who knows? Maybe in a week, I will be raving about Istanbul for all the same reasons as why I have fallen in love with Belgrade: The people are so nice; I have so many friends; Sometimes I wish I hadn't met this many people, because I have no time to just chill; All this fun is bad for my health; The history is amazing; The girls are so beautiful...

Vamos a ver.


Even if the next stop is awesome, it will never dampen the fire I have burning inside me for the Balkans. It's not just this place; it's the whole place. So here is my guarantee: I will be back here someday.

And maybe someday soon.

And I'll have friends waiting for me. 

All I've got to say is, these dogs better be from some CRAZY country or something, because from my vantage point, there were in fact just some regular old dogs behind the gate at the Belgrade Zoo.


And the ole bear wasn't very happy about his situation.


Is it really a good idea to put a garden variety, chain link fence between children and man-eating felines?


This dude was just asking for it. I wish he would have lost a finger or something.

 

I guess they don't have a Serbian translation for "Don't feed the animals."


Because at the Belgrade Zoo, you're as up close and personal with the inmates as you're going to get this side of the bush.



 

Belgrade.




 

The Three Black Catz.
Ain't nowhere else to stay in Beograd.


It's like, can we please not have this poster up in Eastern Europe? (I still refuse to see this movie until I leave Eastern Europe).


Zivko (on the left) lives in the real New York (Nova Varos, Serbia).


This is Never BP before he became strung out after the "fun, fun, fun" of Belgrade and the Three Black Catz.


And Dragana, the longest-serving employee of Mladin's place, who has turned down several offers from American guests to marry her.

She turned me down as well. 

Who says college ends when you graduate?

If you're in Belgrade, it picks right back up, at the Three Black Catz Hostel.


But it's not "college" as in "Whoo, college!" idiocy.


It's a place where you meet real people.


All of whom smoke cigs -- this is the Balkans, after all.


And it's a place owned by this guy, Mladin, also known as "the man." 

"Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came...."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.  

Walking through the Baščaršija a few weeks ago in Sarajevo, Eirik, my Norwegian friend who works in his country's Bosnian embassy, lent a word to the unwise for use during my time in the predominately Muslim city: Never, under any circumstances, was I to hold up my thumb, pointer finger and middle finger in public.

If I happened to be ordering tri piva in a bar, I was to do it the way I was taught as a pre-K'er at Bee Hive, and hold up my pointer, middle and ring.

"But I can't do that," I said, awkwardly maneuvering my not-opposable-enough thumb to try and pin down my pinkie, which has always been amazingly hard for me. "Why is it so important?"

Eirik looked around, and discreetly flashed what not to do. "This is the Serbian nationalist symbol," he explained. "Just don't do it."

I didn't ask why, and for the rest of my time in Muslim Bosnia-Hercegovina, made sure to pin down my pinkie with my thumb when ordering three Bud Dry's.

It was only once I made it back into Republika Srpska, in the capital town of Banja Luka, that I began to see evidence of what Eirik was talking about.


A БИX ШTA JE TO?? At the time, I couldn't read any Cyrillic letters whatsoever, but I immediately recognized the symbol below the sentence -- it was what Eirik had flashed discreetly that night in Sarajevo. It was the Serbian nationalist symbol.

And right next to it,


any ambiguity as to what the artists were trying to convey was cleared up.

A БИX ШTA JE TO?? Roughly translated, it means "And Bosnia-Hercegovina, What Is It??"

To the "Patriot Boys" from Banja Luka, the answer is simple: Bosnia-Hercegovina is Serbia. And if you're proud of Serbia, you show it with three simple fingers -- the thumb, the pointer and the middle.

Serbs from Republika Srpska bear some resemblance to Israelis who, until August 2004, settled in the Gaza Strip, and to this day, reside in the West Bank. The analogy is imperfect; not all Jewish settlers living beyond the 1967 borders are extremists, and the same goes for many Serbs living in RS. But the similarity lies in the cornered-animal theory: When you identify yourself with a certain group -- whether it be ethnic Serbs living in Serbia proper or Israeli Jews living within its internationally-recognized borders -- and live in separation from your brethren, you will feel like a cornered animal. You will react as if your survival is being threatened. You will hold up your thumb, pointer and middle fingers -- not the peace sign.

The "Patriot Boys" in Banja Luka feel like those Jews who used to live in trailers in Gaza; they feel like they have to puff out their chests and assert their Serbness.

Just like the West Bankers who, in 2004, came in droves to protest withdrawal from the Mediterranean sandbox given to their people by God Himself, so, too, do the Patriot Boys view БИX as their rightful land. Gaza is Israel; BiH is Serbia. In their interpretation of history, the facts are indisputable. There will be no debate. It's as simple as that.

But ask a Tel Aviv surfer how he feels about his "brethren" living in the settlements, or a Belgrade intellectual how he feels about Ratko Mladić, and you'll get the same reaction: A shaking head. A look of embarassment. A wish you hadn't asked that question.

In Belgrade, most people that I have met seek to disassociate themselves from the extremism that is uber-prevalent in Republika Srpska. They have no interest in "Greater Serbia;" they have an interest only in peace.

"I hope that we will be reaching a time of relax," Zivko, a Serbian from the town of Nova Varoš, said to me the other night at a bar called Idiott. "I am tired of all this politics. I am tired. I am looking to the future, and I hope that it will be a time where there are no more of these problems," he said, staring straight ahead with a far-off look in his eyes. "I do not need 'Greater Serbia,' whatever that is. You want to know what I need? I need a nice woman, a house on the Mediterranean and a dog. And I invite you, I invite my other friends to come there, and we just relax, go fishing." Zivko took another drag of his cigarette as he burrowed his eyebrows. This was his dream; it had nothing to do with righting historical wrongs in Bosnia-Hercegovina, or in the Krajina region of Croatia, or in breakway Montenegro.

It had to do with finding a nice woman and a dog -- which is all that I want as well.

A song by the mid-90's band Porno for Pyros was playing in the background as Zivko told me what it was that he wanted. I found the lyrics to be foreboding of what may actually unfold in the near future, as tensions in the Balkans continue to simmer beneath a surface of stability: We'll make regrets, we'll make regrets!...

I looked at Zivko's profile, and I couldn't guarantee that Serbia was yet in the clear from the troubles that plagued it and its neighboring countries throughout the 1990's. They made regrets then, and may do the same again soon. It is a beautiful day today in Belgrade: Blue skies, just the right temperature, a stream of sunlight pouring in from the kitchen window, which make it hard to sit inside and type. But storm clouds are in sight. They are out there, on the horizon, hovering above the converging Sava and Danube Rivers.

The country -- and the entire region -- is not yet in the clear. Two days before I arrived in Belgrade, a popular referendum ratified a new constitution, which was needed to replace the invalidated document which governed the former country of Serbia and Montenegro. The referendum was about a new constitution, but it was widely seen as a vote on whether or not to allow the southern Serbian region of Kosovo to withdraw peacefully, as Montenegro was allowed to do just last May.

Kosovo's independence is almost inevitable. The main question is whether or not war is as well. The three-month NATO bombing campaign that peppered Serbia from Kosovo to Belgrade to Vojovodina in 1999 was triggered by the dispute over this region. Memories of the "Bombing Spring" are still fresh. But fears among the populace that their government is moving back towards a radical position on Kosovo are well-founded.


I have met educated people in Belgrade. They want peace; they want a nice woman; they want a dog. But not everyone in Serbia feels this way.


The people who spray paint the words "Sons of Serbia" are like the Patriot boys in Banja Luka. They do not want a nice woman and a house on the Mediterranean -- they want to unite the Serbian people. And if the Serbian people happen to live in a scattering of countries across the former Yugoslavia, then drastic times call for drastic measures.

But people like Zivko will be caught in the cross fire. All I can hope and pray for is that his government, and his people, do not make regrets so soon after the last war. I hope that one day, I will be invited to his house, meet his beautiful wife, play fetch with his dog, and then go fishing. 

Romania, from what I've heard, is quite a strange place. It's Balkan, but its language is Latinate. It's a stone's throw from Serbia, but takes a Stone Age to get there, because of all the visa restrictions and therefore shortage of transport. And its money is made of plastic.


You can see right through it.

I was giving Anna a hard time for studying in a country which has such weird money, but the joke was on me. Less than an hour after taking this picture, as I was stuffing my hand into my pocket to pay for beer at a Belgrade corner store, the 200 dinar note got stuck on my camera case and ripped right in two.

"Man, if this was Romania..." I thought, as I frantically searched for more money, not knowing if I would now have enough. (Luckily, I did ... just barely). 

"He said it was free."

"FREE?!"

"That's what he says..." Johannes, an Austrian who learned a bit of Serbo-Croat during the year he lived outside of Zagreb, pointed over to the old Serbian man who had pointed us towards the entrance, and shrugged. He was just as amazed as I was.

"How in the hell do they pay their players??" The American capitalist inside of me made sure that was the first thought that came to mind.

In Sarajevo, I'd gotten into the FK Sarajevo-Željo derby for less than three euros: Peanuts, I thought at the time (or pumpkin seeds, once I realized that those are what people in the Balkans take out to the ballgame). But after the news Johannes had just brought, in retrospect Sarajevo was beginning to feel like Monte Carlo.


Judging by the play of Partizan's keeper, I'd say they pay him with pumpkin seeds. He was terrible. In a 3-1 loss that was but a hit post and a missed header away from being a 3-all draw, this dude let what proved to be the game-winning score find the back of the net on a slow bouncer, a ball so easily playable that it would have lost in a foot race against a pint of molasses. He went in for the slide-pick up on what should have been a routine play, and what should have been a routine play then became a 2-o hole, from which his team could never recover.

The fans who actually showed up in the stands -- it felt like a Strake Jesuit high school game during the first half, minus the clouds of cigarette smoke and Orthodox chapel peeking its head above the stadium wall -- were not happy. Balkan folks are reknowned for their lack of, well, tact, so you can imagine the insults that were hurled his way. (Johannes isn't fluent in Serbian, but he knows the euphemism for pulling a Monica Lewinsky, and he was laughing almost the entire game at the loud grumblings from the pumpkin seed gallery).

Football in Beograde was nothing compared to my Sarajevo ... "experience." The security pat down was much more severe. The ban on flares was actually enforced. No one was smoking weed in the stands. I didn't hear a single song until the start of the second half. After hearing legendary stories about Serbian crazies who support the Belgrade club Red Star, I was ready for a riot. What we got was a stadium so empty, I kept waiting for Moises Alou, Pedro Martinez and Larry Walker to take the field, all ten years younger and looking fit for a Montreal crowd.


But at least I was warm in my new second-hand, "It's so ugly, it's cool" jacket, which I have affectionately named "B." (After the 'B' stitched onto the sleeve on a backdrop of wings).


After the final whistle blew, the floodgates of Balkan insults really opened. The Partizan coach, who is as bald as George Costanza, was mocked with cries of .... this is a family site. I can't actually say it. Just think of an animal that builds dams, and then picture if that animal decided he needed a new summer do, and bought a Mach 3. Johannes translated; I died laughing.


Of course, it all came together the next day as to why a game that was free still couldn't draw even a half-capacity crowd. It had nothing to do with the cold; it had everything to do with an organized boycott by Partizan fans of their team, due to philosophical differences with its management. The fans we had seen were scabs, replacement players. We had crossed the picket line without even knowing it. But at least we had learned some good Serbian slang in the process. 

"Serbia has always been on the border, right in the middle of the divide. Between East and West."

What better evidence can I give to back up the words of my friend Zivko than the intensely Orthodox religiosity of this country? Christian, like the West, but with a touch of mysticism, which has trickled down through time from the legacy of Byzantium.


And Belgrade has been the heart and soul of the modern Serbian nation, the country with an identity crisis, between East and West.


They may use the Cyrillic alphabet, but you forget -- say, for example, when you are walking around the Beograd Zoo, which has all the trappings of a modern Western animal prison -- that you are in what many consider to be the "East" every minute of the day.



But I love Serbia, whether it knows itself truly or not. 

This is Jalal. Jalal is the man.


It was at times like these in Prague -- when I meet an Iraqi from a town actually called "Babylon" who is trying to get a job teaching English, though he himself is not a native speaker -- that I miss my friend Tom. He's in South Africa right now, having the time of his life in the Peace Corps, but the plain fact is that he missed out on a big experience in not meeting Jalal.


Happy foreigners who speak English are quite possibly my favorite people in the world. They are the types who would automatically become "the man" if they were introduced to Tom. "Jalal is crazy! Jalal is the man!" is what TK would surely yell at every possible moment, and Jalal, not understanding the humor, would simply smile and then feel obliged to yell, or go "Whoo!", or something to indicate that yes, he is in fact "crazy" and "the man."


But what Jalal would never know is that he isn't "the man" for any other reason besides the fact that he is from another country, speaks English, smiles a lot, and exists.


Just look at him. Especially after he rallied, you could see why Jalal is THE MAN. 

"If you need to cross the river," Bino told me, pointing out places on the map that I could scope out that afternoon in Prague, "don't go on the Charles Bridge. There are way too many tourists."

"I mean, there can't be that many," I said, my morning coffee in hand. "How bad could it really be?"

Bino just stared at me. "When you look at Prague on Google Earth, you can see the tourists on the thing."

I thought he was exaggerating. Then I saw for myself.

"I tried to cross the Charles Bridge once," he told me once I returned home, having confirmed with an eye witness account just how destructive a force mass tourism can be. "It took 30 minutes."

We couldn't compare times, because I had taken one look at the bridge formerly known as Charles (but which has recently been renamed "Overpopulation In a Nutshell Most") and veered to the left. I may be a tourist, but I am a self-loathing tourist. I can't beat 'em, but I still ain't joining 'em. Most Legit -- which doesn't have nearly the longevity as its next door neighbor to the north, yet remains a perfectly good way to cross the river -- was just fine by me.



MOST LEGIT! MOST LEGIT 2 QUIT! HEY! HEEEEYYY!


Break it down!


Once again, I ask the question: If a river isn't clean enough to swim in it, is it clean enough to eat fish out of it?



With all the popular fixation on mullets, I don't think rat tails have gotten a fair shake. This one was legendary.

 

More Prague.

BMW cannot be happy about the free subliminal advertising Mercedes-Benz gets every time a tagger forgets what a peace sign actually looks like.


Wes? Is that YOU?


Va Beach Va, dude. For real.


Yes, it says what you think it says.


I was walking home alone from the Reggae Bar, and I happened upon a free concert being put on in a public plaza. "Support Lesbiens" (I can't tell if the extra 'e' -- rather than an 'a' -- is significant in changing the word's meaning) was either the name of the band, or the event.

Kind of strange.

Not that there's anything WRONG with that! (You have to be a Seinfeld watcher to get that one).



This bridge dates back to the era when MC Hammer actually had money, and was most legit. So legit that he bought the rights to rename a bridge in Prague after his essence. But sadly, so legit that he could not quit his spendthrift ways ... which was of course what led to his bankruptcy.

Praha...

... has UVa secret society members?


....and people who don't like George Bush?! What is this, Europe or something?


Ya know Bino, I can handle a lot of the Christian jokes that you send my way. But telling me, "Looks like your boy is a little pale there. He could use some sun"?? Now that is just taking it too far.


(But I still laughed).


I have a general rule of thumb for traveling, and that is, whenever the first place I go is called "Reggae Bar," the city is okay in my book.

 

Praha.


That means Prague.


I know I left a while ago, with a sour taste in my mouth after "Restarting Marketa" ended in a draw, but the place is gorgeous.


It needs to be memorialized on the blog.

 

Remember when I went to Copenhagen, and fell in love with the hippie commune called Christiania? Ljubljana doesn't quite have that, but Metelkova is about as close of a parallel that I have been able to find.


It's not really a "commune" so much as it is an abandoned military complex -- just like Christiania -- that has been converted into an artsy, alternative style hangout that has chill bars and good music, all the time. Like Jan, I can only wish that I had had a place like Metelkova to hang out at as a high schooler ... or even as a college kid.


I mean, please, a jungle jim that you can chill on with beers at night? Without having to worry about cops getting on your case? Sign me up.


And why is it that we don't paint all of our buildings like this?


Or decorate them like this? 

Ljubljana DRAGONS!!


I kept waiting for the Wicked Witch of the Eastern Europe to swoop down at any moment.


You can't escape them. You can only hope to find St. George.


My question is, How in the world did the idea of a "dragon" spread so universally in the days before the Internet? It's not like dragons exist, so it really baffles my mind. Everyone seemed to know about them, from China to Great Britain. Even John of Patmos was talking about 'em! Have you ever read the Book of Revelation?? Someone, please do a study on this.

 

So my Belgian friend Jan (as in a dude whose name is pronounced Yon, not a girl from "The Brady Bunch") and I hiked up to the castle in Ljubljana to see what was up, and we came across a random photo exhibit of one of those Chinese cities that wows people with the fact that 10 million people can live in a place without anyone ever having heard of it.

I can't remember the name of the town.

But I will never forget that this apparently makes the cut of the Top 100 Reasons why I should go there.


Don't worry, you read the caption correctly: Sweet Lovers. I don't even wanna know what "Sweet and Sour Lovers" would show. 

Ljubljana

I am obsessed with dragons. There are plenty of them on display here in the heart of Slovenia.



I'm telling you: Ljubljana = the illegitimate child of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Holland, with the Dutch daddy exiting the scene forever after their one night stand, leaving the Austrians to raise a kid whose genes scream out "The Netherlands!"


 

The graffiti in Ljubljana was the best I have seen. In the Balkans, it was trash. In the non-Balkan part of the former Yugoslavia, it was art.

Less is more.

People tried to tell me while I was there that no one in the country had any love lost for the Tito dictatorship. I sure found a lot of places that bucked that trend -- his portrait can still be found throughout the former Yugoslavia, even in Ljubljana. He may have been a dictator who sucked all the money into Belgrade, "Brotherhood and Unity" style, but Josip Broz Tito was still half-Slovene, and despite the relative prosperity of this country in relation to the rest of the "republics," a lot of people miss the good ole days.

Brilliant work. A is for the internet, invented by a former U.S. presidential candidate. M is for corporate domination. E is for ... corporate domination. R is for ... corporate domination. I is for one of two things, which the four of us argued over: Elise and I said it was a rocket, a tribute to NASA (this could just be a Houston bias, though a Quebecoise agrees with me, so there); the other two people with us contend that it stands for a missile, or a bomb. But seriously, guys, when was the last time a bomb had a checker board painted on it?? I is for NASA. K is for ... none of us could figure out what K (the artsy way of writing 'C') is for. And the upside down A is symbolic of the about face AMERIKA's image has taken in the unipolar age, in the eyes of the international community.

I'm not into art, mainly because I am not deep enough to understand it really, but I know one thing: This is art.

And this? This is just scary ... but it's cool, huh? (He is saying "Good night!")

 

"Restarting Marketa"

Anonymous said...
so what happened with Marketa? did you stay or did you go? did you pay or did you fold?

A rare comment deserves a detailed response.
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Should I stay or should I go now? Da da da da da da da da...

None of us were bringing it up, but all three of us -- Jordan, Bino and I -- were playing the same tune in our heads, over and over and over. "It" was the little situation Marketa's greed had gotten me into. "It" was a taboo subject.

Marketa, the English-speaking Czech landlady who collects rent from the Naughty by Norfolk duo, had demanded (retroactively) that I pay her back for all the "utilities" I had used during my week sleeping on the floor at "her" apartment ... the one on Staropramenna Ave., owned by her father, for which my two friends are paying more than what is fair in rent. I had made her an offer: 200 Kc, or about $10, from which I wasn't budging. She said -- via text message -- that 200 Kc wasn't enough, without making me a counter offer. She wasn't budging, either. And so we were stuck, two rams butting heads, our intertwined horns forcing our eyes downward to ensure that no solution would be reached.

"It" was a black cloud hovering below the ceiling at Fraktal, the Prague cafe where Jordan, Bino and I sat in silence, not talking about "it."

Oh, you've got to let Marketa knoooow, should Billy stay or should he go? Da da da da da da da da...

The cloud was only getting darker, bigger, more ominous with every minute that passed.

All I knew was that I wasn't going to cave. I wasn't filling Greedy McGreed Greed's pockets with anything more than ten bucks -- and even that was extortion in my eyes. Jordan and Bino were maxing out their phones' credit with text messages to friends, searching on my behalf for a Good Samaritan somewhere in Prague, trying in vain to separate the rams' horns and find me a place to crash -- but it was looking bleak. Most didn't respond; one had moved to Budapest the day before; another already had a full house; the last one said his landlady would be delighted to have me stay ... for 500 Kc.

A lightning bolt struck down in the corner of the room, and I began to count down the seconds until I heard the rumble of thunder. Rain drops would begin to fall any minute, I thought.

The logic of not talking about "it" was about as sensical as restarting your computer when it won't connect to the Internet, hoping that everything will magically work out when it turns back on. You know nothing will have changed, but you can't think of anything better to try, so you heave up a Hail Mary ... with no receivers in the end zone. "If we just don't talk about it, and stay away from the apartment for long enough, eventually everything will be okay, and she'll let me stay there without demanding reparations for all the 'utilities' I used..."

We were deluding ourselves, and we knew it, though wouldn't admit it openly. "Restarting Marketa" was as likely to work as lightning striking twice.

But sometimes, lightning does strike twice.

The subject still taboo, we paid the bill at Fraktal and made out for the park nearby. It was cold, it was dark, and it was plainly obvious that Daylight Savings had fallen back the day before. The mood outside was fitting: Bleak and depressing. Should I stay or should I go now? At that point, I was leaning towards "go." Taking a hamburger-folded print-out from my back pocket -- (I had gotten a list of all trains leaving Prague for my next stop from the station's information desk that afternoon) -- I honed in on the 0:52 departure time for Budapest. Suddenly, a 4:00 a.m. change in Bratislava was looking mighty attractive.

And that is when Jordan's phone buzzed again -- the familiar sound of an incoming text message.

The entire day, he had been receiving them, mostly from Marketa. And every time, his face had read the content aloud before his words could do the job. Bad news, bad news, bad news Bears, each and every time. I was becoming conditioned to the sight of him pulling out his phone, as Pavlov's dogs were conditioned to the sound of a bell -- but instead of salivating, I had learned to automatically curse Marketa's existence.

This time, though, was different. This time, it looked like Jordan might have something good to tell me.

I can't remember the exact wording of Marketa's final message, but I do remember that it sounded like anything but Pavlov's bell. "Marketa says she's not staying with us tonight after all, and wants to know if I can come home and help her move her bags downstairs, because she is crashing at a friend's place," Jordan deadpanned.

Could it be??? The impossible? Victory ... was ... mine?

Bino chimed in without missing a beat. "Tell her that we're at an Internet cafe as far on the other side of Prague as you can come up with. We're not going back there."

It looked like our "Restarting Marketa" strategy had worked out, after all. Lightning had struck twice. Not knowing what else to do, Bino and I went in for the "Saved By The Bell" leaping high five ... and awkwardly connected with the sides of our hands. So we tried again, and smacked palms as solidly as an Albert Pujols swing on a Brad Lidge hanging slider. Victory was mine, and I wouldn't have to pay a dime ...

... as long as I could avoid running into Marketa until I left for Budapest the following day.

You can imagine that, after such an unbelievably opportune stroke of luck, the three of us were going to make damn sure that that didn't happen at the apartment. I may have been hanging out with two Jews, but neither were named Daniel. We weren't walking into the Lion's Den. The only way I could possibly lose at that point would be if I randomly bumped into Marketa on the streets of Prague. Fat chance, right?

We took a tram ride across the river and found a new cafe. Black tea, hot chocolate, coffee with milk, Irish coffee, bagged potato chips inexplicably served on a plate with a napkin and silverware, whatever -- just keep it comin', and please make the service as slow as possible. I was trying to dilly, dally, procrastinate and waste time like I was back on a construction site in the sweltering summer heat of Houston, working for Humphries. (It was while working construction as a 16-year-old that I got the name "Bílly," by the way, because the Mexicans were simply incapable of pronouncing the name "Bayless.")

"I can't BELIEVE how lucky I am!" I said probably a thousand times in the two hours after Jordan got that text message. "I mean, seriously, she lets me off the hook like that? When she KNOWS she's got me boxed in? Incredible."

Jordan and Bino couldn't agree more. "That's what we keep trying to tell you about this woman," one of them said. "She spent a half a million dollars on coke in her lifetime, and was into heroin, too -- she's freaking bipolar, man. One minute, nicest woman ever. The next, she's a raving lunatic. You never know with her, ever. She can change on a dime."

And she had changed on a dime -- from rejecting 100 of them to getting nada. And I couldn't have been more pleased with myself.

Everything went smoothly from there. We returned to Staropramenna Ave., up the three flights of stairs and into an empty apartment. Some of Marketa's bags were gone, and she hadn't stolen any of my stuff as collateral -- as Jordan had mentioned as a hahaha seriously though possibility a few hours earlier. When we got ready to go to sleep, he set his alarm for early -- 8 in the morning -- and I packed up ahead of time, ready to roll out of there as soon as I got up from a nice, comfortable, cost-free sleep on my air mattress. All was well in my world, and I was 200Kc the richer as a result.

The next morning, everything went without a hitch. I showered quickly and strapped on my pack. My watch read 8:30. Still early, but there was no way I was going to get greedy with the time I had been alotted to escape. The Clash with Marketa had not materialized -- I was no longer wondering "Should I stay or should I go," because after such a close call averted, I was going. The Phish lyrics I had been humming all week prior to Marketa's demand -- (Jordan's iPod put me to sleep every night I was there) -- retook center stage, as I said goodbye to Bino's old, and my new, friend from Norfolk: "This has all been wonderful, and now I'm on way!"

And I walked out the door -- no Marketa. And down the stairs -- no Marketa. And outside -- no Marketa. I was free!

This has all been wonderful, and now I'm (really) on my way!

Or so I thought.

Bino, like the good friend that he is, got out of bed an hour later and made his way down to the nearby mall, to meet me for a coffee in the food court before I left for the station. We promptly moved over from the McDonald's -- which was all that had been open when I arrived as an early morning asylum-seeker -- to Cafe Emporium, a WiFi hot spot at the top of the escalator. Enclosed by transparent plate glass, it turned out to be quite a hot spot indeed.

My back was to the glass, so I didn't see it coming, but when I heard that tappety-tap-tap just behind my head, Bino looked like he had seen a ghost. And like Jordan's text message from the night before, I knew without words: It was Marketa.

She had come to ruin my farewell party.

"How did she find us??" I could not believe it. And neither could my old roomate. "Do you think Jordan told her??"

"No way, man. I have no clue." And then, there she was, standing above us, asking if she could sit down.

"Sure," her tenant said. There was no escape; we were busted.

It was surreal -- like a scene from a movie, when the hitman offers his victim a cigarette, smiling as he makes polite small talk with a man who knows his minutes are numbered. The three of us were in a no-smoking, yuppie establishment, so no cigarettes were proffered. But the tension was just as high. And this time, "it" was far from taboo.

"So, I hear you want to give me 200Kc?" Marketa said in my direction, smiling her sinister, hitman smile. Silence. Awkward silence. "You don't want to give me anything, do you?" And she laughed, as if that would make the exchange less uncomfortable. "Don't you think it's fair that you pay me back for all the utilities you used? You were there for what, a week? I don't think you could find a hostel that would let you stay for free, do you?"

No, and that's the whole idea of staying with FRIENDS, I wanted to shout. Not only that, but thoughts of screaming, "They already PAID for those freaking utilities in the ridiculous rent you charged them!" and "Why didn't you freaking mention my financial obligations when we met FIVE DAYS AGO!" crossed my mind, with a choice word other than "freaking" included in my imagined outburst. But I said nothing; I just stared at the table cloth in front of me. Bino looked like a deer in headlights, and it was only the thought of his immediate future that held my tongue for me.

Marketa had me cornered, and knew that my attachment to the friend sitting across the table from me was the Achilles' heel which prevented me from springing across the table like a caged animal.

"Also," she continued, the sinister smile still pulling her lips upwards as she shifted her gaze to Bino, "I believe you and Jordan owe me some money for staying at the place an extra three days." She was referring to October 29, 30 and 31, which apparently were not included in the "month" long lease the pair had originally signed. Now it was simply bordering on the ridiculous. I knew Greedy McGreed Greed was into avarice, but not to this extent.

"Uh, yeah," Bino said, always the diplomat who avoids confrontation. "Sure, we'll leave you some money." Just as Marketa knew that Bino's welfare was my kryptonite, she also knew that her connections with Bino and Jordan's new landlady -- who had tried to force the Naughty By Norfolkers to sign a lease agreement written only in Czech -- was enough to cripple any effective resistance from her soon-to-be former residents.

"Yeah, I think that would be fair," she continued. "You're about to find out how expensive utilities are in Prague."

My dad always told me not to hit girls, but he said nothing about bludgeoning or strangling. The thought briefly crossed my mind.

"Sure, Marketa, we'll figure something out," was all Bino could muster. Tension. Awkward, awkward tension. I was still staring at the table cloth. How in the world had she found us??

It turns out it was just luck. Just as Jordan is a Jew not named Daniel, neither is he named Judas. He was not to blame -- it was just plain old bad luck. Finally, Marketa left, satisfied that she had extorted enough for the morning, and exited the table with -- what else -- a sinister smile, and a "Have a great time in Budapest!"

Five minutes later, Bino and I paid the bill, and we left for the station. There was no parade; it had been cancelled due to rain.

Did "Restarting Marketa" lead to victory in the end? I would say the answer to that is a resounding no. Justice was not served; a tyrant enriched herself at the expense of virtue. But would I go so far as to say that I lost? Definitely not. I had already said that 200Kc was my limit, and I withdrew the said amount for my buddy before hopping on my outbound train. Marketa got more money than she deserved, but she probably still wasn't satisfied.

So, in response to "Anonymous," did I stay or did I go? I stayed. Did I pay or did I fold? I paid. Marketa 1, Bayless 1. Even draw.