Belgrade, I love you. I really do. But I can't handle being in a concrete jungle like that for too long without escaping. Stewart feels the same. That's why we came to Crna Gora.

This is a part of the world I never dreamed I'd be in. Especially twice (I spent two nights in Kotor in September/October). The realization of, "Where in the hell am I?" happens to me all the time -- and it's always accompanied by an ear-to-ear grin, because the next thing I realize is, "Fah, fah away." I am smiling and fah, fah away when I'm entering Kosovo in the backseat of Mladen's Serbian relative's VW Golf; as I am taking a piss in a bathroom in the mountains of southwestern Serbia; and as I am hiking around a semi-frozen lake in Durmitor National Park, in the world's newest independent nation.


Hiking for five hours today in powder -- in Carhartt's that now have a a huge hole on the left leg near the cuff, an even huger one on the right cuff, and a this-is-getting-a-little-ridiculous one right over the pocket where I keep my phone -- was enjoyable largely due to one thing: The hiking boots I picked up in Nova Varos last December. Big time. BIG time. Shin deep snow + river rafting tennis shoes made of mesh (which are great for the summer) = wet feet. Wet feet = unhappy. Buying those boots = good decision.

"It's like Tahoe," Stewart, my newest Black Cat from NoCal said today from atop the icy ridge overlooking Crno Jez (Black Lake). "But it's not. It's f***in' Montenegro."

A refreshing departure from smoke-filled rooms, half-empty mason jars of pivo and a sink full of sludgy mugs that had previously been full of piping hot Turkish coffee (aka the Three Black Catz)

Zabljak, Montenegro, to be exact.

I mentioned deep snow. Some parts, though, redefined the word deep.

"I'm kind of worried about getting back before it gets dark," I said once we reached the point of no return on trying to trailblaze across the steep face that jutted out on the peninsula. "Which way should we go?"

I had already said I thought we should just cut across the sliver of water next to us and backtrack. That would be an hour, minimum. Taking the route less traveled could take a little longer.

Or a lot longer.

"Let's just kick it, man," he said. He motioned to the steep part.

I'm not gonna be the guy who says no in that situation. I followed Stewart.

This is the part when my shoes filled up with snow, because I think I fell on my ass in shin-deep powder about 11 times. Maybe 15. A few times, the branch I held onto for dear life snapped, and luckily I didn't just roll off the cliff into the "Is that the lake, or the bank?" part of the landscape directly below.

You can see where we were. The big peninsula, facing north. About halfway back home, either way. And we chose the dead end.

"S**t, man."

Stewart had led us through the scary part, and he was the first to find out that there was no way to go any further. Physically impossible, for anyone not named Sylvester Stallone.

We turned back, which is when I must have lost them.

Cool sunglasses are hard to come by. Cool sunglasses, that is, for cool people. That means people who shop at Value Village, or at the Saks Fifth Avenue of Value Villages, Goodwill. Stewart had a pair of cool sunglasses -- big, purple-tint, old man style. And he let me borrow them today, just a week after Adi, one of the Three Black Catz neighbors, lost mine.

"I won't lose them," I said thirty minutes into our hike today, when he asked just to check. "I'm not Adi."

And I lost them.

When we got back to our sobe, that's when I realized. So I walked thirty minutes back to the restaurant we had coffee in after our hike, only to find they weren't there. Thirty minutes back, in the snow, this time in the dark, and that made an hour out of my life that proved fruitless. And I had to tell Stewie that his sunglasses were sleeping under a drift of snow somewhere on Crno Jez, in Durmitor National Park.

"What is the lesson we learn from this?" I had asked during our backtrack on the treacherous portion of the hike today. Stewart had just said in frustration that he was just pissed off at that point, since we had spent all that time walking into a snow-filled dead end.

"That we should never not follow the tracks of a Montenegrin hiker," he said. We had run into someone coming the opposite direction 20 minutes in.

"No. It's that you should always listen to Bayless." I knew we weren't meant to go the route Stewart had taken us (slash, I was lazy and didn't want to try it).

And oh, the irony. Not only was I Adi, in losing Stewie's glasses, but we spent about 20 collective minutes on the ground because Stewart led us the wrong way.

Even?

No?

Everyone hates that feeling. "Yo man, I'm really sorry, but..."
But what. That's what the eyes are saying before you can finish, even if they are trying to be nice about it.

"But those glasses are gone, man. They're in the snow somewhere."

Breathe, breathe, they say.

"I would offer to buy you new ones, but I can't exactly go to the Cool Sunglasses Store to get them."

Breathe.

"And I would offer you money, but...."

Breathe.

"Money isn't exactly going to be able to get you new ones, either."

"How about you just buy me an extra big beer tonight?" The 21-year-old dude's way of saying, "Don't worry about it. Shit happens."

Stewart feeling blue.

Forget Lonely Planet. It is worthless. The "cheapest place to stay," always, ALWAYS, means "not the cheapest place to stay." That's why we shacked up with this Montenegrin grandmother who had a sign for available sobe outside her apartment.

Universality is a big thing that you learn while traveling for eight months. Some things, they're just the same no matter where you go. Kind of like Catholic mass (so I've heard).

My universal lesson of today was that everyone's grandmother makes stuff for you to eat that is nameless, but good. It's "I don't know, the stuff my grandma makes that is good."

Stewart and I met this old lady's 23-year-old grandson, who studies in Belgrade, this morning, and his shrugging shoulders taught us this fact. And this stuff is good, believe me. Every old Serb woman serves it with coffee. You take a big spoon of it, put it in your mouth, and take a sip of water. Some kind of berry stuff, I don't know. If her own grandson can't tell you the name, when he is a Serb, why are you looking at me?


Grandma Crna Gora has taught me two other things:

1. That my Serbian has improved dramatically, and...
2. That it still sucks.

She doesn't speak any English, and doesn't let that stop her from just talking.

Full time. Talking, talking, talking.

I am actually able to pick up about one in five, one in six words, and can generally get a feel for what she's trying to say. Two weeks ago, the ratio would have been about one in every fifty words. I guess the fact that I've filled up my little black book -- not with names and numbers of hot Serbian women, but with vocab and verb conjugations of the language that hot Serbian women speak -- has helped me get in with this old, wrinkly Montenegrin chick instead.

Which could be a good thing, if I can sweet-talk her into knitting me a new pair of Carhartt's.

"