The White City.

Belgrade.

I came to Belgrade for the first time in November. I planned to stay for three or four nights. I stayed for 12. The only reason I left for Istanbul was because I had to meet my sister there for Thanksgiving.

But I came back. I had to. Another 12 days, again at the Three Black Catz Hostel, only to leave again, bound for Old Serbia. From there, I headed back to Turkey -- the rest of my family was coming to Istanbul to meet me this time, for New Year's.

I came back again. For a third time. Only because my mom wanted to see the Balkans, which got me a flight from Istanbul into Sarajevo. Beograd is only seven hours from there by bus. As Stewart, my NoCal surfer friend from the Three Black Catz would say, "avo," I'm gonna come back home to Belgrade.

I stayed for only 10 days that time. A week in Novi Sad with Stewie snapped the streak. But after Novi Sad -- less than two hours from the heart of Serbia -- where do you think I would go?

The fourth stay at the Black Catz was for five nights. Then we headed down to Montenegro for some fresh air. Stewart, who had been with me for an entire month, by far the longest amount of time I'd ever chilled with one person, kept heading west from Kusek, towards Bar and the Adriatic Coast.

I may had lost yet another Black Catz brother, but I still had the Black Catz -- which always has waiting for me a father (Mladen), a hot babysitter (Dragana), a love-hate stepsister (Tanja), an Eddie Haskell neighbor (Adi) and free Turkish coffee.

So I came back. For a fifth time.

But why? Why Belgrade? It's not just Americans who ask me that; it's Serbians, too. For the former, my answer is "I don't know." For the latter, it's "Ne znam." I really don't have an answer.

Part of it, perhaps, is that by the time I got here, I was so burned out by moving and grooving for five months, that I was ready to just breathe. Be familiar with my surroundings for once. Give my back a rest from carrying my life on it.

Another part, undoubtedly, are the unbelievably good looking girls in this country. I emphasize the word "unbelievably."

And another is that I just like it. And so, I have gotten stuck.

"Are you ever coming home?" I hear that, too. I do have an answer for that: Yes, I am coming home. Sometime. I'm not gonna be stuck forever. I have grand plans to keep moving south -- Kosovo, Macedonia, and we'll take it from there. But for now, for this week, I'm here.

Living the life I love, loving the life I live.

Who is that white trash Californian with lines shaved into the side of his head? He got Serrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrbed!

Beogradski....Meriliyan....istochna....geographica....duszina........ Great, I can read Cyrillic. It's still freaking Serbian.

No words needed, and it sums up both why we're not leaving the Middle East anytime soon and why the earth ain't getting any cooler in that time span.

Osama bin Mladen, the Tiger of the Three Black Catz. If you saw the size of the man's skull, the size of his hands, and the size of his pony tail, it wouldn't be that hard to envision him knocking Turk heads on the battlefield in the 14th century.

"The CBR."

Casual Boyfriend Reference. This one needs a little more space than just a caption.

We've all gotten the CBR at least once in our day.

I am in Belgrade, so I will give you a fitting analogy. A CBR is kind of like a NATO jet dropping a bomb on Serbia's Chinese Embassy, as happened in 1999: The CBR is the multi-million dollar "smart bomb;" the girl is Bill Clinton; the guy being warned to "back off" is Jiang Zemin. Like any NATO bomb, every CBR is strategically placed, and dropped with pinpoint precision. But like that NATO bomb that was meant to serve as a warning to Beijing, a CBR, too, is feigned as accidental.

We all know the truth though. If it smells like a CBR, tastes like a CBR and looks like a CBR, then it is a CBR. A Casual Boyfriend Reference.

"Oh, I love A Tribe Called Quest! One time, I was in my boyfriend's car, flipping through the radio stations, and then my friend called and told me that my favorite Tribe song was on 96.6, right as I was about to get to it! I couldn't believe it!"

That is a fictional example of a CBR. The word "boyfriend" in that quote was completely unnecessary, and irrelevant to the fact that the girl likes the same rap group as you. If you went by the tone of her voice in the delivery, you'd think the word "boyfriend" was no more significant than any of the other words. In actuality, though, it was meant to be received with wailing sirens and flashing red lights: BOYYYY-FRIEND! BOYYYY-FRIEND! BOYYYY-FRIEND!

The girl -- like President Clinton -- threw that CBR/smart bomb down on you/the Chinese for a reason: So that you know to watch yourself.

Sometimes, if a girl is nice, you get a CBR after only a few minutes. Other times -- if the girl really likes attention -- you get it after a few hours. But under really unfortunate circumstances -- as poor Stewart found out the other night from "Laguna Beach: Serbia" -- you get it after a few nights. (Although, my personal record was a few weeks. Never trust an Austrian cutie with dreads).

So how do you solve a problem like Marija? She goes to Dub Syndicate alone, and dances/flirts with a random American guy all night. Then, she goes back to the Three Black Catz, chills, goes outside and takes pictures of him lying drunk on "the horse," and gets his email before she leaves.

He doesn't get her info; she gets his.

Two days later, Marija sends Stewart a message -- wants to hang out. So he invites her to come out with us, to Plastic. He is macking the entire night. Didn't even have competition, really. If he did, she didn't let him know. Although Marija left early that night, Stewart knew -- he knew -- it was in the bag.

How could he be so sure, though?

Because she invited him to come to Budapest with her, just the two of them.

GREAT SUCCESS!

Or so he thought.

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

"I'm going to Budapest tomorrow." That's what they all say. Vincent, my old brate from the Black Catz, who comes from the 51st state of America, Canada, used to live by that mantra.

Budapest, tomorrow. Stewart, too, lived by it at first. Then he met me, the master manipulator. I like to think that I played a small role in turning Stewart from a passerby into a full blown "loke dog," the Cali term for "local." Budapest just hadn't happened, after more than two weeks in Serbia, and he was beginning to give up on it, for lack of time. Bosnia, Croatia -- those were going to have to take the role of his original destination, or else how would he make it to Spain on time to visit his dad?

And then, Stewart met Marija. And she invited him on that trip. Suddenly, "Budapest. Tomorrow," sounded mighty nice indeed.

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

When we saw Marija for the third time, there was no way we could have seen it coming. A boyfriend? At this point? Our radars would have had an easier time picking up a Stealth Bomber.

"So," I heard Stewie say from across the table, his hottie fake blondie eating up each and every word, "what's in Budapest?"

He was expecting anything but what she said in response.

"My boyfriend."

Just like that. No remorse. No cringe. No "Uhhhhhhh" eyes. Just out with it, like a heartless bia bia.

Her boyfriend? Her BOYFRIEND?

If I had taken that sip of coffee just a few seconds later, the stain would have still been in the blouse she wore that night, now over a week ago.

Stewart's face. I will just never forget the way it looked at that moment. You know when a kid really thinks he's getting the present for Christmas -- so sure that he's already daydreaming about how he's going to play with it that very afternoon -- and then he opens everything, only to find out that he had been dead wrong? That was how Stewie looked.

It was a mixture of extreme annoyance, a dash of melancholy and a lot of anger.

It is at times like those that I am glad I met Jeep. He was my partner-in-crime in messing with our teachers at Strake. The key, to anytime you mess with anyone, is the eyebrows. You've got to learn to funnel all of the energy from your face into the eyebrows. If you do that, you will not laugh, I promise you. It is a tried-and-true method. Though your flexing brows may look a little strange while you're constantly moving them up and down, it is still better than outright laughing -- a dead giveaway that something is amiss.

O.G. Zoka was to Marija's right, and facing me, but she didn't pick up on what had just happened. No one else besides the two of us did, for that matter. But, as Stewie and I never stopped marveling over, our minds are tuned into an almost identical frequency. He looked over at me; I furiously moved my eyebrows all over the place; we both held in laughter.

Needless to say, Stewart suddenly felt really "tired" after we left the cafe.

"You're not coming anymore?" Marija asked, once we had made it out onto the sidewalk.

"Naw," Stewart answered. It was like Opposite Day, the way he explained himself. "I'm just really tired. I don't feel like going out."

Almost as believable as the NATO "intelligence gathering failure" excuse, eh?

Beograd.

The Sava.

Cigan.

The Kalemegdan, a.k.a. "My Favorite Place on Earth."

Belgrade blazon.

Very true.

Hell has frozen over.

Who wants to spend their time going to see old Serbian Orthodox monasteries when they can see a statue of Rocky Balboa?

Whoever said that I've been wasting my $100-plus thousand dollar UVa education by shuttling around the former Yugoslavia in an aimless, existentialist haze for the majority of the past five months was way off. The Three Black Catz may be responsible for millions of brain cells lost forever, but a little R&R is essential in the Balkans if you want to maintain sanity. Besides, productivity is not as tangible as it may appear to those with "real" degrees and respectable jobs.

You can't put a price tag on the kind of knowledge I have been accumulating since I landed in Split, Croatia last September.

A history major in college, yet until this summer, this was one in major need of enlightenment regarding the Balkans. I knew nothing, to put it simply, about a part of the world that was responsible for lighting the fuse of the Great War, and where wounds from the Second World War have still not fully healed. Until I read Balkan Ghosts last July (an experience that I can honestly say changed my life, since it sparked inside of me a burning desire to travel to this crazy place), I knew nothing at all about the former Communist country of Yugoslavia, except for the following:

• A guy named Tito broke with the Soviet Union in 1948, and,
• There was a messed up war here in the 90's.

Oh, and I knew that Vlade Divac, Pedja Stojakovic, Toni Kukoc, Darko Milicic, Drajan Petrovic, and every other NBA player with a last named ending in "itch" hailed from somewhere nearby.

My days of Slavic ignorance seem like a distant dream at this point.

The irony is that Balkan Ghosts focused mainly on Romania, Macedonia and Greece -- three places I still haven't seen. Robert Kaplan, the author, threw in some tidbits from a Why Croatia and Serbia Have Beef 101 course, and discussed "Old Serbia" and the Legend of Kosovo pretty extensively -- but he completely skipped over Bosnia, which has more than enough books devoted to it alone. None of that matters now, though. That book was just a nudge; I took the plunge, and I have done my best to soak up as much of my surroundings on the ensuing free fall -- that means not only trying to learn the history, but also the customs, culture, cuisine and language.

After spending most of my trip hopping between the South Slav (Jugo Slav) countries of Serbia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia, Slovenia and Montenegro -- reading, talking, absorbing and learning stories about life from the horses' mouths -- I am a regular wannabe Balkanologist.

I know more about these people's own history than most of these very people. The most common question I hear -- other than, "Why are you here?" and "Are you in the CIA?" -- is "Why do you ask so many questions?" I feel almost as comfortable in a run-down Serbian cafana as I did in a booth at The Virginian until last May. And that's not even having truly scratched the surface on trying to understand a place where, as I once read, "nothing, nothing, is as it seems."

But if only my parents could have seen me two days ago in Zabljak, Montenegro, after Stewart and I got stood up by our Crna Gora Grandmother's grandson, Velimir, on a date to go skiing on the mountain nearby.

There was nothing to do, as Zabljak is pretty much like "Kusek," Montenegro, so we just bought the cheapest bottle of domestic rakia available. A fine domestic product called Lozova Rakia, with a slogan that read, "Eau de Vie de Montenegro," French for, "Water of Life of Montenegro." We took our water of life, found a picnic table in someone's front yard, and sat down to enjoy the fine afternoon.

Step 1...

Step 2...

Step 3...

And Step 4 to becoming a real Balkan man.

All the while, with a huge, gaping hole in my Carhartt's, just so the wet snow and cold wind could also be invited to the party in my only pair of pants.

"It's 3:00 on a Thursday afternoon," Stewart said from the other side of the bench. "Your parents would be so proud."

Maybe so. At this rate, maybe I really am


But at least I'm not working behind a cubicle!

BOO YAH!

"it would be awesome if you came back in march. i'm sure your family would love that. you don't return from europe because you love and miss your family, you return because of uva basketball. nice."

-rmb3d@virginia.edu

In the many versions of the Balkan Beard that I've sported during my time in Serbia, I have heard many deprecating remarks (and a lone good one. Thankyou, Original Gangsta Zoka).

For example...

• From Jelena, the original "Stacey Tractor Beam" Serbian girl, after she hadn't seen me for over a month following my first jaunt into Turkey: "That's it? And you said you hadn't shaved since the last time you were in Belgrade?
• From Kris, the Australian brother of mine from the Three Black Catz, whose beard could out-man the Unabomber's: "I feel sorry for you beard." (He was 18 at the time).
  

And tonight, the greatest of them all.

• From Lizzie, the world's most prestigious photography critic: "It's like, it is trying so hard to be a real beard, but it just can't."

It's not that I'm like, "Ohhhhhhh, yeah." It's that Mach 3 blades are expensive. I don't even buy soap -- I just use other people's, and take advantage of all opportunities to jack the free ones from semi-hotels....and I try not to bathe too much. Once y'all send me some razor blades, I will start shaving more often. Until then, I'm going to keep engendering pity from those able to grow real Balkan Beards.

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.

"

Father Scary Serb.

This is the funniest sequence from "Friends" ever, and I promise, it is relevant to a story I have about Serbs:

Chandler: What're we gonna do? What're we gonna do?

Joey: Uh, uh, we'll flip for it. Ducks or clowns.

Chandler: Oh, we're gonna flip for the baby?

(They had forgotten Ross' baby on a city bus, and were screwed, because at the station's lost and found, there were two babies that had been forgotten on a city bus).

Joey: You got a better idea?

Chandler: All right, call it in the air.

Joey: Heads.

Chandler: Heads it is.

Joey: Yes! Whew!

(Joey celebrating, Chandler giving the Chandler look...)

Chandler: We have to assign heads to something!

Joey: Right. Ok, ok, uh, ducks is heads, because ducks, have heads.

Chandler: What kind of scary-ass clowns came to your birthday?

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

If you're from Banja Luka, it wasn't one named Ronald McDonald, because Republika Srpska doesn't have a single McDonald's.

They have a cheap imitation of the Golden Arches, instead. But it hasn't served billions just yet. They call it -- buckle your seat belts for the roller coaster ride of creativity -- "Mac No. 1." And that cheap imitation's cheap imitation of Ronald McDonald makes a scary-ass clown look about as scary as a pink, furry teddy bear.

Jesus Orthodox Christ, is this guy freaky looking.

I call him Father Scary Serb.

His face alone is why I will never forget about the Bosnian Serb McDonald's. It's why I tell everyone I meet who has been/is going to Banja Luka about Mac No. 1. Here is what I love: At some point along the way, there was some business exec in Republika Srpska who looked over what some graphic designer had sent to his desk, pondered his decision, said to himself, "Looks good," and signed off on the cartoon face of the guy married to the witch from Hansel and Gretel.

It absolutely blows my mind.

Where does someone even think up such a character?

My question was answered the other night in Belgrade, after I had gone to see Dub Syndicate play at SKC.

Zoka and I walked into a bar called Triangle at about 3 a.m., and lo and behold, there he was, sitting at a corner table with four Serbian guys around my age.

Three years after Borat bought his wife, when she was 15, her virjeen hung like this guy's sleeve.

Father Scary Serb. In the flesh.

My fascination with old Serbian men was nothing new at this point. Call it a case of homo erotic, reverse xenophobic pedophilia, but I love them.

They just chill. Every day, all day -- chilling. Samo. Usually, it's in herds. Occasionally, solo. Whenever they're walking -- unless it's the man talking, in which case he is very vocal and demonstrative with his hands -- they hold their hands together, behind the back (except for when it is too cold). Lots of nodding in agreement. Lots of "Da, da." Lots of chess playing when not walking.

I always hope that they will talk to me, so that I can bust out with a few Serbian sentences, trick them into thinking I'm a local, and then bring out the left hook of "Ne znam srpski" and "Ja sam amerikanac," to throw them for a loop.

Dreaming of the day when my crush will talk to me.

Usually, they don't. But it doesn't mean I don't observe from afar. When I have a translator, I am laughing the whole time, because old Serbian dudes are hilarious. For example:

"Ivan!" a 70-something-year-old said to an even older friend at the bus stop in Nova Varoš one day back in December. Ivan -- the alias I have given to the man who may already be decomposing as his heart continues to beat -- was old. Really old. As in, "Yo, Ivan, what was it like to fight in the First and Second Balkan Wars? You really stuck it to those Turks and Bulgars, didn't you? Didn't you!"

Anyway, the man speaking wasn't exactly a spring chicken, either, but here is what he had to say to Old Man Ivan:

"You're still alive?! You'd be better off underneath the ground!"

Ivan let out a hearty bellow, and went back to being senile. Then he got on the bus.

Not Ivan, but still the man.

They just always seem to be arguing. Yelling, bitching, moaning, about something. But that's the best part -- they're not. They're just chatting. Chatting like Old Serbian men chat -- with gusto.

Wishing I was in their clique.

Now take another look at Father Scary Serb.

Now THAT, my friends, is a real Balkan Beard.

See what I'm talking about now?

I don't know why he decided to call me out, but he did. And my heart skipped a beat.

"Who, me?"

That's what my face said. I was giddy. This guy was the old Serbian dude who chills, after all. I mean, how long has he been growing that beard? And the hair? And why was he out this late at night? And why was he sitting with a table full of guys my age? The answer: Because this guy was the old Serbian dude who chills.

I approached his table. He was slurring his speech, while I was very articulate. And yet neither of us were speaking very good Serbian. He soon tired of me and lost interest, and I left.

Fifteen minutes passed. And then he came to my table.

Zoka wanted him to leave; I wanted him to pull up a chair. The eye contact we had was like a non-verbal argument.

When he asked her where I was from, why I didn't speak Serbian, etc., she explained to him that I was from America, that I spoke engleski.

Father Scary Serb relayed the message to the entire bar. By screaming it.

Zoka continued with the eye argument: "Don't encourage him. Don't ask him to sit down. Get him out of here."

I stood up and had him pose with me for a photo session.

"Tell him to shut his mouth! Tell him to close his mouth! His mouth is open!" Father Scary Serb kept yelling in Zoka's direction. Apparently he doesn't smile in pictures where he is from.

But I guess that's the difference between a land of Ronald McDonald's and a land where old Serbian men chill at bars until 4 in the morning.

CTEBAH.

The man-eating hrčak of Vojvodina.

Stevan -- cute, cuddly little Stevan -- is no ordinary hamster, though.

Stevan is an ANIMAL.

"Wassup, man! Why you frontin! Huh! Wassup!"

We give hamsters the same treatment we give rapists and murderers: Life behind bars; no chance for parole; time every day for exercise in the yard; constant surveillance; meals delivered straight to a small cell. Being a hamster is just like being in prison.

We all know it's a joke. A hamster isn't a rapist, or a murderer. It's a hamster. They don't know any different. They're cute. They're soft. They're furry. They draw endless amusement from running around on their little wheel. They love when people pay attention to them. They even have people names, as if they're some sort of dog who understands their identity.

But Stevan is no ordinary hamster. He is dangerous.

Playing with fire.

"Stevan can't stand anyone to touch him." G-Unit knows; Stevan was given to her as a gift.

I didn't pay any heed. And I paid the price.

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

"OW!"

"What happened?"

Stevan had just bitten the hand that does not feed him, when one of the fingers from that hand made the costly mistake of inserting itself into Stevan's lair. And it wasn't a love tap, either -- the little guy had drawn blood.

"Stevan is crazy, man," Stewart said from the kitchen, chuckling. He had just dodged one of his patented, "I'm cute, I'm cute, I'm cute, I'M NOT SO CUTE SUCKA!" fang attacks five minutes before.

Inmate No. 1 at the 35 Kosovska Unit of the Novi Sad Penitentiary.

I guess I'd be pretty mad at the world, too, if I was in solitary confinement for life.

Stevan acts like he's got a score to settle when he finally gets out. When he's not sleeping, he's preparing for that day.

Scaling the walls of his cage to practice climbing the walls of the penitentiary.




Running the wheel for speed training -- perfect for eluding capture in close proximity to the jail. Running in circles around the cage -- designed for long distance conditioning, so that he can run and run and run once he scales the penitentiary walls.

(He runs too fast to even document with film).

And my favorite, doing pull-ups, so that he can take anyone in a fight.




"Stevan's getting HUGE, dude!" Stewart is from California, so he knows a thing or two about muscle-heads.

I don't even want to know what will happen to the man who put Stevan behind bars, should the little guy ever get out. But it won't be a pretty picture.

Novi Sad.

My Serbian Mistress.

Six days in the capital of Vojvodina, without Internet, without television, but with three good-looking Orthodox ribe to cook, sew and clean for Stewart and me ... Life in Serbia can be pretty good at times.

Novi Sad or Belgrade?

I love them both. The latter is the steady girlfriend; the former, a one-week fling. But I can't put a ring on my new girl's finger just yet. Belgrade has been too good to me for too long. To toss her aside, just like that, would not only be inappropriate -- it would be unfair.

Besides, I've never heard of any rap group called Novi Sadski Sindikat. Have you?

I will say this, though, about Novi Sad: At just over an hour away from my Balkan Home Sweet Home by bus, and with a waaaaaaaaaaaay better bod, she makes for a damn good Serbian Mistress.




Tragedy struck my first day.

You know that sound? That terrible, awful, godforsaken sound? It's like nothing else on earth. There's a reason they came up with "R.I.P." as the tombstone acronym. It's because of what happens to your only pair of pants after you hear the dreaded riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip.

My Carhartt's have taken a mortal blow to the liver.

Thanks, Vojvodinan trash cans. Especially you jagged metal ones. I really appreciate it.

"And now, I will sing the Kazakh national anthem to the tune of your national anthem."

Luckily, I had Dragana -- the "real Bosnian girl" -- to patch them up. With style. She made sure, in Cyrillic letters, that everyone knew the new and improved version had been "Made in Serbia." Name one other dude on earth -- especially in Texas -- that is rocking that this season.

The sad part is what began to happen after about five days of looking goooood.

The hole reappeared. Dragana's sewing abilities had been proven to be insufficient.

Now, it's only a matter of time until these pants die. And when that happens...

I don't want to talk about it. I just can't envision life without them.




Vojvodina is not quite Serbia.




I mean, it is ...




But it's not.

The Serbia I knew before this past week was Turkish Serbia. Five hundred years of Ottoman occupation style. Vojvodina -- which borders Hungary -- has a different history completely. In Old Serbia -- essentially south Serbia -- you can feel the legacy of the Turkish yoke, in the air. You can see it in people's faces, on the sidewalks, in the flowing water of the rivers. Vojvodina is Austro-Hungarian Serbia. You can still see the legacy of empire, but it's just easier on the senses. When you're in Novi Sad, you don't feel like you're in the East; you can't even imagine that the place may have ever been in that realm. You're thinking about courts and corsets and Vienna; not viziers, sanjaks and the Porte.


But Dragana, I'm sorry. The Petrovaradin fortress may be cool and all -- that's where the infamous Exit Festival is held every year -- but it doesn't hold a candle to the Kalemegdan.

But maybe that's just my Belgrade Bias shining through.

Oh, and another thing: You may want to keep up on those ice skating lessons.




Stewart, who is California as California can be, decided last week to "get Serbed" by Adi's brother Milan -- "the best hairstylist in all of Belgrade." He then allowed Kris to pressure him into adding Michael Irvin lines on the side (the right side; not pictured).

"You look like shaban guy," is what our Novi Sad girls had to say about it. Context can explain to you folks back home what "shaban" means.

Gordana? Gordza? Gor.......what now? No wonder Stewart announced her nickname the first night: "Juh juh juh, juh juh juh, juh juh juh, GEEEE YOU NIT!"

Coolest. Apartment. Ever.

I just love that at Serbian weddings, someone, at some point, was like, "You're getting married! I know exactly what we need to do: Get out a Serbian flag!" Just picture if you were like, "Uhhh, Mom? Dad? I'm marrying a Croatian girl. Is it okay if we scrap the flag thing?"

See what I mean about Austria versus Turkey?

"King of the Castle, King of the Castle. I have a chair, King of the Castle. You do this, you do this. King of the Castle."

Tanja, our Microbiotics-eating, choir-singing, English-speaking queen.

G-UNIT

St. Vincent DePaul, you've got some work to do to catch up on the style points of Novi Sad's Catholic cathedral.

PLJESKAVICAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA