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.