through the eyes of reg

Meet Reuben

2010-04-10T15:56:00.001-07:00

We pulled into the dusty lot and that's when I first saw him. He was just sitting there, by himself, on this make-shift bench, wearing a little tattered white, red and blue track suit, so dirty and ripped I could tell it was likely his only pieces of clothing. He was swinging his tiny legs, back and forth, back and forth with the careful rhythm of a child that is bored and looking for something to do. His face was dirty -- covered with what resembled clay more than food. His dark eyes took notice of our arrival, but unlike all the other children who came chasing after us like a herd of wild horses, he just sat there. Silent. Statuesque. Totally unphased.

Between the unloading of supplies and trying to organize the amassing crowd, who had heard some foreign doctors were running a free clinic today, I lost track of the little boy that morning. I can't explain why this little guy intrigued me so much. Yes, he was insanely cute but I had seen cute kids before. Yes, it was the first day of clinic work in Haiti and so emotions were running high, but that wasn't totally it either. All I can say for certainty is that there was something about the little boy in the red, white and blue track suit that instantly touched my heart in such a simple, powerful and indescribable way. I made a mental note to try and track him down later, hoping I could find him amongst the chaos of the Haitian countryside.

After a morning of having churned through about 30 kids, I was totally in the groove of my modified pediatric examination: introduce myself and shake their tiny little hands while saying "Avec plaisir", a rather formal french saying which made each of them giggle. I gathered this largely stemmed from them never having been so officially addressed by a white foreigner. From there I would listen to their complaints and subsequently rattle off my classic series of questions: how have you had it? what makes it worse? what makes it better? what colour was it? was there blood in it? do you have a fever? I then would give each child a quick once over exam regardless of their complaint -- "take some deep breathes, open your mouth for me, say "ah", tilt your head this way, sit forward like this, does this hurt?" -- followed by a more detailed examination of the system that seemed to be the source of their problems, this usually being "la vente" aka their bellies.

I was in such a groove that when the next child was plopped down on my make-shift exam stool, it took me a second to realize that the child was the little boy with whom I had been so taken. He sat there on my stool and just stared at me with a look that I will always remember -- because it was as if he had no emotion at all in that moment, He wasn't curious, he wasn't scared, he wasn't giggling like all the others -- he just sat in silence because his mother had told him so. I tried my classic line, "Avec plaisir" and he just stared at me, and without even the slightest signs of a smile or a laugh, he replied "Enchante". Right then and there, I fell in love with this kid.

Throughout the course of the time I spent with him I learned a few important things: 1. His name was Reuben 2. He was six going on seven 3. He lived in the house directly in front of our clinic with his parents and brother 4. He had sickle cell disease and was in pain most of the time. And even though his story is tragic, his life is disadvantaged and he clearly experiences the type intense chronic pain that no child should have to endure, he spoke without any intention of garnering pity or sympathy. He just told it the way it was. I got so emotional listening to him and his mother that I was fighting back tears throughout the conversation.

As I started to realize that we had nothing to offer to help Reuben -- he didn't have an infection, he wasn't having diarrhea, he didn't have any open wounds -- a few fat tears rolled down my cheeks. Here was a child who really needed help and yet we could do nothing for him besides try to console him with some short acting pain relief and a lollipop.

I tried to explain, "Je suis desolee Reuben, mais c'est tout qu'on peut offrir aujourd'hui. Je suis telement desolee..." my voice trailed off. I tried to find a way to explain everything to him -- why he was getting the pain and why we had nothing to help -- but there was no words, no way to explain to a six-year old that even though we had mountains of medicines, none of them were for him.

It was a very hard moment in my life to watch him get up from the stool, take his mother's hand and walk away. He wasn't angry, he wasn't disappointed. He just was.

For me Reuben represents everything that is sad and cruel and unjust about our world. He is a child, facing a life of harsh realities, little opportunity and a lot of suffering. None of which he has control over. Nobody says life is fair, but why, for Reuben, does it have to be so terribly and painfully unfair?

I saw Reuben a few more times throughout my time in Haiti. He was always the same -- wearing the same track suit, looking at me with the same dark eyes, sitting silently behind the crowd of overzealous and hyped up children that constantly encircled us. On our last clinic day, I walked over to him as everyone loaded up the truck and knelt down to say a final goodbye. He still had no sign of any emotion on his face as he said "Aurevoir" -- nothing that gave me even the slightest inclination that he would remember our exchanges. I patted him on the head, gave him the last of my stash of lollipops and turned to walk away.

I had tears in my eyes. Part of me wanted him to run up to me and grab my hand or touch my leg -- giving me some sign that he understood that I would have helped him if I could have. But, as our truck pulled away, he remained, sitting on the concrete step, as stoic and unaffected as ever.

When I reflect on my trip to Haiti, no matter how many people I can recall who we were able to help, no matter how much good I felt like we did, visualizing Reuben sitting there in the background serves as this ubiquitous reminder that sometimes, despite the best of intentions, there truly is nothing we can say or do to help. Sometimes, as hard as it is, I have to learn, like Reuben has, to accept the circumstances and limitations that life deals you.

Driving Through Destruction

2010-03-20T05:37:00.000-07:00

The first time I was driven through the heart of PAP, where destruction was at its worse, I think I set a new world record for the most amount of gasps and repeated "Oh my God"s uttered in one 60 minute period. I couldn't believe it. Tent cities. Buildings leaning precariously, waiting to fall like all of their surrounding neighbours. Rubble. So much rubble. In the downtown core, no matter which way I looked, it was the same scene repeated: colourfully dressed people bustling around in front of massive piles of grey concrete rubble and debris. Some of the rubble was being slowly cleared but most of it sat exactly as it landed in the moments following the earthquake. Tears rolled down my face as I absorbed the scene.

I think a lot of my emotional reaction came from not just seeing the destruction (and being constantly amazed at how much damage a 15 second earthquake could do) but also from realizing that the rubble piles were not mere a heap of mangled concrete blocks; they were the graves of an untold number of unfortunate souls. So far the death toll is estimated at 230,000 people, and yet the excavation of PAP has barely begun. Who knows how many peoples' remains lay buried in those mounds? Will we ever know? Where will they eventually be laid to rest?

And even more eery was that all around these mass graves, people were running their daily errands, sitting trying to sell their goods, carrying a load of water or chatting on their cell phones (it never ceases to amaze me how in developing countries, no matter how poor you are, you still manage to have a cell phone). In other words, life was somehow managing to go on amid total chaos, disaster and tragedy.

Seeing all the rubble conjured up a real mix of emotions. Disbelief. Sadness. Helplessness. And yet the more I thought about this dichotomy -- the living literally walking among the dead -- the more I started to recognize the resilience and strength that has, since the days of slavery, defined the character of Haitians. These people had endured one of the most traumatic and tragic events this earth could have coordinated and yet here they were plodding along, with for the most part, nothing less than a smile on their faces. While chatting with one local, I asked how life possibly goes on after the earthquake. In response, he really summed up the attitude towards the aftermath that I saw in so many of the Haitian people, "It's not a choice to go on with your life. It's just the way it is. Of course life goes on, because it has to." Wow. Powerful stuff.

And the weirdest part of the whole experience of driving through the parts of PAP most devastated by the earthquake, is that by the end of the trip, it had all somehow grown normal. I didn't gasp. I didn't mutter "Oh my lord". I didn't even bother snapping pictures anymore. Somehow the dramatic pile of rubble, leaning buildings and tent cities had entered the ranks of "ordinary" in my brain. Somehow, my emotional circuitry had been numbed. I guess that's evidence of how life goes on: not by any conscious decision but rather because it has to.

As Simple As Shoes

2010-03-15T18:26:00.000-07:00

I was going to sit down and write out a more detailed day to day account of what we did, but I realized that my schedule of sleeping, eating and working was hardly the most interesting part of my time in Haiti; nor does it do justice the most memorable and thought provoking moments of the trip. So instead, I will limit myself to the most remarkable stories.

The first story actually took place on one of the last days we were at Anis Zunuzi school. All the other foreign volunteers had already departed and since clinic wasn't being run that day, we decided to sit and watch the soccer tournament the school children were putting on.

The kids watched with wide eyes as we trekked along the sidelines in our hospital greens and finally settled into some empty seats. Like any of my friends will tell you, I rarely can keep quiet, especially at a soccer game, so within no time I was cheering and shouting trying to rally the support of my fellow spectators for my newly adopted team of red and white. The children were giggling away, timid to approach us at first -- probably partially because we were new and different but also likely because I couldn't stop shrieking "ALLEZ!!! FAIRE LE BUT!!!" at the top of my lungs.

Either way, some brave young kids finally cozied up to us and started chatting away in a mix of french and creole which was so characteristic of Haitian kids once they got over their initial curiosity and shyness. They asked what we were doing, where we had come from, how old we were and most to my distress, where my own children were. The shock that swept across their faces at hearing that I in fact had no children was only outdone when they heard that I didn't even have a husband!

Once their initial questions died down, two young girls, maybe age 12 and 15 nestled up right beside me, so close that our sweaty arms actually stuck to each other in the scorching Haitian sun. After sitting long enough that our upper limbs effectively melted into one, the smallest of the two girls finally looked up at me and asked a question I'll never forget: "How do you stop your feet from growing in Canada?" I wasn't sure I understood. Did she really just ask what I thought she was asking? Surely I just didn't understand because my Creole is, well pretty much abysmal. After all, it made no sense.

I asked her to repeat the question. Again, she said loud and clear, this time less in Creole and more in French, "How do you stop your feet from growing in Canada?"

I was puzzled. The only thing I could figure to do was to answer her seemingly strange question with my own question, "Why would you ever want to stop your feet from growing?" somehow trying to picture a scenario or size of feet that would warrant such an inquiry.

In this tiny voice, filled with a sentiment of "how dense can you be woman?!", she replied, "Because my shoes don't fit anymore." Duh. She broke our gaze and pointed down at her dusty feet, which I now realized were hanging out the back of her sandals by a good inch and a half.

I was mere nanoseconds from blurting out "Well we just get new shoes when our feet grow in Canada" before I caught myself and realized how tragic and touching this interaction had been. It was a simple question. It was impressive logic. But most of all, it was heartbreaking to realize how different our childhood circumstances had been. Here I was, a child who would wear up to three different pairs of footwear on a given winter day (boots to walk to school, casual shoes for the classroom and sneakers for gym class). She was a child who likely has had but one pair of shoes for the majority of her formative years. How could I have possibly anticipated her motives when I couldn't even begin to relate to her dilemma?

And while I felt that I shared very little in terms of childhood hardships with that little girl, I couldn't help but realize that she, just like any other kid in the world, was remarkably clever, curious and unremittingly resilient. She asked not to conjure up pity, not in hopes I would supply her with new shoes but instead she asked simply because she was a kid with a question. And what do kids do when they have a question? They ask someone who they think might be able to answer them. She wanted to know if she could stop her feet from further outgrowing her already undersized shoes, it was as simple and innocent as that. Double duh.

And now looking back, the only sadness or regret I will feel when I recollect this encounter is that, while she had a simple question, I certainly didn't have a simple answer.

To Haiti In A Hand Basket: A Reason to Revive the Blog

2010-03-13T07:46:00.000-08:00

Well it's certainly been some time since I sat down and blogged. Since I started medical school in August 2008 and effectively put my "everywhere girl" life on hold, I stopped feeling like I was experiencing things that were necessarily "blog worthy". In retrospect I realize that medical school, even if you don't step foot outside your friendly local hospital, offers up experiences and interactions with people that is totally and utterly blog-able. (Insert endless stories from the ER where patients try to explain how they get things stuck on, stuck in or stuck to, themselves, usually uttering something along the lines of "I just wasn't thinking....") I thought to myself on many occasions, "Man I should blog this -- this is absolutely priceless". However, when time was limited, I always decided it would better serve my patients (and myself for future exam purposes) for me to read the medical literature around their cases and conditions rather than blog about how ridiculous, hilarious or heartfelt their stories were.

However, my most recent adventure to the small but incessantly interesting nation of Haiti completely tops the charts of "blog-ability" and has finally pushed me back to the drawing table (or blogging table perhaps) and motivated me to resume my roll in the ranks of bloggers. So, here I am, to tell the tale of my trip to Haiti.

Before recounting anything about this trip, I must pay a heartfelt and most sincere thanks to my roommate and her sister (whom shall remain unnamed because I'm just too lazy to ask if they mind me using their first names). In a few short weeks they put this entire trip together, rallied people to donate more than $5000 as well as an overabundance of medical supplies and got their wonderful parents to allow their living room to be transformed into "ground zero" on the eve before our flight out. I would never have made it to (nor survived) Haiti without them.

So, after many weeks of planing and packing, we were finally on our way to Haiti. The whole thing was a little surreal on the flight down there -- we went from seeing images of Haiti smeared all over the evening news, struggling with ideas of how to help, to sitting on one of the first planes to fly back into Port au Prince (PAP) airport since the devastating earthquake, trying to make sense of the flight attendant's announcements in Creole, armed with 9 hockey bags packed to brim with medical supplies. And this switch from passivity to activity happened in little more than 3 weeks. It was all a little much to process to say the least.

We walked off into what seemed like any other tropical airport -- until we were redirected back out of the airport, and on to make shift shuttles packed so full of people and bags (mostly humanitarian workers and Haitians living abroad who were returning home to visit relatives) that I was surprised the driver could actually still fit and operate the gear shifter, which was nestled between someone's legs. We were driven past foreign military compounds and over to a make-shift immigration and baggage claim area -- apparently the original ones are still full of fallen rubble.

After rounding up our hockey bags full of supplies (during which I have never sweated so much in my life) and passing through an interesting customs experience we were spit out into the heat and chaos of PAP. And what chaos it was. So much shouting and hand gesturing I felt like I was in the middle of an Italian mafia feud. Locals were fighting over helping us with our bags -- not so much to be kind and welcoming, but moreso in hopes of earning a few dollars or bits of food. You could literally see the desperation in their eyes. The first of many harsh realities to be experienced.

We finally found our local contacts in the sea of faces, said rushed greetings, loaded up their truck with our oversized bags and soon enough were whipping through the outskirts of PAP. The effects of the earthquake were so glaringly obvious. Rubble piles everywhere. Collapsed buildings with lopsided signs still hanging on by some stray wire or rod. Tent cities stretching as far as the eye could see. UN and international aid agency trucks whizzing past us in every direction. Make shift shops made out of sticks and sheets scattered along the roadside. People trucking bottles or buckets of water on top of their heads, back and forth between the tent cities and the water stations. Total, total chaos.

We finally arrived at Anis Zunuzi school where we were being hosted. It was full of playful local children, so curious about these new people who arrived with bags bigger than they had ever seen. Several tents were already set up on the former soccer field to signal that other foreigners in our group had already arrived. We unloaded our stuff, set up our tent and began to learn the faces and ropes of our little compound that would become our home for the duration of our Haitian adventure.

We went to bed early that night -- exhausted physically from all of the travel, but moreso exhausted emotionally from the journey. While I have traveled a fair amount to developing areas and seen hardship in other's circumstances, there is nothing that compared to what I saw in Haiti. Absolutely nothing. As we nestled under our mosquito nets that night, my mind was racing, my heart was pounding and my emotions were all over the place. How were people, who had lost everything (read: EVERYTHING) going on with their lives? How could an earthquake of not more than 30 seconds have turned the lives of over 8 million people completely upside down? Was our measly effort going to make any difference what so ever? What had I gotten myself into?

I drifted off to sleep with a million questions swirling around in my head, a feeling of mixed worry and excitement and an unshakable feeling that I was about to begin the adventure of a lifetime....

Pictures and more stories to come.

Cross Canada Bike Ride

2008-06-26T06:01:00.000-07:00

So, as you may or may not know, in 5 short days I am undertaking a cross-Canada bike ride with two close friends. This adventure will no doubt be filled with endless supplies of stories and anecdotes that I would love to share. So I just wanted to put the address for our team blog on here so that people who wish to read updates, can find where I will be publishing my blogs about the bike ride.

http://seemedlikeagreatidea.blogspot.com/

Enjoy!

The Golden Slipper

2008-06-26T05:52:00.000-07:00

Just a little warning: this blog involves heavy reference to alcohol. It is a blog I had written back while I was visiting Australia in April 2008 and I have been toying with publishing it for awhile now. Hope you enjoy.

When I initially told my aussie friends I was coming back in April, a couple of them responded, "Sweet! We can go to the Golden Slipper!". Having lived in Australia before, I knew that this was the second biggest day of horse racing in Australia (next of course to the Melbourne Cup). I had never had the opportunity to experience the horse races in Australia because I had also had the bad luck of being scheduled to work at the pub on the days where the big races were on (which is obvious because anyone who can't afford to actually go to the races, comes down to the pub to place their bets). So I was ecstatic beyond ecstatic to finally have my day at the races, which if I could judge from other people's experiences involved men in suits, women competing for the nicest "fascinator" (aka feathery head piece), the potential to win a bit of money and of course, a hell of a lot of booze.

Soon enough the races were just a day away and I made the cardinal mistake of heading down to the pub for a couple "quiet ones" the night before. Well "quiet ones" rarely stay quiet at Australian pubs and so before I knew it, I was waking up at 6am the day of the races with a terrible hangover. Not a great way to start what is one of the longest days of drinking in Australian culture.

Myself along with 47 other eager race-goers boarded the bus by 8am to ensure that we got up to the Rosehill Race Grounds in Sydney early enough to get decent seats. Before the bus even pulled out of the city, the men were into the beers and the women were into the 'girly drinks'; all I was into at that point was the greasy egg mcmuffin my friend had forced me to buy after saying, "Trust me, you'll thank me for this later." And as my stomach gurgurled and my head pounded from my poor decisions from the night before, I nawed away at the greasy sandwich and wrote my friend a text, "You were right."

Finally we made it up to the race grounds, with about half the bus already drunk by 9:15am -- this was definitely shaping up to be a day to be remembered (or more correctly a day to be forgotten in a drunken haze). We filed into the grounds, staked out our seats and waited until the bars started selling full strength beer (by this stage I was slowly getting my second wind back).

The day was everything I had anticipated: laughs with friends, excitement of watching your horse win (although my bets were always painfully on the conservative side so the winnings were never anything to get terribly excited about) and of course, plenty and plenty of shenanigans.

One of my most favourite memories of the day was standing up against the fence where the horses who placed first, second and third would parade by with their proud owners after the race. My one friend, a particularly vocal Aussie at times, had bet a small sum on the winning horse and was overtaken with joy and excitement of her biggest ($8) win of the day. As her winning horse and its obviously very wealthy owners passed before us, my friend yelled, "Yeeeeeaaaah! I just won $8 on your horse!! Yeeeeeeaahhhh!". The owner, an older man who, by being the owner of the winning horse had just won about half a million dollars on the same race, turned to my friend with a huge smile on his face and reciprocated with a "Yeeeeaaaahhhh!" followed by a triple fist pump. Gotta love Aussies.

As the races ended (and brawls seemed to errupt among drunken races fans to our left and right, we tried to gather as many of the 47 of us and head to our meeting point. The next hour (or more) was spent trying to assemble everyone in one general area, which let me tell you, is not an easy task when each one of those 47 people were pretty severely intoxicated. I think it would have been easier getting 47 kindegarten children out of a chocolate factory, as people would wander off, saying they were going to look for someone but come back with a hot dog or bag of popcorn. Finally, one of the girls, a gym teacher, in her most authoritative voice, yelled at us to line up against the wall. There we were, about 40 young adults, all dressed to the nines, lined up against a brick wall, forbidden to move until told otherwise, being counted off one by one. It felt kinda like grade school all over again -- well minus the high heels and my buzz.

Finally the scragglers were rounded up and we boarded the bus home -- with the ride home being as eventful as the day itself, as the boys tried to out-chant the girls, the girls tried to out-sing the boys and everyone simply seemed to try and make as much noise as humanly possible. Cudos to the bus driver for not kicking us all out on the side of the highway.

All in all, the races was one of my most classic Aussie experiences -- fun, sun, laughs and good friends --and not to mention, I ended the day with a net winning of $1.75. Not bad indeed.

In Retrospect...

2008-06-14T05:40:00.000-07:00

Well the wounds from my treeplanting experience are starting to heal (I can almost fully close my right hand, which I think means I am slowly getting over the treeplanting ailment named, "The Claw"; however, my "Christmas toe", named for the numbness in a treeplanter's toes that don't come back until Christmas, shows no progress), the paychecks are ceasing to arrive and the memories of my time in the bush are distancing. Funny, because as you look back on something, you always remember the good with what my mother often calls, "rose-coloured glasses". Well, treeplanting is kind of like that too; however, it's not that I've forgotten that aches, the pains, the bugs, the sweat and the back breaking labour -- moreso, all of that just seems like an endless source of laughter now. I mean, how can a job be that crazy, that tortuous and that intense?

I got a real kick out of re-telling treeplanting stories -- and not just my own stories, but stories from other treeplanters that were shared in the evenings around the quintessential campfire. Stories of black bears having to be chased off planting blocks by a helicopter, stories of personal bests in terms of planting (one guy actually planted 7400 trees in one day!) and stories of bugs "the size of your head, I swear". For my family and friends, I felt like a bridge connecting them to this seemingly other-worldly experience that in my opinion can only be truly understood, truly fathomed but most importantly truly appreciated by those who experience it.

These days, I find myself looking at open fields and thinking, "that is some creamy planting land" (creamy, being the slang for land that is really easy to plant because the ground is soft, the planting sites are easily chosen and there are very slashy bits). I find myself feeling lazy if I work any less than 10 hours a day (opening up my parent's pool seemed to pale in the hard-labour category in comparison to planting). And lastly, and perhaps the most troublesome, I find myself serving up king's size portions for breakfast and dinner before having to remind myself, "you don't burn 5000 calories a day anymore" and scooping half the quantity of cereal back into the box.

Treeplanting is definitely a lifestyle unlike any other -- and don't mistake me, I don't necessarily miss treeplanting itself, but I miss the intensity of my days, the satisfaction of beating my personal best and most of all, the comraderie and closeness between newly formed friends that seems to flourish out there. People you barely knew a day before become your closest companions in but a few hours as you share experiences that are completely off the charts (if there were such a chart to measure the intensity of an experience).

For outsiders, there seems to be very few motivating factors to stick out the treeplanting gig -- but for those who have experienced treeplanting, in all its insanity, it is the money (how could it not be?), the challenge and in my opinion, the friends that keep people coming back season after season. Although my rookie experience is likely to be my only treeplanting experience (given the constraints of not having summers as a medical student), there is a secret part of me that wishes I could have stayed all summer this year and even, (I can't believe I'd say this) go back again next year. There is just a feeling out there -- the enjoyment of living such a simple lifestyle, the satisfaction of spending long days in the wilderness and the amusement in sharing a completely unique experience with others -- that makes treeplanting an experience that no matter how hard the work was, how little money I made as a rookie and how long this Christmas toe takes to heal, was and will remain, completely and whole-heartedly worthwhile.

Insane Beyond Insanity

2008-06-03T14:56:00.000-07:00

So treeplanting is essentially the most intense, insane and ridiculously conceived job of all time. We actually it's rated second on the 'hardest job in Canada' rating (don't ask me who created the rating and the criteria but I hold undying respect if the person has actually survived them all). What takes the number one spot on that list you may be wondering? King Crab Fishing. But apparently treeplanting only came second because at the end of the day, you actually get to sleep which is apparently an unnecessary luxury for king crab fishing. But I digress, back to treeplanting.

First I think it would be helpful to describe a typical day in the life of a planter, or at least the way I experienced it. After a rather disappointing (for the most part) sleep in a tent that fast becomes your little portable home, I would get up a little before 6am, in order to beat the masses to the lunch goodies as they seem to be completely gone by 6:05am. A hot breakfast is served somewhere in the vicinity of 6am so after making my lunch for the day (started out being 2 sandwiches, 2 oranges, and a range of snacks and treats), I would scarf down as much of the ginormous breakfast as I physically could (actually quite a feat at 6am) in order to have enough energy for the day ahead. I usually had just enough time to brush my teeth, fill up my 10L water bottle and put on my gators before our crew headed out in the truck to the "reefer".

What's the reefer you might ask? Well as indicated in my previous blog, treeplanting has some of the most unique and entertaining slang. The reefer is actually a gigantic 18 wheeler truck without a cab, which is insulated and kept cold thanks to huge generators. It is in the reefer where all the boxes of trees are stored in order to keep them as cold as possible until they inevitably get planted. All the crews fight to get to the reefer first so they get the easiest boxes (closest to the front) and don't get stuck waiting in a huge line. We usually would load about 40 heavy boxes of trees (boxes can have anywhere from 180 to 315 trees) into our little insulated box on the back of our truck and off to the block we would go!

I was on a relatively small crew -- a 6-pack as it's called in the biz -- so all of this morning routine was generally pretty efficient. Being on a bigger crew (12-packs or 15-packs) undoubtedly involves a little more waiting and a lot more boxes from the reefer (and apparently more time to throw rocks at the old beat up abandoned car wreck left near where the reefer was parker -- what a way to start the morning).

So after we drive to our block (section of land where our crew will plant that day), which can vary from 5 minutes to an hour, we hop out of the truck upon arrival to start our tailgate safety meeting. As we unload our gear (planting bags, shovel, block bag with personal stuff like rain gear and lunch and water jugs), our foreman goes over safety issues of the day like "how to avoid sun stroke", "how to avoid repetitive strain" (my thought is -- don't go treeplanting) and my favourite, "what to do if a bear comes on your block". (That reminds me, one of the best parts of orientation for treeplanting was getting to watch the video "Bear Aware" which depicts 80s-style dressed hikers shaking a can of rocks repeating "Woah Bear!" as their prime mechanisms to avoid a bear encounter). We actually did have a bear wander on our block one day -- a mum and her two cubs apparently thought it was the best place to take their morning dumps.

After our tailgate meeting and after our foreman assigns us our pieces for the day, it's a 10-12 hour grueling day of running around over slash piles, through swamps, up steep hills and through thick patches of "devil's club" (a prickly bush that I am convinced was designed by the devil himself) with 40 pounds of trees in your bags, bending down about 2000 times a day (as a rookie planter, whereas a vet is more likely to bend over more than 3000 times). Add in the fact that any break you take, all you can think of is that you are losing money (so lunch rarely gets touched let alone finished) as well as fighting off some of the worst swarms of mosquitoes, black flies and soon enough horse flies. Sometimes I was working so hard the sweat was dripping off not just my face, but off the brims of my hat and the sleeves of my shirt.

If we were lucky, we'd finish planting around 5:45pm (some days going as long as 7pm and one crew even stayed out until 11pm) upon which time we'd load our equipment and our tired bodies into the truck and haul everything back to camp where a huge hot dinner was waiting.

The amount of food people eat while treeplanting actually deserves it's own paragraph. I bought a generous size plate and bowl and was initially a little weary that perhaps they were too large. Once we were in the full swing of planting (where people are burning upwards of 5000 calories a day), people were busting out not plates, but platters, not bowls but pots, not spoons, but ladles, not forks but salad tongs to eat with. I have never seen individuals consume as much food as I did while treeplanting -- although admittedly it is well well well deserved.

If you are lucky after stuffing your face at dinner, you might have an hour or two to sit by the campfire or read or listen to music before flopping back into your make shift bed around 9-9:30pm. Showers are a rarity for many since the energy it takes to shower (and the almost certainty of it being ice cold) usually scares everyone but the dedicated and the brave.

Still more experiences from treeplanting to recount, but in hopes of avoiding an overly long blog, I will save them for the next installment.

So Much To Catch Up On...

2008-05-26T13:18:00.000-07:00

Well I have found a quick moment to update but it seems that no amount of time would suffice to convey the craziness that is treeplanting. I have spent the last four weeks up in northern BC, in the Prince George area, planting tiny spruce and pine trees (about 1500 a day to be more specific) as a rookie treeplanter. It's been an experience in itself -- some of the most intense highs and lows of my life and of course, having no shortage of pure ridiculousness (like watching 50 planters battle it out for the last few boxes of trees at the end of our first contract or seeing a family of black bears roam on our block to go to the bathroom).

As my time at the public library internet wears thin, I will just end this very brief blog with a promise to not only write a more detailed blog about my experiences up here, but will definitely share with everyone the crazy lingo of the treeplanting world, of which my favourites are "J roots" and "slutting them in".

Until next time...

A Short Note From the Everywhere Girl

2008-04-28T23:44:00.001-07:00

When I think about the last six weeks of my life, it's no wonder my one friend called me the "Everywhere Girl". Since leaving Belgrade in mid-March, I have been from London to Toronto to Vancouver to Sydney and now back to Vancouver, spending no more than 3 weeks in any one of these locations. My body is so confused with what time zone I'm in that as my regular bout of insomnia kicks in at 3:30am, it seems safe to say that it has effectively given up trying to catch up.

The past six weeks have indeed been a whirlwind -- getting pelted by hail the size of chocolate Easter eggs in front of Buckingham Palace, eating myself to a disgraceful state with close friends at my favourite sushi buffet restaurant around Toronto, catching up on laughter and stories with an old travel mate in Vancouver and going tandem surfing with a close friend off the eastern coast of Australia. Whirlwind doesn't even begin to describe it.

And it doesn't stop there -- tomorrow I fly up to the northern BC city of Prince George in anticipation of starting my inaugural season as a treeplanter. For the next 6 weeks I will shed eat, breathe and work the great outdoors -- and hopefully make some decent money to pay back some of the funds I blew through as the Everywhere Girl. It will be perhaps the most challenging 6 weeks of my life (although travelling on Indian trains has got to be up there somewhere), not just physically but mentally and emotionally as well.

Not to mention I will be following up my treeplanting experience by undertaking a 2-month cross-canada bike ride with two of my nearest and dearest Aussie mates in July and August. It is bound to be a truly Canadian summer of hard work and hard play.

So I guess in closing this blog, which I must admit is a rather unusual one (severely deficient in the humour department, my apologies), I just wanted to say that while my blogs may be few and far between in these next few months as I embark on perhaps two of the greatest outdoor Canadian adventures a young gal could ever ask for, the blogs I do get to publish will undoubtedly be filled with incredible experiences and hopefully a whole lot of laughter. So stay tuned.

Until next time.....

Lessons From a Nomad

2008-04-22T18:52:00.001-07:00

Recently a good friend took me down the coast in hopes of doing some rock climbing around the cliff haven of Nowra. We cruised down in my friend's weathered white station wagon, packed full of a mish mash of climbing gear, surfboards, bike helmets and my friend's two adorable dogs nestled amongst it all. We were deep in conversation when all of a sudden my friend squealed to a stop on the shoulder of the highway, looked in his rear view mirror and grinned as he said, "Well this will be interesting". I looked back to see an elderly woman with long scraggly grey hair, wearing a long purple cape with her thumb stretched out trying to catch a ride. As she trotted up to the station wagon, all I could think was, "Well, if nothing else, this will at least be some good blog material".

Her name was Mary and she as she plopped down in the back seat amongs all the sports equipment, she opened her mouth to begin what would be one of the most interesting, contradicting and off-the-wall conversations of all time.

Throughout the 25 minutes she spent in the car with us, she expressed her views on the downfall of society (break-down of the family), the true causes of mental illnesses (anger at not being loved) and the magical rejuvenating powers of rain (not to mention it apparently is the best thing to cure dry and damaged hair). I am normally a rather fiesty conversationalist but I just sat there in fascination of what she would dare say next.

The best part of the exchange was during Mary's rant about the deterioration of the family unit and the lack of parenting done in today's society. Just as she was summing up her ideas, my friend interjected with the story of his birth. His father had booked a ticket to New Zealand to do some bush walking and it turned out to be only four days after my friend was supposed to be born. My friend ended up being three days late so his father left for a week in New Zealand just a day after his birth.

Mary's response to this apparent abandonment on the part of his father was absolute horrification. My friend replied with a shrug of his shoulders, "Well, I think I turned out alright", which given the incredibly kind, caring and generous person my friend turned out to be, is a gross understatement. Mary came back with a line that was a perfect word bite which I have been using as the punch-line whenever I recount this story to friends, "But Tim (my friend), just imagine the person you could have been if he had stayed!!"

Now I don't want to portray this woman as totally nuts -- it sounds like she actually is doing some pretty amazing work in the communities she enters and has some really interesting opinions and ideas that I agree with to a certain extent. Not to mention the fact that my friend was completely and utterly intrigue that she was a true nomad, her only possessions being the tattered cloth bag that flopped beside her on the back seat.

Needless to say the experience was interesting beyond interesting and my initial assumption was right, I got some decent blog material.

A Life Down Under

2008-04-14T17:18:00.000-07:00

I am way over due for a blog -- I know this. However, when days are easily filled with surfing, sunshine and catching up with friends I haven't seen in two years, you can't blame me for spending very few hours in front of a computer screen. Since my a week ago to the lovely down under, adventures and shenanigans have been so a-plenty that I don't even know where to start -- well actually I do, at the airport.

As our plane touched down at Sydney airport, I was squealing like a two year old child with a new toy (or like my 25 year old friend after being surprised by her boyfriend with "Rock Band") in anticipation of finally coming back to the placeI consider a second home. The excitement was at its peak as our plane slowed and parked at the gate. I leaped out of my seat with my belongings only to be put back in the place I had spend the last 15 hours of my life so that Australian Quarantine officers could spray the insides of the plane with stuff that "would ensure no foreign insects, that might have accidentally have been brought on board in Canada, could be released unknowingly into the Australian ecosystems". I had forgot about this ritual at the airport and nabbed a flight attendant to inquire how long this would take. She replied, "Only 10 minutes. Don't worry, this stuff works pretty fast to kill everything on board." KILL EVERYTHING ON BOARD? Yikes, excitement morphed into uneasiness at the thought that I was in an air tight tube and the crew was spraying noxious gas -- I was certain this was going to take years off my life.

We finally disembarked from the poison plane and I hauled ass through the airport, remembering the layout like the back of my hand. I rushed through customs, finally to the baggage carousels and saw in the distance "Big Green", my weathered backpack with the Canadian flag that I had sown on over 10 years ago, clinging for dear life by a last few threads. I dodged through the crowd like I was a special agent only to be stopped and questioned by the first of many Quarantine officers -- apparently rushing around like a maniac looks suspicious.

I finally entered the last of the Quarantine stations, and met this lovely woman who instead of asking me stiff questions like a customs officer, started chatting to me like an old friend. What I didn't realize at the time was that she was meant to not only "check" all my bags, but go through them with the finest tooth comb you can ever imagine -- no article of clothing left unexamined, no pocket left unchecked. On a regular trip this would not be an issue, but considering about half of my bag was funny costumes that I was planning on wearing to crazy nights with the legendary soccer girls, I definitely felt like I had some explaining to do. First came the bunny suit and the friendly lady smiled. Then came the bright pink genie pants, and she kind of laughed. Then she pulled out my old wonder woman costume that was actually made to fit a 6 year old child. The smile kind of slipped off her face at this point. Finally she pulls out my "Gold Member" body suit and cocks her head to the side and says, "What exactly are you doing in Australia?".

As she was attempting to repack my over stuff bags, I inquired if I would be too much to ask if I could put on the genie pants to walk out in. She gave me a half entertained, half disturbed smile but then let me on my way. I was slightly nervous at the attention the genie pants were drawing as I weaved through the last of hallways to the exit and was seriously hoping the soccer girls hadn't let me down in the costume department. I rounded the corner and saw three of my best mates standing in homemade full length bunny suits, holding a huge sign with my old nickname on it, taking pictures with an elderly security man. The legends of the outrageousness that is the soccer girls was definitely as strong and alive as ever.

Since this festive first encounter, I have spent my time "coffee-ing" at nice cafes in the central town, "breakfast-ing" at my famous ocean-side restaurant, "barbie-ing" with all my old mates at a friends appartment with a killer view of the beach and "pub-ing" with friends old and new at the local watering hole. I have slotted back into a laidback lifestyle, surrounded by some of the best friends a girl could ask for, in a beach-side city that was the winning combination that stole my heart two years ago. The only way to describe being back is -- unreal. Absolutely unreal.

Pretty sure that's NOT how it went down in the Bible...

2008-03-25T18:26:00.000-07:00

If there is one thing in the world I wish I had a picture of, it would be, hands down, a photograph of this man I saw in London this past Easter weekend who was re-enacting Jesus dragging the cross. My friend and I were busy weaving our way through the ocean (not sea, but ocean) of tourists that clumped around Westminister Abbey and Big Ben, when I saw this man dragging what I thought was a huge log. Caber toss in the downtown London? No, wait. That's Scottish, not English.

So what the heck was this guy doing? Before I could put two and two together (the first two being that it was Good Friday and the second two being that we were right around Saint Margaret's Church), I saw that it wasn't a log but rather a cross. If anyone was trying to make a point about suffering, I'd say this guy nailed it: dragging a huge cross through the seemingly impermeable hordes of tourists stopping to snap pictures of the famous buildings from every possible angle (including one guy lying face down on the filthy pavement cocking his head up to capture some apparently brilliant angle of Big Ben). I could barely stand it, and I certainly wasn't lugging around a huge piece of wood with me. I'm not much of a religious person, and hate when people try to force their religious beliefs on others -- but as I watched the guy haul the huge cross around through the crowd, I couldn't help but give him points for style.

The best part of the whole thing was the followers behind the modern day Jesus, who handed out bright yellow pamphlets that read: "You have four reasons to smile today. When you opened it up, four bold statements to the likes of "Jesus loves you" and "Jesus has a plan for you" sprang out from the page, along with one too many bright yellow happy faces.

A woman presented one to me and I was about to do what I normally do in these situations, which is politely decline, but before I could, she slipped in this tiny little comment that would effectively make me an asshole unless I did anything other than enthusiastically take the pamphlet and smile from ear to ear, as if God himself had just enlightened me. As she slowly held out the pamphlet, she spoke softly and sweetly, "Hope you have a great Easter". I hate when they do that! How can you not take a smiley happy face pamphlet from someone who just wished you a happy holidays? It seemed so quiet, so casual and so innocently well-intentioned but it was this conversational time bomb that blew up in my face and made me do something I never do: graciously stick out my hand to accept religious propaganda.

Just as we were about to round the corner away from the crowds, we caught one final glimpse at our cross-dragging friend. We could still only see the top of his head as he weaved through the crowd and I made a comment like, "Wow, he's still at it. Gotta give him credit for trying." The words were barely out of my mouth when, like in a movie, the crowds slowly parted to reveal the full length image of this man -- and to our absolute disbelief, we saw a little wheel attached to the bottom of the cross. This man wasn't dragging it at all! He was merely guiding this log on wheels! My friend and I howled in laughter at the mental image of Jesus fastening a wheel to the original cross, "Hey, do you guys have a screwdriver I could borrow?"

We laughed periodically throughout the day anytime the image of the cross on wheels floating back into our minds. While his demonstration was thoughtful, bold and undoubtedly carried out with strong devotion to his faith, seeing that little squeaky wheel made me laugh so hard at the thought that Jesus might be looking down and thinking, "That's not quite how I remember it."

How Do You Say Goodbye....

2008-03-23T01:02:00.000-07:00

My usual goodbye routine with foreign friends involves tears (I turn into a bloody waterworks), numerous bear hugs and of course, an open invite to visit me in Canada. As the days of my farewell to my Serbian friends neared, I couldn't help but realize that while there would for sure be tears and hugs, the invite to come to Canada seemed tragically out of place. Serbians have one of the most difficult, arduous and trying processes to obtain overseas visas, with the application for Canadian visas sitting somewhere in the 40 page range. Somehow slipping in my usual, "And please, you are welcome to come visit me in Canada anytime" seemed almost like a slap in the face.

"If you want to see me again, you'll have to come back to Balkans" was the response my Serbian friend when it came time to discuss the future of our friendship. It seems so restrictive, so cruel and so unfair -- dependent on where you were born, some of us can wander freely in and out of every continent and yet others, like my Serbian friends, are effectively imprisoned in their own country. Sure Serbians travel, but these are normally the wealthy Serbians and above all the well connected Serbians; so for people like my best friend, who hails from a small Serbian village and who works his fingers to the bone just to make ends meet, even if he amassed the small fortune required to secure visas and a flight to Canada, it is still unlikely he could actually get it. To this reality, he finally explained, "I might as well put my passport next to my roll of toilet paper in my bathroom."

This problem actually brought me to tears at one point -- the same best friend was browsing through my travel pictures from New Zealand, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Fiji, Hawaii and a couple of places and he would click through the pictures repeating, "I just can't believe this exists on our planet." He was in a state of such innocent shock, such naive disbelief and such genuine curiosity that it broke my heart to realize that it is very likely that this, looking at my pictures, was the only way my friend would experience the world outside Serbia.

I have always believed travel is a privilege -- but what I never realized was a privilege is the opportunity to travel. So many people I have met at home and during my travels talk about where they have been, where they are going and where they would like to go. Being in Serbia made me realize the sad injustice that, as a Canadian, when I share my travel dreams, they aren't just dreams but a sincere potential reality one day. But when Serbians share the same, there is an underlying realization and understanding that many of them are unattainable, plain and simple.

And now, as their government tries to balance their EU aspirations and their disapproval over Kosovo's self-declared independence, the possibility of improving the current restrictions on Serbians wishing to travel remains unclear. My friends have explained that improvements in the Hellish process of securing visas for travel continues to be dangled in front of them, like a carrot taunting a rabbit, but no changes have or will foresee ably be made. So where does that leave people like my best friend, who so desperately wants to visit me in Canada? I'll tell you -- standing in the mile-long lines at the Canadian embassy for days, if not weeks on end, with no guarantee that something, anything, will come of it. So for once, it's me that says to him, "I just can't believe this exists on our planet."

Change of Perspective

2008-03-13T04:10:00.001-07:00

When people, and there were many, used to say to me, "I've been to Belgrade, and no offense but it is the one place I would never go back to", I used to respond something to the effect, "You are talking to the President of that club.." Initially I found Belgrade a very harsh and unfriendly place to live in; the big daunting grey communist style apartment blocks, the lack of availability of even my most basic comfort foods, the endless honking haze of traffic and overcrowded buses and worst of all, the smoking, everywhere, all the time. When I went home at Christmas I was starved to get out of Belgrade, dreading my post-holiday return more than the plague.

Now, here I am with one week left in Belgrade and I can't believe I am going to admit this, what would shock anyone who heard my Serbia rants over the holidays, but I am actually going to miss this place; I'm going to miss this place a lot.

So, what changed? I believe it was a combination of things: meeting new people, doing new things, and of course, coming to appreciate delicious Serbian food specialties. The more I met people and became more connected with the Serbian language, culture, cuisine and way of life, the more I began to realize that this is a place that is seriously under-appreciated, underestimated and grossly misunderstood. I have been welcomed into more people's houses, treated to more coffees and invited to more gatherings than I can recall. To the outside world Serbians are portrayed as aggressive, unreasonable and 'shit disturbers' for lack of a better term, and I admit, there are reasons, valid reasons, for these portrayals. However, if you spend time in this country and connect with people the way I have, you begin to realize that there is also an extremely fascinating, beautiful and welcoming side to the Serbian culture.

Recently, I took a trip to a small city about two hours from Belgrade to visit a friend's family and friends. The whole day I was treated almost like royalty, with people always eager to test their English with me. In the evening we went to a tiny pub, where we enjoyed chatting about soccer, tennis and Serbian music over a few quiet beers. A local heard us speaking English and introduced himself as a former weight-lifting champion for Serbia (then part of Yugoslavia). There was a quick exchange in Serbian that I didn't exactly follow and then he chugged the rest of his beer and ran out the door so fast I thought he was trying to skip out on his bill. No one seemed bothered, so our conversation reverted back to debating the famous Zidane head-butt from the 2006 World Cup Finals.

Moments later, the former weight lifting champion, a brick house of a man, busts back through the door, holding a bowl of goulash in one hand and a basket of bread in the other. He placed the bowl in front of me on the bar and smiled excitedly. The scents of fresh spices, garlic and warm bread made my mouth water and I asked my friend what was the reason for all this. Apparently, my friend explained, the man had just made a fresh batch of "Odds and Ends Goulash", a local specialty, and he was more than ecstatic to share it with a foreigner. As I scooped up a huge spoonful of the piping hot goulash, I could see him smiling from ear to ear. I was about to ask what was in the stew, but guessing what the "odds and ends" might refer to, I decided it was probably better not to know. I spooned the mixture into my mouth, in absolute amazement of not just the delicious impromptu goulash but more so of the incredible kindness of this stranger. Before I knew it, the bowl in front of me was empty and my stomach gurgled in complete and utter satisfaction. The man laughed as I rubbed my stomach and gave him a thumbs up, then he gathered up his dishes and bid us a simple goodnight.

This is the real Serbia, that so many travelers don't get to see and the one that I will truly miss. I feel so incredibly happy that I got to see this side of the country and culture and that I had the opportunity to gain such a genuine understanding, appreciation and fondness of this region of the world. My change of sentiments towards Belgrade, and Serbia in general, reminds me of what a friend once said about his dog, an English bulldog, "At first it was so ugly and annoying; but then, at some point, I don't know how or why, it all of a sudden got irresistibly cute".

Business as Usual

2008-03-03T04:11:00.000-08:00

The city buses are full with people going to work, waiters bustle around to bring coffee to people sitting at outdoor tables, young couples wander hand in hand eating ice cream: life is back to normal in Belgrade -- at least for now.

"I don't know, we are all pretty tired of violence, protests and war" was how my friend answered my query regarding the future potential for more anti-independence demonstrations in Belgrade. He, along with the world, are all too familiar with how out of hand the demonstrations got when soccer hooligans torched and damaged a series of embassies. However, this past week Belgrade appears the same as the day I got here: sunny, bustling, and full of life. This is the Belgrade that people fall in love with and this is the Belgrade I hope, with all my heart, remains, despite the certain difficulties Kosovo's independence poses for not just Serbia, but the rest of the Balkans region.

But, for now all there is to do in Belgrade is wait, watch and get out to enjoy the sun.

"I'm so ashamed of my people"

2008-02-25T02:43:00.000-08:00

As the world watched, a peaceful demonstration in Belgrade seemed to turn back the hands of time to an era where riots and violence characterized the streets of the Balkans. I write this blog to clarify, from my perspective how and why this happened and to hopefully shed light upon the struggle and anger of many Serbs, who watched in as much horror at the events from last Thursday that flashed across television screens around the world.

"Peaceful protest is our best weapon and the only way to gain support for our loss. Everyone knows this but it's only a small minority of Serbs, the ones who don't care about Kosovo anyways, who make us look like savages in our own city". These are the words of a Serb friend, and many Serbs share these sentiments. As I walked to work on Friday morning, passed countless smashed windows and vandalized buildings, I couldn't help but see Serbs starring at the gore as well, shaking their heads in disgust, so incredibly disappointed in the behaviour of their fellow countrymen. They are all well aware that the events of Thursday did untold damage for their country internationally and for the legitimacy of their fight for Kosovo.

The rioters and looters many of us saw on the evening news, who brutally set the American and Croatian embassies on fire, were the result of hooligans with too much alcohol in a city where the security forces are ill-equipped and stretched to serve and protect well beyond their capacity. These hooligans, mostly youthful soccer fans, took the opportunity to congregate in Belgrade on Thursday, since the government provided free transport for those wishing to attend the peaceful government demonstration, and do what soccer fans seem to do best: get drunk and raise Hell. These types of hooligans, that exist everywhere in the world, used the cover of such a high profile day in Belgrade to let loose and be destructive.

And while some may say I am being naive in my belief that the government had only peaceful intentions, regardless, I believe that Kosovo was the furthest thing from the minds of those who stormed the embassies. They were hooligans, plain and simple. They don't need an excuse to riot. But when they actually find one, as mammoth as the one that arose from the situation on Thursday, they act accordingly, as we all saw. As you watch as these types of events on the news, which may be repeated to varying degrees (although hopefully not), I just ask you to picture yourself alongside the majority of Serbs, who remain as shocked and horrified as you are -- and imagine, this is their country.

The Reality on the Ground

2008-02-18T01:28:00.000-08:00

As the world watched as Kosovo declared independence yesterday, everyone in Belgrade held their breath to see what the reactions would be. As a foreigner, I was especially worried, since the only news I could find that was in English repeatedly showed reports of riots mere blocks from where I work. (There were riots, but they were small and isolated.) However, the longer I live here, in a country whose people are so often viewed as aggressive, irrational and extremely nationalistic, I realize that there is so much more to the story than we ever see on the evening news.

I have had countless discussions with Serbs about Kosovo and for the most part, they're claims and worries are absolutely understandable. They realize they have their backs up against the proverbial wall - but that doesn't mean the pain of losing a part of their cultural heritage hurts any less. As a Canadian, many Serbs always try to get me to relate by saying, "Well how would you feel if Quebec did the same thing?". I see a lot of differences with the history and circumstances with Quebec, but the more I learn about Serbia and Kosovo, the more I realize they aren't so different after all. It's a hard thing to imagine a part of your country, where the blood, sweat and tears of culture, religion and life have been shed, is just suddenly not yours anymore. While the Serbs as a whole will forever be remembered for the '99 attempts to ethnically cleanse the area, the thing to remember is that for the average Serb, who has no want, need or taste for violence, they are losing an invaluable and irreplaceable part of their heritage and country and there is little, if anything, they can do about it.

Who I really feel for is the Serbs living in Kosovo, because no matter how much Kosovo says it will not officially be an ethnic state, the reality is that it is and minorities in these types of situations that always get the short end of the stick (to put it lightly). I can't imagine what it would be like to live for generations in an area of your country and then one day, you are told "Sorry, but this isn't your country anymore". I bet there is no one out there, who if put in this situation, wouldn't have something to say about it -- and Serbs, both living in the area and from the rest of the country, do have something to say about it. And for the average Serb, they wish to say this loud and proud but above all, peacefully.

There is no easy way around all of these difficulties. But the reality is that this whole process may set a worrisome precedence for other regions and groups fighting for autonomy. As much as the world is coming together, it still to be also pulling apart and Kosovo's independence is definitely an incredibly important world event of the latter. So as much as people can, from afar, write this all off as another conflict/troublesome period in the Balkans, there may be some very real and scary global repercussions, which, for Canadians especially, may be felt a lot closer to home.

Dear Mom, Don't Worry, I'm In Kosovo.

2008-02-13T07:16:00.000-08:00

So without many ways around it, we found ourselves at the border of UNMIK - aka Kosovo. We ended up having a day in Prishtina before we were able to catch a connecting bus to Montenegro's Adriatic coast, so in the spirit of travel, we made the most of it. Kosovo is one of those places that I really wanted to see, but had (obvious) reservations. However, in retrospect, I am glad we had to travel through the region because it definitely gave me a totally new perspective of an area that often make the headlines for not-so-appealing reasons.

The first thing that became apparent in Prishtina, was their love of all things America: the Victory Hotel (pictured left), "New York Style Pizza" on every corner and my favourite, "Bil Klinton Boulevard". They definitely don't hold back in showing their alliances to the Western world.

As we wandered around Prishtina, it amazed me how modern and bustling everything was -- clearly the huge amount of aid money that had been pumped into the region had accomplished something! We wandered past beautiful churches, an incredible modern art museum and countless shops selling things you can't even find in Belgrade. This was a totally different Kosovo than I had expected.

We also saw blatant promotion for KFOR (Kosovo Force - the UN force still present in the region), which was a little unexpected but definitely interesting. It almost became a game with my friend as we would see an armed vehicle approaching us and we would guess what country they were from; we were almost always wrong.

Our time in Kosovo was short, but I must admit I enjoy the novelty of saying that I was there in what is likely the last months of it as a part of Serbia. (They even issued a really cool "UNMIK" stamp upon entering the region). I think my experience would have obviously been drastically different if I had traveled to the regions that are more troubled (Prishtina seems pretty removed from the bouts of conflict that still occur in the region); however I am glad I gained a different perspective of a region that is so chronically in the news. And, whenever Kosovo does declare independence, it will definitely carry a different weight, now that I can picture it for myself, to watch as the events unfold.

Macedonia: Come on, work with me a little

2008-02-07T02:38:00.000-08:00

So after our trials and tribulations to get into Macedonia (the country, NOT the northern region of Greece), we finally felt the train slow to a chug, signaling our final approach into Skopje. Many people warned us that Skopje is, well a hideously ugly city to say it plainly. I was optimistic that the city would surprise me -- afterall, could it really be that ugly?

In short, yes. As our taxi winded through the city to get to our hostel, sketchy turned into scary and ugly turned into ghoulish. The taxi pulled into a small overgrown parking lot and pointed to a dark building that was apparently our hostel. Although as we walked towards the building with our bags, the word 'hostel' didn't really come to mind -- instead words like "crack house", "kidnappers hide-out" and "illegal drug trade" came to mind. As you can tell from the picture I took the next morning, that the taxi driver's offer to find us a hotel before we even arrived to the hostel were well placed; I'm sure countless travelers book the hostel online and immediately regret the decision once they see the house in person. But we were so tired that we decided to grin and bear it, even if we could only stand to be there for one night.

We entered the house, which was filled with smoke (not just from cigarettes) and a large group of un-showered, ragged and mischievous looking Macedonian hooligans, clearly under the influence of who knows which or how many drugs. When the hostel website boasted "social atmosphere" this wasn't exactly what we had in mind. We finally located the one girl who ran the place (and wasn't completely spaced out) and she directed us to the back of the house where the bedrooms were. We walked in and found the only other traveler we would ever see at the hostel during our time there. She was this tiny Japanese girl, who could barely speak English, and she was huddled on her bed. She stared at us when we walked in, with that same look like an animal has when it's pissed on the rug and is nervous of being found out. I barely felt safe being there, with a guy and with being able to speak English -- the fear and unease that dripped off her face were more than warranted.

We basically just fell right into (and subsequently out of due to extreme discomfort) the beds, that I believe we the result of the hooligans making off with old seat benches from an abandoned train. This thing couldn't be qualified as a mattress nor could it even be traced back as a relative of a mattress. I don't think I slept one wink that night -- partially because of the terrible sleeping arrangements but moreso because I had this feeling that at any given moment the police were going to bust through the door and yell "Get Your Hands Up!" and we, along with the rest of the dead beats, would be thrown in jail on drug charges. We decided that the less time we spent in this hostel, the better.

So early in the morning we caught the bus to the "only place worth visiting in Macedonia" according to fellow travelers, Lake Ohrid. (A quick note at this point, we realized one of the weirdest time-zone brain bogglers, aside from of course Newfoundland. When I travelled due west for almost 20 hours from Istanbul to Northern Greece, there was no time change. And yet, we traveled 3 hours due north from Northern Greece to Skopje and surprise! It's a different time zone. As a result we huffed and puffed our way to the train station for a bus that wasn't leaving for another hour.)

So after an uneventful 3 hour bus ride, we arrived in Ohrid and were excited to wander around the quaint little town, that was apparently Tito's favourite vacation spot. It was undeniably cute and obviously quaint, but the grey sky did little to show us the best that Ohrid had to offer. Like so many places on this trip, we tried to picture what it would be like in the summer, with the outdoor cafes full with people, the harbour full of little sail boats and the town bustling with vacationers. While we really enjoyed the city, that was the Ohrid that would be really worth visiting.

We spent the day wandering around the cobblestone streets and lakeside boulevard. On a clear day you can apparently see Albania, since the lake is a natural border between the two countries. We wandered out to see this famous church that is perched on a spectacular jagged corner of a cliff. It was definitely an unbelievable view, even though the church itself was under pretty heavy construction.

The rest of our time in Ohrid was pretty ordinary -- just trying to enjoy the historical sites and small town feel. But by the time came to board the bus back to Skopje (a necessity if we were to keep with our tight Balkans Tour Schedule), we had both had our fill of Ohrid in January.

We spent another sketchy night at the hostel; the biggest surprise being that our bags hadn't been sold for drug money while we were in Ohrid. We got up early again the next day and ventured out into Skopje to see the few sites we had read about in the guide book. We checked out their funky although tragically hideous post office (which you can see in the middle of the picture below -- it's the building that looks like a crazy concrete circus tent); walked across the city's Kamen Most bridge; and wandered through the unexciting old town. The most interesting part of the entire day was seeing the squatter's tents in one of the city's parks -- definitely wish there would have been a cafe close enough where we could have sat and watched the tent tenants wake up and undertake their morning rituals which appeared to include cutting down part of a tree in the park for fire wood. Squatters' rights indeed.

Our quick jaunt through Macedonia drew to a close; although the country seems interesting and would unlikely be more pleasant in the summer months, I have no strong desire to return any time soon. So when the girl at the hostel suggested we come back in June/July to stay at the hostel and to see Macedonia at its best, we smiled politely and nodded. Even if I do find myself back in Macedonia someday, that hostel is one place I can guarantee remains as unappealing all year-round.

Greece: The Party Starts A Slow Death....

2008-02-01T06:15:00.000-08:00

After the unbelievable day in Aegina, it was definitely hard to find an experience in Greece, in January, that could top it. We tried valiantly - and came pretty close, but all in all, the morning after Aegina was the beginning of the end of our time in Greece.

We decided to head to the celebrated Nafplion -- which was definitely beautiful and worth the 3 hour bus ride. However, the decline in the quality of accommodation and the fact that I smashed my face on a sink (don't ask how) so hard that my lip looked like I'd just had a lip injection meant for Jessica Simpson, it fell short of competing with Aegina. We wandered around the cute little town, the greatest and most breathtaking sight being the coastline that boasts amazingly turquoise waters, white pebble beaches and rugged mountains. There is an amazing walkway that wraps around the coast and leads you back into the heart of the quaint little port town, right through a strip of waterfront classy cafes and seafood restaurants. Definitely worth the inflated price and rather poor quality of coffee just to enjoy the scenery.

Later, to the dismay of my coworker, I was determined to haul ass up the 999 steps to see the ruins of a fortress (which the true attraction; I have to admit I had grown tired of ruins and really just was itching to sweat it out with a hike). We decided to buy ice cream to make the climb less unappealing; however, for those who have ever tried to eat and climb at the same time, you can relate that we were breathing harder than if we hadn't had the ice cream. Although my choice of banana popsicle proved wise: it was the BEST (and cutest) banana popsicle I have ever had the pleasure of consuming and trust me, I have tried countless varieties. 999 steps later, we were greeted with a "Closed" sign; apparently the end of the work day in Greece is 2:00pm. We debated for awhile ways to climb over the gate and went through the possible scenarios of what would happen. In the end, getting arrested in Greece just didn't seem worth it. So we huffed and puffed our way back down, minus the ice cream.

Overall Nafplion was good to us; we ate well (and cheaply), we enjoyed great weather and we even got to talk hockey with our eccentric "Pension" (small hotel) operator, who proudly maintains that Chelios (who is a Greek American) is the greatest hockey player on, next to Wayne Gretzky of course. But, it had an incredibly hard act to follow. Consider eating the best, most amazing, mouth-watering steak (sorry veggers) at a great restaurant where the wine selection is just right, the lighting accentuates all the right angles, the music sets the perfect ambiance and the company can't be beat. No matter what you eat for your next meal, it's going to be hard to compete and even the most gourmet food will fall short in comparison. Well Aegina was that steak; and Nafplion, no matter how hard it tried, still tasted a little dry and overcooked.

The next day we explored Mycenae - once the home of the epic Agamemnon. It rained the entire day, so while the ruins were definitely interesting (and delightfully different from the rest), it was hard to be impressed while trudging around in wet socks. We even got to see Agamemnon's apparent tomb, where legend has it that the unexperienced German archaeologist Schliemann, who so wanted to prove the validity of Homer's epic, stumbled on a human body and after removing the ornate mask proclaimed, "I have gazed upon the face of Agamemnon". The body immediately disintegrated, a carelessness on Schliemann's part that continues to haunt archaeologists. And turns out it wasn't even Agamemnon.

Finally, it came to the day we were meant to leave Greece and head north to Macedonia on our way back to our respective cities (Belgrade for me, Sarajevo for my coworker). We planned the whole trip out to a tee, double checking the train/bus schedules, fares and routes. One piece of advice I can give here is, never ever trust online transport schedules/fares in Greece/the Balkans, as I can guarantee it resembles the actual schedules/fares about as much as Britney Spears looks like a responsible parent.

We arrived for a train to Thessaloniki that didn't exist and were forced to wait 2 hours for a train that took equally as long but cost twice as much. However, we didn't totally despair because we still were scheduled to make our Thessaloniki - Skopje (in Macedonia) connection. We arrived in Thessaloniki, only to discover that the 6pm train to Skopje similarly did not exist. We had missed the one daily train (at 4pm) by mere minutes. We asked at the information desk about buses to Skopje, and began to slowly learn the effect that the name dispute over the use of "Macedonia" has had on transport between the two countries. Greece protested the use of "Macedonia", citing that there was only one Macedonia and it was within the Greek borders (the northern region). The Macedonian disagree. So you can see the can of worms we unknowingly opening when asking, "Do you have buses to Macedonia?"

It was a nightmare experience - we wandered around the unattractive downtown core of Thessaloniki, dragging all our bags, looking for some way of getting to Macedonia. This was the moment, amid the sweating and the cursing, where the party effectively died. We were told to find a travel agent who could help us, only to discover that travel agents close from 5pm-7pm for some unknown reason. Everything that could have gone wrong did: the phone card we bought didn't work; the bus we heard rumours of didn't exist; and finally when we retreated in defeat to the one cheap hotel (not common in Thessaloniki, which seems to take advantage of stranded travelers) it was abandoned. We jumped on a bus (where the tickets we purchased didn't work) to the single hostel that existed in the city, only to find an enormous "CLOSED" sign on the door. I dropped my bags and crumbled in desperation. This was the low of the low; I just wanted out of Greece.

We ended up having to stay in the sketchiest most overpriced hostel, and even got trapped in the stuffy elevator for a good 15 minutes when attempting to go to our room. We had the most uneventful and boring evening and following day until we were finally able to get out of the country. So Greece, what started on a high note, rose beyond my expectations, slowly declined into what effectively was one of the worst travel experiences I've endured.

Greece: The Party Really Gets Going...

2008-01-30T04:13:00.000-08:00

So after our whirlwind day in Athens, we took the recommendations of numerous travelers and got up early to catch the one hour ferry to Aegina, one of the closest of the Greek islands. (Due to the time of year, countless travelers we met warned us not to bother going to the further islands because few ferries ran between them and fewer services were open once you got there. Everyone had a troubling story so I decided to save Santorini and Mykonos for sunnier times.)

Although Aegina is only one hour from Athens, it truly feels a world away and the day we spent there was the definite highlight of my entire time in Greece. While Aegina wasn't the island I had longed to see, I realized it has it all: the beaches, the ruins, the classic white churches and best of all it doesn't take up an entire day to get there;)

The first and best decision we made was to rent mopeds. Having rented them in Hawaii with my sister and only having good memories, I strapped on my helmet and squealed in excitement as we buzzed away from the rental lot. We raced down to a small fishing village on the very southern tip of the island that was highly recommended for lunch. We enjoyed our first true Greek culinary experience! I can't describe the whole experience other than to say it was perfect - truly something from a travel magazine...(as you can tell from the picture -- this was taken while literally sitting in the seat at the restaurant). The rest of the day was spent traveling almost every inch of paved roach on the island -- and some unpaved parts too. Riding on a moped seems to have this affect on me where I seriously cannot wipe the smile off my face to save my life. Literally if someone said "I will give you a million dollars to frown right now", I doubt I could do it, even if I concentrated. Well, maybe for a million dollars... but not a penny less.

The scariest part of the day wasn't the jagged curves on the mountain roads, nor almost getting t-boned by a crazy Greek driver, but it was almost running out of gas while up in the mountains in the south part of the island. Honestly, I have had some close calls with running out of gas, but this experience made all the rest feel like small potatoes. We were way up in the mountains and due to a poor estimation, we found ourselves too many kms away from a gas station when that famous little red flashing gas light blinked to life. Apparently the extra weight of having 2 people on the bike (my moped broke down and had to be abandoned for the better part of the day - this still couldn't wipe the smile off my face), combined with endless switch-backs through the steep mountain roads, proved just too much for the little bike to take. We coasted back down the mountain roads, having to retrace our route back into the nearest town that had discouragingly looked like a ghost town. I shuddered at the thought of a) not making it to the town and b) making it there only to realize none of the gas stations were operating in the off-peak period. I pictured us, ragged tourists, thumbing our way back to town and showing up at the rental place with neither of the two bikes we had rented. I bet they see it all the time. The bike hummed in discontent and finally we could see the edge of the town. In the most dramatic performance since Jack and Rose's goodbye in Titanic, the bike chugged its last breath and died as we rolled into the gas station, that was luckily open. That was too close for comfort.

The day ended with the most fantastic sunset as we pulled back into the rental lot. We bought some of the island's specialties: pistachios, which are sold in every size, shape, colour and flavour on every corner in the harbour town. And the old woman we bought them off was right - the best I've ever tried. We flopped back onto the ferry en route to Athens, completely exhausted and grinning ear to ear. To continue the party analogy, this day was the part of the party where you think to yourself, this just might be the best party I've ever been to... and it seriously was.

Greece: The (In)famous Party Animal

2008-01-28T00:34:00.000-08:00

My time in Greece reminds me of an experience I am sure many of us have had: you are throwing a party and debating about inviting the ' classic party animal friend' (cpaf) -- the one that really gets the party going with their crazy antics and unheard-of drinking games. At the beginning the cpaf gets everyone, including your timid friends, laughing and having a good time, so you sit back and praise your decision to invite him/her. The party continues into the night and although it slowly loses steam as the hours tick by, overall the whole experience is still highly enjoyable and the cpaf has provided you with good memories and stories to recount to your coworkers on Monday. But then, that moment eventually comes when the cpaf throws up in your washing machine and/or pisses on your couch; the music and the whole atmosphere die and you can't seem to remember the fun times because you are stuck dealing with the cpaf, who has promptly passed out on your bathroom floor, using your new towels as a vomit cloth. When Greece is good, it is truly amazing, just like everyone promises. But when the magic dies, all you want to do is shut the door and walk away.

The Beginning of the Party....
My Greek experience started with the overnight train from Istanbul to Thessaloniki in Northern Greece, the stop-over hub for travellers heading down to or coming back from Athens. I had a rather uneventful and luckily short lay-over before my Thessaloniki - Athens haul (5-6 hours depending on the speed of train you opt for), so my impression of Thessaloniki was that it had a dreadful bathroom but a pretty decent sandwhich stand in its train station.

By the time the train finally pulled into Larissa station in Athens, my entire journey (from Istanbul) was a nearing the 22 hour mark and I was ripe for a shower and some clean, or cleaner, clothes. The metro in Athens, launched for the 2004 Olympics, was impressive and pretty much dropped me off right on the doorstep of Athens Backpackers, which was unbeknownst to me at the time, one of the best rated hostels in Athens. First impressions of the place were decent -- although the classic sweat/dirty clothes stench that knocked me out as I opened the door to my room was less than welcoming. I showered, changed and went downstairs to enjoy a much deserved cold draft beer at their in-house bar as I waited for my coworker to arrive and to officially begin the 'Great Adventure of the Canadian Interns 2008'. (The adventure was to last 10 days, cover 4 countries and rack up a whole whack of new stamps in my passport.)

The first cold swig was barely down my throat when I made some friends out of three Americans. We exchanged the classic hostel-talk (what are you doing, how long are you traveling, where did you come from and where are you going next). I had barely finished these formalities when my coworker burst through the door, a huge smile on his face seeing that I had already found my place in the bar. My coworker didn't even bother putting his bag in the room and bee-lined for the bar to join us. Our friendship with the Americans was on temporary hiatus and we gushed about our vacations at home and gossiped about the goings-on at work. Eventually we re-entered conversation with the Americans and wound up having a great night chatting, drinking and laughing with not only the Americans, but a whole troupe of travellers from the around the world.

We woke up and greeted Athens with bright eyes, bushy tails (not really) and a slight hangover. We stuffed ourselves with the modest hostel breakfast of toast and boiled eggs and prepared ourselves to see as much of Athens as humanly possible in one day. We walked out of our hostel and realized we were starring right at the Temple of Zeus so figured it was a good place to start. A little note at this point on something that was unexpected in Athens but turned out to be a source of great entertainment: the street dogs. As you walk around Athens, you will inevitably be sniffed and sized up by a whole range of street dogs -- some of them politely trot away after finishing their assessment (finding you unsuitable apparently), others stare at you for a moment and watch your movements for awhile but then lose interest and then there are others that seem to adopt you as a lifelong friend in an instant and follow you around for hours. It's really weird -- no matter how hard you try and ditch these dogs (my coworker and I actually ran and hid behind a tree at one point), they always seem to find you and give you this sensitive but slightly offended look like "Hey, I thought we were friends?".

I digress, but the point being that we had barely made it out of the hostel door and we already had a canine buddy, who would accompany us throughout the better part of the day so we figured we might as well name him (One Eye, because he did in fact have only one eye). The Temple of Zeus was amazing -- it was still early so we got some amazing shots of the sun coming up over the Temple (with One Eye running in the background in countless of them) and it gave us our first taste for ancient ruins, which would be the focus of pretty much the entire day.

Next we visited the coveted Acropolis; we could see the famous Panthenon perched up on the mount from the Temple of Zeus and we beelined our way over in hopes of avoiding many of the crowds that pack the ancient grounds throughout the course of a day, even in January. It was truly amazing (no, not that One Eye followed us in and actually took a whiz on an ancient column) but just the entire atmosphere and feeling that you were seriously walking around one of the greatest fallen civilizations humans have known. You slowly climb up to the main entrance which reveals amazing views of both the city and the Parthenon, passing ancient ruins and the Theatre of Diomedes on the way. That first moment when you lay eyes on the Parthenon, which graces the majority of postcards from Greece and is the one mental picture of Athens that I had, is indescribable. Even though it is covered in scaffolding and workers (as it apparently has been for years), there is nothing that can compare to starring at the real thing versus simply seeing a picture. It would be like trying to compare the feeling of winning a gold medal at the Olympics and simply being in the stands. And as you can clearly see, it goes without saying that pictures cannot do it justice.

We visited the other famous ruins sites that are scattered around Athens: the Agora (the centre of ancient life), the site of an ancient library and we even checked out some ancient toilets (see photo)! While the thrill of seeing the ancient rubble slowly weaned, I still had this feeling of really wanting to remember the moment and take it all in -- and One Eye was patient enough to give us the time to do that.

After a flawless gyro lunch, we decided (well I decided and my coworker silently obeyed) to hike up the nearby Mount Likavitos, which boasted a 360 degree view of the city. We huffed and puffed our way to the top and were rewarded with being completely alone on top, with the cutest little white church completely empty. We took a deep breath and stared out over the sprawling city of Athens.

We wandered the streets of Athens for the rest of the day -- wandered in unknowingly to a huge student protest in front of the parliament, and just let ourselves get lost and found again. It was an exhausting day, but hugely rewarding. We also took a stroll later to the newer Olympic grounds, with One Eye and another another dog (whom we named Dickens because on several occasions he would run out into on coming traffic and bark and chase cars, nearly getting run over about ten times, scaring the 'dickens' out of us) at our heels. The gates we were locked so we simply contemplated what it would feel like to run a lap of the track, with the crowds cheering you on, a lifetime of dedication and training on the line. One Eye and Dickens simply barked at a bum on a nearby bench. The four of us left, happy and satisfied.

Stay tuned for "The Party Really Gets Going..."

Sultans and Spices...

2008-01-24T02:07:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the wonderful people at Alitalia (see blog below), my trip to Istanbul, where Europe truly meets Asia, was shortened to only one day. I had so much in the city I wanted to see and only 24 hours to do it in - well even less considering the tourists sights have yet to offer tours at 3am. Even with such a tight time constraint, I am pleased to share that I managed to squeeze in seeing just about everything I wanted to, even with time to share some Turkish apple tea and nargileh (flavoured tobacco smoked out of a water pipe) with an old spice salesman.

The day started off bright and early. First stop, the Spice Bazaar where mountains of spices, sweets, traditional clothing and teas were proudly displayed by vendors. The building smelled amazing, not surprisingly considering its contents, and vendors warmly welcomed you into their stalls, most of them inviting you to share in their morning tea. I could have spent the entire day here, watching locals mingle and share animated stories and jokes over a hot beverage.

The next place on my ambitious agenda was to explore Aya Sofia, one of the greatest heritage places in Istanbul. Aya Sofia, constructed in its current form between 532 and 537 AD, historically has changed hands between rulers as a place of worship. The highlight was seeing the partially uncovered Christian holy mosaics that had been plastered over during the rule of the Ottoman Empire when the building was converted to a mosque. It was amazing to be able to wander through this unbelievable relic of ancient times without hordes of tourists pushing and shuffling about. Although I must admit, I did "tour-creep" a group of English tourists, eavesdropping on the tour guides presentation a couple of times.

The next sight to see, which is right across a long promenade, is the famous Blue Mosque. I wandered around the grounds, not wanting to enter since there was a prayer session happening (and I try to avoid being an invasive tourist as much as possible). It was really funny to see the little school children sitting in the outdoor pews, eating their doner kebabs (I swear they ALL had one), completely unfased by the fact that they were smack dab in between the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofia. I guess we become accustomed to magnificence if it's in our own backyard.

The rest of the day included wandering through the overwhelming Grand Bazaar, exploring the eerie Basilica Cistern, taking a ferry ride to Ushkudar (the Asian side of Istanbul) for more wandering, roaming through Topkapi Palace Museum (the highlight being the collection of jewelry and royal ornaments in the Treasury - does anyone really need a solid gold hairbrush?!) and finishing the day with returning to the Spice Bazaar for my aforementioned rendez-vous with an old spice salesman. We could barely speak to each other, but oddly it was my favourite part of the day. I felt as close as I think I possibly ever could to being a local, even laughing alongside the vendors as awkward tourists shuffled past, with enormous cameras hanging like oversized pendants from their necks, their faces burried so deep in a map that they were missing the beauty of the experience right around them. I tried to pay the man for his generosity, but he refused and I walked away feeling like I was parting with a friend as near and dear as any.

My time in Istanbul was insanely short; however, I was privileged to have been invited into the heart of Turkish culture, even if for a moment -- something I highly doubt many tourists get to experience no matter how long their stay in the country. As I boarded the sleeper train to Greece, I felt both sad and completely satisfied: sad that I couldn't have had more time to explore this incredible place but satisfied that I had in a fleeting but eternal moment tasted, smelled, saw, heard and touched the essence of Istanbul.

At Least Buy Me Dinner First....

2008-01-21T07:51:00.000-08:00

I think this will go down in my history of being screwed by airlines as the greatest tale of them all. I had been warned by my coworkers, who frequently fly the Belgrade-Toronto route to avoid at all cost flying with Alitalia. While all other recommendations differed from person to person, the hatred and contempt expressed for Alitalia was unanimous across the board, with horror stories extending beyond what I had the patience or time to listen to. However, my ticket home with Alitalia was booked and paid for, so essentially there was nothing I could do but pray that I might successfully navigate through the minefield of deficiencies and disappointments that sets Alitalia apart from the rest. I guess no one upstairs heard my prayers.

Surprisingly I made it home to Toronto completely unharmed, with both myself and my luggage in tact. I scoffed at all those who bashed Alitalia and even praised the airline for landing at Pearson amid a terrible snow storm. Thus, when it came time to board my flight back to Belgrade via Milan, a bad airline experience was the furthest thing from my mind.

It all started with the flight out of Toronto being delayed. I expressed my concern that I would miss my connection to Belgrade to the flight attendants, but they assured me that the plane would wait since it was a small flight and there were other people making the connection from Toronto. I eased back into my seat, again applauding the airline for taking such good care of me.

I arrived in Milan, hurrying to my gate but not running for my life since the smiling flight attending assured me so compassionately that the flight would be waiting. I get to the gate only to find out that the flight had, contrary to my hopeful naivety, left without me. I was re-booked on the afternoon flight and although I had a considerable wait, it seemed that it still wasn't so bad.

We boarded the afternoon flight like any other. We sat in our seats and buckled our belts like any other. We were shown how to inflate our life jackets and use the oxygen masks in case of emergency just like any other. Then, unlike any other, as our little plane tore down the runway at top speed, it came to a halting stop that hurtled my un-secured water bottle down the aisle like a rocket. This was the beginning of problems with Alitalia that would last more than 36 hours.

We got reshuffled off the plane and back into the waiting room, where we were assured that the flight was simply delayed. After 6 hours of repeated delays and assurances, the flight was cancelled and myself and a group of about 50 people, mostly Serbs trying to get home for the Orthodox Christmas the next day, found ourselves facing being re-booked until the morning. Everyone collected their bags and made their way to the Alitalia desk to sort out tickets and vouchers. I had the added pleasure of realizing my bags were, as so many of my coworkers had insisted is a specialty of Alitalia, lost.

The morning came and we all boarded the bus from the hotel housing, and might I add discouragingly full of Alitalia passengers experiencing delays and cancellations of every sort. To sum up the next whole series of delays and cancellations: 3 more flights to Belgrade that day were canceled, partially due to weather but mostly due to Alitalia's sheer crapiness. We finally were re-routed through Zurich with SwissAir, which involved another 7 hour delay, with both airlines refusing to take responsibility for the growing troupe of Serbian travelers who went from about to miss Christmas, to missing Christmas, to missed Christmas. In the end, we boarded a plane and finally left for Belgrade at midnight, 3 days after I left Canada. I arrived in Belgrade waiting to find my bags, which Alitalia staff assured me had already arrived in Belgrade, only to find out that they were sitting somewhere in the chasm of incompetence that is Alitalia's lost and found in Milan's airport.

Needless to say, I have firmly taken up my position amongst my coworkers as the newest, although not greatest, Alitalia horror story. I finally picked up the last of my bags that slowly found their way back to Belgrade over the past two weeks -- and judging from the dozen or so tags from all over Italy and even as far as Barcelona, Alitalia's ineptitude continues to amaze me. Although I must admit that it does appear that my bag had a great vacation through Europe..

A Cross-Cultural Imbroglio

2007-12-06T00:27:00.000-08:00

Yes, that's right, I used 'imbroglio' meaning difficult or embarrassing situation. It's one of my GRE study "words of the day" so I decided to put it to use since really, given this tale, it's absolutely fitting.

So I found myself needing some 'feminine products' because as cliche as it sounds, it was 'that time of the month'. I was with the a fellow Canadian intern, and seeing that he is male and generally the whole female cycle is not only a bit mysterious but also a little unsettling for the opposite sex, I sheepishly tried to conceal what my true intentions were as we entered a pharmacy. Luckily it was a young girl working behind the counter and when she asked if I needed help, I tried to whisper loud enough for her to hear, but softly enough so that my male companion wouldn't notice. She looked at me puzzled so I repeated myself a little louder, already slightly horrified at the thought I would have to communicate what I wanted with hand gestures and pointing. She repeated what I said, still puzzled, as if trying to search the depths of her English abilities to comprehend my request.

By this point, my male friend has wandered over and realized the nature of my query. He joins in on our impromptu game of charades, and oddly enough starts pointing to the region, that if he were a woman, would have made sense, but now, whatever advances I had made with getting the girl to understand what I wanted, were totally blown out of the water. I hate to imagine what thoughts were racing through her mind, as the two of us made a series of attempts to act out what I wanted. She now just stood there, starring at us with his horrified look on her face. Without taking her eyes off of us, she called over her shoulder to her coworker, who for a moment I thought would be some kind of 'pharmacy security' who would toss out to the street for making weird and what seemed like inappropriate innuendos to this innocent young cashier. Instead, another girl emerged, acting as support for the first girl, who I think will be scarred for life.

I repeated what I wanted in a last ditch effort, trying to avoid the stares of the other shoppers who also became intrigued with the crude foreigners. Then, as if a light above the girls' heads suddenly blinked on, the girls both yelped out "Ooooh! TAMPONS!" and in one motion slapped a series of boxes on the counter. We all kind of had a bit of chuckle, but there was still a feeling of awkwardness that couldn't be laughed off. How do you get your dignity back after having a crowd of people watch as you repeatedly point to your crotch? I tried to smile it off, but we both broke into a half-run as our feet hit the street. We rounded the next corner and spent a good moment howling in laughter and trying to catch our breath. Oh how entertaining cross-cultural exchanges can be.....

Croatian Coastal Experience

2007-12-04T06:30:00.000-08:00

So Dubrovnik is officially beautiful -- even on a rainy day. Nothing could take away from the awe that Dubrovnik inspired -- not pelting rain, not soaked feet to the point that "trench foot" became a distinct possibility and not the overpriced food and tacky tourist swag, which included a Croatian flag string bikini.

We cruised in on a fully empty tourist bus from the quaint little town of Mostar in BiH. To my absolute puzzlement, we crossed the border into Croatia after an inspection of our passports that was so lax and incomplete that I could have offered a hand-made cartoon drawing of myself instead of identification and I highly doubt it would have roused even the slightest suspicion. The drive, even through rain, was unreal as our bus chugged around jagged coastal corners to give spectacular views of the pristine turquoise waters of the Adriatic sea and the small fishing towns that dot the coastline. Finally, we made our descent from the mountain side highway down into the incredible town of Dubrovnik to begin an adventure that will remain a highlight of my time in the Balkans.

We spent the bulk of our time wandering through the incredible 'old town': a gathering of impeccably maintained white stone buildings, with a commanding promenade lined with cute little shops acting as the main artery of the town. Off the promenade, little side streets branch off revealing one-of-a-kind shops by local artists, small restaurants boasting delicious fresh pastas and pizzas and charming Irish pubs (with real Guinness on tap!). I found it particularly novel that each archway was outfitted with green vines and real mandarines hanging down like mistletoe! The whole town in enclosed by the impressive towering fortress walls, complete with turrets and guard towers. Normally Dubro-vnik is crawling with tourists, but the combination of the low tourist season and the incessant rain meant that we felt quite alone in this wonderful place.

We filled our time simply wandering through this amazing town; the highlight was the 2.5km walk atop the fortress walls which offered incredible views of the old town, the sea and the mountainous back drop. I took so many pictures that I believe I can make one of those flip-books which would document my every step of this walk. Typical tourist. But, even with having to struggle to keep my umbrella from blowing inside out, whilst trying to shelter my camera from the rain, whilst juggling an oversized purse and worrying about slipping on the slick stones, I managed to take in the moment and appreciate that I was seeing something so beautiful and magnificent that it seriously brought me on the verge of tears.

Our second day in the city was absolutely smashing weather-wise -- we conveniently missed the early morning bus and so got to relive our old-town experience with the sun on our faces. We went out for a boat ride to get a different perspective of the town's magnificence and it was an equally memorable highlight. We tasted local specialties at the Saturday morning market including an addictive candied orange peel, enjoyed the sun at an outdoor cafe and strolled back along the coast to our accommodation to catch the late afternoon bus. All in all, it was a magnificent weekend that truly will go down in my books as one of the most unforgettable.

What seemed like an uneventful trip to the police station....

2007-11-22T01:17:00.000-08:00

So I finally gave in to my boss' request to register at the police station. Apparently every visitor to Serbia must be able to produce proof of where they stayed during their visit upon exiting the country, although it seems like few travelers and foreigners actually seek out acquiring the appropriate proof. The whole thing seemed too communist for my liking --but after the possibility that I might not be allowed to leave the country was raised, I hastily and happily went along to the police station.

I have, inadvertently, seen the inside of other Eastern European police stations (that being a story for another time). These stations were the topic of our ridicule and mockery for a long time because of their ancient typewriters, outdated walkie-talkies that rivaled the size of a brick and general way of doing things that seemed like something out of an old black and white movie. Well if Poland's police stations seemed antiquated, Serbia's stations are absolutely prehistoric.

I once described the fashion in India as, "India is where t-shirts come to die". Well, I can firmly say that Serbia is where law enforcement equipment and customs come to die. Everything from the dusty typewriters, to the classic sergeant smoking a cigar in a small, poorly ventilated windowless office, this place makes equipment from the 1980s Miami Vice look like futuristic gadgets only appropriately owned by the likes of James Bond. I was sure that a typewriter sitting in the corner, that must have weighted nearly a ton, had been relegated to a dark corner after being replaced by some sort of computer. But, during my visit, a young officer sauntered over to the machine, with an young woman at his side, and he began taking what I can only assume from the dramatic reenactment of a purse robbery, was a witness statement. I didn't even realize we had finished our business until my boss tugged at my sleeve and I was lifted out of my daze of disbelief and amazement of feeling that I was visiting a law enforcement museum rather than a functioning station.

The whole ordeal was topped off with a cab ride in potentially the most putrid and acrid smelling car I have ever ridden in in my life. Honestly, if there was the option between taking that cab or riding around in a garbage bin all day, I'd take the garbage bin at the drop of a hat. It was so bad that my father passing gas would have been a welcome odour by the time we reached the office.

And imagine, all this is just one afternoon in Serbia.

Where is the boundary between milk and cream?

2007-11-20T01:14:00.000-08:00

Just a short observation about Serbian dairy products: can you really still call 6.7% milk, milk? In Canada, I grew up with four options of milk: skim (white water), 1%, 2% and 'homo', which I'm pretty sure is around a 3%. Having grown up on skim, it was a novelty to use 1% every so often -- I enjoyed the extra 'creaminess' on occassion, but generally my heart and preferred palate belong to skim. For me, even 2% is a bit 'out there' in the milk world and 'homo', well don't even get me started. But generally, life made sense with a simple system of 0, 1, 2, 3 choices of dairy beverages.

So here in Serbia, the rules of milk that seemed so well defined in Canada don't apply. There are all these crazy percentages, like 2.4%, 3.7%, 4.2% and so on. The lowest I am able to find (with the carton contain a woman with a tape measure around her waist, presumably to demonstrate how much weight you will lose if you start drinking this brand) is 0.9%, which to a loyal skim drinker is a little hard to swallow. I made a mistake last time by buying a 3.7% -- to me this tasted more like i was suckling directly from a cow's utter than sipping from a cold glass of milk. So you can imagine my disbelief and novel intrigue, when I came across a milk rated 6.7%. Seriously, I was so curious that I was tempted to buy it just to see how it pours -- like a liquid? or somewhere between a liquid and a solid? The 6.7% boxes acted like a bridge into the world of creams at the grocery store -- from left to right, the milk percentages got higher and higher and then after 6.7%, there was this unidentified leap into the cream section, almost as if you wouldn't notice if you grabbed a box from either side. So I guess my question still stands, can you really call 6.7% milk, milk? And I guess more interestingly, who drinks the stuff?!?!!

Pictures of Serbia

2007-11-16T03:59:00.000-08:00

I am trying out a new way of posting pictures... so here is a slideshow of some of the more interesting pictures of Serbia...
Enjoy!

2007-11-16T03:47:00.000-08:00

I Heart Bosnia i Hercegovina

2007-11-16T00:16:00.000-08:00

So they don't actually have T-shirts mimicking the famous NYC slogan, (although to my delight I found retro "Sarajevo Olympics '84" tees) but if there was such a shirt, I would definitely buy it. I was in BiH for over a week and can officially say it is one of the most captivating places I have had the privilege of exploring. I can't quite put my finger on what it is about BiH that inspires such sentiments of romantic mysticism and adoring fascination -- the outdoor ruggedness of the mountains? the quaint wooden shops filled with lively locals in the old town? the unmistakable influence of the past that flows out of every mosque, church, city building and bullet hole that I pass? the delicious scents of baklava, freshly roasted coffee or sweet grapes that fill the streets? the sight of people of all ages, walking, smiling, laughing and just enjoying life? Whatever it is, this place has me hooked.

I knew I would like Sarajevo when I first saw the fellow who was contracted to drive our entourage from the northern part of the country to the capital city. He was friendly, stylish and best of all, an Olympic swimmer (i'll leave the obvious physical implications of this profession to the imaginations of the female readers). The stories of his experiences as an athlete and now coach in the international swimming world was as engaging as the breath-taking drive through the mountains, full of trees in the peak of their autumn behaviours. I was excited to arrive in Sarajevo, but sad that our time getting 'up close and personal' with a local celebrity was winding down along with our journey.

One of the best parts of discovering BiH, was learning that their currency, called 'convertable marks', is also know as BAMS (Bosnians marks). I couldn't resist putting dramatic volume and grammatical emphasis when I would say something like, "Yo.. here's 10... BAMS!" in my best Snoop-Dogg-esque impression, followed by an over-dramatization of slamming down a fist full of bills on the counter.

The history in Sarajevo is, as I mentioned, unavoidable. History of so many time periods mixes together to create this rich feeling of being in place that has seen both the best and worst of human capacity. If these walls could talk, what a tale they would tell. Whether it was exploring an old fort up in the mountains, or stumbling unbeknown upon the very place where the Archduke Ferdinand was shot that spawned the beginning of World War I or seeing the graffiti and bullet riddled walls depicting the not-so-long ago genocide, the past is very much alive in the Bosnian capital.

We discovered this unbelievable restaurant called Pivnica -- for my Polish readers you'll note the relation to 'pivo', and yes it is a brewery. It was the most magnificent setting -- high ceilings, ornate decore but with an ambiance that made you feel very much at home and characters from all walks of life simply enjoying a beer and good conversation. It honestly felt like something out of the 1920s -- a place where soldiers sat (there actually were German soldiers) to have a beer while on leave and I half expected flapper girls to appear at any moment.

My only beef with the place was the ambiguity of the washroom signs that left me almost peeing my pants in indecision. Let me take a moment to explain my dilemma: I was presented with two doors in the normal fashion. The first one has a picture of the head of a person, gender unclear, with a cowboy hat. Given that the cowboy is the ultimate symbol of maleness, I was pretty confident this was the male washroom. I strode over to the other door, about to push it open without even analyzing the sign on the door. But then, as I got closer, I realized the other sign had a picture of the same cowboy, only this picture portrayed the full human figure. There were no obvious anatomical cues and in fact, the figure was portrayed with broad shoulders and pants instead of the classic female hour-glass, triangle dress that I thought was universal.

So the two options: a cowboy head, or a cowboy??? It was anything but clear about where I should do my business. I walked back and forth a couple of times in confusion and even swung open the doors to see if I could catch a glimpse of a urinal upon which to make a distinction. No luck. Plan B was to wait for someone else to go in or come out. I waited for a couple of minutes, and finally decided just to take a stab in the dark and put my money on the full figured cowboy. All of a sudden, I hear someone coming down the stairs and so I decide to wait. The sound of their footsteps rounding the corner was, by this time, music of the heavens to my bladder. I breathed a deep sigh of anticipation and then to my absolute discombobulation a person appeared who reminded me of the gender ambiguous comedic character "Pat". I swear I have never been as confused about someone else's gender in my life. They were wearing a bulky, form-concealing sweater, baggy pants and sporting a unisex haircut that actually looked more like a wig. I would have felt more confident playing the lead in a Broadway musical than I did trying to guess this person's gender. In the end, my ambiguously gendered friend went into the cowboy head and I scurried into the other door, praying that I guessed right. I saw no other people coming in and out of the washrooms so I guess this mystery is one that will remain for the ages.

My trip came to an end with a 6am flight home to Belgrade. Sarajevo, very fittingly gave me the most wonderful adieu. As we rose above the clouds, there was the most magnificent sunrise over the mountain tops. I had a huge smile on my face as I slowly nodded off for the quick 45 minute flight, sad to say goodbye to Bosnia but happy to know it was the first of many trips.

Now that's service folks...

2007-11-09T10:37:00.000-08:00

First of all, I am overdue for a blog from my trip to Bosnia -- which I will write as soon as I have a moments rest. So stay tuned because there is a whole lot to say about that place....

That being said, I couldn't NOT write a quick blog about my experience last night at a Belgrade movie theatre. It was all pretty ordinary until we stopped at the snack counter just to browse and admire the profound difference in the concept of sizes of popcorn. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I see what thought couldn't be true -- they sell BEER at the theatres in Serbia! I mean, having worked in a movie theatre in Canada (an experience that has left incalculable scars from being forced to wear a uniform consisting of pants that I'm pretty sure were tailored for a 9 month pregrant woman, a see-through shirt and purple, green and yellow striped epaulettes to top off the ensemble), I know how much mess and shenanigans can be made out of pop and candy by the youngsters. What happens when you throw alcohol in to the mix??! I don't even the pimply faced kid (it's always a pimply faced kid) hired to clean up the theatre...

Either way, we bought into it just for the novelty of it all. And I must say, it is every bit as refreshing and delightful as you would imagine it to be. This country definitely seems to know how to do movies right..

A Taste of the South....

2007-11-01T09:46:00.000-07:00

So here are some pictures, in no particular order, of some of the interesting sights in the south of Serbia...

I took this picture because I find the Roma population settlements so interesting... I would love to take pictures from within it and of the people because they are so different from Serbians..

This country loves loves loves basketball and I can see why -- they are all about 7ft tall...

An interesting building..
Not a bad picture of the countryside considering it was taken from the mini-bus ride from hell with a cell phone camera...
Again, a bit of the countryside
It's pepper season in Serbia!!! So many people selling them out of their cars on the sides of the road...
A view of Novi Pazar..
A second view...

Unfortunately I don't have a picture of the politician with the blue eyes, sorry ladies!

Did I nod off when we crossed the border??

2007-10-24T00:23:00.000-07:00

So it's official. I went on my first legitimate 'business trip' -- my excitement as we boarded our private mini-coach was palpable, to the amusement and confusion of my mentor and senior project staff. Some of my enthusiasm eventually wore off throughout the five hour journey to the small town in the south of Serbia called Novi Pazar (NP), about 20km from the border of Kosovo, but the landscape was so diverse that my attention was occupied nevertheless the entire voyage. As our little van winded through the increasingly mountainous terrain, our driver seemed to be plagued with progressive impatience and what I at one point half questioned as blindness or a mental disorder. It was as if he was filming a movie for driving schools across the world entitled, "Everything you should NEVER do as a driver if you value your life and that of your passengers". He passed on jagged corners, gave new meaning to 'riding someones bumper' as we came so indescribably close on numerous occasions to mounting the back of a slower moving vehicle in what can only be described as a near lovemaking session between the vehicles and sped through villages attracting stares of disbelief and fist-shaking from the countless Babas selling bags of red peppers throughout the countryside.

Miraculously we survived the drive -- a feat I had begun to doubt possible, especially considering the hundred or so (I only started counting halfway through the journey) plaques and vigils dedicated to those who had lost their lives in accidents on the highway. One quick note about that -- on one of our stops I went in for a closer inspection and I noted what must have been the person's name, date of birth/death as well as an etching of their face and generations of flowers and candles surrounding it all. This is all relatively normal. What wasn't normal, was the etching of the smashed up car, which I assume depicts the outcome of the deadly accident, that was prominently displayed at the centre of the entire vigil. I think there are some things about Serbians I will never understand.

Anyways, we arrived in NP, and it was so different to Belgrade and the rural countryside that I had to double check we didn't cross the border into another country while I wasn't looking. A quick Serbian geography lesson -- there are three major areas in Serbia: Vojvodina in the north, previously part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, "Serbia Proper" in the middle (the rivers largely acting as natural borders for these areas) and Kosovo in the south which retained a stronger Turkish influence. NP is a predominantly Muslim town, having been under Turkish rule for over 500 years, which explains the run-down Turkish baths, mosques galore, and baklava on every corner. Our time was mostly dedicated to meetings with the Project's local coordination committee, tours of local primary health care centres and most excitingly, a meeting with the "President of the Municipality", a handsome older politician with the bluest of eyes and wreaking of 'George-Clooney appeal' that elicited some post-meeting girl gossip from even some of the most conservative female Project staff members.

In between all the work, we somehow found time to peruse their famous local leather market, where, if I had had the modest amount of Euros on me, I would have bought a seriously stylish dark brown leather jacket. No worries, I will be going to NP again soon -- if not for work, for the leather, so you all have plenty of time to get your orders in. The town is also famous for having the best knock-off Diesel jeans in Europe, which they proudly boast in signs that read "Original Copy!".

The trip was short, but so great to finally see something else besides Belgrade, to get a preview of my (hopeful) trip to Turkey during the January holidays and to be part of the project traveling 'Entourage'. All in all a successful business trip, even with disappointingly returning to Belgrade sans leather jacket.

Stay tuned for pictures from this area as well as stories from the north...

Try this One on for Size...

2007-10-19T01:47:00.000-07:00

What is the purpose of a postcard? I have always felt it is to promote the best your country/region has to offer, often with a little unadmitted help from the good ol' airbush. A postcard is supposed is a way to say to friends and family, "Look where I am. Aren't you just insanely jealous?" This unspoken understanding benefits everyone involved -- the country gets paid for promotions passing through countless hands across the world, the recipient gets to ogle exotic places in the world and have something to put on their refrigerator and the traveler gets to not only show off their adventures but also gets to opt out of purchasing tacky bottle openers or key-chains through pre-emptively giving the cheapest and might I add weightless souvenir of them all.

With this premise commonly understood in my experiences in the world of travel and tourism, I have yet to make sense of the choice of postcards readily available in Belgrade. So like any good scientist when presented with an unknown, I decided to conduct a simple experiment to see if the postcard selection is really as baffling as I have so far experienced. I decided to roam the famous walking boulevard Kneza Mihaila, laden with historic buildings and amazingly refinished architecture, on a busy Saturday afternoon to carry out my research. All of the tourist-paraphenilia vendors were practically licking their fingers in anticipation of the onslaught of camera-bearing, white-haired foreigners which were to make their weekly appearance, so I knew that only the best of the best, the cream of the crop if you will, of postcards were going to be on display. I will share with you the results of my experiment, which caused me to move further and further away from trying to make sense of Serbian postcards and more and more firmly planted in the belief that Serbs, like many cultures from an outsiders' point of view, can sometimes be inexplicably weird.

The results:
The Top Five Most Popular Postcards (drum roll please):
5. A scantily clad girl cleverly covering the details of her exposed bosom, with a view of Belgrade at night in the background, with the caption "Hot Greetings from Belgrade".
4. A large photo of Tito, the ex-communist leader which many Serbs openly and intensely criticize for having wracked their country in debt, petting a cheetah, clearly NOT a native species. No caption needed apparently.
3. A series of mismatched and poorly edited photos of Tito standing with one triumphant foot on various animal carcuses, most of them current endangered species, with the explanation "Tito Hunting".
2. Again a series of mismatched and slightly blurry photos of past soccer riots, with what I assume is an amateur photo of one of their city's soccer stadiums in the centre. This spread is complemented with graphics which, if I recall correctly, I used for making a homemade banner for my 7th birthday.
1. This one I still can't wrap my head around -- a large photo of perhaps a 3 second lapse after one of the bombs being dropped in the 1999 strikes on an unidentified building in the city.

I believe I rest my case.

"Oh man -- you TOTALLY sound like him!"

2007-10-15T03:16:00.000-07:00

Here's a quickie for you -- we started talking about the movie 'Borat' in the office and I was doing my, rather exceptional if I do say so myself, impression of the politically incorrect character to the delight of my coworkers. I left the room for a second to make a tea, and walked back in to what I thought was another coworker showing off their 'Borat' impression, to which I joyously exclaimed, "Oh man! You TOTALLY nailed the accent that time!" As I saw the baffled look on my coworkers faces slowly morph into very unimpressed sour smiles, I tried to apologize, realizing that the Borat impressions had clearly finished while I was in the kitchen and he was in fact just speaking frankly about something that was "very nice", but I found my foot so far down my throat that I simply scurried back to my desk and buried my face in my laptop. Luckily my coworkers seem to be either exceptionally forgiving or simply have a short memory but either way, it will be some time, if ever again, where you will hear me mutter, "I like you gypsy..."

Horns, Brake Lights and Bumpers....

2007-10-10T06:22:00.000-07:00

Like in any big city, Belgrade has pretty bad traffic jams during rush hours. It's intensely busy in both directions on the bridges connecting downtown to New Belgrade, the fastest growing urban area in the country and incidentally where I live. While it may look the same as at home -- frustrated drivers, impatient a#*holes who try to shoot up the shoulder, and ambitious lane-weavers who make no gains at all -- the experience on public transport is definitely one to share.

I am on a bus, with an estimated capacity of say 60 people, that is so jammed I can't tell if my feet are actually still making contact with the floor or not. With a backpack full of valuables, I would normally be conscious of people suspiciously touching my bag, but on this bus ride I would give a round of applause to anybody who could muster up enough elbow room to actually pull off stealing something from my bag. People are so packed in that moving around is like one of those puzzles where there is only one free inch of space and every piece has to be moved accordingly, only on this bus, that inch of free space got off at the last stop.

And just when you think you are going to lose your mind -- with your head jammed into some guy's arm pit who wreaks of cabbage, your legs straddling an old lady in a way that in any other circumstance could be considered a sexual advance and your privates making contact with so many strangers' limbs or body parts that you stop questioning if you are being groped and just assume you are -- more people manage to get on. All of a sudden, you feel the bus slow down and through the sea of body parts you can just barely make out a bus stop. It is at this point that I always begin to barter with God -- "Dear Lord, if nobody else gets on this bus, I swear I'll start validating my ticket everytime" -- but then you see the faces waiting at the bus stop perk up and you know that somehow, no matter how unfathomable, more people are going to squeeze on this bus.

One time it was so hot and sweaty that I started to feel dizzy and managed to get close enough to a window so that I could open it. I slid it all the way open, standing on my tippy toes to feel the breeze; however, before the fresh air could do me any good, a man snapped the window shut and said to me in broken English, "draft make you sick". At this point, my coworker explained that Serbians apparently believe that the wind, especially 'wind tunnels' are a leading cause of colds, flu and a range of other ailments. I imagine old Serbian grandmas recounting to their grandchildren the dangers of wind, using sentences like "i remember the great breeze of '48...everyone got sick"

By the time I guess it is my stop (I have to guess because my ability to see anything beyond the 5 - 10 strangers surrounding me is seriously compromised), it takes me a good couple of minutes of softly saying "Izvinite", meaning excuse me in Serbian, before my commitment to politeness is thrown out the window and I'm plowing elbows into backs and literally two-handed pushing people out of the way to make my way to the door -- to freedom. I get off the bus and take a gulp of air like someone who's head has been held under water for too long by a member of the mafia aptly named "Fat Tony". And it's at this point, everyday, that I vow to avoid the buses during rush hour at all cost, but at the same time know I'll find myself groped, dizzy and sweaty all over again tomorrow.

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, the Beautiful, the Eerie and the just plain Weird

2007-10-09T02:53:00.000-07:00

Some pictures to give you an insight into life in Belgrade.
In the Old City...
Remnants of the bombings...
Some buildings haven't been touched since....

Beautiful view of the Danube from famous Karlemegdan fortification...
Talk about choices of meats in tubes...

The beautiful Churches right behind my office building...

Talk about communist style apartment blocks...

Crossing the Danube into the heart of the city...

Mix of architecture styles is typical of Belgrade...

Interesting perspective...

I read this great book by Dzon Grisjam

2007-10-04T10:16:00.000-07:00

So at my persistent request, my coworker agreed to take me to "Rodic", a huge Superstore-esque shopping centre where I was promised I would find more variety of products than my local "Maxi" which boasts little more than various meats packed in various styles of tubing, milk with a fat percentage that soars way beyond the double digits and a sorry selection of dried out, moldy fruits. So you can imagine that as a Krechowicz, lover of all things food, it would be a grave underestimate to say I was excited.

We hoped off the crowded bus and there it was, this enormous expanse of concrete that made me feel oddly at home. There were bright lights flashing, shopping carts just waiting to be filled and a procession of people exiting the building with smiles on their faces. As I trotted up to the entrance with my coworker scraggling a fair distance back, I felt a magnetic-like pull towards this place in anticipation of the fulfillment and joy that would come. I dare say it compared to the feeling a devout Catholic might feel upon entering a beautiful church. Clearly, Rodic will be my own personal place of worship.

This place had everything - like Loblaws, Canadian Tire, Payless Shoes, the LCBO, the Beer Store and Old Navy rolled into one. I won't go into detail about the series of mini-triumphs that followed as I found some of the food stuff I feared didn't exist in Serbia, but let's just say I won't be living off of drinkable yogurts and carrots anymore. Perhaps the funniest thing of the entire adventure, which I will conclude this blog with, is an interesting phenomenon I encountered in the book section. After looking at some of the books and having a sense of deja-vu when looking at the cover but not recognizing the author, I slowly began to realize that they had phonetically adjusted famous foreign authors' names so that when Serbians pronounced them, it would essentially be pronounced that same as in English. Examples will clarify, "Margaret Atwood" becacme "Margarit Atvud" and "Stephen Hawking" became "Stefen Hokinje" and you guessed it, "John Grisham" became "Dzon Grisjam". It makes you wonder would become of Garcia Marquez or Miguel de Cervantes....

Stay tuned for actual photos from the city and the string of mis-haps I will be sure to encounter as I try to find a gym in Belgrade...

2007-10-01T07:08:00.001-07:00

JAT SQUAT -- experience flying on communist era airline

2007-10-01T03:10:00.000-07:00

You may have travelled the world, but let me tell you, in my opinion you haven't really traveled until you experience JAT airways. Now I am no air place mechanic, but I have had my fair share of flights and I think I can safely say that the plane I grudgingly boarded to fly to Belgrade was missing some seriously important parts, ex. engine covers, cabin temperature regulation devices and apparently landing equipment.

Add to this experience, 30 English school children with cockney accents so strong I couldn't tell until we were just over Germany that they were speaking my native language. Wearing matching baby blue tracksuits, they screamed and squealed in unison with every movement of the plane -- the take off and landing were in itself an experience i wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Picture having little Johnny behind you, rattling your seat with the same intensity as a dog shaking a squirrel or small bird to death, loudly announcing his thoughts on the fate of this plane and screaming at the top of his lungs his fear that take-off has caused him to go deaf. For the love of all things holy, someone give little Johnny some gum. And a Valium or two or twenty.