Sotiritsa, Greece

There is an internet cafe in my village! And what a wretched place it is. There are only ten terminals here, two don't function, and the other eight are usually taken by kids playing Counter Strike or sullen middle ages dudes hemorrhaging money on Party Poker. Everyone else is sitting around, smoking cigarettes.

Life has been rather idyllic here, at least since my sister got out of the hospital. She picked up something approximating traveler's diarrhea, but much worse. We thought that maybe it was amoebic dysentery, but I'm assuming they tested for that, and it came back negative. She was in the hospital in Larisa, about 40 km away from the Estate. It was an unfortunate experience, but it was interesting to see how Greek hospitals work. The verdict: not very well; it was inefficient, there was an appalling shortage of nurses, and nobody cares about you unless you know somebody. Luckily for my sister, my family has connections at that hospital: three of my cousins are doctors there, and pretty high ranking doctors too. At first, the junior doctors and the nurses were rude to my sister because she is obviously a foreigner, and they were set to shove her into a room with like 10 other patients. But then my cousin Costas, one of the doctors, came to visit with my parents and let's just say that there was a marked change in how my sister was treated after that. She was moved into the smallest room in the hospital, and once it was determined that her roommate (a decrepit 80 year old woman from some village in Epiros) was insane they were all set to move her into a room all by herself. Getting good service in Greece is definitely still about who you know.

After Helen was released, the usual Estate activities of swimming, watermelon-eating and general laziness began. They haven't stopped yet. Yesterday was the first day Greeks had to go back to work following their two-week summer vacation, so now the beach in front of the Estate is empty. Good. The less people the better. We now have an uncle of ours from Toronto staying with us for an undetermined period of time. Other various family members have passed through as well. One night there were about 15 people visiting, which was insane. It was my family (4 people), close family friends and their four kids, my sister's godfather and godmother and three members of the godmother's extended family, plus my cousin and his girlfriend. But usually it's a steady trickle, with just a few people visiting every night.

I have vague plans to hike up Mount Olympus. Vague, because once I get to the Estate it's very difficult to get me to go elsewhere.

Life is good.

I don't want to go back to school.

Guca, Day 5

This is the last day of the festival and frankly, I'm pretty happy about that. Overall, this has been an unbelievable experience, likely the most fun I've ever had, but I'm really eager to move on to Greece and see my family.

Also, I'm didn't have as fun a time last night as I had the previous three nights. The village is now overcrowded to the point where it takes half an hour to walk down one street. It is literally shoulder to shoulder out there, with barely any room to dance. This makes it impossible to meet people on the street. I spent half of last night looking for people I had met during my first two nights here, but it proved basically impossible. I eventually met four Polish people who were absolutely lovely, but I'm incredibly disappointed that I didn't run into the two Austrians, two Australians and two Brits who I previously partied with. We hadn't yet exchanged emails and now never will because they left for Belgrade this morning. My other problem with having this many people around is all the garbage it creates. There are hundreds of temporary rubbish bins around Guca, but a thousand more are probably required. By 3 PM, there are greats heaps of rubbish piling the streets: beer bottles, beer cans, various food wrappers, etc. By midnight, the village is absolutely filthy. Honestly, the true heroes of Guca, in addition to the families who open up their houses to visitors, are the people who clean the place in the middle of the night. At 9 AM, when the party is in full swing again, Guca is actually clean.

I also think the tone of the party has changed. It's still a drunken piss-up with crazy music playing at all times, but now it's a Serbian nationalist drunken piss-up with crazy music playing at all times. There were always people wandering around with Mladic or Karadzic t-shirts and shouting nationalist slogans, but during the first three days there were also people sporting Zoran Djindic t-shirts. It seems like all the Serbs who have poured into the village starting Friday afternoon are all ultra-nationalists from either Republika Srpska or southern Serbia (notorious nationalist heartlands). Honestly, I could care less if people want to be ultra-nationalists, and I think I'm a lot more tolerant and understanding of Serbian nationalist than most people. Plus, Guca is first and foremost a festival run by Serbs for Serbs, so they can express themselves however they please. But it can be very uncomfortable for foreigners, or Serbs who aren't ultra-nationalists, it just kills the party vibe for them. For example: I was chatting and drinking with a bunch of Serbs near the town centre, and having a great time. I was dancing and shouting. Before I knew it, half the people around had Karadzic posters and were shouting slogans which I presume meant something like "Karadzic is a hero." What am I supposed to do in a situation like that? I'm certainly not going to start waving around a Karadzic poster. So I left. This wasn't the only such situation either.

So it's time to leave. I'm slated to go back Belgrade tomorrow, and from there I jump on a Thessaloniki-bound overnight train that goes via Macedonia. That's pretty exciting. But first there are more brass bands to dig! The finals of the competition are today at 3 PM in the stadium, after which there's a big street party with the winning band. Should be fun.

Guca, Day 4

I'm still alive!

Things just get more and more insane. People have poured into the city in the last 24 hours as week has turned to weekend. And it's not just people looking for a party either, every street hawker, panhandler, war amputee, swindler, crook and pickpocket has arrived as well. I've seen the strangest things for sale. Ever needed one of those long wire thingies to snake out your drain? You can get them from three different people in Guca. How about a vintage Bosnian Serb army uniform? Ditto. One guy was selling chainsaws. I'm pretty sure chainsaws are the last thing you should be selling to drunk people.

The Boban Markovic concert last night was a level of crazy that I've never seen before. I have no idea how many people were in the stadium last night, I tend to be very bad at estimating these things. There could have been 20 000, 50 000 or even 100 000. Either way, it was a sea of humanity. You could tell the Serbs from the foreigners because the Serbs were so drunk they could barely stand. Foreigners were a little more stable on their feet. People were passing around bottles of booze and were throwing entire cups of beer into the air. By the end of the concert pretty much everyone was soaked. Toward the end, an Italian dude (acting like he was just released from jail) dumped an entire cup of beer on my head. Everyone was dancing like maniacs and shouting. Towards the back of the stadium, where there was more room, people were just running around in circles and hurling themselves into the grass. I've never seen people hard so hard in my life.

And the music was unbelievable. A number of foreign bands opened for Boban Markovic. The best of the lot was from Reims, France, composed exclusively of either doctors or medical students. They ran around the stage like maniacs and yodelled into a microphone. There was also a school band type of outfit from Poland. They even had cheerleaders. They were all 10 years old and were scary good musicians for being so young. Then, finally, Boban Markovic took the stage at about midnight. I forgot to take note of how many people were in his hand, but it was something like this: Boban and his son Marko on trumpet, one guy on bass drum, one guy with snare drums, three French horns, two tubas, and perhaps a trombone. Not sure about the trombone. They were amazing. Most of the bands around town play one of two kinds of song: either fast and loud, or slow Serbian singalong folk songs. Boban and his band played everything, including a lot of mid-tempo stuff in strange time signatures with long, intricate trumpet solos that the drunken crowd didn't know how to dance to. They were clearly better than every other band in this village. Every note they played was crisp, clean and clear. This was particularly impressive when they were playing fast - even at 250 beats per minute, every note played was crisp and precise. Boban Markovic is still the band leader, but the main trumpet is now his son Marko, who I think is only 20 years old. He is already better than his father. I have never seen or heard a better technical trumpet player than Marko Markovic, and I doubt I ever will. He can play anything, at any speed, in any style. And he can also scat in Serbian! The band played for about 2 hours. With half an hour left, there was a loud screech, and then silence. It looked like the band had busted an amp or a speaker or something. I didn't see any technicians anywhere and I wondered if they were as drunk and everyone else. Some people in the crowd started to boo and throw beer cans in the direction of the sound engineers, but then suddenly the music started again. It turned out only to be a power surge and thank god, because I'm pretty sure there would have been a riot if the concert had to stop prematurely.

And today - more of the same! There is a parade through the streets of Guca today with all the bands involved in the competition playing and hundreds of thousands of people drinking and dancing. It is going to be insane. Before that, at 3:00, I am having lunch with my family again. They are roasting a pig in their guests honour. We'll see if the pig is enough food for everyone. They have accepted more and more guests as the week has gone on. In addition to over 10 people sleeping in their house, they now have about 20 people, mostly French, sleeping on their lawn in tents or, in the case of one guy, sleeping on the grass wrapped in a tarp. But the food will almost certainly be amazing. Yesterday I had lunch with my family as well, we had a stew of cabbage and pork which is evidently common at Serbian weddings. It was delicious.

This rules.

Guca Day 3

And I'm beginning to slow down. Last night was about as ridiculous as the last one, ending with me climbing to the top of a statue of a man playing a trumpet with a Serbian dude, then almost falling off and breaking my back. Good times! But I can't take that much more of this, for two reasons. First of all, I'm tired. My stay in Serbia has been basically a nonstop party, and I simply am not used to partying this often. Nor do I particularly like it; if nothing else, all this jumping around has taught me that I really, really, really value my quiet time. Secondly, somewhere along the way, probably in Belgrade, I ingested something that I shouldn't have ingested and now my stomach does backflips pretty much every time I put anything into it, including water. So you can image what booze does. 40 days in Africa and I didn't get sick once, and here I am with stomach pains in Serbia.

So even though tonight promises to be more frantic than the last two nights combined (all the Serbs who couldn't get time off work will be flooding into town tonight), it will necessity have to be a quiet night for me. In an hour of so, I'm having lunch with my host family. From what I have gleaned about Serbian hospitality, there will be more food than I can possibly eat. That will likely be followed by an hour or so hovering near the toilet as the food makes quickly makes its way through my system. And then tonight, Boban Markovic plays a concert in the stadium. Markovic leads the best brass orchestra in Serbia; if I hadn't randomly bought a Boban Markovic album three years ago, I wouldn't be there today. The concert starts at 11 in the stadium and will go probably until 3 in the morning. I probably won't get to sleep until 4. This is what constitutes a "quiet" day at Guca.

Guca, Day 2

There is an internet cafe in Guca! I was afraid that I would have to write a gigantic post when I got back to Belgrade, and there is no way that I would be able to encapsulate everything that's going on here in one post.

Guca is a village of 3000 people, about three and a half hours south of Belgrade. For those driven to try and find it on a map, the closest major city is Cacak. This part of Serbia is mountainous, and Guca is surrounded by hills. It is an absolutely breathtaking village. Holding a gigantic trumpet festival/debaucherous party in a village of 3000 people presents some serious problems, not least with accommodation. 500,000 people will come to Guca this year. A lot of them are Serbs from Belgrade or Cacak or Nis or somewhere within driving distance who come for the day then retreat back home (driving drunk, inevitably) to sleep. But even if only 20% of the people who come to Guca sleep here... well, that's still a gigantic problem. They tell me there is a hotel here, but I haven't seen it yet. Pretty much every family in Guca has opened up their houses to travellers. A lot of people camp. And a lot of people, including a Welshman who I met in Belgrade, sleep in fields, the town square, or collapse on the street, drunk. I am staying with a family. There are nine of us staying at their house, three per room. I have no idea where the family is sleeping. I am staying in a room with a Frenchman, Laurent, and an Irishman with arguably the most Irish name of all time, Patrick Murphy. We arrived at about 6:00 PM last night. Immediately, the family made us sit down and offered us food, coffee and booze. The father, who's in his 50s, immediately took out shot glasses and put them in front of Patrick, Laurent and I. It was slivovice. We thought that it was just a welcome drink (very common in Serbia), but he kept filling up our glasses after we finished and insisting that we drank more. We probably had 7 shots of slivovice, and we were drunk. And then we went off into the night.

How can I describe this festival? How's this: it's a bunch of crazy people (almost all Roma) playing crazy music to even crazier people (probably 95 Serbs and miscellaneous other foreigners). The festival is loosely structured around a battle of the bands. There are competitions all overt Serbia, regional playdowns, and at the end 16 bands emerge, representing all regions of the country. These bands give concerts in the stadium (not a soccer stadium, but a specially-built stadium for brass music!) and there is a panel of judges who give the bands marks. The winner wins the title of "zlatna truba", or golden trumpet. What that entails I don't know. Probably money and definitely fame. Meanwhile, in downtown Guca, hundreds of brass bands play for the thousands of people milling around. They play in restaurants, on the street, anywhere there is room. Remember, this is a village of 3000 people, so this is all happening in a very confined area. You can walk 20 metres and another band is playing.

It is absolute madness. The music is fast and pulsating. Serbian brass music isn't "traditional" music per se. A lot of it is, and I'd say that the bulk of the repetoire of most bands consists of Serbian folk songs. But there is new material being written all the time, and all sorts of foreign influences are easily identifable. Last night I heard a band playing Brazilian samba on brass. Most bands are about 8 people, but sometimes more. You'll always have a bass drum, a snare drum, at least two trumpets (definitely the most important instrument in the band), a tuba or two, and some melange of trombones, french horns, flugelhorns, sousaphones, whatever. The music is absolutely frenzied - songs are played in double time, at 200 beats per minute or faster. The harder people dance, the faster the musicians play. Everyone is drunk. I've never met a group of people who enjoy drinking and partying as much as the Serbs. The music starts at about 7 AM, and continues in earnest until about 3 AM though if you know the right bar, it never stops. Meanwhile, there are vendors everywhere, selling beer, slivovice, vodka, every other kind of alcohol you can imagine, massive amounts of grilled and roasted meat (ethical vegetarians probably shouldn't ever come here, because there are entire pigs being roasted on spits pretty much everywhere you look), t-shirt and every other kind of trinket you can imagine. It's a crush of people in a very confined area.

I was separated from Laurent and Patrick but I ran into some people who I met on the bus down here, two insane Austrian guys and two Australian girls. We just bounced around from bar to bar and wandered down the street, listened to music and danced. Various people joined us along the way, including an English couple, various Serbs, a couple from Madrid, and innumerable French people. French is basically the second language of this festival, there are a lot of French people here. At about 1 AM we went into a bar and we stayed a while because the band was good. If you like what the band is going, you give them money. The more money you give them, the longer they will play, otherwise they'll just leave and set up shop at another bar. But this band was good and the people at the restaurant were generous. I guess word gets around among the bands about good places to play, because soon there was another band in this tiny restaurant. And then there was a third. It was absolutely insane. You had to get really close to the band you wanted to hear or else the other bands would kind of drown them out. Consequently I spent a lot of the night dancing right next to blaring tubas, which is definitely fine by me.

We moved on to another bar where we made the acquaintance of some Bosnian Serbs who insisted on buying us drinks. OK then. The band at the previous restaurant followed us there. They made a circle around me and one of the Australian girls and we went absolutely crazy. I danced harder than I'd ever danced in my life. I probably spent $40 (a lot of money in Serbia) on this band because they were amazing and I didn't want them to stop. There are two main ways of paying the band. First, you can shove the bill into the lead trumpet (always the trumpet). Or, and this is my preferred option, you paste the bill on the lead trumpeteer's forehead. They are invariably sweating so much (everyone sweats in Guca all the time) that the bill sticks. They blasted at us for about 45 minutes. Afterwards, everyone was exhausted (it was about 3 AM) and wanted to sleep, but I ran into the Welshman who I had met in Belgrade and we decided to keep partying. We went to the main square and drank with Serbs (who of course never sleep). I learned some interesting things from them. For example, some of the bars, including the one we had just been at, are known as havens for Serbian ultra-nationalists. The Bosnian Serbs we met there definitely fall into that category. Moderate or pro-European Swerbs generally don't step foot into those bars. They have their own preferred bars and restaurants, where ultra-nationalists (many of whom are wearing Mladic or Karadzic t-shirts) aren't welcome. I am learning a lot about Serbia here, more than I did in Belgrade.

I finally stumbled home at 5 AM. This morning, the family served me a wonderful breakfast of cheese pie, eggs, watermelon, greats heaps of food I had no prayer of finishing. He also offered me slivovice. Brandy at 9 AM. Why the hell not. The insanity here never ends.

Belgrade Day 5

I am leaving Belgrade tomorrow and thank God. This is less a reflection of the city than of the people who are staying at the hostel with me. Belgrade has a fantastic, debaucherous nightlife, but it's hardly the only thing to do here, though you wouldn't know that from the habits of everyone staying at this hostel. People want to get destroyed every night. And that's fine, but I've began to get a little bored of that. I've tried to float the idea of finding some kind of unique Serbian restaurant, but nobody finds that idea interesting (there are traditional Belgrade bistros called kafanas with ale and crazy food and people playing the accordion). Disappointing.

I am deeply disillusioned with hosteling in general. I'm 26 years old; it's no longer fun to share bunks with drunken 18 year old English guys who want to get drunk and buy Serbian prostitutes.

I had to leave Belgrade yesterday or else my head was going to blow up. I took a day trip to Subotica, which used to be an important city in the Austro-Hungarian Empire but is now basically a sleepy border town on Serbia's border with Hungary. Northern Serbia has a significant Hungarian minority, and the bus went through a lot of Hungarian villages on the way to Subotica. There isn't a lot going on in Subotica, but it's very leafy and pleasant and drips with Austro-Hungarian ambiance and was basically a perfect change of pace for me.

So this is it for me in Belgrade. I come back here after Guca, but just for enough time to catch an overnight train in Thessaloniki. This city is pretty amazing but if you visit, make sure you come with a LOT of energy. This is a 24 hour city, and it's rather pointless to visit if you're not willing to adapt to those terms. Belgrade reminds me a lot of Bucharest: similar size, not always aesthetically pleasing (though there are some very, very nice parts of both cities), exuberant, hard-partying, full of really, really nice people.

And now, five days of trumpets.

Belgrade Day 3

This city is absolutely FRANTIC, and it may just be impossible to avoid getting caught up in the madness. I partied last night until 9 AM and I didn't even mean to. I finally got my clothes back at 9 PM, and to celebrate I went immediately on walkabout (I had been cooped up in the hostel all day waiting for my luggage). I got back to the hostel at about 12:30 AM, and I was all set to go to bed, I wanted to wake up early and make a day trip to Novi Sad or Subotica or somewhere. I thought that by coming back so late, I would avoid outgoing partygoers. Well, nobody in Belgrade goes out before midnight, and things don't really heat up until 2 or 3 AM. So the partygoers were still at the hostel and convinced me to go out. What's the harm in a few beers?

A few beers is never just a few beers in Belgrade; the city just sucks you in. We ended up back at the Sava River, on a floating bar. It was a turbopop bar. Turbopop is a form of Serbian popular music that's basically souped-up versions of old songs, with synths and drum machines replacing traditional instrumentation. Turbopop basically sounds exactly like Greek music from the same era, just sung in Serbian and with a slightly different sound (i.e. synths instead of acoustic instrumentation). But the rhythms are the same, the timber and style of singing is exactly the same. Walking into that bar (we were definitely the only non-Serbs there) was like walking into a Greek wedding. So I stayed there until close and danced and danced and introduced myself to various Serbs (who of course liked me because I'm Greek and bought me slivovice) and sweated. In recent years, certain Serbian DJs have started remixing old turbopop songs; I started listening to this "neo-turbopop" about a year ago and I absolutely love it. The band actually played a few songs that I knew and could sing along with (well as much as one can sing along with lyrics in a language they can't speak). The Serbs at the club was pretty thunderstruck that I knew Serbian songs; they thought I was a madman. So more drinks were bought on my behalf.

At closing time (6 AM), I wandered out of there and promptly made the acquaintance of a Serbian-Australian and his Serbian cousin who had all sorts of crazy tattoos on his arm and was a complete lunatic. I chatted with them for a while and before I knew it, it was 8:30 AM. Oh shit. Time to go home.

If I don't leave Belgrade soon, it's going to kill me.

Belgrade Day 2

My luggage is still AWOL. I called Air France at 1:30 and confirmed that my bags had indeed made it to Belgrade (whooo hooo!). The delivery guy was currently out distributing other people's lost bags (there's one guy employed by Nikola Tesla airport to deliver almost every airline's lost luggage, JAT has their own I think) but my bag was slated for the next load. He estimated the wait at 2 or 3 hours... and 6 hours later I'm still waiting. *Sigh* I called them back an hour ago and they confirmed that my bag had left the airport, so I guess that's progress. $10 says alcohol is involved some way.

Here's the thing: I am in dire need of fresh clothes because I went out last night and sweated and basically made my current clothes unfit for further use. I wasn't planning on going anywhere, but I met a girl from Montreal who convinced me to go to some club with her and some other random hostel people. Here is a transcript of our conversation.

Girl From Montreal: hey, what are you doing tonight?
TG: Nothing.
GFM: You should come partying with us.
TG: OK!

As you can see, it was a tough sell. So out we went into Belgrade's vaunted nightlife. I can confirm that everything I'd heard about this city and its nocturnal partying seems to be accurate: Belgrade is indeed a rollicking good time. This city jumps, and large swathes of it are open 24 hours a day. I've so far seen 24 hour a day restaurants, bars, internet cafes, pharmacies, supermarkets, and, coolest of all, a 24 hour bakery, ideal for getting a greasy slice of burek at 3:30 AM. Last night we went to the Sava River, where there are a series of floating clubs on the river. Floating clubs sound kind of gimmicky and lame, or at least they do to me, but there is actually quite a useful utilitarian reason for their existence: being in the middle of a river means that floating clubs can make as much noise and stay open as late as they desire as they aren't located in anything approaching a residential district. There were about 10 clubs in a row on the river, and from what I understand there are more moored on the Danube a few minutes walk away. The first one we went to was completely dead, while the other had a lineup outside. I of course befriended every Serb who cared to talk to me. There is a difference in how I introduce myself to Serbs, and how I introduced myself in Mozambique any pretty much everywhere else I've visited:

Mozambique: "Hi, my name is Terry. I am from Canada."
Serbia: "Hi, my name is Terry. I am Greek."

Being Greek means something here, Greeks and Serbs are very good friends. Part of that is history (similar histories of Turkish occupation, and we tagged with the Serbs during the Balkan Wars against first the Turks and then the Bulgarians), part of it is sharing a common religion (Orthodoxy) and part of it is contemporary politics: Greece opposed the NATO bombing strikes on Serbia, getting themselves into a bit of trouble with their NATO allies along the way, and have generally stuck up for Serbia in every conceivable way in the past 10 years (example: Greece will recognize Kosovo's independence when hell freezes over). So being Greek matters here; announcing myself as such generally meant someone either hugging me or buying me a shot of slivovice (Serbian plum brandy/firewater that I think I will be referencing multiple times in this space). Sometimes both. I even met a Serb who spoke Greek, he evidently lived in Greece eight years ago. As per usual, my Greek is pretty damn good with a belly full of slivovice.

So you can imagine how my night went: pretty wildly, once we moved to the club that was packed. I never received an explanation why the other one was dead, unless "because people are here instead" counts as a reason. It ended with me dancing on a table, hugging random Serbs and saying phrases in Serbian that random people had scribbled on a piece of paper (somewhere, Matt Voytilla is reading this and laughing). I think I am friends with half of Belgrade now. I went to a 24 hour fast food place at 3:15 AM or so (the party continued on the river until God knows when), made friends with the dude tending shop, and he made me some crazy food, like chicken stuffed with sausage and other stuff then shoved into a bun. It was heavenly.

And now I anxiously await my clothes...

Belgrade Day 1

I am in Belgrade. My backpack is in Paris. This is a problem.

This is how it went down: my ticket called for a really quick connection in Paris, only 45 minutes. When I first saw the itinerary, I was immediately concerned and even went so far as to call Air France to see what they had to say about it. No sweat, I was told; because both of my flights were using Terminal 2E, I would basically jump off one plane and on to the other with a minimum of fuss and time to spare. OK, no problem.

Air France, by the way, is an amazing airline, probably the best I've taken (though I have yet to take Singapore Airlines or Cathay Pacific or Emirates or any of those "deluxe" Asian airlines). They give you half a baguette with dinner, and a healthy slice of camembert afterwards. Champagne is free. Also, they have cameras both on the underside of the plane and in the cockpit, both accessible from your personal entertainment system thingie, that afford crazy views. I have no problems with Air France.

(The internet cafe I am in is playing a Serbian language version of "Just Another Day" by Jon Secada. I'm not even making that up.)

My problem is with Charles-de-Gaulle airport and the people working there. For some inexplicable reason, Air Traffic Control told us to dock at Terminal 2C. It took 15 minutes for us to taxi into our stop, then 5 minutes for busses to transport us to the actual building, and then it took 30 minutes to get to 2E and go through security and sprint to my gate. That would make me 5 minutes late for my flight. At that point, I thought my bags would be left behind for sure. But then the captain accounced that because we missed our takeoff slot, Air Traffic Control was delaying us at the gate another 40 minutes. Probably for the best from my perspective - 40 extra minutes would have given baggage handlers a total of one hour and 25 minutes to move my bags from 2C to 2E. That is a lot of time. No reason why my luggage shouldn't make it to Belgrade, right?

Of course my luggage didn't make it to Belgrade. I don't understand how it's possible to fail to transfer a bag from one plane to another in 1:25. Remind me never to fly through Paris unless I have 3 hours connection time. My bag is supposedly arriving tomorrow aboard the same flight. It had better, because the clothes I do have are completely unsuitable for Belgrade's scorching heat. I have a pair of jeans, a black t-shirt, and a long-sleeved hoodie, absolutely the worst possible clothes to have under the circumstances. To minimize sweating, I only left my hostel at 4 PM and walked VERY slowly and took numerous breaks in the shade but I am still dripping with sweat and probably smell very badly. I think I may take it easy tonight, which is a shame because it's Friday night and Belgrade from what I understand jumps on weekends (and every other day, actually). But I can't risk completely ruining these clothes just in case I have to wear them again tomorrow. Actually, I do have to wear these clothes tomorrow... my bag isn't being delivered until 5 PM. Or, I can hang out with the hostel staff. I am staying at a hostel where my sister stayed literally 3 days ago (she is in Greece now). They quite definitely remember her, and liked her, so they are being extremely nice to me. All this coasting off my sister's reputation kind of reminds me of high school.

Off to seek shade...