I went to Belgrade this past weekend to see friends, meet with a couple of people from my old job, and pick up the things I had left behind in my last minute run over the border.  The weekend was excellent, relaxing and interesting. Being in my former office made me appreciative of the fact that I do not work there anymore.  Chaos can be lovely, but not 24 hours a day 7 days a week, there is only so long a person can live in crisis mode before it begins to eat away at their body and brain.

  

Getting to Belgrade was no problem... getting back however...

The bus driver stopped like ten times before we left Serbia... stopped to buy cigarettes, to smoke them, to buy things at the little family produce stands on the side of  the road, to smoke, to let people he knew on, to let them off.... the whole time I have this massive sinus headache and the back half of the bus are foreign girls in there late teens/early twenties speaking loudly in english.  At one stop they came up to me... one recognized me from a party in Sarajevo... and started asking me where I was from and what I am doing here etc... my face was killing me and I just wanted to be left alone, and then they did not believe me when I said I am from CA.  "But where are you FROM?" "California" "but you have an accent" "um, okay" "well where are your parents from?"  I lied.  It seemed like the thing to do at the moment, but upon second thought later, while back on the bus that I was beginning to think would be my new home, I realized that Sarajevo is a very small place and my lie might come back to bite me.  Oh well.  I figure if a group of people are so adamantly unwilling to accept the truth (repeatedly told to them) they deserve the harmless lie I fed to them.

Then we FINALLY get to the border and the guards come through, no problem with me (I am NOT sitting with the young'uns, as a general rule I avoid sitting in the self created international section while crossing borders.  There are benefits to traveling in groups, but they tend to draw unwanted attention from harmless curious onlookers and armed guards) but there is a problem with folks at the back of the bus.  So this group of australians are pulled off the bus and the girls, who were not traveling with the australians are talking loudly about how they are glad it was not them, and start laughing and joking about these YOUNG australians being pulled off by clearly unhappy border guards (the australians do not speak BCS at all).  We sit there, after about 30 minutes the aussi girls come back on, but the guy they were with is still not back.  So one of the non-aussi foreign girls goes up to the bus driver and starts in on him about when are we leaving and they have to get to Sarajevo... the driver is saying "I don't know."  They take the aussi guy's bags off the bus, we wait.  Finally, he and his bags come back and we leave.  We have at least 3 and half hours left till Sarajevo.  Then about thirty minuets into Bosnia we are stopped by the police and the bus and baggage area is searched... then we go on... then the driver stops about six times... smoking, letting locals on and off.

Finally we get to Sarajevo and before we arrive at the station the non-aussi girls want off the bus (so they won't have to take a taxi) and they are telling him in english to let them off... the driver is saying in Bosnian, this is not a stop, they don't understand, so passengers are translating for them, they are complaining in english... loudly...

So we get to the station and they want me to split a taxi with them (even though they are going no where near my place)... there are no taxis, so they are trying to flag down other people's taxis, the drivers are saying 'no, you have to call a taxi'.  At this point I have already phoned and have a taxi coming for me... I see the aussi group standing around looking totally overwhelmed.  They are all sick... which apparently is why the border guards were stressed about them... and they have no KM and no idea how to get to their hostel... which is about a block from my building.  So when the taxi arrives I have them get in with me and just take them and pay for it... the non-aussi girls ran up to me as we are getting into the taxi and say 'I thought WE were all going together".

So I get home at like 2 am... I was supposed to arrive at 10 or 10.30 pm.