Recap & Homeward Bound

So, this is it. My last night in the Hippo Hostel, in Budva, in Montenegro, in the Balkans. I am heading off to known and unknown elements back at home in the San Francisco Bay Area again in less than 5 hours. Sigh.

Before I get too much into thanking all those people who played any role in my many mind-boggling memories of this place from the past 6+ months, and then rehashing some of those memories in quick-witted fashion, I should say that I'm going back to the Bay, and hopefully finding a nice, new apartment in Oakland again, near the lake (anyone know of any good vacancies?) because I didn't manage to find an impressive new job in public radio anywhere else in the country that would necessitate my relocating out of the Bay Area so that I can practice the occupation that I have loved for almost 10 years now. So, sigh, again. I'm going back to my favorite city in the world, where the largest concentration of loved ones in my life reside, where all my favorite places and things are, and where my beloved is waiting for me to not have a long-distance relationship with him anymore. I'm not that bummed about going back, thus.

But, it's been quite an odyssey here these past several months. It's hard to be leaving this place that since April 5th, I've been calling Home, this beautiful, lively, hectic, scatter-brained, infuriating, wonderful place -- and that would be both the hostel AND the city of Budva. As far as life-changing, eye-opening, furiously intense, and adventurous chapters of a person's life, this ranks up there just under my 4 and a half years in college as the period of my "youth" that I'll think back to for the rest of my cognizant years on earth as a time when I met a world of wonderful people and things, and experienced the most in life. And, it all fit into a neat little window of half a year.

I'll remember a lot from this window: the places, the people, the sights, the conversations, the laughs, the torment, the mishaps, the food, the fun, the folly, the things I wrote about in this blog, the things I *didn't* write about, and everything in between. I think in Italian, the phrase mille locos, or something spelled similarly, translates to "a thousand crazies". Every last crazy of my mille locos these past 6+ months was worthwhile. From my early days here transitioning into this world, to my laid-up months with the back injury, to life in the trenches during the height of the heat, humidity, and water shortage of Budva, to the past month and a half when I've been able to double my number of red dots on the wall map I own of cities I've been to -- it was all worth it. All of it. That's right, I wouldn't have skipped this for anything in the world. Though, no, I also wouldn't do it again. Because I believe that the most life-affirming experiences we have, the ones that shape us with sledge hammers and not chisels, we can only have once, and must then move on to the next one. It's true, my therapist told me.

So, to recap: Martina is leaving the building. In just a few short hours. I'm traveling to London, New York, and Orange County for the next 2 weeks. I'll be back "home" the night of Thursday, October 25th. Everyone residing in the San Francisco Bay Area, I'll be expecting a massive ticker tape parade down Market Street that weekend. Thanks. And, I'll see you all soon, wherever you are.

Greece is the Word

I think the song lyrics go something like this, if I can remember my John Travolta musicals right:

Greece is the word (is the word that they heard)
It's got groove, it's got meaning
Greece is the time, is the place, is the motion
Now Greece is the way we are feeling.

Or, maybe not. But, since I just got back from there 2 days ago, I guess I should tell you a little bit about it.

This was my last "holiday" before I leave Budva for good, and it was 11 days of rest, relaxation, and a number of frivolous things that girls do when they've got lots of quality time together and nothing specific required of them. Nicole and I arrived separately in Athens, greeted each other with surprise and excitement, as if we hadn't planned on being at an airport in Greece at the same time on the same day, and then we hit the town. Actually, the town and two islands. That's specifically what we hit. Suffice to say lots of good times were had. In the interest of brevity, let me just give you some of the highlights (and maybe a lowlight or two, though I won't dwell on those much because I'm not feeling like a downer today) of what we saw and did in each of those 3 places that were thus hit...

ATHENS (4 nights): The capital city of Greece, Athens has been continuously inhabited for at least 3,000 years. They like to brag about it being the leading city of all Ancient Greece, enjoying a host of cultural achievements during the 5th century BC that laid the foundations for western civilization, blahdy, blahdy, blah.

• The poshy hotel that Nic got us was short on friendliness but long on clear views of the Acropolis from their rooftop jacuzzi deck. It was centrally-located too, within meandering distance to 3 major Metro stops.
  
• We went to a ridiculously entertaining dinner at a tiny place called Edodi, situated inside an old house in a neighborhood that hardly let on about the charming, intimate setting that the restaurant enjoyed inside. The entertaining part comes from the incredibly personal attention you get from all the staff who bring every single dish on their menu to your table and describe them one by one to help you decide what to order. First, you choose apps that way, then the staff bring out beautifully arranged plates of raw ingredients for each main dish and explain how the dishes are prepared. Then, the desserts come out on a multi-tier cart. And finally, the toothpick dispenser is delivered to your table in a music box with a dancing puppet inside it. You open the drawer to get a toothpick out and the music starts so that the little puppet inside the window of the box dances around. It takes a guy named Romeo to bring that kind of charm to the act of getting a toothpick out to, well, pick your teeth.
• If you want to see live music in Athens, the way to go is rembitika, which they call "Greek Blues". (Though, being a fan of blues music personally, I didn't notice just 12 bars being played.) There are rooftop tavernas in the Plaka district of Athens that have great views of the Acropolis all lit up at night, where you can see local musicians playing rembitika, trying to inspire the Greek restaurant patrons to get up and dance. My favorite part of watching local people do traditional Greek dance? -- Anyone who's willing to get up always has a couple of friends who will come with and crouch on the edge of the dance floor, clapping along to the music and serving as The Active Admiring Audience that the dancing person is dancing for. Being a performing seal myself, I find that tradition very motivational. We went to drink and watch 2 nights in a row.

Cut to: a 9-hour ferry ride south to our first island destination.

SANTORINI (3 nights): The southernmost member of the Cyclades islands in Greece, Santorini, also known as Thera, is a small, circular archipelago of volcanic islands in the Aegean Sea, about 200 km southeast of the mainland. The largest island in the group has little towns built on the top of cliffs facing the caldera, a volcanic feature formed by the collapse of land following an eruption. Santorini's caldera was formed in the Minoan eruption around 1600 BC. (Yes, I looked all of this up to impress you.)

• This place was inhabited by the cruise ship set, which I personally feel is a population of travelers that can suck the charm out of even a port like Heaven. I saw a woman freaking out and yelling at a local man over some donkeys walking "too close" past her on their way down the mountainside to the docks that she was heading toward too so that she could "catch a boat out of this place".
• About those donkeys: I wanted to ride one up the mountainside as soon as I read about them in the guidebook, but then changed my mind when I saw how bored and depressed they looked waiting around with their wranglers for some overweight American fares to come along. I decided not to burden a donkey just for the novelty of the experience, and opted to ride up the mountainside in a cable car that dangled from overhead, much like the Sky Ride at Disneyland back home. That was fun too, actually.
• All Nic and I did on this island was sit around eating, drinking, and talking, and strolling the tiny passageways and dangerously cobbled stone alleys shopping for all manner of lovely trinkets and attire for mostly ourselves but also a few loved ones. I bought more on Santorini than I have done in the past 6 months of travel and living abroad total. I need new, bigger luggage.
• It's a toss-up which is my favorite of the 2 restaurants that we ate at more than one time each on the island. One contender was Naoussa. The cool thing about that place was that the gregarious, affable staff there who greet you upon arrival with a freshly-poured glass of locally-made white wine remembered our names the 2nd time we came by for dinner, even though it was 2 nights after the first time we were there. I felt like a total local, despite the fact that there are no locals on Santorini, just tourists and seasonal hospitality industry workers. The other restaurant that I might call my fave was Elia, run by Yanni, the island's resident Sean Penn look-alike and man-about-town. He knew EVERYONE in the restaurant industry on Santorini, and had a million things to say about everyone and everything. This is the type of guy who goes out all night to local bars after he's closed his restaurant and pays 20 Euros to the nearby baker just so that he can show his friends the baker's pet parrot who talks and whistles at pretty ladies. Yanni told great stories!
  

Then, it was a 4-hour ferry ride north again to our only other island destination.

NAXOS (3 nights): The largest of the Cyclades islands at 428 square km, Naxos was the center of archaic Cycladic culture, meaning that it now sells a lot of bronze or stone replicas of ancient idols, helmets, and other found archaeological garbage in the souvenir shops around Hora, the main town on the island. Not that that bothers the archaeologist in me at all.

• This was definitely my favorite place that we visited in Greece, which makes it nice that we ended the trip with it. I loved how Naxos actually had locals and families living on the island year-round, and now that the high season was coming to a close, the people you see on the main stretch of road in the center of town on a Friday or Saturday night are Greeks who live there and are out with their kids, or on dates, or enjoying the quarterfinals of the Rugby World Cup on the flat-screen T.V.'s at the bars. (Go, Argentina!)
• The hotel where we stayed was about 10 paces from the beautiful and largely unpopulated Agios Georgios Beach. I laid out on lounge chairs under umbrellas for hours at a time and went wading into the shallow waters that ran for meters out to sea for 2 straight days. Everyone in Santorini kept warning us that Naxos would be quiet when we got there, but actually, when I'm looking to spend some time on the beach, what I *want* is quiet. It was perfect!
• Nic and I stumbled onto the Domus Festival (a music and dance performance festival) in the Kastro (the old castle which was the center of things for the small Catholic population in the area) on our last night in town. We saw an overly-emotive jazz vocalist do pieces from Ella's songbook, and while she had a really nice voice, her grandstanding unfortunately made us have to avert our eyes so that we wouldn't laugh. The performance aside, it was incredibly cool to see live jazz performed in the cellar of an old stone church-turned-museum, surrounded by religious and household artifacts recovered from as far back as the 4th Crusades. That might've been the coolest venue in which I've seen live jazz performed to date.

Another ferry back to Athens then for a final, brief night there before Nic and I parted company in the Athens airport on Monday. She, heading back to the Bay, and me, going to Budva for my last stand. All in all, the Greece leg of my travels was a wild success of the luxurious relaxation variety. Thanks in large part to my dearest friend Nicole and her substantial appetite for idle conversation.

Seasons Change

So, John got to town on Tuesday night. It was a harrowing day full of tired and weary (I worked the day shift on my own), and then joy and bliss (John arrived and we kissed). It was a nice reunion.

And so far, it's been a good visit. We haven't done a whole lot of sight-seeing thusfar. I blame John's jetlag and my sense of not wanting to sight-see that much in a place that I'd been calling home for the past 5 months. I wanted us to go to the first annual Petrovac Jazz Festival, but the weather (hot and rainy) and my health (tired and pukey) held us back. But, we did take 12 hostel guests and 3 peddle boats out to Sveti Nikola Island yesterday and spent 4 sun-soaked hours on the only completely deserted beach in Budva. No one believed me that the beach was going to be devoid of tourists, but I was dead right. Everyone had a blast, despite one lost t-shirt (by George), one lost pair of prescription glasses (by my beloved), and one lost lunch (by me, my first time seasick!).

It's strange how these past 3 days or so, this town has really emptied out a whole lot. I knew it would happen after August was over and the high season ended, but I wasn't really prepared for it happening 2 days before September, and also at such a dramatic rate! Where normally there would be bathing-suit clad couples and families coming back from the beaches at 5:00pm heading to their vacation rentals, or where I would see teeming hordes of humanity marching along the promenade at 7:00pm at night, checking out the carnival rides, the beach bars, and each other, there just AREN'T ANYMORE! It's sort of sad to see the end of the era of madness. I always hated crowds and never enjoyed this scene as it carried on all around me here in Budva these past couple of months. But, now that we're in September officially, and John is here, so I'm finally on vacation, it's just sad to see the season end.

This is the beginning of another change in my world here in Budva. This next month and a half will be about friends visiting, and taking lots of vacation trips around the region. So welcome, new era. Good-bye, old one. I will miss thee teeming masses and thou crazy hordes.

Tonight, John and I set off on a ferry across the sea. Italy, here we come!!!

Living off the Land

The other day, I came very close to being a Balkan version of Laura Ingalls. Or, rather, a Vietnamese-American, 33-year-old, 21st century, Montenegrin version of America's favorite pioneer girl from the Little House on the Prairie books. So, I guess not so close. But, I did go for a nice, long hike up the hills past the Hippo Hostel to a natural spring, where I drank my fill of the cool, clear water, and then meandered my way back down, picking wild blackberries and fresh figs along the way. I ate and drank from the land that day.

The pioneer party included me, Nadya, our neighbor, Jelena, and her mother, Sonja, along with Travis, an Australian guest staying at the hostel. We hiked for maybe an hour up the hill and the view along the trail was spectacular the entire way up. As we climbed, we could see the entire town of Budva, Old Town in the distance, a big swath of the Adriatic Sea, and Sveti Nikola island, a wedge-shaped mass of land 1 nautical mile offshore. And, we passed old stone ruins of houses that have stood on these hillsides for centuries now. Some of the ruins had been incorporated into lovely modern houses, sprawling across the hillside, and some of them had chickens penned inside. There was a small church, rebuilt and looking quite sharp, with headstones in the graveyard that were labeled in Cyrillic and which dated back at least a couple hundred years. There were lots of trees and fences made with twigs and barb wire. It felt like I was hiking Point Reyes at times.

The natural spring that we drank from has been tamed, put into a wall and piped out now in 3 faucet-looking things that continuously run, which kills some of the romance of the spring itself, but I guess makes it less muddy around where the water comes out of the rock. And, after drinking our fill of spring water, we picked juicy, perfectly ripe blackberries from bushes all alongside the hiking trail on the hill. We ate as much as we collected to bring home with us. And, the figs. Figs are in season now too, so there was an assault on all the fig trees that we encountered on the road home. Jelena, the scorchin' hot blond bombshell and her mom, with long sticks that they found in the woods, whacked at the high branches of the fig trees to get the fruit down. We all had fig seeds stuck in our teeth by the end of the afternoon, but there were no complaints. We came home to a nice cup of Turkish coffee, some good conversation, and playing with a kitten that Nadya and Sonja found trapped in a barn up in the hills, which Jelena insisted on adopting.

There will never be better-tasting blackberries or sweeter figs or clearer mountain spring water in my life than on this afternoon in Montenegro.

Bedroom Voice

So, I've been sick for the past week. Sore throat, bad cough, lots of juicy, juicy phlegm. The entire staff of the Hippo Hostel came down with something gnarley within days of each other, and we're all just now climbing out of it one by one. In the meantime, I've learned how to hock an impressive loogie. I can projectile spit them even. I'm almost southern with my jar of moonshine and my cut-off denim shorts, carrying a spittoon around with me wherever I go!

So, the result of a week of bad cough and torn-up throat is that your voice is very tired and deep. You know -- the I-have-a-cold voice, which is kind of sexy and raspy. The bad thing about the I-have-a-cold voice is that I can't sing whenever I want to, and at the end of the night, I'm really tired from a day of trying to talk. The impromptu karaoke thing happens a lot around here, can you believe it? And, I can't stand that I don't have the voice to belt out showtunes on command. Heartbreak! My fans are waiting!

Though, the sexy, raspy trade-off is good too. Tonight, I walked into the Irish Pub here in the Old Town and the owner of the pub, a guy that we all know pretty well because we go in there a lot with our hostel guests when we're on pub crawls, said to me: "Hey, I thought I heard your beautiful voice out here. Whatchou doing?" Also, there are these 3 Asian-Australian guys staying with us here, and the one who had to call a couple of days before they arrived to make their reservation for 3 beds, his friends told me last night that he had said after getting off the phone with me that I had a really sexy voice and he wondered what I looked like. You have NO idea how much a compliment about my voice gets me! I mean, I'm in radio dammit. You KNOW that everyone who works in radio inherently likes the sound of their own voice to SOME degree. Well, with my penchant for judging voices (I can't be someone's friend, truly, if I don't like their voice. I just can't!) on a regular basis, it stands to reason that high praise to me is a compliment on the sound of your voice. So, yes, when a person tells me that he or she likes the sound of my voice, I tend to get all soft and fluttery. It's a little button I have. Is it wrong of me to publicly admit this on a forum like my blog?

Well, now you know. It's easy to butter this bread. Just tell me you like the sound of my voice, and yes, you can have any favor you want. Even 2 extra nights for 3 people in a hostel so full that we turn away walk-ups daily.

Serbian Funk in the Garden

Last night, I went out and partied my body for the first time since early May and have now proven definitively that I am healed! The back is BACK! Rich Bitch, the Serbian funk band that I've been touting since I got hold of them at the radio station here, was playing an outdoor bar near Old Town, the Garden Caffe. (Did anyone ever download their album from my blog when it was up there for 3 weeks?) God, they were great live! My friends and I didn't sit down ONCE after the band's first song. A lot of good funk covers and then a number of Serbian hits from decades past. They brought on a woman lead singer who was the Yugoslavian Tina Turner in the 80's and were doing a lot of her songs from back in the day. She has a GREAT voice! Deep and strong, which I love in chicks!

We danced under towering trees on a stone deck in the balmy night air with a yellow-gold moon shining down on us: me, my boss at the radio station, Vukan, 20-year-old Aussie Stu with the indomitable energy, 2 cute, blond girls from Finland, American Brian, 2 Brits, and sundry other folks from the Hippo. I stood maybe 3 feet away from the horn section boogying down like it was nobody's business. They rocked the house (rocked the open air?)! And I finally remembered why it is that I came here to Budva for these 6 months. Because, it wasn't for the herniated disc in my back and 2 months of bedrest. It wasn't for the sweltering humid heat or the city-wide water shortage that makes cleaning the hostel and washing my hair a particular challenge. And it wasn't for the countless inconveniences that a language barrier, not having a car, and 50,000 tourists on the beaches here tend to cause. I came to meet and talk to and party down with interesting people. And the added bonus was working up a sweat dancing in the streets and then schmoozing with the Rich Bitch saxophonist all night.

There's good music here in the Balkans if you know where to look. It's not all just techno club crap and bad turbo folk, ex-Yu style. Mario, the above mentioned saxophonist told me that the band is releasing their 2nd album next year. It'll be the first to go stateside. I want to see the music videos that come out with the new album. (No joke! I've been promised a DVD.) Good times last night! Good times seeing live music again.

Accidentally Drunk

And, in the category of Don't-Drink-It-Unless-You-Smell-It-First, I've committed just about the stupidest transgression I've perhaps done so far here in a foreign country just now. I've accidentally drank a shot of vodka. (Seriously, ACCIDENTALLY!) I mean, I think it was vodka. It was something alcoholic. And it was clear. And it was in an unmarked water bottle in the freezer. And the water bottle looked exactly like MY water bottle, which I also keep in the freezer. And anyone who knows me knows that I can't hold my liquor. Not even a few drops of it. So now, I'm 20 shades of pink all over, my head is throbbing, my heart is pumping like a jackrabbit, and I pretty much can't breathe because my throat is closing up. How pleasant.

All this because my people (and by that, I mean, members of my family AS WELL AS my race in general) lack an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase, which turns alcohol into sugar in your body so that you can metabolize it and not be poisoned by it. (Read the bit on "in humans" and not "in yeast and bacteria".)

I can't believe I did this! I can't believe I went into the freezer here at the hostel, took out what I thought was my innocent little water bottle, and swallowed a swig of it without registering what it was first. And, I can't believe I'm blogging about it while under the influence! God, the misadventures I can have just sitting around a quiet hostel on an idle Thursday night.

But now, for the ironic part of this story: Nadya is leading an excursion tonight for all our guests here at the Hippo. I was supposed to join her in it shortly after I grabbed my water bottle to head out. The excursion is a pub crawl through Budva's Old Town. And, I was tagging along with the intention of drinking nothing more than some carbonated mineral water with a slice of lime floating in it. Never mind. I guess I'm not going after all. I've already had my pub crawl, thanks!

Hi, I'm Still Here

I don't know if it's just because I had a REALLY quiet day cut off from just about everyone on the planet, or all of the Hippo staff went out to dinner tonight while I worked a busy hostel shift alone, or my days off are spent on my own all the time, or the heat and mosquitoes are getting to me in general, or WHAT, but I felt a little lonely tonight, and am getting kind of tired of my own company. Usually, I'm quite fond of my own company, because, let's face it, I'm a laugh-riot to be around (!), but after 2 weeks in seclusion at the back rehab spot, and then all of my days off since I've been back spent by myself, I'm getting a little fed up with just the company of my iPod, the short, two-word conversations I have with local sales clerks around here, my witty little observations on the fashion sense of some of the more scantily-clad young women around, and similar alone-activities. And, I don't know if it's my imagination, but I seem to have hit a dry-spell on comments to my blog, emails from peeps in my inbox, and letters from home. Have you guys forsaken me for more witty and interesting friends? Friends who aren't living so far away in such a tiresome place that most of you have zero interest in? Or, am I just being over-sensitive to the neglect? Don't answer that. I don't have a therapist here should I get the wrong response.

So, anyway, after a solid week back into the fray here at the hostel and at the radio station, I've got these few tidbits of news to share:

1. The high season is off to a staggeringly busy start as of July 1st. The Hippo is at full capacity almost every single night, which makes accepting walk-up guests who don't have reservations, or extending the stays of guests who do but like us so much they want to add a few nights to their total time here, a really tough juggling act. But, since I earn more money when we have more guests in-house, this is a good thing, and now, I can fund that trip to Italy after all.

2. My back is fine these days. I never pick up anything from the ground without going into a full squat and working my quads and glutes, but I'm fully-functional again now. I'm also taking fish food as a supplement 3 times a day too. Or, at least the container LOOKS like a bottle of fish food, and the contents SMELL like a bottle of fish food. But, really, it's brown colored capsules, and not multi-colored flakes, so I shouldn't joke. Those crazy Germans and their Vitaminkapseln mit Muschel-Extrakt!

3. Fire season began here this past weekend with a grassfire on the hill over part of the Budva Riviera just south of where we live. The blaze took more than 2 days to contain, and all last night, you could still see it lighting up a huge swath of the hillside while firefighters tried to get it under control. Budva is already suffering a water shortage, which tends to happen every summer when the population of the town jumps from 17,000 (local, normal population) to 70,000 (tourists and tourism industry staff added), but 2-day long grassfires that need water for putting out must really add to the challenge. I guess I should seriously consider taking fewer showers from now on. Those who have to live with me probably won't appreciate it, given how hot it is here these days.

And, finally, 4. Ponta Planet has been going strong these past few weeks and we've hit our stride as far as content and production values at last. I don't want to brag, but last night, when Nino, my engineer, was directing my voice-tracks, he made some sort of comment about it sounding good now that we're 10 shows in. What?!? We're 13 shows in, Buddy, and I thought we were sounding good 6 shows ago! Jeez, everyone's a critic!

If you guys get the chance, send up some smoke signals to tell me how you're going, or listen to a Ponta Planet show archived here on this blog (links to download episodes appear to the left of these ramblings). Prove to me that these feelings of neglect are all part of the lack of breast-feeding I had as a baby and nothing more.

Gathering No Moss

The Rolling Stones are here in Budva playing a concert date on Jaz beach tonight. (Yes, here in Budva!) Everyone from the hostel and the radio station went to the show except me. I get to do the Cinderella routine because I have a bad back that wouldn't support me walking, standing, jumping around, dancing with the hordes, or getting jostled by rabid Stones fans, for hours at a time, with no place to sit down should my back need a break from it all. Anyway, you know, those old rockers just aren't my thing, and neither are these big, giant stadium concerts. I just don't do crowds. Though, I had originally wanted to go, just so I could say I saw the Rolling Stones perform -- in BUDVA! And, that would've been a laugh. But, I guess I'm keeping my €50.

So, I'm minding the store tonight here at the Hippo. And, blogging my way through the peace and quiet. It's rare to get peace and quiet right now at the hostel, given that the summer rush is fully upon us, and we're at max capacity every single night, pretty much. It's been a crazy couple of days since I've been back to work here and at Ponta Radio. Ridiculous amounts of non-stoppedness. I'm going to WANT my days off when I get them now!

In fact, this Wednesday, for my first full day off from work now that I'm back *at* work, I'm taking a day trip to Dubrovnik -- the pretty, clean, more cosmopolitan, waaaaay over-touristed big sister of Budva, located on the Croatian coast. I signed myself up for a bus tour for the day. Why, oh, why, you might be asking me? Since, I've already been there, seen plenty of it, and don't like it all that much, etc. etc. I'm going because I've got to cross an international border before July 18th, to legitimize my stay here in Montenegro, and a bus tour to Dubrovnik is the cheapest way I can do that. Them's the rules, since I don't have a work visa to stay here for longer stretches of time. It's been just about 90 days since I was out of the country last. Which means that it's been 3 months since I've been here in Montenegro! I can't believe how the time flies. Though, I feel like I've been here for ages. I can't believe what HAPPENS to you as the time is flying, is more like it.

It's been 3 months! I've been in and out of home-sickness, in and out of back injury, in and out of fights with David, in and out of photo albums, and in and out of epic friendships with our hostel guests. And, there are 3 months left to go. Crazy! This stone continues to gather no moss.

You Made Me Love You. I Didn’t Want to Do It, Didn’t Want to Do It.

ABOVE: Lights of the town across the bay from my room in Igalo. I went arty with the camera and made the lights run.


D A T E L I N E : Thursday, 5 July 2007
Penultimate Day at the Institute
Igalo, Montenegro

You know a couple of weeks ago, I waxed melodramatic about how clingy I can be about things? Well, it’s true, even here in the weirdest back rehab spa I’ll ever visit in Eastern Europe. (Because there are so many others in Eastern Europe for me to judge against, right?) But, sitting here on the spacious private balcony of my room overlooking the blue-green waters of the Boka Kotorska and the surrounding hills, I’m getting a little sad that I’m checking out and leaving for Budva tomorrow, to go back to what used to be my normal life – life before the back injury, when I didn’t lay around all day trying not to move my back, when I worked more, cleaned bathrooms, hung laundry, and led walks up to the monastery 12 minutes from the hostel. When I went to the beach on my days off, took daytrips, walked around Old Time taking pictures, and could go to a bar at night with friends if I was off shift. I’m going back to the hustle and bustle of lots of strangers invading my space constantly and no chance to run around naked after a shower air-drying if I want to. I’m going back to what was supposed to be the 6-month adventure in Montenegro I was having, if my back hadn’t gotten hurt. I guess my adventure took a detour.

It’s funny, when this whole thing happened in the middle of May, I was so pissed off that my plans for the summer were being hijacked by the bad luck and clumsiness of a slip and fall accident. I had already gotten used to a month and a half of life in Budva with all new favorite things to do. And, I hated the even newer routine of lying around all day alone, trying to remain conscious when all there was for me was eating, sleeping, reading, watching DVD’s, and hanging out online. It was so frustrating not to be part of the Budva that I had gotten used to.

And now, over a month and a half later, I’m about to be discharged from the Igalo Institute with pretty much a clean bill of back health and I’m a little sad to be re-entering hostel society with all the activity and responsibilities that it carries with it. I’m a little sad to be leaving behind the slovenliness of laying around all day, every day, with no expectations on me except that I not move too much. And, I’m actually a little sad to leave behind these last 2 weeks of weird Igalo Institute routines that I’ve been developing sharply. God, maybe I’m just sad about losing yet another routine!

After tomorrow, I’ll probably never again wake up before 8:00am and be happy about going off to any sort of group activity. I’ll miss all the nice, pretty therapists who wrap me up in mud, point hoses of water at strategic parts of my body while I’m immersed in warm water, and demonstrate walking on tiptoes around the swimming pool for me. I’ll miss the cute waitress who calls me “my dear” and has a fresh, hot cup of black tea brewing at my table as soon as I arrive for dinner in the restaurant. I’ll miss being done with my day by 12:noon and having nothing else I have to do except lounge around on my balcony keeping myself entertained counting how many colors of blue I can see in the water below me. I’ll miss being so close to the promenade at Herceg Novi, which I can get to after a short, 50¢ bus ride, where there’s a great little movie theater that thinks it’s an art house, the best gelato café on the boardwalk anywhere, and a lovely cliffside walkway right next to the water which has even better people-watching than anything in Budva.

It’s interesting to me how much I dreaded coming here all this time, and now that I’m having to leave, I’m sad to go. That means I liked it here, I guess, which is the most surprising bit. Igalo turned out to be more than just good material to blog about in my snarky little way. It turned out to be a good experience that I’m not sorry I had.

We're Gonna Drink Bacardi Like It's My Birthday

It was my birthday yesterday. For the very special occasion, I got to leave the institute and spend the night back in Budva. It was so I could see friends at the hostel, eat barbecue, collect a slew of presents, including what had come in the mail from peeps at home, generally be lavished with attention and love, which strangely, I’m not getting at the institute, and connect to the internet for the only time this entire week. (Gasp!) And, I had the most spectacular day! It wasn’t enough that Matt and his girlfriend came from London with gifts of Sue Townsend (book), Tom McRae (CD), The Tea House in Covent Garden (3 different kinds of tea), and The Body Shop (smell goods), and carried around all of my heavy bags so that my old-lady back wouldn’t get further injured, but the best presents they gave me was company in a strange place like Igalo, and a ride to Budva.

How can one of my best birthdays possibly be one that I spent several thousand miles away from 90% of my friends and loved ones, in a country where I don’t speak the language, and oh, yeah, my back got injured and I’m walking around like a gimp all the time? Well, it was.

My cup runneth over. It really does. It runneth big time.

Bloggie Goes to Igalo

D A T E L I N E : Tuesday, 26 June 2007
Day 2 at the Institute
Igalo, Montenegro

There’s no internet connectivity here at all, and I’d have to walk 2 km into town to get online at an internet café, so guess I’m going to send this out late, whenever I can connect this laptop to a signal. Here I am at the Igalo Mediterranean Health Centre for my back treatment. I have to stay here for 10 days after all. The doctor who assessed me yesterday was saying that this treatment is supposed to take 3 weeks, but I wasn’t down with all that. She was wearing a form-fitting, black knit dress with white polka dots on it and a ruffle at the hem of the skirt when she met with me for my official clinical evaluation, so how am I supposed to take that seriously??? I need at least a white lab coat, if not a stethoscope draped over the shoulders, for me to buy into anything a doctor has to say. I’m giving it 10 days and then I’ve got to get on with my life.

Things here are going to be quiet and slow, something I can only appreciate up to a point. If I only had to take all this down time for 2-3 days at a stretch, I’d be much more into it. But, 10 days is going to be rough! There’s nobody here for me to talk to! Virtually no Americans come here, or even other English-speaking nationalities, I’m told. And, I’m a complete anomaly, being “Chinese” and all. The other stats to share: About 80% of the patients, or clients, as I’m sure the PR people here at Igalo would prefer that I say, are 55 or older, and of the larger, rounder body type. And, the facility itself? Think: 1980’s corporate hotel, with all of its old, dark wood décor and by now, broken-downness, that’s sort of funny and sort of depressing at the same time. In fact, all the things here, the staff, the clients, the services, the food, all of it, is pretty sad. On the funny spectrum, it would weigh in at the pathetic end, not so much the clown end.

But, on a positive note, my room is just huge, and has a lovely view of the Boka Kotorska, the biggest fjord outside of Scandinavia. (Maybe that’s why all these Norwegians like to come here for treatment all the time!) I have a nice, big balcony with decent furnishings, a full-sized bed (I miss full beds like you wouldn’t believe. It’s been months since I’ve slept in one!), and some chirpy crickets in the ventilation ducts in my room, which I presume are part of the nature-sounds therapy that this place offers but doesn’t seem to list on the brochures. And I’ve got a lot of time to hang out, work on my tan, read my books, make more mix tapes in iTunes, watch DVD’s that I’ve borrowed from various sources, and write things. And, oh yeah, there’s the therapy bit that I’m also here for. That stuff is interesting, to say the least! Day 1 of my treatments was a mass of confusion, seeing as how there’s NO orientation offered here in the least, except for the unsmiling person who gave me a card with some strange code words noted on it in a foreign language yesterday. Excuse me, I don’t mean to be a Princess, but I need a little bit more hand-holding here. Please?

Anyway, after a very frustrating day of running around like it’s the first day of school at a new junior high and I’m trying to figure out my class schedule during passing period, I’ve found out the therapy routine. I’ve got 20 minutes of group exercise at 8:00 am for core strengthening with an instructor who speaks about 5 words of English and the rest of it is Serbian and Norwegian or German or something, I think. There’s only one person my age in the class, and he’s pretty decent-looking, but says all the funny things he says that makes the rest of the class laugh in some language other than my own, so I can’t partake in the amusement. Then, I have one-on-one “lessons in movement now that your back is broke”, which is boring, so is thankfully not every single day. After that, I get breakfast, which is taken in the sad version of a Las Vegas buffet-style restaurant, only with inferior food quality and not everything is buffet-style quantities. Then, onto: underwater massage (a hose pointed at various sections of your back and legs while you lay in a big, warm tub, for all of 11 minutes), group pool exercises (with all old, overweight people, thankfully, while the instructor is some scorchin’ hot mama!), and then my mud wrap for 15 minutes (which lots of my lady-friends who like to go to day spas would enjoy, but I find too gooey to appreciate). And then, I’m done for the day pretty much by 11:30 am.

Like I’ve been saying all along, this is part of the experience of this particular adventure. So, I’m just going to sit back, relax, and put up with whatever they hurl my way for the next 9 days. Go ahead. Do your best to break my spirit, people! I’ve got bloggie on my side to vent into. And, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. It’s 9 days away, but it’s there.

Abandonment Issues, Separation Anxiety, and Yes, I'm Clingy.

Yesterday, a number of emotionally catastrophic things happened which caused me to analyze the nature of my clingyness. (Well, I guess we should first start with the admission that I am in fact quite a clingy person. I attach easily to people/things/routines. I need time for long, lingering good-byes. I stroll Memory Lane often. Etc.) But, all at once yesterday, two of my closest friends in the whole wide world left town after a short visit of only 6 days here in Budva. A long-term hostel guest named Simon, who's been here even longer than I have and became part of our little Hippo family, left for home. And, the first group of people I've really been able to connect with here since my unfortunate fall and subsequent withdrawal from hostel society, also left en masse. It was almost an orchestrated act of abandonment on the part of those I *thought* cared about me!

But, little did they know that their leaving would cause worse fallout than just making this a quieter, less interesting place to be. I was GRIEF-STRICKEN last night! INCONSOLABLE in my loneliness! Because I've realized since I've been here in Montenegro that when you're away from most everything that's familiar to you, all the things you know and love, you tend to hang on to anything, ANYTHING AT ALL, that's become remotely part of your world order for even a minute. Be it a person, a hair clip, a route you take to the post office, or a brand of yogurt, you attach to it more quickly, and are pretty much devastated when it goes away. Or, at least, this is the case with me.

The good thing about it is that you can make close connections with people using less effort than usual. And, like 10-year-olds leaving camp at the end of only a few weeks, you're crying and swearing that you'll keep in touch with each other forevermore when you have to part. But, the reality of it is, in our adult lives, when they're gone, you end up getting busy with other things (for me, busy with new hostel guests or the radio show or back-healing), and you move on a lot quicker than the initial emotions would lead you to believe you can. Does that make me fickle? An emotional liar? Or just better-adjusted, if given a couple of days?

I don't know. But, last night, I was sadly lying around trying to read, watch a DVD, work on a Ponta Planet script, make new playlists in iTunes, and I couldn't. I kept getting drawn back to writing -- my journal, the journal I'm keeping for someone else, emails, a letter I'm writing to a friend back home, all forms of writing! I even wanted to compose a poem or something, anything I could think of that would adequately encapsulate the profusion of feelings running rampant through me over all these people I just lost. None of it met the work order. So, I sent IM's to friends at home, complaining about the pain, and seeking solace for my separation anxiety. Then, I fell asleep.

But, something good came out of yesterday's little exercise in identifying my losses. And, being the self-aware, planner-type that I am by nature, I know that when I eventually leave Budva for home, I'll miss several things from here, and, given the length of this stay, it'll take more than a few days to recover from my long, lingering good-bye with this country. That in mind, I've put together a list of things that I'm going to start preemptively missing:

• mesaras (butcher shops) that'll grill the meat you purchase right then and there for you, free of charge
• Kajmak (a brand of cream cheese)
• having 2 corner stores within 5 meters of the house that sell fresh vegetables, bread, eggs, AND feminine napkins and toothpaste
• eating all of my meals at a patio table under a trellis of grapevines
• barbecuing every-other day
• hearing English spoken in at least 5 different accents at any given time
• prescription meds costing less than €2 per package
• and, narrow, stone alleyways inside old city walls almost everywhere you go.

I miss a lot of things right now (people and things I left in California, many of the friends I've made here who've already left, being upright for long periods of time since my back is still not fully-healed), and will probably miss lots more things to come. But, I got better this morning and stopped being weepy over Marin and Brian, Simon, Dan/Dane/Doug, and that hilarious Canadian couple, Chris and Jess, from Calgary. So, if that only took 24 hours, then, doing the math, I guess I'll stop missing Budva by Christmastime, after I've returned to the States.

On the other hand, I may always miss this place, regardless of the ups and downs I've experienced here, because this is just an incredible time in my life. And, anyway, I'm just clingy!

Mostly Horizontal

It's been almost 4 weeks since my dramatic, lifestyle-altering fall-down-the-stairs-in-the-rain incident, and I'm still usually found horizontal on a pull-out bed in the office of the Hippo. But, I'm more mobile now than I have been for ages!

I was facing some tough decisions for a while these past several days, since it looks like the damage to my back is kinda serious. (I had thinned-out cartilage between two bony bits in my spine that wasn’t holding a disc in place very effectively, so when I fell down-went boom, the disc slipped south and to the left and is now pressing on a nerve that will, over time, kill said nerve to the point where one of my feet will stop moving, and then I’ll have SERIOUS issues, blah-blah-blah.) But then, I was told of this alternative medicine institute 2 hours from here near Herceg Novi, the Igalo Institute, where I can undergo all kinds of alternative therapy to get the herniated disc back into alignment. The neurosurgeon that I saw last week at the clinic in Podgorica recommended that I go there for at least a week and a half and, if that doesn't work, then I should probably enjoy some back surgery. (ACK!)

I had a really crappy week pondering these options. But, after a good cry, I found the website to the "institute" and, okay -- IT'S HILARIOUS!

This place is trying to be a *spa*! For rich foreigners! And, it's known to the Norwegians like Cabo San Lucas is known to Americans! Among other things, they treat arthritis, allergies, cellulite, sports injuries, chronic eczema, obesity, stress, multiple sclerosis! They do breast augmentation, dental work, shiatsu massage! They do Thalassotherapy! These are treatments based on the use of seawater, seaweed, and algae masks/wraps! I sense a sushi reference coming on! But, anyway, they also feed you well here! You have these beautiful private rooms with balconies that overlook the Boka Kotorska, the largest fjord outside of Scandinavia! Their medical staff of 51 physicians, 93 nurses, 178 physical therapists, and 27 lab staffers are in multilingual teams that "smoothly operate" in Norwegian, English, German, Italian, French, and yeah, Serbian! And, that's just what the website says! My own, private room, buffet meals, and medical treatment will cost me €78 per night! (I called and checked today.) That's less than any decent hotels in any major city in the States would charge! God, I can't use enough exclamation points all of a sudden!

!!!

I KNOW there was an episode of Hart to Hart early on in the series where Jonathan and Jennifer go undercover to a luxury spa to uncover the real reason for their good friend's supposed suicide. Maybe this is a similar spa! Maybe I can be Jennifer Hart, Darling!

So, fine, I guess I'm going to Igalo for a couple of weeks. Starting June 22, it would seem. I might even be spending my 33rd birthday there! Hmmm...

Now then, let's recap all the positive developments since last I whined:
1.) I'm going to a spa instead of getting back surgery (probably).
2.) The painkillers I'm taking are working just grand. I'm rarely in any sort of pain, and am getting up and around a lot more now. Though I probably shouldn't, just to avoid injuring myself further. These painkillers make you feel SO invincible, though!!! (Evil, deranged laughter here...)
3.) The radio show has taken off and is going pretty well. Week 2 was even better than week 1! I have all the time in the world to lie around on my stomach writing decent scripts and conducting interviews with professors from local Universities who serve on the faculty of Tourism Studies here.
4.) And, podcasts! I've discovered lots of new podcasts to listen to, which keeps my ears very busy.
5.) Oh, and did I mention? Marin and Brian are here for the week, and though they're going out doing all their sight-seeing with friends from the hostel and not with bed-ridden me, it's great to have them around at all. They brought peanut butter. (FINALLY! Toast-cover of the gods!)

It would seem that I'll live. And, if the spa is all it's cracked up to be, I will live without having any knives stuck in my back. Dare I dream?

Reports from the Field III: Laid Up in Budva

All right, fine. 3 weeks after the fall, I guess it's probably time to rehash everything about this whole back injury business, and tell the blog-reading population that cared enough about me to come here in the first place why I've been lying around on my stomach in a bed, irritable and blogging. Why so many hours of watching "The Office" on my laptop and why this still-life-in-pills? So, here, for your review, is the whole sordid tale.


D A T E L I N E : 26 May 2007; Budva, Montenegro

When last we left our hero, she was idling away her days in summertime fun. But, wait! Tragedy has struck! And now, a little more than a week later, I'm writing you from my recovery bed, the pull-out couch in the office of the Hippo Hostel...

I had a slip-and-fall incident last Friday evening, going down some marble stairs at the market across the street from the hostel in the rain. I was innocently running out for a tub of yogurt and took a false step to end up on my backside on the stairs after having hit the edge of some of the steps with my lower back and both elbows. I couldn't get up. Someone had to run back to the hostel and get my friends. I was carried home and deposited on the couch in the lounge, to lay out on my stomach for the rest of the night.

After a visit to the nearest hospital in Risan (a 45-minute drive from Budva), where I had a botched x-ray taken, it was speculated that I suffered a fracture in my spine somewhere. Though, how the fine doctors of that sad, socialist-era state hospital could know that from the blurry x-ray they were looking at is beyond me. I blame the 20-year-old girl posing as the x-ray technician in her official-looking blue jeans and polo shirt, the one with the disposition of a pissed-off orangutan, for the bad films. So, I paid my 17 Euros for their time and expertise and we left with some prescriptions for pain medication to head home and seek out another opinion.

Enter Dr. Lidija Ljubisa-Maslovar, a local doctor in Budva who practiced medicine in San Francisco for 10 years or something, and who's English is excellent. Since the country was closed down for the next 4 days due to a national holiday (Montenegro was celebrating it's 1-year anniversary as an independent nation!), Dr. Lidija could only consult with me over the phone from her vacation spot out of town, and she made an appointment for me to come see her on Wednesday. After my visit to Dr. Lidija's office on Wednesday, where I had an ultrasound to make sure that my internal organs weren't injured in the fall, it was arranged that I would go see specialists at a private hospital in Podgorica, the nation's capital, where I would need an MRI and another x-ray taken. And, in the meantime, I was to lie in bed immobile for at least the next 2-3 weeks.

A distraught and frantic phone call to John in San Francisco, where he was 4 hours away from leaving on a jet plane to come here for 2 weeks. We argued. I almost cried. We decided he shouldn't come and waste his only trip here to see me on this version of a vacation: watching me lie around in bed all day frustrated and worried that my 40's and 50's will be plagued with back issues. So, he canceled his flights here, to be rescheduled for late August sometime when I'd be better able to show him around town and even accompany him to Sarajevo, Rome, Florence, etc.

Then, Thursday brings with it a daytrip to Podgorica. David and I rent a car so that I could lay in *comfort* (and I use that term loosely) on my stomach in the reclined front passenger seat of the car while he drives the hour and 15 minutes to the hospital there. I don't get to see a thing of the countryside and mountains that connect the coast to the capital. We're met in Podgorica by a scorching-hot woman who doesn't LOOK like she works for an orthopedist, but who nonetheless leads us to the hospital and escorts us through the entire process, from radiology to the doctor's clinic that I'm to go to next.

I always thought that I was tough enough to handle an MRI, something that's usually depicted as a scary thing to people who are prone to claustrophobia, panic attacks, fear of loud noises, etc. But, I'm laid down in the MRI bed and have to immediately close my eyes and go to my happy place so as not to lose it completely. (Sidenote: My happy place is lunching on the patio of Jack's Bistro, sipping iced tea and eating calamari while looking out at the boats in the marina of Jack London.) The space inside that tube is pretty damn small, and I'm afraid that any moment now, the sharp, shooting, burning pain in my lower back will return, and oh, my God, can I just tell you about the noise??? Think: air raid sirens during WWII. The whole time, my good friend David is in the next room with the technician enjoying the tour of my internal organs that they're on. (He has all kinds of things to tell me about my insides afterwards.)

Anyway, I survive that process without ever screaming or pounding frantically on the MRI tube to make it stop. And, then I'm taken to another room for another x-ray by another pissed-off orangutan who's just trying to get the whole thing over with, no matter how much it hurts me to lay flat on my back on a straight, hard table top. From there, it's a short drive to the doctors' clinic nearby, where I'm given a comfortable examination table to nap on while I wait the 3+ hours for the doctors to arrive for our appointment that was supposed to take place at 2:00pm.

It's 7:30 in the evening when Dr. Aleksandar Juskovic, the good-looking, young orthopedist finally arrives to look at my MRI and examine me. He does a number of tests on my back and legs, rotating things every which way and asking me when it hurts. Then, he tells me that I've had a herniated disc in my back for quite some time now that must've never manifested symptoms until this recent fall in which I incurred a lot of trauma to the muscles in my lower back. I need to remain absolutely still on bedrest and take some really intense medication and then I can start physical therapy after I see him again next weekend. He might even do a housecall in Budva so that I don't have to fade the drive to Podgorica again.

And thus, I am here at this point: lying on my stomach, injecting pain-killers into my own thigh twice a day, and listening to A's games broadcast over the internet at all hours of the night. I will hopefully be back up and running, taking on visitors from home and hostel guests alike in glittering social repartee in the coming weeks. In the meantime, when my radio show begins it's bi-weekly broadcast on June 4th, I have plans to be horizontal on an air mattress on the studio floor with a mic.

It's all good vibes and pain-meds for me from this point forth! Yippee.

Reports from the Field II: Heating Up

During happier, more active times, before I became a bed-ridden internetolic with her own blog, I was sending emails home to my peeps, giving them the scoop on all the haps here in Budva. Let's go back to said happier times, now shall we? Just so I can remember how fun it was when I was still vertical...


D A T E L I N E : 18 May 2007; Budva, Montenegro

I don't know if it's the heat, or the general Montenegrin spirit of there's-still-time-I'll-get-it-done-later that's overtaken me, but
what I intended to write WEEKS ago has been sorely delayed. I swear, I began this 5 days ago! Actually, lots of things that I intend to do everyday aren't getting done in the time that I'm intending: studying Serbian, getting a haircut, planning my excursion to Italy, buying a beach towel that has an image of a 500 Euro bill on it, etc.

There's always some reason to put these things off for another day. It's hot, I can't be expected to move! It's hot, I need to go to the beach! It's hot, I need to hang out at the radio station! So, I'm not nearly as productive as my best intentions would lead me to believe.

In the past month, I've slowed down on the daytrips a lot more and have just settled nicely into a more common, day-to-day routine that involves the hostel, the beach, the radio station, and barbecues. Also, during that time, the Hippo saw it's share of bad luck: 11 days without a phone line or internet, 2 occasions when we lost our plumbing (one of which lasted 2 whole days!), 3 occasions of losing power suddenly in the evening (one of which occurred right when the movie "Hostel" was reaching it's annoying and long-awaited conclusion), and a 2-night stay by a group of 9 disrespectful, rowdy, young Slovenians who acted like they were on one of those party buses that frats like to rent and tear through the city in. We survived, though.

Now, the days are getting longer and (did I mention?) hotter. Which means that we're getting busier here with more guests in house. The body count for April was officially 83 in the end. And, so far for May, we have 56. (I've got Euro signs in my eyes.) My radio show, Ponta Planet, will now officially start airing the week of June 1. It'll be bi-weekly, though I don't yet know which days. Did I also mention that there's a Montenegrin attitude of there's-still-time-I'll-get-it-done-later? Some decisions don't get made until the last possible minute. In the meantime, though, I'm out recording content for future shows, and writing a script for the pilot for prospective new sponsors. Good times, playing radio producer in a country in which I don't speak the language!

And, there are obviously great days in the sun to be had as well. Last week, as I was walking from Budva to Sveti Stefan along all the different beaches and coves with an Aussie hostel guest of ours, Brad, I came upon a little grassy hut that overlooked some stone decks along the sea. There were people sitting around inside eating, and since the place *looked* kind of like a restaurant, we went inside to have a drink and ended up sitting down to an amazing lunch of grilled fish with the owner of the place, his brother, his mother, and his best friend. Zoff, said owner, a balding, mid-forties playboy fisherman who likes to sniff your hair and kiss your neck if you're not able to dodge him, only opens the restaurant to his friends, but will allow random tourists to lay on his private decks and sun themselves for a small fee. Since he seemed to like me and Brad, and I liked his grilled eggplant and how fresh the blue fish was, we came back the next day and spent more than 6 hours with him and his friends going out on his fishing boat, eating, sunning ourselves on the deck, and learning how to de-scale the catch of the day. I took to calling Zoff's mother "Mama", because I didn't know her name. His brother, Dragan, drove us home at the end of the day. And, now, everybody's mobile number is in my phone. And, all I wanted was to be in at the restaurant and to make sure I could use the decks free of charge.

Done and done!

Also, the first weekend of May was Budva's annual carnivale. Everyone at the hostel went out for 2 nights of partying in the Old Town that Friday and Saturday. There were parades, baton-twirling dance troupes who did routines to "Holding Out for a Hero" and the ever-popular 80's soundtrack hit "Maniac", and live music on a huge stage erected outside the Old Town walls. I discovered that I like a Macedonian pop singer, Toše Proeski, despite his following of screaming 14-year olds. And, now, I can honestly say that I've seen a re-enactment of the biblical story of the great flood while standing in actual pouring rain. That's of course not to be outdone by the fact that I then danced under fireworks with a firetruck hose pointing to the sky over us making it rain even harder than God intended. The only thing missing that weekend was an organized wet tee shirt contest.

All told, the slowing down to a day-to-day routine isn't at all bad!

Reports from the Field I: And Budva would be where???

So, a little bit of background as to why I'm in Montenegro right now. On April 22nd, I sent a dispatch home to friends and family which gave something of an explanation, and also my first impressions of things here...


D A T E L I N E : 22 April 2007; Budva, Montenegro

By now, over 2 weeks into my 6-month stint overseas (I love the way that sounds: I'm living overseas...), you're probably wondering what I'm up to. At least, those of you on the distribution list who knew that I was moving to Montenegro for 6 months. I'm sorry I've been so silent for the past 18 days. But, it's been an odyssey just to get here, get my bearings, get to work at the hostel, get around town while the main road is under heavy construction, get simple little necessities like hair conditioner and apples...

So, after a 45-hour period of travel that was made that hideous by a missed connection in Paris, I arrived in Budva, Montenegro on April 5th to a bustling hostel and my good friends, David and Nadya. I'm here to help them run a 2-story, 5 bedroom hostel that sleeps 24. And, when the summer tourist season begins, I'll begin my stint as the English-language radio producer/host of Ponta Planet. The show will run in English bi-weekly on Ponta Radio. With enough sponsorship, it'll also run in French, German, Italian, and Russian once a week each. But, those aren't my gigs, so let's get back to talking about me, shall we?

There's not much to report in the way of wacky anecdotes that fill you with delight and wonder at the exoticness of my new world. Yes, the Adriatic Sea is amazingly blue and beautiful. Yes, I'm meeting scores of worldly travelers (more than 50 so far this month!) coming through the hostel. And, yes, my days off are split between lying about on the beach soaking in the cool sea air and taking day trips to nearby towns which sell things like home-made prosciutto or which have city ruins that go back further than the Magna Carta. I've seen LOTS of incredible beaches, and walked through the narrow, stone-paved streets of LOTS of old towns (here, they're exotically called Stari Grads).

So now, in no particular order, here are some first impressions I've gathered in the past few weeks that I thought noteworthy:

Women here are absolutely stunning. They're well put together and extremely fashionable, even when they're just running out to pick up a carton of milk. Despite this, Montenegrin men stare at both me (for being Asian) and Nadya (for having shapely legs that go on forever) whenever we walk down the street. It's really unnerving how they never smile at you when you make eye contact and smile at them, though.

Construction zones in Montenegro (of which there are lots in Budva right now; they're expected to be completed before the official tourist season begins on June 1st) aren't off-limits to random passersby. You're welcome to walk under the moving boom of a backhoe to get across the street, no hard hat required. Just try not to get run over by the tractor that's sidling up to the backhoe so that the drivers can swap cigarettes.

There are no supermarket chains in this town. There is one Mega Market (tm) in the town center, and countless mini markets on every single residential street, where you can buy everything from a head of lettuce to freshly made Burek to toothpaste. We have 2 such mini markets right across the street from the hostel, one of which sells half-liter bottles of beer for 40¢ each.

Lots of Brits travel. They come to the hostel in droves and I'm starting to say things like "David and I went to uni together." and "Well, you'll find loads of ruins all over this bloody coast, now won't you?" because of them.

Feeling like you're half on vacation and half living a new life makes the days go by quickly, but makes your time away seem a lot longer than it really is. I'm 18 days in and it feels more like 80. I miss home a little bit. I miss my peeps a lot more.

New to This

I write a lot. Mostly, it's journals and letters to friends and stuff. But, sometimes, when I travel, I send long email updates home to loved ones talking about my weird experiences that make them tell me I should be blogging. Usually, I just dismiss their suggestions as overly-supportive declarations of love or ways to get me off their backs inundating them with so much spam.

But, right now, since I've got a bunch of time on my hands while in a foreign country (fell down, went boom, while in the resort town of Budva, Montenegro and now must lie around on a bed recovering), I thought I'd try my hand at something new. Joining the digital revolution even in my journaling pursuits.

So, here, you'll find some of my various thoughts as I have any that are worth publishing online. And, maybe once in a while, I'll post something old that I've written in the near or distant past, just because it might be worth a good laugh. Who knows?

Let's see where this whole blogging thing takes us, shall we?