September 07
“I noticed that men here are really, um…manly. Is that common?”
“Why, did someone give you a rough time?”
“No, it’s not that, it’s just that that the way they dress and talk to women…is there some sort of macho complex here?”
“It’s not even a complex, it’s just ignorance. Men here generally only think about showing off their money and their muscles”
“Damn, that’s a bit messed up”
“What’s even more messed up is that the women here encourage it. That’s actually what it takes to get a woman’s attention now. They feed the culture, so it’s not even a complex”
“That’s a pretty outdated idea of masculinity”
“It comes from our warrior tradition”
...
September 06
“So how was your first night in Serbia?”
“Terrible. I was turned away at the border because they didn’t sell insurance there, I had to go all the way around the other way. It was cold and past midnight, too. And when I finally did cross to the other side and camped overnight, I woke up to find out my shoes were stolen”
“Wait really?”
“Yeah. At first I thought it was a dog, because I saw a dog running around that morning. But no, both shoes were gone. It would’ve had to take one shoe in its mouth, carry it away, then come back to take the other one and carry it as well”
“That’s fucked up”
“Yeah…who steals a vagabond’s shoes? That is literally one of the worst things you could possibly do in this life…there has to be a special circle of hell for people like that”
“Well…welcome to Serbia, I guess”
.
.
“You’re from Texas, right?”
“Yeah”
“The Mavericks are my favorite basketball team from the States?”
“Oh no way? I didn’t know you people paid attention to basketball anywhere outside the States”
“Are you kidding? Basketball is huge here. Serbia is the #2 basketball-loving country in the world. We got silver at the Olympics in 2016”
“Man, I guess I think it’s because the U.S. doesn’t think basketball exists anywhere else because it thinks it’s not relevant anywhere else…because we’re the best at it”
“Yeah, that is a problem. I like how the ’NBA World Championship Series’ is only played in the U.S.A. as if there were no other countries in the world”
“Yeah we can be arrogant like that. Do you like any other sports?”
“Well yes, tennis because that’s one of the sports where Serbia has a real contender. Novak Djokovic is my hero”
“Oh, man. Tennis was my whole life in school. I loved Djokovic back then but stopped liking him recently”
“What, you mean back when he was still an underdog?”
“Yeah, I sorta think he’s a huge prick now”
“What? Why?”
“Well after he started winning majors he just started developing a really bad attitude. Like he throws tantrums on courts”
“Tantrums every now and then, but not nearly as much as when he was younger”
“You could say that with about anyone, but Nadal and Federer are way more behaved on the court”
“Djokovic still has something to prove”
...
Bosnia & Hergezovina
September 03
“What I like to tell people whenever they ask about the civil war is the funny parts during that time”
“The ‘funny parts’? How could there be anything funny about a civil war?”
“For me it was this book. The thing is that all the people had these books of…sort of like domestic cakes”
“Is it sort of like, uh...the cooking version of the Little Red Book that Mao handed out in China?”
“No no no, it’s just like this, like…a regular book, I will show you”
“Ok, so a book that was being sold normally”
“Yes, this book was being sold all around ex-Yugoslavia. It’s a cooking book, and everybody had it”
“So this book right just happened to be the most popular, it wasn’t a state book or anything”
“Yes, there were many books going around Yugoslavia at the time, the others would be like, uh, and encyclopedia or something, you know, all around. But everywhere I went, I would see this book because it was like uh, uh, something domestic…and uh, when the war started…1992, Sarajevo was a mixed city. You know, it was uh…a little bit complicated situation to explain the whole, but uh…Sarajevo because it was in the middle of ex-Yugoslavia, we are the only Islamic country in Europe”
“Ahh, ok so it’s politically Europe but Islam is culturally dominant”
“Yeah, well…Albania as well you know? But uh, in Europe you know they say that Bosnia is like the border for Islam to go further into the continent…and from the right side we had Serbia which is mostly Orthodox, from left side there is Croatia and uh, they are mostly Catholics and because Bosnia was in the middle all of the people mix and they were coming…Sarajevo was the capital of culture, for example you would say Belgrade was the political capital of Yugoslavia…Zagreb was the gay capital…”
“Hahaha!”
“Yeah…and Sarajevo was some kind of a cultural capital of Yugoslavia. And the thing is that a lot of people mixed, you know, and we would have like a lot of mixed marriages and uh, when the war started, a lot of people who were Orthodox, they went to Serbia, Catholics went somewhere else…”
“So they all separated back to where they came from…”
“…yeah, it was very very easy, I think actually it was like this American setup for everything because they started to fund just the political parties that are radical, and it’s very easy to confront when there’s a religion involved, so it’d be very easy for them”
“So was this part of a divide and conquer strategy?”
“Yeah yeah yeah. Ha, this is the one, like ‘divide and conquer’, yeah. And because a lot of the people from my building left so at the beginning so this is getting to the funny side of the war that I started telling you…I remember the meat”
“The meat”
“Yeah, the meat. We didn’t buy the meat like we would when we wanna have lunch and go to the store and just buy it and have the lunch and that’s it. We bought like the whole cow, and we cut it, put it in the freezer, and it stays there and we always have it. And the first like, uh, fifteen days of war there was no electricity at all. So all of these fridges are melting down, so we would do is…well what can you do? You have to cook the meat…and allllll of Sarajevo was smelling of meat because there were so many people cooking their meat”
“Well yeah, you can’t let it go to waste!”
“Yeah yeah, of course. Even though what is going to happen, there’s just like ten maybe fifteen days of some shit happening and you don’t know what it is, you know. And uh, after that meat….I didn’t have meat for another four years”
“Oh god”
“Because there was just nothing to eat”
“So you had fun for fifteen days and then utter misery and starvation for the rest of the time”
“But but what actually happened after you spent all of your food at the beginning was then you go out, go and uh…break some other people’s door because they are left, you know, they are left…”
“So you would sack, er, not sack, but…”
“Just to find food”
“Right”
“Because you did not have any food”
“So you would loot”
“Uh, sorry?”
“I think it’s called ‘looting’”
“Yeah?”
“’Looting’. L-o-o-t”
“I don’t know that word, what it is”
“It just means like…you find abandoned places, or places where the owner left it vacant, but there’s still stuff…”
“I don’t know the word, but”
“Yeah, but basically you just go in and you take the stuff”
“Yeah, take the food, I mean you don’t have anything to eat. The stores are not working, there’s nothing, you know…and uh, we found some food and some shit but we were also going to these uh…how do you call this…uh…basements, because you try to find a lot of people who dry meat and stuff like this that they use”
“Preserved”
“Yeah, pr…preserved. And one guy, he was working for this book company, and when we go in his basement, it was just full of books….it was just literally full of books, you could not open the door there”
“It was just stacked up all the way “
“Yeah, just stacked up from the bottom to the ceiling…and we took, all four of us, well…one of these, one copy each. You know there were ten, fifteen of us in the whole building, and all of these books there was just one book, it’s called ‘Cakes’ or something, I don’t know, but this book that I showed you, it was just the recipes with pictures, and this book was like on these, like these really good paper, like everything was quality”
“Glossy paper”
“Yeah, quality gloss paper…all these pictures on every side, you know there’s these pictures of some crazy crazy cakes”
“Nice…so it was a ‘proper’ cookbook”
“Oh yeah, like something new. Like this was before and now this was like…really quality. I still have this book actually…it’s not here, it’s at my mom’s place….but the thing is that uh, when when the war, you know, going first year, second year, third year we didn’t have anything to eat. Like 1993…it was totally crazy. Nothing worked, of course nothing working but all the aid that they are sending us, it was total shit you know? You really don’t have anything to eat. And in one moment, my mom is coming to the room where my brother and I are just sitting and reading this book”
“The cookbook?”
“The cookbook, and…”
“This is horrible! Because now you’re looking at all the things you can’t eat”
“No, this is the fun side. Come on, of course, it’s the fun of the the, haha…the war”
(hands the book over)
“Oh my god…yeah this is nice paper”
“Yeah”
“And so you were basically…this was your only way to fantasize about food that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to lay eyes on”
“Come on, that….that was, you know, mom coming inside and saw that my brother and me were looking at this book you know? It was totally crazy for her”
“Could you find a single recipe in here that you would be able to cook?”
“Oh, I think all of them. Why?”
“No no no, like…like during that time”
“Ah, during that time. No”
“So what did you eat during that year? 1993? That was when I was born”
“1993 you were born?”
“Yeah. I was born during the worst period of the Bosnian war, I suppose”
“Yeah, definitely….nothing. Rice”
“Okay, so rice”
“Rice, and uh…we had rice. Rice with nothing. And just rice”
“What about bread? No bread?”
“From what? We actually…we actually made the bread with rice. So we actually had canned beef as well. When you give it to the cat, the cat doesn’t want to eat it. Really. And what actually happened…there is a monument in the shape of this can, it says ‘monument to international community’”
“Because that’s what the international community donated to you was canned beef”
“Yeah, so we had the rice and beef and we would learn how to make things with these two ingredients in many ways”
“So you guys are the masters of making different dishes with just rice and canned beef”
“Oh yeah, trust me on that one. My father went to the…he was a soldier in the war like everybody was, and uh…”
“Did he survive?”
“Yeah”
“Ok, good”
“And the thing is that uh, there is a trench…about a hundred fifty meters, and there was the line of the other army, and like it was really close. My father waits when it’s very dark so he goes out the trench, goes toward them and pick…”
“Are you serious? When he waits till dark, he would literally get out of the trench, into the line of fire, and then walk over to the enemy side”
“Of course, because there was food there”
“So he would just steal their food?”
“Not THEIR food, but food that is on the middle of these land”
“Oh my god, like the…where people…the land where people get shot, you mean”
“Yeah yeah yeah”
“No man’s land”
“Yeah”
“I thought trench warfare was sort of finished after world war one”
“Come on man, that’s how wars are even right now”
“At least you have sandbags”
“But it is crazy”
“Yeah, that’s insane…he would get so hungry that he would go pick up food in no man’s land….wait, who would leave food in no man’s land?! That makes no sense”
“There is a growing food, like uh, like spinach. Because this line where he was-“
“The battle line was over crops”
“Yeah, it was like in a small village”
“Oh wow, so they were fighting on farmland”
“Actually, they were…yeah. And one time he was able to find some dried meat and an onion from a village up in the mountains during a different assignment, and when he came home with it, we all looked at that piece of meat and onion and it was a feast. Any kind of food was valuable. One egg would cost 75 Euro in now’s money. But that onion…that onion was one of my best thing I ever ate for a long time”
“How big was the piece of dried meat?”
“200 grams”
“That’s nothing!”
“To us, it was everything”
.
.
“It was a planned neighborhood where our family lived, so we had all these green areas”
“That’s nice! I guess that’s as much privilege as one could get back then”
“Of course…when you see Sarajevo, it’s just concrete everywhere. Very few parks, but all these green areas, they were…ah there’s this term that means you can grow stuff, vegetables and all this…but this area here, just a walking road where there were no cars. This flowed to the river, so just this area here, you go down, and they see you: the snipers. The sniper can see you down this area by the river…”
“Oh geez, that’s how…that’s how far the sniper’s range was?”
“Oh yeah”
“Ok they might see you but was that really the shooting range?”
“Oh yeah”
“Wait how far is it in kilometers?”
“Give me a moment…so they could see from up this hill. From the church up here, they were shooting all the time. So I could see them from my window, actually”
“So you saw the snipers…was your home ever shot at?”
“I had this…what do you call it when the grenade goes…shrapnel. I collected them. All of the windows in these windows were down. We used nylon to replace the glass”
...
Montenegro
August 31
“Sorry”
“What was that?”
“Th…”
“Hm?”
“There’s a giant super yacht passing by just right behind you”
“Oh my god…it’s got a helicopter on top of it”
...
Kosovo
August 26
“So what are the biggest cultural surprises that you discovered ever since moving here to be with your girlfriend?”
“Well, the culture is sorta like all the other Balkan countries, if you know or been. It’s very conservative…it’s perfectly normal to meet a beautiful 22 year-old and she’s a virgin. Perfectly normal”
“Yeah, but that’s just a Balkan thing. Well actually that’s the case in a lot of countries outside Europe too. Anything you noticed that’s distinct to this place?”
“Well, I don’t know if this is the case in any other country, but if you’re the firstborn son, you have to stay at home with your parents for the entirety of their life. Firstborn sons never leave the house”
“So it’s the second born that gets to go out and make something of themselves?”
“Well, to the parents here, being at home to take care of them till death is making something of themselves. But yeah, you’re stuck at home till they’re dead”
“That’s fucked up”
“Yeah, definitely don’t want to be firstborn here”
.
.
“Which country are you traveling to next after leaving Kosovo?”
“Montenegro”
“Ok, good. I was about to say that if you were trying to go to Serbia from here, you’d be blocked at the border…they don’t recognize us as a country”
“Oh seriously?”
“Yeah, we’ve only existed for ten years. We used to be a part of Serbia”
“What, and they’re really upset about you being your own state? I mean, no offense, but it’s not a lot of land to get upset over”
“Yeah, but that’s the case. I mean, we’re 90% Albanian, so it really doesn’t make sense for us to be a part of Serbia”
“What about your relationship with Albania? They’re okay with you being your own state?”
“Yeah, they’re pretty cool about it. But there’s a lot of the world that still doesn’t recognize our existence. Our passport is pretty weak because of that. We can’t go to a lot of countries. Spain, China, Russia, Brazil, well…actually pretty much half the world doesn’t recognize us in fact”
“That’s nuts. I mean, I just believe whatever Google Maps tells me…I mean, if there’s a border and it says ‘Kosovo’, I’m probably gonna err on the side of it being a state. I mean, Lonely Planet has a separate entry on it, so it must be a state, right?”
“Right, haha”
“So what’s keeping half the world from recognizing your independence? I could hardly imagine a country like Spain or China to have any relevance or interest in saying no to you guys…there’s not much at stake, really”
“Well, actually, there is stuff at stake. You have to understand that we’re a separatist or secessionist state from Serbia. All those countries I’ve mentioned have regions that want to break away from the mainland. In Spain, they’re worried that if they recognized Kosovo’s sovereignty, the Catalan state would have more legitimacy in declaring their independence”
“Oh you’re right! Russia has the Chechens to worry about and China’s got Xinjiang to worry about”
“Right. They’re afraid that those people will say something along the lines of ‘oh so you recognize this population from some state faraway to be on their own but you won’t even consider allowing us to be independent from you?’ It sets a precedent. But you know, we have a lot of random countries in Africa that recognize us, like Swaziland and Ghana and such”
“Ha, what stake could they possibly have in recognizing you? It feels pretty random”
“They don’t. Our politicians pretty much bribed them to switch over to recognizing us”
“What, African recognition is that important to you?”
“Any recognition is important to us. We’re trying to get a seat at the U.N….that’s like the ultimate sign of legitimacy”
“Ohhh, and you’re basically trying to get enough of a majority to be included. What does it take to get recognized by the U.N.?
“I think you maybe need like at least 2/3rds recognition to be included, and African votes are the cheapest to buy”
.
.
“So…what are you guys known for?”
“Uh, war with Serbia”
“No, I mean, what’s your biggest export? What industry do you specialize in?”
“Uh…we don’t really have industry here”
“Oh come on, you have to have industry here. How else would there be money going around? You have to be producing something. Where does the money come from?”
“Foreign aid. That’s where the money comes from. Foreign aid”
“Oh…”
“Yeah…”
...
Macedonia
August 24
“There it is”
“There’s what?”
“Where Mother Teresa’s house used to be”
“Wait, she’s from Macedonia?”
“Yep. That’s usually just about the only thing that people know about Macedonia, was that Mother Teresa was born here. Her, and this crazy motherfucker over here”
“Who’s statue is that?”
“Alexander”
“Alexander who?”
“THE Alexander”
“Alexander the Great?”
“Yeah”
“I thought Alexander the Great was Greek, though”
“Don’t tell people here that”
...
Albania
August 21
“The period of Communism under Enver Hoxha was probably the hardest period in this country’s history”
“The man was that crazy?”
“Let me give you an example. If you were to go to the town market to shop for your food, you’d hardly find anything close to the variety you’d find today. We had potatoes and not much else. And if you look around and see a potato that didn’t look good and complained about it, you’d get in serious trouble”
“What, for pointing out that a potato didn’t look good?”
“Yeah, you could go to jail for that”
“Wh…you can’t be serious”
“If you were to make a comment about the quality of anything that the state produced, you would be taken to prison for up to 6 months. Either the merchant or even a friend accompanying you would be compelled to report you to the police because insulting a product of the state would be interpreted as inciting dissent and opposition to the government. Everyone always had to appreciate everything and pretend that everything was high quality even if it wasn’t. And it worked. People here actually believed that Albania was the greatest country on earth”
.
.
“You see this clock tower here? It was built because we have two mosques in the city centre. The leaders were afraid that with the two mosques, Skopje would be misidentified as an Asian city, so we wanted to build a taller structure than the mosques that was distinctly European in style so that we could legitimately be a European city. When the Ottomans came, the clocktower was the first thing they destroyed because it was a symbol of Albanian identity which wanted to be European. After the Ottoman Empire dissolved, the clock tower was the first thing to be rebuilt”
.
.
“Has anyone noticed that our drivers here are really bad?”
“Um, YEAH. The do some pretty stupid things over here”
“Wanna know why that is? We’ve only been driving for 27 years. Cars didn’t exist in Albania until our dictator died and the country opened up. I remember my grandfather decided he wanted to get a car after one year of them starting to import”
“How old was he?”
“71. And he decided to get a driver’s license 3 months after getting his car”
.
.
“You know, our country didn’t even have bananas until a few decades ago?”
“You seriously never had bananas? They’re the world’s cheapest and most common fruit”
“That’s how isolated we were. We could not have access to bananas. When bananas first started appearing in the country, my mom thought they were dangerous because they came from somewhere else. She hated the sight of bananas”
“Is she still that way?”
“Now? No. Now, she’s bananas for bananas”
.
.
“When we finally opened up our economy, do you know what was the first company to come here?”
“Coca Cola!”
“That’s right”
“Gotta bring Coke to the people”
“But what was interesting about how we dealt with Coke was that people were collecting the bottles after they finished drinking to show on the mantlepiece or the display cabinet”
“They thought it made good decoration?”
“Nope, that was their only decoration. Everyone up till then had identical furniture and decor. Coke bottles were one of the first things that showed up that a person could have in their house that would make it look different from other people’s”
.
.
“You know, Albania’s come a long way since we abolished the dictatorship, but some people still strangely like to reminisce about the old days”
“Such as?”
“Well, my dad would see the girls wearing miniskirts around and get furious about ‘look at how we’ve become as a society…this is immoral and blah blah blah”
“Yeah, back then there was probably a strict dress code”
“Ha! It’s not about modesty or morality though…it’s just because things are different. Get this: he would point at a woman today wearing a hijab or burka and say the exact same thing about how messed up society is because of this dress”
.
.
“You have a street here named George W. Bush street”
“Yeah”
“That seems a little random. Why Bush? He’s probably the least popular president in recent history”
“To us he was the only president in recent history. At least, he was the first and to this date the only U.S. president to have ever visited Albania, so we named a street after him”
“Do you think if Trump were to visited he’d get a street named after him today?”
“You know, probably not. But there’s a corporate building right next to George W. Bush street, maybe we could name it Trump Tower”
...
Cappadocia
August 02
“Hey, I finally made it, but I can’t find your place”
“Listen, I sent you a GPS pin, you can’t find it?”
“No, I’m at a hotel nearby, but the pin you sent doesn’t lead to a real building, is there anyway you can meet me at the hotel?”
“I’m sorry man, but it’s 2 AM and….I’m so fucking high right now”
“I know but, I think your place is only a block away or something, can you give me directions from the Cave House hotel?”
“Sorry man, I’m like…just way too fucking high right now…just follow the directions. If you can’t find it, then…I’m sorry, but I’ll see you tomorrow”
“Wait, what do you mean?”
“If you can’t find the place, then you can maybe stay somewhere else…I’m just way too high and it’s way too late to come get you now”
“Alright…you okay though?”
“Yeah, I’m just really really fucking high”
...