BELGRADE—"If you are Serb, you are Orthodox. If you are Orthodox, you are Serb."

Goga says this in invisible quotation marks as she wipes her fingers of the coffee that has just abandoned its cramped and shrunken cup. Though this remark is one of the truisms that allows for the perpetuation of Balkan broad strokes, or as my friend and travel partner Marisola would say, "prescriptive identities," it is true enough. And so the conversation between the three of us—Goga, Marisola and myself—takes place in a greasy spoon unadorned with any Christmas decor.

Christmas is coming, but not until the seventh of January. Baby Jesus is still remembered, but within a different consciousness; whereas Christmas in the West is preceded by forty days of shopping, here it is preceded by forty days of fasting. And when it does come there won't be a particularly orgiastic display of reindeer and Elvin forced labor. The holiday to beat here in the East is Easter. So though I write this on Christmas Day, the climate, both literal and symbolic, does little for my Christmas spirit (which was exorcized at the age of five anyway).

Belgrade (Beograd/Velegradha/Dar Al Jihad) is a city in which I breathe easy, though I couldn't quite tell you why. I felt the same way in Berlin. The two capitals have a similar character. They both house the same beast: there is a grime and a fog that slithers around the city. A grey, hazy basilisk. The French would boobytrap the Arc de Triomphe to rid themselves of such a monster. I find him to be a trustworthy companion.

I've spent three days in Belgrade with Marisola; she's been living here, writing and researching. She has impressed me endlessly with her grasp of Srpski and her intimate familiarity with the city. We've been around the place, from Tito's House of Flowers to the Studentski Kulturni Centar, a club that is more vibrant and trendy than its name suggests. Today we visited the May 25th Museum, currently hosting a gallery of dissident artwork from "behind the Iron Curtain."

Henryk Musialowicz, War Against Man, 1960

Jacek Sroka, Gestapo, 1982

Alfred Lenica, Without Preparation, 1970

Eduard Gorokhovsky, Lenin-Stalin, 1989

Jan Dubkowski, Closed System, 1980

5:44—I am remaining calm. My flight to Budapest is delayed indefinitely. I am surrounded by sweaty, angry Europeans. I do not speak their language. (But every so often I can take a guess at their sentiment. Earlier, as I was walking toward the gate I'm currently camped outside of, a man speaking Italian unleashed a passionate, hateful tirade against the staff of the airport, most likely for their participation in drafting his new and inconvenient travel plans. He was carried away, screaming something about the decay of Europe.)

I do not have a phone. Even if I did, I do not have the telephone numbers of my friends in Paris. I do not have a computer. I do not have any money. I have a ticket. A ticket and a passport and two peeling, sunburnt bags. I hope the plane arrives at some point.

6:16—I just overheard a fat man in a red shirt say in English that the flight is delayed five hours. A little girl nearby keeps peeking at me from behind her backpack. Would it be creepy to give her a wave?

She's just staring. If anyone is being creepy, it's her.

6:20—Definitely not waving.

7:35—The fat man is informed. He sits next to his wife and she holds their child. Fat man is a good father and will continue to stay informed about the delay, whose lifespan is increasing by the moment, for the sake of his family. I will make use of my proximity to him. A big, red lagoon of information. In English.

Adjacent to me there is another young guy in a black overcoat with dark brown hair and dark brown eyes. He's also writing in a notebook. Therefore he might be writing almost the same paragraph as I am writing in this notebook.

INTERVENING MINUTES OMITTED

8:40—The departure time currently reads as 21:45. Five minutes ago it was 21:30. I just need to get to Budapest. And someone to send my thoughts to.

9:25—With any luck, the flight will be boarding in a short while. But I'm really not ready to trust the airline's staff. They've lied to me before. How often do they lie, as a rule?

A poem by James Fenton, which due to both my lack of a cable and the passage of time--we're now in Budapest--will have to serve as my report on my time spent in Paris. Just as well, really, since in retrospect it seems as though I went out of my way to conform my days to this piece.

Don't talk to me of love. I've had an earful
And I get tearful when I've downed a drink or two.
I'm one of your talking wounded.
I'm a hostage. I'm maroonded.
But I'm in Paris with you.

Yes I'm angry at the way I've been bamboozled
And resentful at the mess I've been through.
I admit I'm on the rebound
And I don't care where are we bound.
I'm in Paris with you.

Do you mind if we do not go to the Louvre
If we say sod off to sodding Notre Dame,
If we skip the Champs Elysées
And remain here in this sleazy

Old hotel room
Doing this and that
To what and whom
Learning who you are,
Learning what I am.

Don't talk to me of love. Let's talk of Paris,
The little bit of Paris in our view.
There's that crack across the ceiling
And the hotel walls are peeling
And I'm in Paris with you.

Don't talk to me of love. Let's talk of Paris.
I'm in Paris with the slightest thing you do.
I'm in Paris with your eyes, your mouth,
I'm in Paris with... all points south.
Am I embarrassing you?
I'm in Paris with you.

                   

PRAGUE--The Swiss man's hair is teased and shiny. His skin is green and smooth. His eyes protrude a bit, as if they are detachable. He tells me, in a deep, strange voice, that he has just lost one thousand "ferking" dollars.

He goes next door, unlocks something from our hostel's locker, and returns, saying that during his stay here he has gotten sick, heard of troubling news from home, and now, on top of it all, lost this ferking thousand dollars. He paces for a time and then asks me if he may light a cigarette.

"I don't mind, but I think they do."

"Who is they?"

"The hostel."

He scowls, turns and inspects the corridor outside for the tobacco gestapo and then wanders down the hall, grumbling. From the bedroom I hear his lighter crackle, followed by a slow wheeze. I really didn't mind.

* * *

I never caught this green gentleman's name, but last night, after he returned from his cig, I would end up seeing photos of his wife and children and hearing of his four-month stretch of poverty and homelessness in India.

First things first: the "ferking dollars": He had lost this money by leaving his jacket, full of crisp Swiss legal tender, unattended in a coffee shop, across from some friendly stranger who had moments earlier struck up a casual conversation from another table. Our green friend took off to the bathroom for a moment and returned to a missing stranger and missing francs.

"It is my fault-- I have been traveling for tin yeers," he moaned in a distinctive European drawl, "but I still get robbed like a ferking teenager!!!"

Up until this exchange I had been suspicious of green Swiss: he appeared strange and acted strangely. For my first two days spent in Prague I hadn't seen him exit the room except to shower, which would leave his lower half precariously wrapped in a towel for hours afterward. (I suppose this was due to his feeling ill.) He was constantly on his computer, listening to 'Jean Geanie' on his headphones over and over again. He would speak quietly on a headset. He looked suspect. He was green. So I was prepared for this robbery-story to be some elaborate, green scheme.

But it wasn't. He didn't ask for any money and didn't pull anything weird; instead we swapped stories of our travel-related robberies and near-misses. My best involved a gang of nefarious Roma children who gnawed at my limbs in a deserted mall in Skopje. (They only made off with a cell phone battery. Punks couldn't even shake me down.) His best, a drama dating back to the early eighties, was much more harrowing.

In 1981 he had arrived in Bombay with the intention of staying for two years. After lugging all of his belongings into his new apartment, he hopped into the shower:

"The very first day, I walk into shower with soap and towel...when I walk out of shower, all I had was ferking soap and ferking towel."

Someone broke into his apartment and made off with everything he owned while it was still packed up. He was sans property--Proudhon, if "property is theft," what does that make theft of property?--but more importanty, sans passport. Sans travelers checks. Sans cash. The embassies, Swiss and US, were simply dismissive, and he was thrown about from the police to the embassies in an endless volley. He ended up with a flimsy virgin passport with no entrance stamp, which meant he couldn't even leave India. Whoever stole all this wasn't cashing the travelers checks, so he couldn't claim that money. The thief didn't cash them for about four months.

So, for the next four months, the green Swiss was on the street. Begging in the street, sleeping in the street. He had arrived in Bombay with everything and within hours was condemned to tramp-life.

"These times in life, you know, it shows you hunger! I mean...I had been hungry before, but that is no hunger. These times in life, you learn hunger."

In the end he ended up piecing together a fake passport through the services of black marketeers in Goa. He arrived in Switzerland thinner and sadder.

I enjoyed the green Swissman's delivery throughout these stories of SNAFUs abroad, but his best words came after he began speaking of his wife.

"How can this beautiful thing deal with a man so stupid? How can she deal with a man who is always traveling...and traveling so stupidly?"

I was a bit suprised to hear that he had a wife, and, without sounding rude, even more suprised to see how beautiful she was. But he was obviously in awe, himself. And speaking of their children, all four of them, had him beaming. But as he told me of his family he returned again and again to that feeling of inadequacy: he truly couldn't understand why a woman like his wife would marry a man like him. He said he had so, so many foibles; I wasn't sure if he was referencing things like the precarious towel usage and the 'Jean Geanie' marathons. So I remained quiet.

For a moment there was silence, and in the silence I considered how many men think about their love in this way, and how many never even consider their luck. Are the latter gents the happy men? For the men like green Swiss, it can be exhausting, waiting on that other shoe. Waiting to be found out.  For such men, beautiful things will always feel stolen, and they're certain word will get around of their theft.

So it comes back to matters of theft. The stranger who made off with the ferking francs probably didn't feel anxious about the sweaty money in his clutches; but the green Swiss, and those of us like him, will always remain anxious when clutching something beautiful. Perhaps it was this unpleasant thought, lodged in both of our minds, that sustained the silence.

Eventually he let out a sigh, one of fatigue and of relief. He threw his hands up and said:

"But you know...everyone is an asshole in some way. I just...I just don't hide my asshole."

An honest and unaffected sentiment. And, if I may say, very eloquenty put.

I spent my afternoon 50 ft underneath Prague, in the Bunkr Parukářka. This chamber, built in 1955, was once a nuclear fallout shelter installed by the Communists to preserve 25% of the city's population while nasty things took place above ground. Now it serves as a hot and trendy nightclub, housing a slightly smaller percentage of inhabitants so that nasty things may take place underground.

Without sounding flippant, I think that one could view this bunker as a figuration of the metamorphosis that the Prague Spring began and the Velvet Revolution realized: what was once a grey and gloomy Soviet state was transformed into a vibrant and challenging republic. Likewise the bunker, once a gigantic casket, is now a flamboyant club.  Many of the shelter's walls have been coated in vivid graffiti and there's been a PA system installed for bands that perform at the locale. (Their noise, you might imagine, doesn't tend to bother those living 16 meters above the stage.) The sections that have been left unaltered still sport a clammy and lethal film and the gas masks, radiation suits and VZ-58's remain in their lockers.

Emerging from Bunkr Parukářka.

 Afterward I had a chat with some Hungarian and Czech comrades; apparently success with most Hungarian vixens leads to death by mafia.  I took my mind off of that discouraging idea by catching a little night music at St. Nicholas Church, Old Town Square.

Tomorrow it's off to Berlin.

Today commences the winter break between Michaelmas and Hilary term. Off to Europe.

EUROPEAN LEG 2010/11:
-Belgium
-Czech Republic
-Germany
-France
-Hungary
-Croatia
-Serbia
-Albania
-Kosovo
-Macedonia
-Bulgaria

The world's less simple for being travelled,
Though. In each fresh, neutral place
Where our differences might have been settled.
There were men sitting down to talk of peace
Who began with the shape of the table.

Photos will trickle in less quickly than words.