Hopping in Europe

<b>The end</b>

I never usually cut my hair while traveling, but I did so in Belgrade. Why? Maybe so I could be in a closed environment with Serbs? Psychologically, you cannot say anything bad about the person who tries to make you pretty. I sat five meters across from Jelena's former boss who had returned to work after recovering from an apparently terminal illness only to find she was now reporting to a former subordinate who was less qualified. Now she looked forward to her early retirement.

While walking about the city, Jelena mentioned an invitation from a cousin whom she had not seen in a long time and wondered if I would not mind going there with her so she could spend time with both of us. I didn’t want to appear over-zealous but secretly I wished Jelena would take the cousin up on the offer and take me there with her right then. To tell the truth I was eager to meet a real Serb, to sit in her house rather than trying to decipher random Serbs passing me by on the street.

Jelena’s cousins kept asking me if they could fetch me juice or quick snacks. Their hospitality and friendliness didn’t surprise me because it was similar in Bosnia. Despite the horrible things they inflicted on each other, they are pretty much the same.

Jelena relentlessly pushed, “Do that song!” After a few “no I can’t and no I won’t,” under the quizzing eyes of strangers I conjured up my strength to produce a wave of low noise out of my throat. "Lane moje oh vidah nah. Vise eh tuje. Kada te pomyslim."
This icebreaker has shamelessly worked every single time for me whenever I’m in contact with Serbs. Like many Eastern Europeans, Serbs are dead serious about Eurovision, and certainly very proud of their culture. Bring up the talented Zeljko Joksimovic, singer/song-writer/musician and his 2nd placed Eurovision song “Lane Moje” and you are guaranteed to charm a lot of Serbs.

The word “Serbia” familiarized itself to me the very instant Marko turned on this song in a hot tiny dorm room in Gliwice. Though the laptop’s crappy speaker produced mediocre sound, I was immediately taken by the enchanting, melancholic melodies. Every now and then when I listened to this song when living in Bosnia, I thought to myself: “how can people who create such beautiful music be capable of such things?”
I was a little bit nervous when Jelena told her cousins that I was from Sarajevo. Over the years, I’ve learned to hide details that might connect me to the Bosnians when first meeting with Serbs whom I don’t know. One night last year on the way home in Strasnice, I heard Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian language and stopped a group of tourists to inquire about their origins. They were very happy when I greeted them in their own language and sang a bit of their national pride “Molitva.” When you run out of topic to talk to people, maybe just sing.

We giggled the whole way until one of them asked me, "How did you learn Serbian?"
"Oh,” I unknowingly replied, “I lived in Sarajevo."
Then I could feel the subtle change in their looks and the smiles they passed from one to another. "So the Muslims there are friendly right?"
"Yes they are."
"They USED to be friendly," one person sarcastically asked and answered her question while her friends laughed.
Since then “I lived in Sarajevo” is replaced with “I have Croatian friends.”

Occasionally I ate cevapi at a Bosnian restaurant in Zizkov and always wanted to strike a conversation with the people who worked there. The problem is I have yet to figure out if they are Serbs or Bosnians. So for every juicy bite of the grilled cevapi and a slurp of salty yogurt is a stealthy slant at the apathetic woman drawing her cigarette and I wonder if I should ask for milk. (The only way I can tell a Serbian from a Bosnian is how they say ‘milk’. The Serbs say a quick, strong ‘mleko’ while the Bosnians (Croats and Bosniaks) say ‘mlijeko’ with a distinct stretching ‘i’ sound.)

When you generalize the causes of your negative emotion, the negativity tends to be bigger than it seems. Up to then I had lumped Serbs together as one single source of evilness, as cold-blooded murderers and loony nationalists, thus the pictures I had of them were less then pretty. But I have since seen them as separate individuals, heck some even are my friends. I have realized that they are also normal people and tremendously affected by the mess they caused.

The hostel-owner-cum-shepherd Ladimir, lethargically blew smoke from his cigarette while explaining to me how he and Serbs lived only day by day, the philosophy which Jelena also shares.
“This is small fry,” he shrugged when I asked if the current global crisis affected Serbia. “We had worse,” he rolled his eyes. “It was hard in the 2000s, then before that during the war with Kosovo, and before that [the Bosnian war] and before that...”

Other than Ladimir, others whom I met were women, thus in a way I could easily identify and sympathize with them. They face the same problem like women in my society: a stay-at-home law student who takes care of her small child and ponders her professional outlook; a divorced survivor from a terminal illness wastes away the rest of her professional years waiting for an early escape; a young grad student who finds she no longer fits in her country. And there are countless nameless Serbs who sell on the street, lean idly by the windows because there is nothing else to do or dwell in the garbage ghetto.

You and I and Americans draft list after list of plans to control and handle the unexpected as well as the expected events of our lives. After all we control our destiny no? For us, it’s easier without the invisible hands which keep sabotaging our every move, shattering our hope and breaking our dream as it did in the ‘Balkan’. Who knows, maybe having no ‘life’ plan actually makes a bit more sense?

Why?

I arrived in Belgrade with no map and no plan. I left that up to a Serbian friend whom I met accidentally in Andorra. How many people travel to Andorra for just one day and rush back for their flights the next day? How many of them end up staying with the same host? How many will return to Spain on the same bus? How many will then fly from the same airport? How many will fly on the same morning requiring overnight sleeping on the same bench? And how many are the exact people you are trying to meet?

That was how I met Jelena.

Meeting random people on the road also makes me realize that there is a 'crazier' and 'flakier’ version of me and that I am after all normal. I cannot retrace the route Jelena and I took anymore because I aimlessly followed her from one boulevard to another while listening to her narration about the city, its history, her life and of course Serbia.

Our first stop was the buildings and radio station bombed by NATO in 1999. They are burned, destroyed and left ruined as a live museum to remind people not to forget. It was only then I fully understood Marko's contempt toward Americans.

Five years ago in a restaurant in Wroclaw, Poland, we sat next to a group of Polish soldiers. Marko pointed at them and smirked. "See how smug they are in that military uniform? Arrr! Americans.”
Another Marko, a Croatian, explained to me, ‘Your country bombed his’.
Yeah but why does it have anything to do with the Poles? Only much later when living in Prague and following the high-profiled rocket-and-radar fiasco concocted by America, Poland and the Czech Republic that I learned about one of America's staunchest European ally, Poland.

There isn’t war if there is no casualty. There isn’t casualty if there isn’t any proven dead body. During the month NATO bombed Belgrade, life went on as usual as only military buildings were targeted.

My hostel attendant Ladimir from Novi Sad, recalled those days. “People flocked to the street,” he said, “to cheer, to dance and to point the middle finger up to the sky and shout ‘come here, bring it on!'”

On April 23rd, 1999, people went to their usual night shift at Radio-Television of Serbia - until the building blew up. Families of 16 victims built a granite headstone with the word 'Zašto' (‘why’) above the names of those who were killed. Why did the TV station belong on a hit list? But a darker question hangs over, the ex TV boss Dragoljub Milanovic. He is alleged to have deliberately sent his employees to work that day knowing they might die. Why? To ensure the propaganda against NATO and solidify the Serb conviction: “the world is against Serbia, and we are the victims.”

We walked half a day before taking a break at a chic hair salon so I could get a ‘Serbian’ haircut with a short bang. We moved on to a restaurant where Jelena ordered a big fat plate of 500g juicy cevapcici, special grilled minced meat, served in many places in the world but only best in Bosnia and Serbia. Like the Bosnians from Sarajevo, she won the argument and the public mini ‘fight’ as to why she should pay for the meal. I felt like a big sinner letting a vegetarian pay for my meat.

With my new Serb hairstyle and full stomach, I walked through the city center of Belgrade heading for Kalemegdan, a fortress overlooking the Sava river. I used to drink Turkish coffee almost every evening with the cleaning ladies at the school where I worked in Sarajevo. They did not understand me at all, and I understood them very little but they invited me for coffee and talk every day.

When I said that I would like to go to Belgrade, Suja, one of these ladies, complained how small the dried-up Miljaka river flows through Sarajevo.
"But the Sava is very huge,” she said making a gesture with her hands to describe its grandeur. I could not detect any sign of malign from her voice and eyes. “And Belgrade is beautiful.”

As I was standing on the top of the Kalemegdan, I remembered Suja’s comments and tried to feel and see what it was that brought up the twinkling in the eyes of a 50-year old. This city is awful, and the river isn’t so great. But my perception of Sava is as a passing tourist who sees the river as nothing more than a large volume of water flowing from one place to another. For Suja, Fatima and the other ladies, they saw Sava in a different light. It runs through the capital of their former country, the mighty Yugoslavia. It represents the past days of glory, especially when the present is not worth looking forward to. The past is maybe all they have.

I got a surprise, though. No one told me that here from this exact spot I would see the Sava end and then blend with the Danube, running its course along the Serbia-Romania border, crossing into Bulgaria before emptying itself into the Black Sea. Only then did I understand what Le Corbusier wanted to say:

"Belgrade is the ugliest city on the most beautiful place in the world."

"Belgrade is the ugliest city on the most beautiful place in the world."

..tbc...

Belgrade is an ugly city...

…big, ugly, dirty, gray and polluted. Jelena dragged me here and there-I had not a slightest idea where. Here I was, in Belgrade and I stealthily looked at almost every Serb who crossed my path to find something, something to explain the reason for my disdain. But no matter how hard I looked, I could not discover anything new, and yet I kept recalling old memories. Hearing the familiar Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian/Serb-Croatian language made me deliriously happy. The Croats, Bosnians and Serbs speak as if they are singing. When I hear them speak, I feel I can see a river flow.

The Czechs speak a Western Slavic language that should be similar to Serb-Croatian, but it seems the dry and emotionless German tongue influences the language. No matter how hard I try, I can't take it in. Everyone from the former Yugoslavia, from old to young, from the capital to the countryside speaks loud and clear as how a language should be spoken, especially for a foreigner because you are assured that if you try hard enough, someday you will understand.

I looked at the men and women, at the way they looked and dressed and turned to Jelena, "You look no different from the Bosnians in Sarajevo."
"No we don't," she replied.

I wanted to ask them about the war, what they thought of Milosevic, if they or their parents voted for him, what they think about Bosnian Serbs and the Muslims, do they support Radovan Karadzic and Mlako Mladic? Do they see themselves as victims? Will they ever apologize for what happened? Is Kosovo’s independence justified? What do they think about Americans? Jeez how I dreaded the question. First the Americans supported Bosnia then the Americans bombed Belgrade and liberated Kosovo. There were many questions to which I will never get the answer, but I didn’t care as I had a bigger plan.

"Belgrade is the ugliest city..." said the French architect Le Corbusier.

I wholeheartedly agreed the moment my train from Novi Sad crept through the countryside and inched its way into the suburb. From the train windows, I saw what seemed to be a monster-sized garbage dump, but once the train got closer I saw shelters made from junks, and as the train got even closer I gasped when I spotted people moving around in this lump. Who can they possibly be other than the homeless or gypsies?

They are probably gypsies as this place is too degrading for even homeless ‘gadjo’ (‘white’ in Romani langue). Later I learned that not only are these people gypsies, they are gypsies from war-torn Kosovo. (There are also different levels of poor.)

I stood right up from my seat, and a Polish student next to me did the same. Without signaling to each other, we stuck our cameras out of the windows and started the Japanese digital frenzy, zooming and clicking and pointing and clicking amidst the giggling and staring from the amused Serbian students. While my brain was still digesting the ‘home’ of the Romani, it got hit by another shock wave as the train moved slowly into New Belgrade. Block after block of dirty and messy grayish-brown apartment buildings appeared from nowhere running parallel to the rail track. I thought I would never see any building messier and dirtier after Tirana, the capital of Albania.

It is not like I was not prepared either. During the past four years I have lived entirely in Eastern Europe where the Soviet interpretation of urban development is present everywhere. I even had the privilege to live in two such settlements, first in Poland and then in the Czech Republic. Then why was I shocked if after all Serbia is Eastern Europe?

This was the second time I felt a strange sense of sadness for Serbia and the ex-Yugoslavia.

Two years ago during a hiking trip in Banat, the mountainous western region of Romania, our group walked parallel with the Danube—flowing along the borderline between Serbia and Romania—and passed a narrow stretch where we could see Serbia from across the river. During communism, many Romanians, though very few succeeded, attempted to swim across this river to seek refuge and a better life in the former Yugoslavia. It sounds like a cruel joke now: “how many Romanians want to escape to Serbia?”

They are EU members while Serbians, Bosnians, Macedonians, Montenegrins and the infantile Kosovars can try in another decade. The Serbs had started many wars in the region only to lose them all. By doing so, they have forfeited the upper advantages, the status and the prosperity the former Yugoslavia had over their Eastern counterparts. The Slovakians use the Euro. The Czechs hold their first EU presidency. The Romanians and Bulgarians can legally stick EU symbols on their car license plates. And the Bosnians and Serbians are busy clearing up rocket-shelled buildings and chasing war criminals to make nice with Europe.

I wonder if Serbs have the temperament of the Czechs who shrugged their shoulders when Slovakia seceded from the Federation of Czechoslovakia. The Czechs would shriek in hysteria instead of showing their fist if you dare say their ancestors were Poles, Hungarians or Slovaks. The Czechs would of course enjoy too much beer and gulash instead of plunging into a political debate or cooking up a plan for a Greater Austro-Hungarian-Czech-Slovak empire. Would things have been different?

...tbc...

<b>"Life is what happens when you are making other plans" - John Lennon
</b>

Do you plan your life to the minutest detail of how it should be? Most Americans will tell you “yes” thanks to all the bargain-on-the-shelf, flying-off-the-chart pop psychology, and all those self-development books like “How to Organize Your Life in 30 Minutes”, “Life Skills for Dummies” etc.

Your school counselors grill you about your life plan: how do you imagine your life five or ten years from now? Heck! Job interviewers interrogate you about your professional outlook to know what you see yourself doing before letting you dig into their 401K.

A former boyfriend of my high school friend told her that age is a marker for when he would buy his first car, mortgage his first house, and get a wife. At this rate I wouldn’t be surprised if he already knew when he and his wife’s chromosomes would combine to produce the perfect-planed baby.

In America, you read "7 habits of highly effective people" to learn how to prioritize your life to achieve your potential and live your life to the fullest. It is good stuff and the Americans are right.

"We don't have a budget plan here," my Czech roommate’s former boss from Sarajevo, said to her when she asked him about the company's financial forecasts.

"But this is a bank,” she insisted. “You have to have a budget plan."

"Katka,” he retorted, “here in the Balkan, we don't plan - get used to it."

How do you see your life five years from now if your city is under siege, the longest siege of a capital in modern history? Can you see yourself professionally in the next ten years when just by going to school you risk being a target for snipers? What plan do you have for the future when the person you called neighbor only yesterday points a gun at you the day after?

When to have your first car, first apartment and first spouse becomes irrelevant if your birth name becomes your death sentence. But this post is not so much about Sarajevo as it is about the lingering demons of its’ past or more precisely about the people who might have perpetuated these demons.

It's official now: I have made it a life goal to visit every single country in Europe.

“Why?” people ask me. I don’t know. A goal is a goal. Some countries you just have to see, like the big three, Spain, France or Italy. Some, it’s so damn convenient like England where most international flights stop over. Some are too exotically inviting to resist, like Greece or Turkey. Some, like Denmark, you descend to for the weekend just because you find a ridiculously cheap flight for 25 EUR return. Some, like Germany, you just cross the border to get a new stamp in your passport in order to remain legally where you are. Some you go to just so you are able to say that you have been there, like Andorra. Some keep on lurking in your thoughts, and you will never have peace until you get there.

Here comes a problem.

‘Serb’ and ‘Serbia’ provoked a certain negative reaction to me. It’s neither right nor wrong; it’s purely psychological. It’s probably the collective emotion I experienced after living in Sarajevo. The war in Bosnia is no longer a piece of news, and the Bosnians are not merely faceless names on the newspaper. I lived, talked, had coffee with them and heard countless stories. Gradually, their past pain and current hatred became mine. Living in a Bosniak-controlled city, I could not (or didn’t bother to) find any Serbs to hear their side of the stories. I left loving almost everything Bosnian and hating everything else. Anyway!

The Belarusian family who fed me<

Last year, when we chatted about housing in Minks, Tanya explained in her childlike manner. “I live in a big city in a small flat. Masha lives in a big city and a big flat. Sasha lives in a small city and a big house, and Inna lives in a small city in a small flat." The sizes of their flats and cities cover all permutation cases of 2. How cool is that?

A few days after my train to Minsk, they emailed me to inform me that I would have the honor of live in a big city and a big flat with Masha.  Masha’s flat was located at a suburb of Minsk, about a 30-minute bus ride from the city center. It was on the third floor, having a balcony open to a small wood surrounding the complex. The wooden balcony was small and had enough space for only two chairs, a dry pile of clothing, some junks, watermelons and two ropes for hanging clothes.  Each night, before going to sleep, I brought my clothes I wore during the day to hang outside and stood for a few minutes to inhale the fresh air. It was so quiet I could hear buzzing sound in my ears. Here in this foreign flat, I slept right a way unlike in the dormitory in Gliwice where I had to turn about, looked up to the ceiling and counted sheep.  Usually the sun had already risen by the time Masha woke me up. I tottered outside to gather my clothes. It wasn’t cold but I shivered.

Masha’s father taught Criminal Justice at a nearby college. He laughed all the time and every night tried to start a conversation with me in English. Occasionally, I squeezed my brain to spit out a few Polish words after realizing Polish and Belarusian pronunciations for some words were familiar. It was understandable because Polish and Belarusian have the same Slavic root, and part of Belarus used to belong to Poland. Masha’s mom worked in an office in the same city and responsible for my nutrient intake during my four-day stay. She was very kind, cooked for the entirely family and sometimes asked me questions through Masha’s translation.  Masha’s sister studied biology and worked part-time in the school’s lab, collecting grass, flowers and small plants in the wood around the flat.  She never opened her mouth to me once during my entire time living there.  She reminded me of my old self, being a shy kid in Vietnam.  My mouth was clam shut, and I had a solemn face of a mourner at the funeral.  My mom scolded me many times “your face won’t bring any luck to your father and me. Try to smile so people won’t think we neglect you." Now my face’s expression improved a bit becoming a blend between the face of the bride in her first wedding and a silliconaire who just lost his stocks during the dotcom crash.

Masha woke me up at 6:00 every morning, put away the bed bunk and performed the morning ritual: showered, shaved, and whatever and ate breakfast her mom had prepared for us.  Her dad and sister had left the flat earlier.  It was only her mom, she and I with the family silly dog barking at everyone and eating every piece of watermelon we threw on the floor. I didn’t have to spend money at all for food during my stay in Belarus being fed tasty homemade Belarusian food three times a day.  At breakfast, I ate toasted bread with butter, grilled cheese and salty sardines, too salty as if somebody spread an extra layer of salt over the pitiful fish. Salty fish was probably a popular dish of former Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries. My Ukrainian roommate Mariana ate plenty of these salty sardines for her meals while we lived together in Gliwice. Sveta from Russian did the same. Masha’s mom cooked rice mixed with carrots, bell peppers and other vegetables I couldn’t tell which from which. The taste was very different from my Asian cooking, but it was very good.  There were always sweets, mostly chocolate, and tea with every meal. If I had known Masha and her mom liked chocolate, I would bring a lot from Gliwice because good chocolate was very cheap there.  I also learned that the potato pancake dish Michal prepared for us during our trip to a Polish mountain was Belarusian national food, not Polish.  If I had stayed longer, I would have the chance to eat this yummy potato cake with the family.

At dinner, we drank a couple glasses of red wine and chatted more since there was more time.  By then, I was somewhat used to drinking culture of the Europeans so I wasn’t surprised seeing kids, teenagers and adults drink beer and alcohol as if I drank soda pop.

Hamburgerred bus

I lost count of how many times I was sandwiched between a big fat belly and a big fat ass in a 40-maximum capacity bus which loaded nearly seventy plus combo of bellies and asses.  Buses in Minsk were the oldest among all buses I rode on in places I’d been. There were many occasions I felt the bus would sidetrack and I would crash to the side. If there was a bus accident, the injure rate from people crashing people stomach on would be 100%.  Masha and I couldn’t talk to each other since we had to either hold on to bus pole for dear life or breathe like pigs because of the body heat. One time, at a bus station, we stood behind a typical old heavy-weighted woman who was trying to get on the bus.  She tried a few times but could not because the flat form was too high for her ages and weights.  Standing right there, Masha held out her tiny hand, directly at the center of that lucky woman’s butt and successfully pushed her onto the bus.  The old lady smiled and was not at all bothered that she might have just been sexual harassed. I couldn’t stop laughing and told the other girls about that incident.

The ‘flamboyant’ president

In the evening, when the bus was not crowded anymore, we sat down on the bus and talked nonsense. Tanya and Masha kept on ridiculing their president, Alexander Lukashenko “You see presidents from other countries are lawyers, businesses men, and big powerful men. The president of our country was a former agriculture director. He isn’t respected by Europe." Agriculture plays an important role in Belarus’ economy, more important than industrial. The picture of grain plants on Belarus’ flag emphasizes this fact. “Focusing on agriculture now is insane," they complained.

This president wanted to change the Constitution to run again for president. He’s known as the last European dictator. For this fact, I think it’s why he isn’t respected by other European countries.

How much?
Sasha was currently working as a correspondent for a newspaper in Minsk. She had just finished an article about juvenile crime and needed to bring it to the local police to double check the facts before publishing it.  Police was someone who scared me before my travel to this country, and now I was in a place full of them. A young policeman, whose name I forgot, wanted to know about American police, especially their salaries. I felt bad and did not want to say anything at all because Sasha told me that police here earned about 300 dollars per month. But he kept asking so I quickly told him the annual $40,000 and emphasized that police were hated in America because they work for the government and other negative things about the police to negate the whopping 40,000 grand.  I asked him about crimes in Minsk and learned that people died mostly from stabbing wounds or from being beaten to death. Before I left, I asked him to visit the US sometimes, but he said it would be impossible. At first I thought he had trouble traveling because of stricter traveling custom between America and Eastern Europe.  However, he explained that he had too much information about the government, thus they wouldn’t let him travel abroad especially to America. I was extremely surprised encountering no problem with the police as previously warned by my friends and online travel tips to former Soviet Union countries.

The glamorous girls

University students received 30 dollars per month from the government for their schooling. For most of them, this was the only income beside their family’s allowance. Almost everybody owned a cell phone which cost 10 dollars per month, a third of their monthly earnings. Clothes were expensive. T-Shirts, tops, pants and jeans were no less than $20, and classy dresses had price tags of around $100.

Like their neighbor Poles, Belarusian girls were overly stylish. Most of them wore flashy tops and pants in addition to high heels, glittering pointy-toed pumps. Mariana, my Ukrainian roommate in Gliwice, showed me her wardrobe consisting of colorful silk tops and pants in bright colors like red, purple and orange. She told me that they were typical Ukrainians styles which similar to what I saw here in every shop.  During my walk around Minsk with Sasha, I mentioned the cost of clothing; she made a flicking sound with her tongue and shook her head: “It is a sad illusion. The girls wore expensive clothes they couldn’t afford and must have begged for money from their parents."

Without healthy hobbies and real purposes in life, sometimes women fall prey to shopping addiction as it does bring momentary pleasure which the brains interpret as happiness.  It’s also that women have more pressure than men to be well-dressed.

On the bus to her dormitory, Sasha told me about her wish to come to America. Her triplet sister, who lived in Wichita Fall, Texas, wanted her to come because she felt lonely, not having any relative beside her husband.  Sasha was worried about being in the United States, afraid that she would work forever as a waitress at McDonald and have no future because she didn’t have any other skills beside journalism. I assured and told her about many of my friends who came to America in their mid, late 20s, 30s and were still able to make a place for themselves in their second country.  It made sense for her to be worried because a few of her friends ended up working at dead-end McDonald when they came to America.  Last year, after finishing work at the camp, Sasha took Greyhound bus to Wichita Fall, Texas and worked illegally for a month in a Mexican restaurant (the natives exploit the immigrants, and the older immigrants exploit the new comers). You wouldn’t believe how much they paid her, an exploiting wage of $2.5  per hour. Still, she was able to bring back home $800 including the amount earned from working at the camp. I never told Sasha that she impressed me in many ways.  At the mere age of 19, the girl seemed to have figured out everything. Graceful, beautiful, ambitious and insanely romantic, I don’t think she would have any problem succeeding in America.  She emailed me recently telling me that she was going forward with her plan to go to America in five years. Hopefully, things will work out for her.

Among many Belarusian girls who dream of leaving for America, Sasha might be one of the few lucky ones to be successful at doing that.  One of her friends, after coming to America to work at a summer camp through Camp USA, decided to stay and worked at a McDonald while applying for schools and plotting to stay permanently.  I asked Sasha how she would manage that if she did not have anyone there to help. “Yah, Cindy. That was exactly what I told her;" Sasha said, “She studies languages and very smart."

I spent the rest of the day hanging out with Masha, Tanya, and Sasha, missing only Inna who was still somewhere in America doing a McJob.

Hospitability:  Universal or culturally specific?

I was not closed with these Belarusian girls when we worked together at a summer camp last summer. The reason I paid more attention to them than others was that I became curious about anything international. I didn’t expect much before coming to Minsk because everybody warned me about what dead city it was. However Tomek, the one who commented that I was going to hell, assured “they are poor but they are very hospitable. They’re willing to take the food from their mouths and give it to you."  No, Belarusians were hospitable, but they didn’t take the food from their mouths because it would be unsanitary, and I would not dare to eat. I was in Belarus as an American who had dollars available any time from ATM machines, but I didn’t pay for anything except for my train ticket. (I was not culturally allowed to pay for myself because I was a guest.) They were extremely mad at me when I kept shoving the money in their faces trying to pay my due.  It was strange to be pampered by a bunch of 18, 19 years old who bought me bananas, bread, ice-cream and ballet tickets.

My Vietnamese acquaintance and friends might think I made a big deal out of the Belarusians' hospitality because Vietnam and Vietnamese have plenty of that. There is nothing impressive about it. I know. I was born there and spent most of my teenage years there as well.  But for the past 8 years, I've lived in the US and have gotten used to the difference “You are my guest, and this is where it ends." There is not any privilege being a guest in America as in Vietnam, Belarus or poorer societies.  My friend Martina, Slovakian, told me about her short stay at the house of an American co-worker who worked at the same camp.  After breakfast, that person asked everybody each to give her a dollar for the breakfast cereal. Martina told me the story while munching on her bread and shaking her head continuously with disappointment “one dollar?” This ‘culture’ difference also happened to Inna.  She was seen as cheap because she didn’t want to spend a lot of money, and the poor, unknowing girl ate food from the host’s refrigerator and didn’t stock it back. “You know what Cindy; in my country guests don’t have to pay for food (now I know why).  Why can’t we eat at McDonald? Why make me eat at an expensive restaurant? I don’t need to eat good food. I just want to see the world." “Inna I know. I know.  If you come to my house or my country, you don’t have to pay either." That was all I could say.

But this is America, not Belarus.

The end

<em>To those who are cursed to an afterlife of damnation; you should not worry too much.  Go ahead! Do sin because once you decide to go to hell, you will have abundant Vodka, tasty potato pancakes, food if not cheap then free since you eat them in a Belarusian family.  You will ride on overloaded buses, being a hamburger sandwiched between two buns: man belly and woman ass and feeling as if you are about to lop-side.  You probably won’t see what you have dreamed before: those pretty photos of Europe on calendars or flyers promoting tours in Europe.  But is it important really? Beauty is not always obvious; the definition of beauty is not universally defined. You should know what you want to see.  If the things you see are not what you have expected from the beginning, are you able to view them in different lights?</em>

I left Minsk at 23:00.  I looked through the window to see Minsk for the last time before the train’s wheels started cranking on the tracks; the only thing I was able to spot was my vague reflection on the dirty glasses. I changed into my pajamas and tried to get some sleep. In my dream, I recalled and re-constructed the images and memories of my recent passage into hell.