Flowings of Your Everlasting Taffyman

I feel like I owe you guys a million updates.. lemme try to recap some stories or something.

HMMM
On my way in to Belgrade (I took a bus at 8:00 AM from Serajevo and arrived around 4ish i think) Anyway on my way in I could tell that some of the stories of the city flooding were indeed true, and whats more they seem to only hit the areas of the city that were already doing poorly- make shift housing (slums) on the side of the river... no scrap materials or sand bags for barricades... open water flooding through unsealed doorways.
The train station and bus stations were also hit.. but not so bad.. still they dropped us off at one of the bus stations which looked more like a park.. and i shoo-ed off local apartment dealers awaiting the representatives from the hostel...
anyway they never showed or i never found them or what ever and so I began to walk for the next cheapest option (a place about a mile or two away..) but I had no idea what direction to go in (just dont walk towarss the river) and the street signs were in cyrillic which is not as easy to understand as you would think.
So I tried to ask some peoples on the street, a taxi driver, a policeman, a street vendor, some passerbys and they all waved me off or said "no" which meant "no english" I believe... not that its hard to communicate when all im trying to say is "where are we on this map im pointing to?" but they didnt want to bother.. so I walked on trying to make my way... I found a mcdonalds (which meant civilization) and a small market full of dealers selling easter stickers and such... and as I was beginning to give up (maybe i will just spend a few hours here and move on to istanbul) a helpful young lady -a student who reminded me of my cousin (who im supposed to e mail) stopped and asked me where i was headed..
and then she helped me find the hotel... but it was booked out... so i headed for the hotels around the train station. In the book they are cheaper than in reality... so I booked a single room for around 25 $ a night and shortly after booking it ran in to a hostel nearby... mother fuckers...
anyway.. i walked towards the train station -stepping in wet cement and almost losing my shoe... and found out that trains leave for istanbul every morning and take about 24 hours to get there... smooth...
So then I walked around town and loved it..
saw some churches, beautiful people, old castles, in the dark i stumbled upon the military museum's outdoor WWII exhibition (a fucking goat load of tanks and cannons and shit-quite scary)
then on the way home I got internet and bla blah blah...

____________________________________

Lets see... i went to that military museum and boy was that fun... actually it was the most interesting and comprehensive museum on the subject i have ever seen.. but it was kind of hard when i got to the section on Kosovo -which highlights very little about the serbian involvement, but demonizes the "Kosovar terrorists" and the war crimes (international laws) broken by NATO in bombing.... fragments of illegal bombs... etc... but i think the hardest part is about 4 displays, one of which has pictures (graphic) showing the civilians our bombs killed.
two have fragments of US war planes shot down...
another has a "captured US soldier's uniform" which probably means hes dead... and his name and such is still on it...
these things just sort of take you out of that "museum" mind set and put you in that "horrors of war" mind set...


_______________________________________________


On the way from Belgrade to Istanbul, I met a nice young Korean man... and we have been hanging out since...
basically there wasnt supposed to be any train changes in the night and every few hours we were waken up and told to get off and wait or run to a different train car..
at about 3 AM we finally figured out that we had to buy beds in the sleeper cars... or sit in the hallways...
and shortly after falling asleep we were woken up again to go through turkish custums which costs 30$ less then it used to!
When I woke up I could tell we were nearing the city, and i loved it... it was how i remembered.. i saw places i have eaten and such from the train window...
I love this city, its one of my favorites in the world.

_________________________________________


hmmm there is always more
i meet rachel tomorrow
not goin to lebanon
booking flights soon.
i think my options are the day steve leaves or june 2nd... which sucks because i want to make sure he gets on the plane alright but i gotta get home man... ok june 2nd probably we shall see.