Relaxing is so nice for the body and mind on occasion. Today was one of those occasions. We woke up around 9:15, and after a family (plus 4) breakfast, some of us went off to rent bikes for the week (bikes are the main mode of transportation, apart from nice German cars...Mercedes, BMW, Audi are all everywhere). We then rode the 10ish miles to the family's favorite beach, against the very strong (15-25 knots, depending) winds. As Sylt (approximately pronouced 'Zoolt') is a narrow island with open ocean on the west coast, this will likely be a regular occurence. At the beach, we of course took advantage of the open ocean to swim. There's a sandbar between 3 and 50 yards from the beach, depending on the tide -- at the lowest tide, some of the ... read more

Hello, Milan! As many of you know, I was battling for a while over where to take my free night between Dialogue and meeting up with my friends. Options ranged from Frankfurt to Hamburg to Milan to Zagreb. I obviously ended up in Milan. I regret nothing. As of about10:20this morning, my Dialogue experience was officially over. The bus headed outat 10:30, but since I was staying in Belgrade a bit later, I headed out for a run and got out of their way so they could load the bus. It was definitely sad to see everyone head out, but many of them are headed on to cool things as well. After my run, I made sure a few things were settled away (room bill, credit card, etc.), then headed out to one last ethnic lunch. ... read more

What an interesting day. The events that transpired included: -sleeping in until breakfast wasn't available anymore -getting stuck in the elevator when it ground to a halt between floors 5 and 6 (shortly to be followed by Dave also getting trapped in the elevator between floors 5 and 6) -getting lost on my run -visiting the Nikola Tesla museum and being (literally) shocked -Meeting the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, who also happens to be a paratrooper -Riding on a boat on the Danube -Taking tequila shots for a friend's 21st birthday at midnight -trying to stay awake after staying up until 4 last night All in all, I would call it a successful day. The trapped in the elevator part was maybe not the coolest thing that's ever happened to me, but it's a ... read more

One down, one to go. Today's disputation was on the Office of the High Representative and was very well performed and received. The long and short of it is: there's no right answer (which is of course why we hold these debates; there'd be no point if there was a right answer). The team in support of removing OHR won out, but it could have gone either way. My team, for its own part, has been preparing for the debate tomorrow: writing questions, examining our own prepared points (which we did before knowing we'd be judges), and considering possible arguments we may have missed. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view -- we've had a lot of free time because of it), there's only so much we can do to prepare; much of it ... read more

A tip for anyone planning on traveling to the Balkans in summertime: plan for heat with random intermittent thunderstorms during the day and every night. Also, do your best to not need to wear pants or long sleeve shirts: it's that much worse, and odds are that your destination will not be air conditioned. Not that I'm referring to anything that may have happened today, when it was about 85-90 degrees and we visited the un-air conditioned Parliament building, of course dressed business casual. That was actually our second meeting of the day; we first visited the Zoran Djindjic Fund. The Fund is in memory of the first democratically elected prime minister in Serbia, who was assassinated in 2003. It exists to aid in international relations, student exchanges and internships abroad, and furthering Djindjic's vision. While ... read more