Goodbye, Banja Luka

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Hello, Belgrade! Since I promised several of you readers that I would post on my blog daily, I will stick to that promise.

Here's my blog post for today:

Nothing happened.

The end.



But actually, though. We left the hotel in Banja Lukaat 10:30and sat on the bus (or got off for momentary pit stops) until about 6. Technically I can say I've been to Croatia now. If you want to count getting out at a rest area and stretching my legs on my way through as "going to Croatia." To be honest, we could have been in Ohio. Cornfields and flatland all around.



Regardless, Belgrade is an interesting city to be in. It's much more industrialized than any of the other cities we've hit. It actually honestly looks like it's stuck in the 1990s...lots of cement and square, short buildings in disrepair that are still being used. I'm looking forward to the conversations we're having in the upcoming days in which I can hopefully get some answers on the economic situation here: it honestly doesn't look great.



Speaking of the economic situation: that exchange rate. In Bosnia, it was 1 dollar to about 1.4 marks. In Serbia? 1 dollar to 84 dinars. 84. We went to dinner last night and my meal's price was 560. Now granted, that's only about $6.75 which is actually quite cheap, but it's daunting to see 560. And calculating the dollars from dinars is a bit more complicated than simply multiplying by .7 as we could in Bosnia.



As for the upcoming days, although nothing happened today, we do have some really cool things planned over the next few days. We'll be working with CANVAS - The Center for Applied Non-Violent Action - so for now we're coming up with ideas of issues we're passionate over and would, theoretically, be willing to go to the streets for. The big-ticket issues, like gay rights, are of the table, but others, like ethnic cleansings, are allowed. We'll see what we come up with, but it should be interesting training. I'll be sure to keep you posted on how it goes!



Lastly, for my mom: happy birthday!

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