Day 7, and the Body has Revolted

Yep, you got it, Dear Reader: I am sick. It started around 3 am Friday morning, and I slept most of the day, went to bed at 9 pm and got up a few times during the night and woke up at 6:30. I have been able to keep food down so far today, but I have to tell you, I really hate being sick. It´s nice to have Wiley here to comfort me, but it´s when I´m sick that I really miss having a mom. All I want is to be cuddled and made better. Today I made myself get out to the cafe, as we still don´t have Internet, but we were told Tuesday at the latest. So we´ve been printing off some pictures to decorate the bare walls of the apartment. Good thing I took that tape. Now, not only can I get the cat hair off my clothes, which is why I have it, but I can decorate too!

Settle In, It's a Long Post

I guess you could say that this is a bit of a catch-up entry because there were things I should’ve blogged about earlier but didn’t.

Re: the jet lag, I’ve never really had it before, and when I woke up at 1 am Friday morning, terror struck. What am I doing here? What am I going to do? What if we run out of money? What if I can never understand the language? What if it takes us weeks to find an apartment? Wiley was very understanding once he hit me over the head and told me to shut up (kidding, kidding), saying that he also went through this the first time he was in Austria, and so while I freaked out a bit, he didn’t. It’s nice to have someone who’s constantly grounded, though I have to say sometimes it’s a little fun to have a fellow drama queenwho can commiserate and jump off the deep end with you for a bit.

And now for the big news: we found an apartment, and it's fully functional!!! You can view pictures here. We won't get Internet for hopefully just a week, but the way things work here, I have no idea, really.

Today has been rather successful - we are legal for three months. We tried to get an extention, but they want to see some more paperwork and suggested we come back tomorrow to talk to someone who knows their shyt. So we'll be traipsing back to the policija station. (Lookie, another word!)

Today's other word is zelimo, which is "We want." I ordered us some chicken tacos for lunch. Apparently I said it funny because Wiley laughed at me, and the waiter looked at him to confirm what I said was true.

Living in Sarajevo is an art....it will definitely thicken your skin. When we walk, I wear my sunglasses, which means I can also gape at people, and do it somewhat privately. They don't seem bothered by the fact that I can see them staring at me. And stare stare stare. Not to mention at the grocery store last night, they all seemed to be scowling. The big difference between their grocery stores and ours are that ours don't require you to come into contact with people unless you want to - the aisles are big enough that you don't have to run into each other. Not so here. My arse isn't all that big, but it sure seemed to be in everyone's way. Dinner last night consisted of tortellini courtesy of Barilla, as well as some bread and cheese and blueberry tea. This morning, Wiley had some (yucky-looking) meat paste with his bread and yogurt. Tonight's dinner will be small since we had more Mexican for lunch (using their Internet).

Well, time to find some curtains for the bedroom. It's still too bright, even being on the 6th floor. Who would've figgured? Hope life in the States is going well for everyone. You are missed!

Getting our feet on the ground

Don't miss Melinda's post below, including the link to the first batch of pictures.

We've been here for four days now, and we are very ready to move into our new apartment tomorrow and start building a regular routine. It's been great fun so far, but we've been on the road in some fashion for two weeks now, and we're ready to start cooking for ourselves again and just having a regular life.

The first four days have been dominated by our apartment search. I intentionally put off finding a place until we got here so that we could see the apartments and their surroundings before committing. That's a great idea in practice, but getting on a plane with only a hotel reservation was stressful. The first thing we did after getting into our room was head out to the rental agent I'd contacted. He's kind of a shifty, nervous guy , but he had two pretty good options and told us he'd call the next day so we could go see them. We thought things were going great. When we went by to see him, the best option was no longer available and the second best option couldn't even be looked at until Monday. We went to visit the third best option. There was a problem with the key, so we could only see the stairwell and the outside of the locked door, but what we saw didn't look so great... and it was more than we wanted to pay anyway. So, since shifty rental guy doesn't work weekends (!!!), we were stuck until Monday. That made us none too happy.

So, we went off to the news stand and bought the classifieds, spent Friday night poring over them, and then made a few calls on Saturday morning. The fruit of our labor was a place in a residential/shopping district in the newer part of town. Since we won't have a car, we didn't want to be too far out, but we also want to save our money for traveling. It took almost an hour for us to walk there from our hotel in the center. It is a nice walk along the banks of the river. The river area near our apartment is full of parks and nice promenades.

I thought we were in trouble as we approached the new place, as there were a ton of run-down- looking high rises, but nestled among the high rises is a little 6 story, well-maintained building. The new rental agent was much more professional and the apartment fulfilled all of Melinda's desires: top floor, shower with curtain, washing machine and all of mine as well: a balcony (we'll have two) and a TV.

We'd planned on a seeing a few places, but after our experiences the previous day, we decided to take it. The location is very convenient, despite being some distance from the center. It is right on the tram line and has everything we'll need on a regular basis right in the area. It also seems like a very family friendly, safe area.

We had a celebratory dinner at the Brewery. My gorgonzola steak was tremendous. Melinda wimped out and had her usual chicken alfredo. I don't blame her... she'd had to deal with a lot of strange food already.

So, while basking in the joy of good food, a new apartment, and the discovery that local cable carries German soccer games and even some NFL, Melinda discovered that I had either forgotten or never been told her correct middle name. I had it in my head that it was Dawn... not so much. The love of my life quits her job, sells her car and comes with me to Bosnia of all places... and the first thing I do is forget her middle name. Not good.

Melinda has been remarkably calm through the entire process. She's a planner and the nature of this process makes planning very difficult. I didn't sleep for a month before I came to Europe for the first time, but she seems to have taken it all in stride. It is going to be an exciting 9 months.

Sarajevo, and the Livin's Easy (For Me)

Ok, finally, I have some pictures that I've uploaded. You can view them here.

I had a nice long post, but now I don't have it with me...we saved it to the thumb drive when we went to the Internet cafe yesterday, and today we found a Mexican restaurant that has free wi-fi. This restaurant is awesome...caters to foreigners, for sure, but the food kicks ass.

The big news is that yesterday we found an apartment. We sign the papers tomorrow and move in tomorrow as well. It's on the top floor, otherwise known as the penthouse suite, of a 6 floor building, and we have a judge that lives on the bottom floor so we have our own security guard. The apartment is lovely and about 3 miles from the city center, which is as far as we wanted to be, but if I'm walking 6 or 12 miles a week, that's just fine with me...til winter hits, right? Ha. No! I'd rather walk than tram it - they're too busy!!! So anyway, we're very excited to have found a place that's very nice and has a shower curtain as well as a washing machine in it! We'll be getting new curtains to block out a bit more light, but otherwise, things are going well.

Day 2, Kittens 3, Melinda 0

The gods are conspiring against us. I stayed up as long as I could last night, which meant my arse was asleep at 7 pm due to only sleeping an hour on the plane. So what does that mean, Dear Reader? Jet lag. 1 am rolled around, and because of the street lamp outside our window, I thought it was already 6 or so, so I got up, checked the clock, and said, ''You've got to be kidding. Crap.'' Wiley woke up too. We were up until about 4 am, and then finally got back to sleep until just about 9 am. Our room faces a very busy street, so all night long, cars zipped by. But it's really quite pretty if it would just rain and be done with it.

And speaking of cars, for those of you who think I have no space bubble or drive too fast, I invite you to Sarajevo. My driving is TAME compared to these nutsos!!! They park and drive on the sidewalks. Sometimes I have to walk in the street, and there may be only a couple inches to spare, but they're good about stopping when we have the green man telling us to walk. (Breathe, Auntie Em. It's all good.)

We've walked around part of the city (I'd say most but I doubt it), and so far, I've seen three kittens, one who looked like it was about 5 weeks old. No, I did not pick them up or pet them. I would love to, but you know me ~ if I touch it, it's mine.

Apartment shopping has not gone so well today. The apartment we discussed with Leo yesterday was already rented, so we went to look at another one, but the keys didn't work. So perhaps on Monday, we can find something or go back to that apartment. The building is in crappy shape, but Wiley tells me from his days in Croatia that the buildings may look bad, but the rooms inside frequently are kept up very well.

I think that's it for today. Pictures will come as soon as we're set up in an apartment so you can see what's going on!

Live from Sarajevo!

on a german keyboard, no less, so pardon spelling. We made it. And our luggage did too! We had a couple of leaking ziploc baggies but no real damage. Are looking at an apt. tomorrow. Bumpy last flight into Sarajevo but met a basketball team from Germany including 7 americans and 5 europeans. Very tall kids. So we are here and dying already from secondhand smoke. Favorite part of trip so far was the United flight attendant: when trying to get my bag overhead because Wiley and I were not in the same boarding class, the lady watched and said it would not fit. I asked for a little help. The unFredlike response: We do not lift bags. Each passenger must lift their own bag. She JUST saw me lift it. I replied rather icily that I could lift it, but what I didnćt want to do was break the plane. She grudgingly came over to help. Wish us well, we will be in touch again soon.

Well, Maybe Tomorrow

will be the day we actually leave. Chicago's weather was bad, so our flight from Memphis was canceled. They couldn't get us to Chicago to catch our connection, so we're flying to Chicago tomorrow and will be in Sarajevo Thursday. In the meantime, I've been catching up on playing with my camera. Check this out:


Maybe you're not impressed, but I am.