Take a Virtual Vacation: Serbia

It’s 5:55 AM, Beirut time, and I’m finally settled at the gate, waiting for my 7:10 flight to Istanbul. From there, I’ll catch an afternoon flight to Belgrade. Even though all airports are basically the same, I’m looking forward to walking around the Istanbul airport during my four-hour layover. Everywhere in the world, big airports […]

Okay, maybe it’s an exaggeration. Maybe it’s because I have six hours to kill here. Maybe and probably, it’s mostly because I only slept three hours last night. But the Sabiha Gökçen Havalimanı airport in Turkey is really scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of amenities. It’s small, there’s no free WiFi, and

Back in the Istanbul airport (I learned this was a “lesser” airport for connecting flights—not the main Istanbul airport at all), when they finally posted the gate for my flight to Belgrade, I made my way there and sat on one of the hardest waiting room seats I’d ever sat upon. I picked up the

Last night, I had dinner with four of my new colleagues from the Incest Trauma Center at an outdoor restaurant on a long esplanade full of other packed little restaurants. I ate some kind of delicious spicy Serbian sausage and a small salad. I couldn’t believe the size of the meat portions–talk about Super Size

Tonight, I had the great honor to meet with three of the volunteers from the Incest Trauma Center. We sat around a small round table for an hour and a half, just the four of us. I hadn’t planned for our meeting, except to bring a beautiful silver object I’d bought in Petra, Jordan last

I arrived at the breakfast buffet at 15 minutes to 10. It closed at 10. What an amazing spread. I filled most of my plate with grilled vegetables and fresh tomatoes and cucumber and a slab of some yummy creamy white cheese that looked like feta and tasted like heaven. Nutella and…..? Not sure….what these

I first heard about the Danube River when my father played one of his favorite records on our old turntable—the one with the arm bent like an elbow that released the disc onto the base in order to play it. It was the Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss. That music would float up into

Ever since I’ve arrived in Belgrade, the women of the Incest Resource Center have taken exquisite care of me. They have fed me, filled my mind and heart with stories, introduced me to their food, drinks, and culture and walked me all around their beautiful city. They’ve answered my endless questions (yes, I did have

An hour from now, a taxi will show up outside the lobby of my hotel to take me the bus that will take me, the organizers from the Incest Trauma Center and all 20+ participants of my workshop to the Hotel Villa Breg, “located on green slopes of the mountains” of Vrsac. There will be

When I walked into the dining room after an early morning sauna at the hotel’s opulent spa, the huge restaurant was mostly empty. There was one table in use by four members of our group, but since it was already full, I sat down at a new table nearby. I set down my things and

Relaxing over dinner and wine on the deck. Happy.

On one of our breaks yesterday, Maja from the Incest Trauma Center handed me a small gift. It was a set of four square coasters, with rounded corners, illustrated and written in Serbian, a thin paper wrapper binding them together. The two of us sat down on the steps of our meeting room, while the

Before I arrived in Serbia, I was unsure how it would be to teach writing to non-English speakers. That’s not actually accurate—almost all Europeans are multilingual, many speaking multiple languages, and since English is one of the first languages people learn after their mother tongue, the majority of my workshop participants understand and speak English,

Of course, as a responsible teacher, I get to my classroom at least fifteen minutes before we’re supposed to start. I want to have the room set up to welcome the students and I like a little time to ground myself and review what I’m going to do. This morning, when I walked into our

We had dinner and wine and live local music for our last night–and a tour of the winery. There was a lot of singing and dancing to the local music, especially as the night went on in the wineglasses emptied. Here’s a taste of the music: