randy drove amela, natasa, and me to "the serb bus station" (as natasa calls it)—that is, the one which mostly serves (i'd written "serbs," without intending to make the bad pun) Republika Srpska (the mostly western 49% of BiH, resulting from the Dayton agreement) and the whole country of Srbija, and soon we were on our way. i was the most "nervous" i've been through this whole trip—and when i thought about it, i realised that it was my wondering whether Srbija would be like Sarajevo. i suppose i've just had a really great time, these past few days, feeling so comfortable in the city through the having of both familiar elements and things that i've never experienced. the other thing that is difficult is, i admit, going to Srbija. while i know that it is somewhat of a providential turn of events that has pointed me in the direction of Beograd, i know that this also carries significant mental and moral quandaries, both of which i must somehow sort out. the more i read, the more my suspicions are confirmed about the primary culpability during the 90s' war—such that it's hard for me to head into this new place, with all of my preconceptions and, yes, prejudice. going through the border (this isn't going to be a linear post, because i'm all over the place in my head) at Loznica, seeing the Serbian army guard and police checking passports and searching vehicles, was hard hard hard and very emotional. winding through the villages past the crossing, where i saw only *normal* wear-and-tear/weather/age damage on buildings for the first time in several days, i realised the extent of my bitterness.

my cyrillic is slow but extant!! it really is just another alphabet, and i use many of the same mnemonic devices, little jumps and the like. it's especially fun, when driving down the road, because the sign that i'm trying to decipher will literally disappear before i've read it. however, i've found that i can kind of keep it in my mind, imaginatively, until i have figured out the letters. the marvels of the human brain. i'm encouraged, though, because i have been somewhat apprehensive about how it would be to be thrust into a primarily cyrillic setting of That Language, but it is not *as* brutal as i'd thought. i love hearing stories from amela and others, about going to school, where they'd have one week of writing all assignments in latin and one in cyrillic alphabet. spacy kids would totally forget, write theirs in the opposite and, consequently, get a failing grade—but, meanwhile, everything could be completely correct and, if read aloud, undistinguishable from the assigned format. then there were the kids who had come from regions either in or nearer Croatia or Serbia—and they would only have one alphabet. the utter confusion on the part of their Bosnian classmates when they saw that it somehow mattered which version of the book was checked out from the library, whereas for most it didn't matter whether it was written in latin or cyrillic—it was just a *book,* whose reading was for substance not as an awareness of physical representation on paper.

i'm beginning to set my wrinkled clothes in the closet of this room on the 28th floor of this building, where i share an apartment with Ana and Danijela. from here i can see a great distance, and hear the highway which runs very close. it's been so long since i've been in a big city and, indeed, i haven't lived *in* one (ever?). but here i am.