I had my first casualty of the trip yesterday. My jeans started to rip and then they really started to rip, until I was embarrassed to be seen in them. (Plus, in Belgrade's Arctic climate I didn't need the extra drafts.) I don't understand why that happened, because those jeans weren't even tight. I guess they were just old. My feelings about Serbia were already ambivalent at best. Jeans shopping did not help things. [Insert rant about the extreme evil of the fashion industry.]

The part of me that likes to torture myself in the name of personal growth wants to learn Serbo-Bosnio-Kosovar-Croatian-whatever and move to Belgrade and figure it out. The rest of me was ready to move on. For the next two days in Istanbul I'm goıng to see my friend and eat a lot and cease with the history lessons and the hand-wringing.