Carving a Path for Addiction

I think I'm an addict. My drug of choice is a white powder, and it sends my mind and body racing into a universe of total euphoria. I know that the first part of breaking an addiction is recognizing you have a problem. I am fully aware of my addiction, the time and money it consumes, and the selfish pleasure it feeds me. Yet I still embrace its manipulative control over my desires and priorities, and I will never cut myself off.

That drug is snow, and my paraphernalia are pairs of rockered, K2 Sidekick skis and Scarpa Shaka boots. For the last time this ski season, I let the click of my boots locking into my ski bindings waft through my nose and circulate down into my lungs so as to initiate that high I constantly crave. I felt my chest warming and expanding with every step up towards the top of my run. And finally, at the height of my high, my legs went numb, and all my thoughts exploded like fireworks that lit up my eyes and left only a S-shaped track as physical evidence of my indulgence.

For the last block break of freshman year, most CC students embraced the emergence of the spring sun by rock climbing in Indian Creek, white-water rafting on the San Juan River, or sand sledding at the Sand Dunes. In my mind, though, there was still plenty of snow on New York Mountain for one last multi-day backountry ski trip. With that in mind six friends and I used the credit four of us had received from our failed attempt to stay at and ski out of Hidden Treasure Yurt during 5th block break with CC's Outdoor Recreation Club (check that story out, here!). Since I was in Serbia for the majority of 7th block, I in no way was involved in the planning (very unlike me, I know). Before I left for Serbia, I said to my friend Kaitlyn, "I expect to come back, put my skis and pack in someone's car, and go skiing without having to figure out any details. That's your job."

She succeeded in everything but the simplest thing: making sure that someone was planning to pick me up from Loomis, my dorm building. I sat in the Loomis lobby for an hour calling everyone on my trip with little success in responses until finally I was told Jarod, one of the drivers, had gotten lost on the 2 minute drive from his dorm to mine. How? I have no idea. Regardless, at 5 PM on Wednesday, we drove to Alicia's house in Denver where her parents sent us all into pasta and chocolate cake-induced comas before leaving at 4:30 AM for Eagle, Colorado.

From the trailhead in Sylvan Lake State Park, the skin up to the yurt was six miles, four of which are road-grade before reaching the 'town' of Fulford (this town is only accessible by snowmobile in the winter and has about four houses). During the first four miles, the sun beat down on our backs, and reflected off the snow at our faces. My six friends and I trekked up with ease, laughing in disbelief that we were covered in sweat in t-shirts while skiing from the heat. When we stopped for lunch, the creativity CC fosters came out in the crazy tortilla-sandwich fillings some people chose. And when I say creativity, I mean putting every ingredient we have for sandwiches, inside the tortilla. So basically people ended up with PB&J, summer sausage, cheddar cheese, and Nutella sandwiches. At that moment, I knew I had to cook or at least play an integral part in cooking meals. I will never settle for Elf spaghetti.

At one point, my friend Xan went to dip a piece of tortilla he had already taken a bite out of in the Nutella. A centimeter before the tortilla touched the chocolate-hazelnut god-sent, I screamed, "XAN NO DOUBLE DIPPING!" I maintained a straight, stern face until Xan was just about fully hidden in his turtle shell. I ripped the facade away and started cracking up, whereupon the entire group collectively sighed in relief. "God I thought you were serious," Xan said. "I knew you couldn't actually get that mad." So for the rest of the trip, people would randomly yell "NO DOUBLE DIPPING GUYS!" It was even used as an album title on Facebook. Nothing is more legit than Facebook official.


The ease and laughter of the first four miles quickly ceased after passing through Fulford. The trail from Fulford splits into three, all of which are unmarked and difficult to decipher. After spending an hour prodding through each with too-heavy packs, we just wanted to light the fireplace and curl up in our sleeping bags at the yurt. On one hand, we were thankfully our educated guess was correct. On the other hand, we wished we had never skinned those two miles and 1,000+ vertical gain. We switchbacked on steep paths through a thick forest of Aspen trees, all of which were naturally engraved with illuminati eyes that seemed to be staring at us tumble to our near-physical defeat. At the five mile mark, we transitioned from spiny Aspens to bushy conifers holding the last piles of snow of the season. Our packs felt like cinder blocks and legs like melted Jell-O. With every step I would pray for Jaqueline, who was about 30 feet in front of me to yell "Land-ho!" or some type of sign of success. Just as I thought I was going to collapse, I heard the songbird sing. I skinned at what felt (but definitely wasn't) a sprinter's pace, threw my pack down on the porch, and collapsed on my bed.

One of my favorite parts about backcountry trips is how early I always go to bed. On this particular night after such a tough skin up to the yurt, we ate our burritos and were passed out by 8 PM. The yurt is a single room with three bunk beds. Two of the beds are full-sized (one became the love-den for Alicia and Arden), and the rest are twins. The kitchen is stocked with plenty of pots for melting snow for water, plates utensils, and spices, peanut butter, and, to all of our excitement, Cholula hot sauce left by previous occupants. Someone could've left a chocolate cake, and I still would've dove at the Cholula. I just love hot sauce too much.

The next morning, after coffee, black tea, eggs and bacon (with Sriracha and Cholula of course!), and a quick yoga session to wake up dead legs, we skinned north for twenty minutes on an established trail, then headed up east up a much steeper grade until we reached treeline. We didn't have a plan from there before hand, but what do you expect, we're college kids! As soon as the pines disappeared and I caught sight of the first false summit of New York Mountain, I knew I was summitting. I had fresh legs and zero desire to ski the crusted slush in the trees the sun had yet to soften. I would've gone alone for all I care since the avalanche danger on our (the west facing) side of NY Mountain was close to zero. On the other side, though, was a cornice that extended at least 25 feet runs along the entirety of ridgeline up to the summit. With the amount of wind the summit gets, I bet if I had tapped it with my pole it would've broken and caused a small avalanche on the east face of the ridge.

NY Mountain is not a fourteener, nor a mountain most people have heard of, but the view from the summit is beyond deserving of a fourteener's reputation. Aspen, Aspen Highlands and the Maroon Bells (where I was for spring break, check it out here!) stand tall to the SSW and various, unnamed, 11,000+ peaks boasting steep chutes, fragile cornices, and jagged ridge lines make up the valley connected to the east face of NY Mountain. I spent ten minutes pointing out each chute I would want to run and which cliffs I'd be daring enough to drop. But of course, I had to quell those desires with the crushing reality of summer looming over my head (don't worry I'll get over it once I start hiking).

The west face of NY Mountain at this time of year is by no means run-of-the-year material. Wind blown divots and hard pack make for a chattery, technique driven ski down to treeline. We didn't expect much else and didn't really care much either since we were still enamored by the expanse of Colorado mountain ranges surrounding us for the next two days. Right above treeline was a six foot drop Arden and I had scouted on the way up. Arden launches off of anything so I knew it'd be perfect for the both of us. About 20 yards above the drop, Jarod, Arden and Xan all drove their poles into the snow to get speed. From my point of view then, the drop was extremely abrupt and the landing looked as if it would shatter my knees. Though it didn't shatter his knee, Arden did bite through the tip of his tongue. I'll do it on a powder day sometime.

Once in the trees, the top layer of snow had turned to soft slush through which we made tight, quick turns. During each of our four laps in the trees, I kept finding little mounds and lips off which to jump, confident that I wouldn't hit a tree upon landing. Looking back, the combination of the intensity with which I approached my technique and the giddy enthusiasm with which I approached most everything else was something quite special that I think the blend of warm weather, great friends and skiing brings about.

Our last run that day was zero intensity and all giddy. A common backcountry trip theme among CC students involves...you guessed it, nudity. With the sun blazing and wind calm, how could we not? So we skied to treeline and ripped off all our clothes except our beacons and helmets. I wish someone could've witnessed three boys and four girls buck naked, uncontrollably laughing while carving through the pines as if nothing in the world could deter their happiness. But don't worry, we have plenty of pictures with our private parts covered by beacons, pack straps and, for me, an ice axe.

When we got back to the yurt, we proceed to take a million more semi-pornographic pictures and then got down to business to find more firewood. The sign inside said the firewood was under a tarp under the porch. Okay, fine in the summer, but when there is four feet of icy, crusty snow blocking any entrance to below the porch, it's kind of an issue. Thankfully a requirement for any backcountry skiing are shovels, so, most of us only with shirts and underwear on at this point, we started digging. It was kind of like digging someone out of an avalanche because one of us would shovel/hack at ice until we were too tired, then switch. Finally, when there was a hole just big enough to fit a person, we stopped and silently nose-gosed to see who would venture down into the abyss. Since I was one of the smallest, I volunteered. I went back inside, put snowpants, my shell, a headlamp and my ski boots on, grabbed my shovel and ice axe, and crawled into the darkness.

I found the tarp, but the edges were also under two feet of snow and completely frozen to the ground. Great. So for the next twenty minutes, I sat hunched over switching off between chipping away at ice with my axe and shoveling the shards that had hit me in the face upon breaking out of the way. The longer I worked, the more aggressive my swings got out of pure anger at the people who thought it was a good idea to keep all the fire wood in the winter under the yurt. I broke a small piece of the tarp free from the ice and managed to stick my arms through the 1/2' x 1 1/2' hole and grab a log. Oh, but of course the log was too big to fit through the hole. So, another ten minutes of now-vicious axing and I finally yelled up to Kaitlyn in between heavy breaths to come grab the logs.

While I was doing this, Xan and Alicia were making up songs and guitar chords about my adventures. According to Xan (even though it's totally true), I was making an alliance with the sasquatch that lived under the yurt. Turns out he was the one that, once I got a big enough hole, handed me the logs. At one point in the video of Xan singing, you can hear Alicia say in a worried whimper, "Guys, we haven't heard anything from Liz in a while...I hope she's okay." Yes Alicia, I'm fine. Furious, but fine and ready for someone else to chop and build a fire with the wood I spent a half an hour getting.

The rest of the night I was mom. I made sure all of my little ducklings ate plenty of pasta, had the proper amount of hard cider, beer and whiskey, and got tucked into their sleeping bags with a warm fire still blazing. I haven't played mom since high school, and trust me, I had a blast watching these goons prance around a tiny yurt.


The spring skiing-must out of Hidden Treasure Yurt is White Quail Gulch. The gulch is prone to avalanches the rest of the year, but with the more stable snowpack and shorter cornices in the spring, the extreme conditions are minimized. We skinned up on Saturday morning to the saddle at the top of the gulch that overlooked the same valley as the New York Mountain summit, hopped off a baby cornice, and swung our turns around the left and right sides of the half-pipe-like gulch. I went first, set the left boundary and skied about 20 yards further down than we had agreed on. The snow was just too consistently soft for my skis to ever want me to stop. They're part of my addiction, so I had to listen.

All the snow below treeline was crust over dust, so we called it a day at 2 and celebrated our last epic run with more beers, hard cider, and whiskey, and Cards Against Humanity. Cards Against Humanity, if you don't know, is like Apples to Apples but incredibly politically incorrect. For the prompt that said what did Michael Jackson think about before he died, Kaitlyn put down children with ass cancer. Yeah, it's that politically incorrect, and many times worse. I'm honestly not even comfortable putting in my blog what my pride and joy of all time at Cards Against Humanity is. It's just too bad. But so good. And would've been equally as great as children with ass cancer to wrap up yet another wonderful block break.

The next morning, we flew down the first 2 miles we trudged so slowly up on the skin out. Some parts were pretty sketchy since they were steep, in tight trees, and complete sheets of ice. Obviously that thought didn't occur to me until later, because I straight-lined most of the way down. Once we got to Fulford, we had to put skins back on for what Kaitlyn called a "5, 10 minute skin max." 5, 10 minutes my ass. Even though 30 minutes of skinning on a very low grade slope is by no means a difficult task, the mental challenge of just wanting to get to the car now that we left the yurt was and always is the biggest obstacle for me. Once the slope angled downward, I threw off my skins expecting to fly down the rest. Life is just never that easy though, oh no. Because of the slushy snow, my skis stuck to the snow, so I ended up pushing and skate-skiing most of the way. Again, it really wasn't that physically challenging, but the car was calling my name so loud.

The seven of us agreed this backcountry ski trip would forever be a 7th block break tradition for our three remaining years at CC. I think all of us are addicts, and these huts/yurts are little drug dens fueling our addiction. At least I have awesome addicts with which to share the high.

Blueberry, Blackberry, Rhubarb Pie
Adapted from Call Me Fudge

1 pie crust
1 1/3 cup granulated sugar
4 tbsp cornstartch
2 cup rhubarb, chopped
1 1/2 cup blueberries
1 1/2 cup blackberries
1/2 tsp lemon juice
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 cup oatmeal
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp butter, cold and cubed

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
2. Mix together sugar, cornstarch, rhubarb, berries, lemon, cinnamon and nutmeg. Pour in pre-prepared pie crusts (uncooked).
3. In another both combine brown sugar and oatmeal. Mix in cold butter so that the mixture resembles a crumble. Distribute evenly over top of the pie.
4. Cover the edges of the pie in tinfoil so it doesn't burn. Cook for 50 minutes to 1 hour at 425 degrees F or until the filling is set. Let cool for 10 minutes. 

Serbian Insurgency

Three weeks ago, people at school were constantly asking me if I was going to Winterfest, the annual event CC funds for the student body to take over Crested Butte for an entire weekend. Part of me was sad that I had to answer no. I was missing a giant two-day party filled with plenty of skiing and crazy adventures in banana and gorilla suits with practically the entire school. How could I not feel a bit upset? Because I was in Belgrade, Serbia instead.

To my surprise, very few people in the United States know where Serbia is. I generally received one of two physical responses upon telling people of my upcoming travel: first, the look concerned fear because Serbia translated into Syria. Second, the look of utter confusion because Serbia evoked the image of Siberia. So let me clarify for those of you (*cough* Erin O'Connell) that have no idea where it is located before you read this post and paint an entirely inaccurate picture. Serbia is in Eastern Europe, in the former Yugoslavia, south of Hungary and north of Greece. I stayed in Belgrade, Serbia's capital in the northern third of the country. Here's my story.

Thanks to the block plan, I was in Serbia for my Block 7 class, The Art of Political Insurgency. The class was interdisciplinary and combined dance/theater and political science to study how non-violent, political protest is a type of performative art in the context of Serbia, the Balkan Wars and the resulting tensions still present today. When I signed up for this class, I had no perception of what Belgrade would be like both physically and culturally. I knew zero about the Balkan Wars, the NATO bombings, Slobodon Miloševič, or the resulting catastrophes in the 1990s. Eastern Europe seems so distant from the West as proven by peoples' ignorance regarding Serbia's location. Yes, I have heard about Ukraine and Crimea for months, but my knowledge on the issue is too small and the media's emphasis on the Russian-American conflict to establish a strong connection with the place. That is further bolstered by the differences between Russia and the USA emphasized heavily by the media. And those countries weren't even part of Yugoslavia.

That was the driving lure though: the unknown, my ignorance, my desire to fill that void on my mental map of the world. It would add yet another layer to my ever-expanding point of view that was once trapped in the homogenous bubble of Wilton, CT.

After a four hour drive to DIA (normally takes one and a half hours) and nearly 30 hours of flying on April 3rd to Houston, Istanbul and finally Belgrade, I stepped on the bus illuminated by the little cars buzzing around corners honking at anyone who dare slow down and the signs for grocery stores, kiosks and restaurants written in Cyrillic. I was on a bus with mostly strangers: I had been in my class for a week and a half, but I knew very little about my classmates who were mostly junior and senior political science majors. That was the last thing on my mind, for I knew the relationships would undoubtedly form; All I cared about was the prospect of exploring this city as much as possible in the short ten days we would be there.

The next day, we were free to do just that. Two of my classmates, Lauren and Shauna, and I strolled out of Hotel Slavia, stomachs full of a sweet, Kielbasa-like sausage, in the direction of the pedestrian street downtown. My first lesson in Serbia was that the number of Menjačnicas, or currency exchange offices, is absurd. Whether indicated by a simple, painted plaque or a neon sign bouncing from letter to letter, Belgrade has ensured that not one foreigner will have to walk more than 20 feet to exchange currency to dinars. I forget exactly why, but it's has something to do with Serbian workers being paid in the Deutsche Mark, which is used primarily in Germany but also in a couple of the Balkan states, so they need a ton of currency exchange offices. Regardless, over the course of the trip, my classmate inserted the word into all contexts. "Where can we go clubbing other than the Menjačnica?" or "I'm going to punch you in the Menjačnica," and so on. It became the universal word for everything and anything, or just merely to replace a emphatic expletive.

We walked around without any idea of where we were going or what we might find. Belgrade is like a leopard: it's spotted with marble-smooth buildings with intricate detail among much less aesthetically pleasuring cinder block, 80s deco buildings. One perfect example is in an alley way off the main pedestrian street with a restaurant sheltered by umbrellas. On the left side is an office building made entirely out of rectangular, deep ocean blue tinted windows and steel frames. On the right side, though, is a mustard yellow colored building with detailed window frames and layers of varied embellishment. This trend continues beyond the first two buildings throughout the entire alleyway. To me, that is a subtle way by which this culture that tries to forget and ignore the horrific moments of their past in the 1990s goes about remembering it silently.

That too is reflected in the bombed buildings, like the national library, the media news station near a Russian church and the Ministry of Defense building. Rather than create a memorial structure, they have left the buildings in ruins due to a conflict of interests. On one hand, people want a memorial built to remember those who died during the NATO bombings endorsed by the USA and the rest of the West. On the other, people want a memorial to remember the vicious, inhumane decisions by NATO to bomb non-military targets, kill innocent civilians and subsequently increase Miloševič's power. This conflict of interest cannot be properly addressed, though, because of the unwillingness of the general public to address their past.

This is what is so amazing about the performative art group, DAH Teatar, with which my class worked: they force people to confront the alternative histories lingering in the air like a blanket of humidity in a Florida summer through non-violent performative protests. DAH began in Serbia in 1991 as the Balkan Wars raged first as an experimental theater group that then developed into an explanation of the individual in tragic times. For about four hours each day in Serbia, my class attended workshops with their co-founders, Dijana Milošević and Maja Mitić, that introduced the tactics behind expressing emotion and message through the body. Later in the day, they would show or act out past performances in order for us to see how the basics we were taught in the morning developed into thematic, performative art.

In one of their performances we watched, In/Visible City, the actors rode a city bus in Belgrade, dressed in traditional clothing of different Balkan ethnicities, and acted out their respective transitions to show the beauties of Serbia and the former Yugoslavia's ethnic diversity. This contrasts starkly to the overwhelming air of nationalism instilled by the Yugoslav Civil Wars in the late 1980s and the Balkan Wars under Miloševič in the 1990s. This nationalism fueled mass killings and ethnic cleansing throughout the Balkans and particularly in Serbia. They affected Albanians, Bosnisans, Croats, Macedonias, Romas and Serbians alike. Underneath the smiles and celebrations in the performance lay the evils of excessive nationalism omnipresent in Serbian past and present.

What I loved most about DAH's lessons was their idea of remembering the past. Whenever Dijana would say remember, she would say it as if it were two words, "re" and "member." In that sense of the word, remembering is an act of reinventing an identity of that person, event, fgroup etc, not so as to falsely represent them from the "winner's" perspective from most history is documented, but more so to incorporate conflicting and complementary layers both hidden and obvious in a cultural or social setting. Those reasons must include both the good and the bad. In many of the cases presented by DAH, the bad is rooted in the nationalistic and patriarchal forces embedded in Serbian identity. As strenuous as it to carry that baggage, it's both necessary and a means by which any culture for that matter is enriched.

I found this richness to in the performance and personality of women's and LGBT rights activist, artist and producer, Zoe Gudovic. On Monday night, some of my class attended the premier of the documentary, Pasarela, which chronicled Zoe's work with Act Women to create a 'fashion show' symbolic of the interconnectedness of social phenomena like violence against women, early marriages, rape within marriages, and social immobility. Zoe's actresses were by no means the stereotypical model, a tactic used to insinuate the universality of the issue addressed. They were bigger with wide hips, and petite with delicate limbs; had dark, small eyes, and cappuccino-colored wide eyes; and had A-cups and DDD-cups. They all for the most part though were victims Zoe found through the Act Women groups around the country that help women to become more self-empowered in a patriarchal society through education, job hunting, etc. Some of the scenes were quite disturbing. In one, a girl who had been forced to marry a man she did not love that constantly raped her, held up a bloody sheet indicative of the forced penetration. 

I have massive amounts of respect for Zoe, for her personality is exemplified by her rendition of Beyonce's "Single Ladies" dance at the end of the film despite the general disdain for lesbians as well as the insubordination of women in Serbian culture. For example, in the 1990s, gays were considered criminals and lesbians were considered mentally ill. The former were placed in jail, and the latter in mental institutions. Although these laws are no longer in place, the anti-LGBT sentiments are immensely present in their society. Similar to Russia, gays and lesbians are targeted by the government because they can not reproduce, and thus cannot carry on the national blood line and increase the 'pure' population. Faggot, gay, homo, etc were used by the Serbians and their government to label anti-nationalists of Serbian and other ethnicities during the Balkan Wars. And although most LGBT people sided with the anti-nationalists, that by no means aided their acceptance in the post-Miloševic society. That's why I respect Zoe so much: it's not so much that she is an open lesbian but more so that she has the vivacity, passion and drive of a world leader supported by all 6 billion people. 

We also met with Utpor, the political protest group in the 1990s that used humor and dilemma action tactics to kick Miloševic out of power, Women in Black, an international theater group that also uses performative art to address political issues, and Boris Milicevic, the first openly gay Serbian politician who ironically is part of Miloševic's former Socialist Party. They were equally as inspiring, insightful, and innovative as DAH and Zoe, but space unfortunately does not allow for much elaboration on my encounters with them. Because of course, I need to talk about the food.

Our hotel's food was at best sub par. Breakfast and dinner there was free, and breakfast was about all that I could handle. I wanted traditional Serbian food with plenty of meat, wine, and rakija. It took a couple days to find it, but once we hailed a taxi in the pouring rain to Skadarlija, Serbia's Bohemian Corner, the search was beyond over. Skadarlija is essentially Serbia's 'old town' district that is lined with cobblestone and rows of Serbian restaurants. Some had women standing outside shoving menus with washed out pictures of food in our faces, others were unassuming and barely noticeable because of dark patios lit up by heating lamps. We instantly migrated toward the latter knowing that if they didn't need advertisement, they must be top notch.

Six of my classmates and I ended up at Tri Šešira, or Three Hats. At 6 PM, the restaurant was empty. I sat down at the head of the table, and was instantly charmed by the Old World style decor. The walls were a mustard yellow with brown-framed paintings, crocheted curtains in front of the doors, and chocolate floor boards. Our table was draped with a pearl white linen and pairs of wine glasses waiting to be filled with red wine in front of each seat. The waiter welcomed us to his restaurant and asked what we would like to drink. We merely smiled back at him, and waited for the first one to admit we had no idea what to order to drink or to eat. "I will take care of you!" the waiter proclaimed proudly. Two minutes later, he strode out of the kitchen with pivos (beers) and a bottle of domestic Serbian red wine. Before we could even ask a questions about the menu, he told us he would bring a sampling of the appetizer menu. We didn't hesitate primarily because we had no idea what anything on the menu was and secondly because the exchange rate in Serbia is so poor that no matter how much we ordered, we would pay at most 20 US dollars a person for a meal that would cost at least $60 a person in the United States. 

Our waiter carried two oval-shaped, wooden plates to our table filled with prosciutto, cured beef, Serbian hush puppies, a pinto bean spread, three different cheeses, a spicy pimento pepper spread, mini corn breads or projas, garlic roasted red peppers, and of course, like in any European country, a basket of assorted fresh breads. Our eyes widened and hands immediately snatched our forks and knives from beside our plates. I smeared the spreads on the spongy, flour dusted white slice, folded the meats on the multi-grain mound, and posited the cheeses on the pepper crusted pieces. I couldn't stop until the bread basket was empty and we could see most of the wood of the platter. The first words spoken in the five minutes since our waiter transported us to the promise land were by my classmate Anya. "Guys, you know the food is truly incredible when you forget you have a glass of wine in front of you."

Although we needed time to digest and soak up some of our appetizers with more wine, we couldn't wait that long. The prospect of sending our taste buds into yet another state of ecstasy (but our stomachs into comas) with the main course proved too enticing to wait more than 15 minutes to order. We all ordered about the same thing. "Give me your best (insert meat name) dish, please!" I unknowingly ordered a thin, chorizo like sausage that came with five links, french fries, two mounds of raw, yellow onion and purple cabbage (Serbians aren't too fond of many other vegetables). The links burst with spicy, chewy fat as my knife slit the casing. Whatever flavor the restaurant intended the cabbage and onions to contribute were completely unnecessary because the richness of the sausage was euphoric enough. A couple french fries here and there never hurt either. 

Even though we were set upon arriving on dessert, my stomach already surpassed the point of explosion as soon as the waiter set down my entree. The bill for two appetizers, two bottles of wine, four pivos, and seven entrees totaled to about 12,000 dinars, or $150. Imagine a NYC dinner of that grandeur; it would cost at least $300 without the guarantee of equal quality.Just as an restaurant owner would hope, the lingering odor of the meal curling through my nose carried me back to Tri Šešira the next night. Boy was it worth it.

Most nights after dinner (well, not this one because our bellies pleaded for the hotel beds), we'd head over to a kafana (bar), sip on rakija and pivos, then head to a noćni klub (night club) until four in the morning. The 9 AM wake up may scare some people away from such late nights, but I figured we were there for so few days and had little time during the day to explore Belgrade, so why sit in the acultural atmosphere of my hotel room? Plus, Serbians are crazy partiers. When in...Serbia, right?

Before coming to Colorado College, I never would have considered traveling to Serbia or any of the countries in the former Yugoslavia in part because of my sheer ignorance of the region and in part because of the current conflict in the Ukraine involving Russia. I never would thought I would ever spend ten days in Serbia learning how to use performance as a medium for political protest from the country's most prominent theatrical activists. And I never would have experienced how complexly rich this previously war-torn society is. Živeli!

Photo credit for the 1st, 5th and final picture: Shauna Barnasevitch