Blogger’s Note: I've been traveling since Tuesday, 3 AM Central time. Reached my destination last night, Thursday, 11:15 PM. Here is an entry I prepared Wednesday but did not have access to post. Situation update is at the bottom.

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Wednesday, 15 March:

My day could only get worse if I don’t make the 5:20 PM flight to Milan. Even if I do get there, I’m still stuck with an overnight there and a flight home tomorrow. It should have been easy to leave. Maybe if I had flown directly from Montenegro to another country, it would have been fine. But I didn’t….I did the normal, logical thing and came to Belgrade, where I was told that I needed an exit visa. This is absolutely contrary to what I had read and understood on the Serbia/Montenegro embassy site and what my US contacts told me.

I’m officially here for five months but if you stay for 90 days or less, you can come and go….all you need to do is leave and come back. If you do this, you'll never need a visa. And, you can just cross the border into Albania or Croatia…that’s fine. But, because I’m teaching at the university (engaged in scientific research and/or teaching), there’s a requirement that says I should get a temporary non-resident permit. Apparently this permit also requires a visa—even though I was looking to leave after being here only about 42 days. I received this news from a young woman Immigration officer in Belgrade who said, “I don’t think you will be traveling today.” I called the Consulate in Podgorica—actually the mobile number of the PAO. That was at 5:40AM this morning. Within the hour, I had the Duty Officer from the Embassy in Belgrade. By 10:00 AM, they had greased the wheels for me to see Petko Boskovic, THE headman in charge of all visa matters for Serbia.

I had one other bit of luck. I got as a taxi driver a fellow named Boban. His spoken English was fair but his understanding was great. He accompanied me and served as a translator/facilitator as I ran the Serbian gauntlet. My time with Mr. Boskovic was short—literally 2 minutes of conversation. He put a specific person in charge of my visa request….which involved getting permission from Montenegro to grant me the visa in Serbia. (Montenegro and Serbia are like two siblings, Serbia the older one. They sort of get along—well, they are supposed to—but they snipe at each other). Bottom line, by 1:20 PM, I had my visa. Now the challenge is to get a flight. I should also add that I paid an arm and leg to Boban—5,500 dinars, which is 55Euros or about $65. It was money well spent. We also spent nearly two hours just talking about life and circumstances. Very insightful. When he quoted me the price—based on something he said later when I asked for a receipt—he was under the impression that I would just expense the cost. That is of course what real business people often do. (He was really impressed that I could get an audience with THE head of the visa office and apparently was mistaken into thinking I really was somebody.) I explained, when I got the receipt, that the best I could do was deduct it from my taxes next year. I don’t know whether he worked any more today or not but he often won’t make that much money in a full 10 hours of work.

I did manage to make a call to Stephanie, where we both almost cried. Worst of all, she leaves Friday morning for a wedding. I am happy she is going. She needs the time and it will be a good weekend for me to bond with the children.

My Alitalia guy is working on my ticket to Milan right now. I am hoping that somewhere I will get a break on something. Maybe I have used my breaks up by getting the visa taken care of. I just want out of Belgrade. Maybe I have caught another break….a fellow just stopped by with a present of chocolates for the Alitalia man. The guy said he was allowed to board at the last minute for a flight to Milan, about a month ago, and my guy was the fellow nice enough to let him do that.

Remember that Tom Hanks movie about the guy who gets trapped in an airport because his Eastern European country declares independence or something? He no longer has a way to enter the U.S. and because he can’t enter, he can’t leave. My situation is not that bad—I don’t think.

I keep asking myself, did I do something wrong? I reviewed the email this morning that told me about the temporary stay non-resident permit. It said nothing about needing a visa. I don’t think I did. Should the low-level bureaucrat in Podgorica, who issued the temporary stay non-resident permit have know about the visa? Maybe she should have but I have no animosity in my heart for her. There’s a strong fatalism that people in this part of the world have. It’s almost as though they look forward to things going wrong. A common phrase I have heard people utter, “This is our reality.”

Why would you ever choose to live life this way? I can’t imagine but I know that in my naïve life, I did not live through the bombings the city took in the 1990s from NATO—deserved bombing because of their attacks in Muslim communities in Bosnia and most recently in Kosovo. I also did not live with the economic sanctions and hyperinflation that the Serbs encountered, where a wheelbarrow full of money would not buy a loaf of bread if you were paid in the morning and waited until the end of the day to buy the bread. And, I can only remember things I’ve read in history about World War II and the invasions by Germans and Italians and later the allies, including some U.S. troops, and of course the local partisans who were shifting to socialism for the country as they fought against the Germans. And, let’s not forget about 400 years of subjugation under the Turks. (The whole Kosovo issue is because Kosovo is the site where the Serb king was defeated by the Turks to begin their 400 years of rule. Rubbing salt in the Serbian wound, Kosovo is populated mostly by ethnic Albanians—who are Muslim—thanks to the Turks.

But all of these things I think would make me want to embrace some new point of view. Why live a life expecting the worst when sometimes just the act of living will mean you naturally receive the worst. Why not try for a better outlook in the hope that maybe things will work out just fine.

If I saw a glass sitting on a table with water filled to the halfway point in the container, I would absolutely declare the glass to be half-full. A Serb and some Americans would say it is half-empty. Life is challenging enough without making it any more difficult by expecting, indeed hoping, for the worse possible outcome. That is my reality.
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Update: Prepared Friday, 17 March, 12 Noon, Central

I made the flight to Milan…had the last seat…got in by about 7:30PM. Spent the night in the Milan airport because there were no nearby hotel rooms available. The ride into Milan by bus was at least an hour…I needed to be back to talk with Delta at 7:30 AM...did not seem worth trying to find a room there. Slept pretty well, considering. Got a flight to Chicago and connection on American to Peoria that would put me home by 5:30 PM—four hours earlier than a Delta flight from Atlanta. Arrived in Chicago as snow started. Flight to Peoria was canceled. Took charter bus home…arrived by about 11 PM. Got up at 4:50 AM to see my wife off. Weather is now fine. Made pancakes for my children and took then to school. The glass is half full.