On joue au basket.

When I went to school in France there was a basketball court in the courtyard of the school. I'm guessing it didn't get much use before I started there. The year I went to Lycee Stendhal though three other Americans also started school there, and we all like playing basketball. We also had a Brazilian friend who liked it too, and was really quite good at it. Pretty soon, though, we had our English, Italian, Norwegian, Romanian and French friends all playing with us. They didn't even know who Michael Jordan was. A few knew the name Magic Johnson. We were teaching the zone defense, the pick-and-roll, and even doing layup drills. The French faculty hated it, well most did. "You're always out there bouncing that ball!" the math teacher complained. When I went back I found they had expanded a building that was at the back of the courtyard and just taken out the basketball court. A pity.

That all was a bit of nostalgia for some international hoops action. While in Serbia this last time we were invited to join the Belgrade office's regular Thursday after work game. I knew Serbia had more of a tradition of playing basketball than France had going back to watching Vlade Divac. Northwestern in particular had begun making a practice of recruiting Serbian players. Still, I thought I was essentially in for the equivalent of a pickup game in the park that you can find anywhere here in the States. I was mistaken.

The game we played was more on par with a men's rec. league here. Our hosts had rented the gym for an hour, a small, hot, sweaty little court at the top floor of the rec. center. I just wore the shorts and t-shirt I had worn to work. Our Serbian friends emerged in baggy shorts, tank tops, high tops, and knee braces. A couple did laps around the gym. They stretched. STRETCHED! I was slightly bemused, slightly bewildered. In the States one gears up for playing sports by doing a couple tequila shots in the parking lot before a softball game. Even I feel ridiculous when I stretch before a running race, because almost no one else ever does. I started to think this was going to be much more serious than a normal pickup game.

It was. Once the game was on we ran up and down the court. Pick-and-roll. Double and triple picks to get guys open. Switching your man, hedging on the pick up top. Filling your lane on the fast break. The first time I went up for a rebound I felt my left shoulder, the one I've dislocated twice before and had surgery on, come out of socket and fall back in. I played on. At some point someone threatened to walk off and go home, muttering something to a teammate that was probably the equivalent of "Pass the f-ing ball, Isaiah Thomas," in Serbian. Things were serious. After forty minutes of this up-and-down game I was toast. After an hour I was jelly, a sweaty ball of quivering jelly. Note to self: next time bring a couple water bottles.

I made it into work next day just fine, though on sore legs, and had a few people who hadn't even played come up to me and say how they heard I was a good basketball player. It's held in high regard in the Belgrade office, and for good reason I see now. It's not a Sunday afternoon game in the backyard that they play. I left Serbia thinking, man, I need to get in better shape, so I can come back and really play a good game with these guys.

Now return you to your regularly scheduled...

So return with me back to Belgrade....

I was able to meet up with Josh. Seemed we missed each other in the airport. He led me back to the flat at Republic Square, which really is the center of town in Belgrade. Prime location. There was an elevator in the building, which was nice since there were otherwise 1 million stairs to climb; however, it is the smallest and perhaps slowest elevator in the civilized world.

Imagine this key, but twice as long

So we get up to the 4th floor, 5th if you aren't going by the European standard of naming the ground floor "Floor 0" (which, frankly, is more consistent with my computer programmer sensibilities). Then Josh revealed the "magic key" The magic key looked like Snape's magic wand if Snape were a steampunk character, or like some sort of obscene torture device, about six inches long with wicked teeth on each side. The real magic to the key, though, was knowing the secret to turning it just so to actually get the door to unlock. I would say we spent fifteen to twenty minutes trying to get that door to open until Josh non-chalantly turned his back to it and turned the key while he faced away from the door, which slid open easy as can be. It was a big, heavy, steel-framed door, and apparently there was a pressure point to the right side of the door that
you needed to coax. These are things they don't put in the travel brochure.

I forget now where we went to dinner that first night. Probably was this sort of cool oncept place where they have a bunch of stations with pizza, salads, pasta, etc. and at any one you give them your little swipe card, and at the end you give the cashier the swipe card and pay for whatever you got. I've seen a similar thing a couple times in the States.

It's much cheaper to get a nice meal in Belgrade than in Denver. A beer, salad, nice entree, and maybe a coffee after will set you back $8-10, about what it costs me to get a burger in downtown Denver. I think it was the next night that we went to a place with more traditional Serbian fare. Well, we walked past it, walked back and finally found it. There are only a few food items that I actually know the Serbian name for and two of them are a couple basic salads: srpska and shopska. Srpska salata has tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and onions. Shopska is basically the same thing with a heap of Bulgarian sirene cheese. These are important items to remember, because they may be the only fresh vegetables you find at a Serbian restaurant. That is a bit exaggerated, but seriously they eat a lot of meat, particularly grilled meats. Serbia is no place to be a vegetarian.