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These are recent stories - the rest are in my latest book,"Walking Through Adversity."

Stories about European Trips (3)

Rob bryant
2006-01-09 11:34:22

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contact with us to ensure I was OK - when he heard I went to the Serb Border on the top of the mountain, he chewed out the driver for taking me there. I heard him say, �you took our VP up there - are you nuts?� Didn�t you hear me say to be careful today?� Later that night I laughed about it over dinner with the program manager, Ron and a huge retired Army Ranger (known as Doc) - but only after I was safe and back under God's and their watchful eyes.

Let�s go see Jadranka - I had not eaten all day and someone said, �Let�s go see Jadranka � I�m hungry.� I was not sure where we were going but it sounded intriguing. Ijeti could not go because it was a Serbian restaurant and he was Albanian, so two Americans took me to this Shangrila out in the middle of a Serb/Albanian cohabitated territory. It was a quaint restaurant made from a 19th century farmhouse. It was in the countryside on a hill overlooking a small town. We sat on the veranda where we could see an ancient chapel and neighboring farms. A shepherd drove his huge flock by and the clanging of their bells was hypnotic and relaxing. A local farmer was plowing a field with his oxen pulling a manual plow. Our host, Miss Jadranka, a beautiful Serbian woman, brought us our meal consisting of grilled pork chops, stuffed bell peppers, garlic potatoes and fresh vegetables. I thought I was transported 150 years in the past until I heard it off in the distance. It was chopping the air and grew louder by the second. Suddenly over a nearby hill came a Black-Hawk helicopter bound for war torn Kosovo. In addition, tanks and trucks passed by several times during our meal as a grim reminder of our location. It caused me to do a double-take to see a tank slow down as it passed by, but I could not tell why. Suddenly, a horse driven carriage emerged from in front of it allowing the tank to pass. What an odd collision of cultures, technologies and times ...