Welcome to Belgrade

It only took me 7 hours to get in trouble with the police in Belgrade. Well, not the police exactly. The autobus controller. Sort of the balkan version of a pompous security guard. Except this guy didn't even have a uniform.

I was taking the midnight bus back to Novi Belgrade after having some cevapi and beers with Guido from the Serbian class in Valjevo. I had my little yellow ticket and punched it like a good bus rider. Then around 10 minutes into the trip the controller gets on and demands to see people's tickets. I showed him mine, but apparently it wasn't the correct one-- after 12 you need a blue ticket (a detail that Vanja and her mom didn't even know). The guy next to me didn't even have a ticket at all. So the guy demands to see our passports. I didn't have mine. Since I didn't have one, he demanded 1000 dinars. I didn't have that either, and wouldn't have given it to him if I did. So he told me if I didn't have either then he would call the police.

Mind you, this is over a bus ticket that costs about 24 cents.

I told him I hadn't known, I obviously had a ticket so I hadn't meant to cheat the system, and that if he kicked me off the bus I didn't know how to get home from wherever we were. We repeated the whole song and dance a few more times, and by this time more people were involved-- a nice guy who spoke english named Milan was trying to defend me. Finally he kicked us all off the bus and Milan and a friend of his walked back with me to Vanja's apartment.