Christmas

Christmas Candle
Originally uploaded by borderlys.

...here's hopin' everyone had a merry christmas. Mine was great! I mostly just ate and drank for 4 days straight. Chrismtas eve, 1st day of Christmas (as they call it here) and the 2nd day of Christmas (which is our boxing day) and then the day after, where there are leftoever to be eaten and more people to visit! I think I will return to Serbia (and possible even Canada!) with a bunch of chocolate and sweets that were given to me -- now those pilates classes are really going to come in handy -- only to go experience a Serbian Orthodox Christmas on January 7th. Visited with all my host families, tonight I am partying with school friends, and on the 29th I head off to Berlin for New Years...should also be good....I'll update again in the new year, so "guten rutsch" as they say here, which means slide well into the new year.

New life as AuPair

LisaEurope 052
Originally uploaded by borderlys.

So I somehow managed to make it into Serbia, and arrived to my new home in Novi Becej (pronounced novee bechay by the way). I live on a river side (Tisa) and it´s absolutely beautiful there! I am privy to frequent gorgeous sunrises and sunsets, I get to walk everywhere, and there is only one other foreigner there, John the American. My family is really nice and the kids are INCREDIBLY cute, although they can be a handful at times...especially since my Serbian is minimal. That being said, I am learning the Cyrillic alphabet and know some basic verbs after two weeks already. Ivan, the 5 year old is learning English rather quickly, and Nadja, who recently turned 3 is a bit too young to learn...but its so cute when she does say stuff in English. Vesna, the mother is home during the day and practices her conversational English while the kids are in school....so really, I get to hang out all day with Vesna in the morning and the kids in the afternoon....it´s a rough life, but someone´s gotta do it!

Budapest

LisaEurope 138
Originally uploaded by borderlys.

Long live Budapest. I made a quick 3-4 day stop here on my way to Serbia. Stayed with a fellow couchsurfer (for those of you unfamiliar with this website/concept, hosts and guests set up profiles and arrange a place to stay for free, with people worldwide) Robert, my host helped me with train tickets, what to see and where to go..him and his roomates even had a CEU party (Central European University) so I met students from arround the world and had a jolly old time. After that, I was heading off to Novi Becej, a small town on the Tisa River (2 hours north of Belgrade) in Seriba and Montenegro.

Liftoff in T + 6 hours

LisaEurope 004
Originally uploaded by borderlys.

It´s hard for me to recreate the frustration I felt when my Air Canada flight to London was delayed 6 hours...First, that meant saying goodbye to everyone AGAIN - I mean, it´s bad enough once, who wants to do it twice? Second, it made me feel ridiculous for being so stressed out before my flight and getting into a few kerfuffles with family members. Third, it meant I was going to have to change my Wizzair flight to Budapest yet again (Originally, I was going to stay at Scott D.´s in London, but he decided to stay in Calgary for a longer period of time and wasnt going to be in London) and pay extra flight fees. All of a sudden my "cheap flight across Europe" was costing me about 200 CAD because of all the fees. If that wasn´t bad enough, the Customer Service Leader at Air Canada LIED to me about having a room paid in London, which put me out over 70GBP which I paid, for quite possibly the smallest hotel room EVER. EVER! If you´re wondering why Air Canada didn´t cover any of these costs, its because they were seperate flights with seperate companies. Why didn´t I book with Air Canada you ask? Well, because I have an acute sense of economics you see, I´d rather pay 40$ for a flight then an extra 200$ or more to book through Air Canada. I guess they won this round.

So Air Canada customer care solutions thought it would be a nice gesture to give the passengers 100$ on their next flight with Air Canada, which is only valid one year. It´s rather funny they gave that out....it´s almost like they assumed people would WANT to travel with them again! urgh.

Anyway, next up, Budapest and arrival to Novi Becej, Serbia and Montenegro...