O Food my love!

I was going to write a little bit about the Balkans, more specifically Croatia and Serbia, but it seems i will have to tell another story first.
Before you continue reading i feel it is important to mention i am feeling very fine. I have no scratch on my body and my mental stability is totally fine, I have enough cloths to not smell dirty and i have very nice people that are offering me a roof above my head.

After spending a lot of time in Serbia i decided to finally head in the direction of Bulgaria. The weather that day was magnificent for end of November and i hitchhiked with ease to the toll at the highway that was going to take me to Sofia.
It was a bit crowded there. Many hitchhikers where there that day and they clearly had more experience of the spot than i did. After a few hours someone offered to take me halfway to Nis and i hopped in his car.
With my few words of Serbian and his basic knowlegde of English we managed to start a little talk, when about 10 kilometers further he stopped at some highway parking spot. There was a little problem with the car that refused to start again. He had a look at the motor and when he came back inside he asked me the weirdest question i could imagine. "Are you working for MI6?". I tried to understand why someone would ask such a weird question at that moment and figured it must have been some kind of joke pointing out i might have some kind of James-Bond trick to start the car again.
I laughed politely telling him that wouldn't help much for the car. He looked at me again with a very serious face this time. "Let me ask you again. Do you work for MI6 or for the police?" From under his seat he pulled out a gun, rested his hand on his lap and pointed the pistol towards me. In exactly 0.01 seconds i understood he wasn't humoring me at all! I uttered some "oww oww oww" sound and promised him i wasn't from the police or so.
"Are you certain you are not from MI5 or MI6!"
"Yes yes. I am not even English"
"Are you working for European Union secret services? or KGB?"
"No, really i don't. I am not working for any government!"
"Give me all your money!"
Well, at least that was clear! I put all the money i had on the dashboard, 40 euros, 34 dollars and 170 dinars (not even 2 euros local currency). I am pretty sure someone in the car considered this not enough, because i heard him ask me if it was all. The gun started moving a little bit out of nervousness and he asked me again for my money.
I explained him i hitchhike because i have no money and remembered him how i travel on very very low budget (we covered that in our discussion during those 10 km but he clearly didn't remember).
Since he was expecting more money he told me to empty my pockets. (tell me again...why do i have 15 pockets?).
Because of the extreme stress i was in i only emptied a couple of pockets, those that had my most important belongings. He was far from content by that and made me remove my jacket and empty the other pockets of my pants. In the meanwhile he continued to drive and stopped on the side of the road some 200 meters further.
The normal stuff happened there. He asked me for my credit card number, my phone pin, and so on...
And then...like its the most normal thing in the world, my phone rang. Violeta from Bulgaria called me to check on how far is am. More and more i am convinced this phone call was a blessing. The atmosphere was very tense before the call and somehow we both calmed down a bit thanks to it. I was hoping to find a way to say something strange to let her know something wasn't ok, but it was almost impossible. He told me what i had to say and advised me to finish the call fast. This was terribly annoying...she expected me in 2 hours and i probably couldn't call her to say the truth before a very very long time!
The phone call ending he asked me again if i was from any secret service. (he definitely enjoyed too many American movies) and then explained me what would happen.
"Listen to me: you are going to open the door, step outside in front of the door and i will shoot you."
...
Nothing more. Just like it was the most natural thing. The only idea at that moment was: Whatever happens, he is not allowed to shoot me!
A strange mix of intense nervousness and determination filled me and i did my best to convince him it wasn't necessary. I had to convince him!
I explained him I did everything he told me and gave him everything. The only thing i still had was my trustworthy hat.
"Please, take my hat also, its the last thing i have, but don't shoot me sir." I heard myself saying those words while one of my arms reached to him to hand him over the hat. At the moment he took the hat my other hand took benefit from his short distraction to open the door and the whole body turned around the corner to run away to the back of the car. I could barely believe what i heard while i was running. Two distinct and loud shots coming from the car. While running i turned around hoping to see his license plate but instead i saw him bowing out of the door opening. OF course i forgot all about the number again and did everything i could to break the 100 meter sprint record.
The car drove away, leaving me without anything in the middle of the highway.
As soon as i could i went to the other side of the highway, started running in direction of Belgrade and put my thumb up, hoping someone would stop for me.
And that is where i met him...the most popular cook in Belgrade, and the coolest cook in my book: Dragan Lukic! He gave me hope and courage. Brought me to the police and explained them everything that happened. He stayed at my side until it was certain that the basic things where covered and that an official interpret was coming.
I still cant believe it. The thing i love the most in life is food. Food is everything for me, i don't eat to live, i live to eat, food is what makes life beautiful...and i was saved by a cook! I tell you...there IS a God!

The situation now is quite ok, so again...please do not worry. It was a lot less traumatizing than i would have expected it to be and i don't feel bad at all. I just regret some stuff i lost and haven't back yet, but i am extremely happy. I have no holes at all and even no scratch on my body! Above that i learned much more of it than i could have learned in any other way.

Please, also do not hate that person on my account but instead be happy everything happened so well! Instead of hating him or having any other bad feeling towards him, put your thoughts into hoping he will get caught or that he will never do this again with someone else.
Just for the record, i find Serbian people in general very nice and warm, so do not consider him as an example of typical Serbian people and hitchhiking is not to be blamed on it neither. You can meet crazy people with guns everywhere, it just happened to be while hitchhiking. Until now every person that took me was extremely nice and i believe that this is an exception that for most will never occur.
The argument that opposers of hitchhiking will get out of it is as insignificant and worthless than saying that the sidewalk is dangerous and should be avoided when you just stumbled on it.

If you ever are in Belgrade, you definitely have to go eat at mythologia (guess who is the cook!)

from the street to the palace!

For some reason I just had to go away from Beograd in a rush! So I arrived in Niš late at night and quite unprepared. I wanted to find a hostel or bug someone on the way to convince them to let me sleep at their place, but that didn't work. (I was damn close to sleep in a student’s dorm though).
Most of the streets where already empty and the few people I met could only speak Serbian. I also had no idea where the hostels could be found.
I quickly decided to find a place to sleep...on the street! Well...on the street might be exaggerated, I am not crazy after all. The temperature was around 0°C and it would surely drop a bit more during the night!
I walked around in Niš for a while to check on some places I could stay for the night or some homes I could squat. The result of this little walk was quite astonishing. I actually had to choose a place, because the possibilities seemed limitless. Let me tell you: it’s a heaven for squatting and outdoor sleeping there.
At the end an abandoned house with no windows was my big preference. I could hear anyone that would come inside the house, see the shadows on the ground floor from my spot on the first floor and there was an easy escape route in case it needed to be.
Some other places where better I think, but I am always paranoid that someone will steal my bag during the night so I prefer to have a save spot with a bit less luxury than a nice spot with a bad ending (I even attached myself to my bag when I slept). The floor however was a bit cold, and since I don’t have a mattress I did another round in the city searching some carton boxes to make a bed from. It was a fruitless search, I always see carton everywhere and now I needed it, none to be found. Oh well, that is how Murphy’s Law works I guess.
Realizing sleeping will cool me down I dressed myself up more then I needed at that moment and went to bed.
You can all pity me or laugh with me, but the experience was a lot better than you might expect. I could have slept well if the stress factor of being seen didn’t wake me up every hour. But then again, thanks to that I remember all of my dreams. And it is funny, they ALL had something to do with either me freezing to death or having a miracle solution where I get a real bed to sleep. My subconscious wasn’t enjoying the experience as much as I did I think! I learned that my sleeping bag is not fit for sleeping outdoors in the winter and that I need much much warmer pants! I am sure I will do better next time!
I stood up quite early, sneaked outside of the house and I smelt the most fantastic thing you can imagine. Pure extasy and happiness in odor form. People that enjoy the smell of fresh bread in the morning will understand me maybe, but that day the smell was even better. It gave new hope, new strength, refreshed my joy and made me laugh at my silly night. That smell gave me more deliverance than any old preacher in front of a church could ever do. That is Religion! That feeling is why men invented bread! That was …giving me a lot of water in the mouth also, so I jumped into the backery.
While enjoying my breakfast at the river I bumped into a man. Without thinking I uttered a “scusi” (it happens quite often I say that in Italian, I don’t know why). The man must have noticed I wasn’t Serbian and asked where I can from, so I started to explain him my whole story (not that he asked for it, but I did it anyway). He was a nice man, mid 50, so I was going to try my shot at finding a place for the next night. I asked him very stupidly: “Do you think I would succeed in convincing you to let me stay at your place for a night or two?” He answered that he wasn’t from that city neither but… (He stopped talking for a few very long seconds there)…that he was staying at a hotel where he had one spare bed in his room.
A confetti explosion happened in my head! A roof! A shower! A shower once more! Warm water! I think my smile was larger than my head at that moment. The hotel seemed the kind where they think overpricing everything is the new cool, but that wasn’t my concern at that moment…I could drop my bag somewhere and take a shower! That was all that counted!
One day on the street – the next in a fancy hotel, and all for the same price…I really start to like this country!