RAT Re: Honduras, plus

[owner-rat-list@whirl-i-gig.com]

Dear Jack -

     A thousand blessings. Honduras must happen' is 
happening with you there, but will expand as you wish. 
Raise high the rat flag in the fall and we'll find you 
down south. Also hoping for Argentina in August. A 
project: Everybody who doesn't have Spanish, get some 
within the year - pretend you're a prof and steal an 
audit from your local college...

     The internet is an evil beast, yes, but here is a 
Belgrade-US-Honduras connect - impossibly.

     Second day. I come in with heavy preconceptions 
about Life Under A Dictator. The world will be in black 
and white. Mostly babushkas and kalashnikovs. Ambient 
surliness. But Belgrade, apart from a lot of the housing 
(externally), is in color. Wake up, coffee on a small 
balcony (the building is the sort used for big narco 
bust sequences on Starsky and Hutch... while the 
interior is warm and personal and saturated with 
loveliness...) - talk about RAT/INFANT schedule (serious 
latebreaking scams to get the last two Swedes down) - 
drive down to the river, stopping for gas - which means 
looking for a guy by the side of the road who negotiates 
a price, then ducks into the woods. He's halfway back 
when he disappears for good at police approach... get 
three fair measure leters from a young women smoking 
hunched over a plastic jug she keeps under a bench; the 
reserve is in the kitchen. Gas stations have gas, but 
don't like the price - so they bump up the rate to black 
market retailers who pass on a further bump thereby 
establishing fair market value... We go to the Sava 
River and are in heaven all day. A side effect of 
collapse - less polution because the factories have all 
shut down... An evening paseo through downtown. Lovely 
buildings - the occasional abandoned hulk (Embassies, 
etc. - some NATO/NAZI grafitti, one pro gov. poster 
featuring MADELINE (Albright) YOUTH in a Hitler Youth 
style)... A confection of a building - in front of which 
protesters were savagely beaten a month ago. But such a 
lovely night! Dessert at an excellent cafe, beautiful 
men and women. Enough gas to get home.
     So - the sun is still yellow, moonsets are still 
dramatic, drives are driven, and there is complete, rock 
bottom uncertainty about the direction the country will 
take. Locals caution that Belgrade is not a city one 
falls in love with at first glance... but always the 
people make the difference, and people are manifest in 
their culture, and the cultural scene here is persistent 
and gorgeous. Persistence and gorgeouness are of course 
enemies to the expedient and unsubtle (politicians).

     Tomorrow, the drive up to Novi Sad. Also, 
Yugoslavia lays Holland in the Euro 2000 cup.

e