Somehow I'd gotten it into my head that Novi Sad would be a quaint little town, the kind you could ride into on a donkey and immediately find a place to stay for the night. It's actually Serbia's second largest city, and every inn seemed to be full. An encounter with some baksheesh-seeking Bosnian traffic cops had delayed our arrival to such a degree that the tourist office was shuttering up for the night when we rolled in, tired and hungry. The woman who worked there let Milo use the bathroom and then sent us on our way with vague directions to a new youth hostel she herself had not yet had a chance to inspect.
Staying in a hostel sounded pretty good to me. It would give the kids a chance to see how Mommy and Daddy (and several of Daddy's predecessors) had traveled back before they were born. Plus, maybe we'd run into some energetic young babysitter types, whose healthy teenage backs are well-suited for a few hours of complimentary piggyback rides. Maybe they'd even invite Greg and me to share some beer with them after the little ones went down for the night.
Unfortunately, no one answered the six-floor walk-up hostel's doorbell, and then a ground floor timer caused the hallway lights to go out. A woman whose office was on the fifth floor told us she was unaware of any hostel within the building. Well, the signage was pretty temporary-looking, just a sheet of paper taped to the door, upon which someone had scrawled the cell phone number we were trying to jot down when everything went black.
We quickly burned through several other options, and when I say quickly, what I mean is that it took us about an hour-and-a-half to come to terms with our fate. We could sleep in the car, or we could take the only room available at the Hotel Putnik. Since it was just for one night, and Milo was on the verge of emotional collapse, we opted for the latter, even though our top floor door wouldn't lock properly and there were all sorts of disturbing stains on the wall. There were three twin mattresses covered in fuzzy brown tapestries, a floor-to-ceiling bay window that invited all sorts of parental anxieties, and a low-slung easy chair that must have been very mod in 1974. I couldn't help thinking that that chair must have hosted a lot of NC-17 action. The general filthiness of our surroundings only deepened the impression that we had brought our children to a place where Communist-era high rollers and hairy-assed war profiteers used to lick bootleg caviar off their
"Yeah, and when we came back that creepy night clerk was sitting at the reception desk, scrutinizing every page of my passport, like this." Greg rearranged his facial features into a hideous rictus and pawed at an imaginary version of the document whose number the hotel is obliged to register with the local police.
"Well, maybe he's never gotten the chance to travel to other countries. You do have a lot of interesting stamps in there . . . "
"Yes! Yes, I'm sure that's it," Greg drooled, continuing his pantomime.
"You did get them back, didn't you?"
"Our passports? Yes. All except yours."
"What?"
"I'm joking."
"Oh. Good. Inky, don't walk on this carpet without your shoes."
At midnight, we were roused by a young boy who ran up and down the hall, screaming, not unhappily, for his father. He didn't sound scared. I got the impression that Dad was in a nearby room, too plastered to take notice of the ruckus his unsupervised son was creating in the common areas. The walls were so thin it sounded like the kid was in the room with us, possibly on roller skates, or maybe a Big Wheel like the one Danny rides in The Shining.
"Why is that boy making so much noise?" Inky demanded from the middle bed.
"I think he wants to show his daddy some trick."
"Can't it wait until morning?" she groused.
"Just try to get some sleep, honey."
"I could if that kid would go to bed!"
"Okay. Shh, now."
I lay there wondering if I were a bad mother for allowing my own reticence to deprive my daughter of a good