Health and Medicine

I had never heard of the (fairly) ubiquitous European fear of air drafts until I came to Serbia on this trip. This time, due to the fact that I'm living with a group of locals, I'm experiencing all sorts of culturally normal things that the average tourist would never witness. Just now Kristina came out of the bathroom after taking a shower and said "can you please close the window? There's a draft!" I agreed if she was willing to leave the window in the other room open. THEN she proceeded to light up a cigarette in the room that I was in. I immediately told her that there was no way in hell that I'd keep the window closed if she was going to smoke inside. She was worried about "the draft" and her wet hair - thinking that it was going to give her a stiff neck.

While in Mostar, Bosnia and Hercegovina we were given a bottle of wine to deliver to the hostel in Nis, Serbia. While at the hostel we met Vladmir ("Like Putin" as he is apt to say) who was the first to tell me of the Serbian "fear of the draft". While in Dubrovnik I recalled Maja yelling at me for allowing a breeze to cool me off saying something about me getting sick but I casually disregarded her. Anyway, according to Vladmir there are some that claim that various Serbian royalty have been killed off by the draft.

So, back in Belgrade. After taunting Kristina for her weird fears I finally found a site that explains it all. PLEASE read this because to an American it should be absolutely hilariously weird: http://german-way.com/blog/2009/02/13/german-phobia-killer-draft/

As some of you can tell I've changed the name from "American Poops in Foreign Toilets" to the more trite title "David Faber's Travel Blog". The decision was hard to arrive at but after feedback from my father and Laura I came to the conclusion that not everybody gets the joke. So, name changed. Hopefully I'll come up with a better name for the blog that doesn't offend the sensibilities of my readers... Sorry Soniku, you're name for the blog was much appreciated by me but not by the family. We'll try harder next time.