Cross continental trip to an exotic land. All meals, travel expenses and accomodations paid for.

The catch - you must smuggle in computers, megaphones and loud speakers to the democratic opposition in Serbia.

Well, I thought, even an anachistic luddite can do a little democratic missionary work now and then. Variety is the spice of life.

Folks at the City Hall in Novi Sad, a town in northern Serbia, had arranged our visas. Gerd Greune who heads the NGO, Ifias Brussels, was our ring leader.

Alexander stayed behind to mount a diplomatic intervention in case we were detained at the border.

So the four of us took off to Serbia. We took two cars, a donated Fiat and a large Ford van pulling a trailer stuffed with humanitarian goods: desks, medicine, clothing AND tools of propoganda.

The Fiat needed constant attention with oil and water. Some of the signals didn't work, we couldn't turn off the window shield water sprayer (I finally pulled the fuse). There was a foaming froth coming from the pool of water and oil that had accumulated around each spark plug. Other than that it was a pretty nice car.

Budapest or Vienna (Wien).

If only I could clone myself - this is the only real dilemma I face in life. Although someone pointed out to me that if I could clone myself then I would be faced with even more decisions.

Helene always wanted to learn how to stick shift. Little did she realize that it would happen on a rainy night while on a high speed autobahn in Germany. You've got to be careful what you wish for.

I had been working 14 hour a day for the last 10 days getting a database driven site working for www.solidar.com and I was on a crash and burn trajectory. Driving through the night was not an option. As the sun was setting, so were my eyelids.

Helene pounded a few coffee's, most of which spilled during her initial shifting experiments, and rose to the occassion. I had a fitful, but sweet, sleep.

After 30 hours on the road, we got to the border at 11 pm. We met up with Alexander from Novi Sad in the southern Hungarian town of Szeged. His job was to get us across the border.

We first talked about trying to take out the propaganda tools to be taken over seperately by other people later on. Finally he said, "This is too much planning. In the Balkans we just go for it". So off we went, Dale and Gerd in the van, Helene and I in the Fiat. The van and trailer had most of the goods, the Fiat just had about 200 T-shirts left over from some marathon in Bonn. We hadn't a clue as to even what to say at the border. So we stuttered out, "Uh, we're just tourists looking to drop off tee shirts to refugees".

Dale was dressed all in black and we couldn't decide if he was more sketchy or more dodgy.

The van was searched both leaving Hungary and entering Serbia. Alexander was instrumental in getting us through. It took over 3 hours of coddeling and negotiations. Cooling my heals in the Fiat, drinking a beer while Helene slept, I watched 5 custom officals siphon out all the gas from 8 cars that were loaded on a trailer waiting to be cleared. They were all quite casual and two were even smoking cigarettes.

Gypsies were begging for cigarettes and change. They are a small people, and can evoke compassion with baleful eyes and when totting their infants.

We finally got released and drove throught the warm night to an even warmer reception.

Even though it was after 2:00 AM, several people from the League of Social Democrates of Vojvodina (LSV) were waiting for us. Vojvodina is a northern provice of Serbia. LSV is one of the groups that Gerd supports. Their fearless leader, Nenad Canak, was there (he's at the head of the table).

Nenad is a warm hearted man who mixes good feelings with his politics. Even though he is serious about challanging Milosevic with democratic reforms, he doesn't take himself too seriously.

We all had a good laugh when he described the closing lines of a recent speach: "long live free Voyvodina, democratic Serbia, and myself". Trying to push democracy under the shadow of Milosevic can be unsettling.

Wars is a paper he wrote in 1993 that analyzes Milosevic's war campaign and puts it in historical perspective.

After dinner, or was it breakfast, we had one more chore before a shower and a comfy bed - to unload the trailer.

What could I expect from an all expense paid trip?

We finally hit the sack around 7 AM in the Hotel Vojvodina. A very nice place with palacial rooms. The tab was covered by the City Council.