I lost my heart in Sarajevo.

That city is my favorite I've encountered on this journey so far.

I landed myself right in the middle of its film festival, an event that began 12 years ago during the Seige of Sarjevo. I saw a couple of bad films; they're doing a tribute to Abel Ferrara, and he sucks. In person he sucks, too. Only bad direction could make Juliette Binoche and Forrest Whitaker bad. And the film "Mary" truly sucked. My new friend Mariana, a Bulgarian film critic, said she thinks he's the kind of director who got into the business to get women.

I also managed to do a little backpackers' tour of the city and we had a marvelous tour guide who is my age, which means he was a teenager during the Seige. During the four years in which the city was surrounded by Serb forces and snipers who shot anything that moved in the street that stretched between the Holiday Inn and the Old Town, life went on. No schools shut down, and despite no food, water, electricity, gasoline or communication with the outside world, people survived. Sheer will and ingenuity. They built an underground tunnel to the airport, one meter wide and 1.6 meters high, through which people escaped. It filled knee high with water and they ran lines of electricity and gasoline through it. Yikes. Yet no one who used it died. A lot of them hit their heads, but no one died. I got a chance to pass through a part of the tunnel that's been preserved. Extraordinary.

They called Sarajevo the Jerusalem of Europe because within 100 square meters you'll find the city's main mosque, Catholic church, Orthodox church and synagogue. Outside every mosque, fresh spring water fountains trickle; this is part of the reason Sarajevo never fell. Despite absolute useless measures to deliver aid, in the form of things such as U.S. army cookies from the Vietnam era and shipments of condoms, those who were brave enough to risk passing through sniper alley to get water from old town into downtown managed to keep people alive by transporting buckets of water.

Learning about this terrible history really opened my eyes. I vowed to myself not to ingnore news reports about the horrors going on in parts of the world I've never seen. It also made me not feel sorry for myself as I slept in a shed with the words "Bin Laden" spray painted on the outside of it and a mangy yet happy dog keeping watch in the yard. 20 people shared one toilet and shower, and I shared a room with three other women: the film critic from Sophia and two backpacking, alcoholic Brits. God love Mariana--she stayed there because she's a freelancer and had to pay her own accomodation for 9 days. The beds cost 10 euros per night. Don't let me complain about the meager pay I get per story; she gets $20 per story at best.

Seeing the city and learning more about the Seige truly made me question journalism and the way we do our jobs. Why didn't the world step in sooner? Why weren't people paying attention, me included? I think statistics, the 5 w's don't tell the story with the kind of urgency necessary. People stop hearing the death tolls in Iraq, in Lebanon, the facts aren't alive for them--how can we make stories come alive for people so they pay attention? I suspect I'll struggle with this my entire career.

It was hard to leave that magnificent place. Don't get me wrong, it's still devastatingly bombed out all over the place; but to me, this is the most beautiful city I've seen. You can have pristine Prague and its picturesque castle, you can have Dubrovnik, the pearl of the Adriatic and its walled city; I'll take Sarajevo any day. If I had any money to invest, I'd help revitalize it and return people to their homes.

The 8 hour train from Sarajevo to Zagreb is actually a 12 hour train, and don't let anyone tell you differently. It creeps at a snail's pace. I think without my luggage I could have run it faster. I met an arrogant Canadian--you think they're all submissive and friendly, well they're not--who tried to tell me everything about everything on the way. Thank God he got off at Banja Luka, a mere five hours into the journey. He's speed travelling--seeing as much as he can so he can say he's been places. He's actually spending most of his time on trains, poor lad. I didn't even bother suggesting this to him. He doesn't hear anything.

But once he left, a group of old boozers joined me in the cabin. I'm talking knock-me-over-with-their-stinky-alcholic-breath, 70-something-year-old dudes. They must have passed a dozen plastic liter bottles of generic beer among them. And it sounded like they were talking politics. It was that kind of heat. To complement the literal heat. That cabin was like an oven. Sweating just from sitting there. And everyone smoked right next to the no smoking signs. The windows only opened a crack. I nearly passed out.

As it got dark and cooled down a bit, one of the boozers tried to talk to me. He knew about five words of English and I know one word of Serbo Croatian. This guy looked remarkably like my father's dearly departed Uncle Jack, so I instantly took a shine to him, despite his odor. He told his boys about me, and all of a sudden I was part of the party. One of them brought out a little bottle of water, and I thought, huh? Water? Turns out it was more of that moonshine, and they insisted I drink with them. So I did. The only word I know in their language is "Hvala," which means thank you, so what are you gonna do? It were good stuff. When we finally got to Zagreb, it was well dark, and Uncle Jack insisted on showing me where I needed to go to catch the train to Venice. Such a doll.

The sleeper car to Venice was dreamy compared to the Bosnian oven train. I slept like a little lamb in between passport checks at the borders--in and out--of Croatia, Slovenia and Italy. I shared the cabin with an Aussie and two little, smelly German backpackers. But it was grand. When we got off the train and wandered out of the station, the Aussie wouldn't shut the hell up. She grew very loud and exuberant, the kind of loudness and exhuberance only youth breeds, and she asked me if I wasn't excited, like, Oh my God, we're in Venice. And of course, I was stunned, literally stunned by the green canals and architecture just right outside of the station. I was taking it in. The expression comes later for me. But I didn't bother explaining this to her, I just walked away.

I am getting so good at losing losers. It's a necessary skill as a lone traveler. Yesterday, sipping a $10 capuccino at a cafe overlooking the water at the Piazzo San Marco, a dude wandered up and sat down beside me for a chat. He couldn't afford the prices at the cafe, so the waiter made him leave. After I paid and left, he caught up with me and wouldn't leave me alone. He told me all about himself--he's an architecture student and he hates his job in a bakery because he's a good worker and his employers fuck him because he's a good worker. Men in nearly every country I've been in start up conversations with me about how much they hate their jobs. Do I look like I care? Do I look like I want to listen to your woes instead of taking in the beauty of Venice? I said as much with my body language. Then he asked me what I do. "I hate journalists. They're all liars," he said in response. So I cut him off and said, "Well, perhaps you don't want to spend any more time with me." That got rid of him. Italian riffraff bitches.

I also got yelled at by a fruitseller in the street. I made the mistake of touching his apricots. I couldn't help myself--they were so plump and beautiful, and I had every intention of buying the ones I touched. Yikes. Italians like to yell. It seems to be the best way to express whatever it is they need to express. Italian Americans in New York are the same, but Italians in Italy are louder.

So I've been eating Gelato instead. Those guys don't yell as much. And I went to a grocery store, because I always go to grocery stores in new places. It was a beautiful thing. The things the Italians do with ham and cheese are fucking astounding. Ricotta lemon cake. Yum. A million kinds of prosciutto. Gorgeous hard cheeses and fancy marinades for mozzarella with all sorts of olives. Some bread and a bottle of wine, and that was me for the day. All the restaurants I've found are so touristy, complete with tourist prices, so I made my own meal. And I was a happy girl. Went to bed watching BBC news, and my day was complete.

The beauty of this place is enough to knock a girl out. And so it did. Today I took it easy, did some laundry, wandered around some more, and now I need to go find something to eat. It won't be hard. Tomorrow I take the overnight train to Nice. I've got a rough itinerary planned for my week until the wedding. Hopefully I'll find a wireless spot so I can post some photos. I've got some great shots.

I also literally lost my heart in Sarajevo. You see, I like to bring little mementos from loved ones back home when I travel. And I've been wearing a lovely silver necklace with a heart pendant my dad gave me for Christmas last year. It disappeared in Sarajevo. A sacrifice to the travel Gods. I hope someone finds it and wears it as a symbol of hope for tomorrow. The kind of symbol that means more when found accidentally in Sarajevo.