After riding for over two hours on a bus that smelled of stale cigarettes and had no bathroom, other than the plastic bucket behind the driver's seat, Tony Martin's bladder he shouted in relief. Some people who have quit smoking are so repelled by the smell of cigarettes that they can become physically ill. Luckily he wasn't one of them, because the vast majority of men, women and children he had met so far in Bosnia all smelled of cigarettes. He had also smoked in the past, but never left the house without mints or breath spray. Years of smoking had significantly shortened his breathing and today he could really feel it. The day before he had played football with some boys he had met in Mostar, probably the first time in twenty years. As a result, his entire body was filled with minor aches and pains. He looked out the window at a slate gray sky and threatening clouds. He knew the Bosnian word for rooms was Sobe, so when they passed the hand-painted sign on the side of the road that read: “Sobe, 5 k” he knew relief was in sight. The last two hours had been some of the most challenging of the entire trip. This group was harder to contact than the others, including those paranoid old ladies in Tuzla who looked at him as if he were some kind of serial killer. But as in most cases, the greater the effort the greater the reward and this group of “pilgrims”, as he called them, was absolutely invaluable in both its ethnic and religious composition; it was like a microcosm of the entire former Yugoslavia on a bus. This, of course, is assuming that his assumptions regarding their nationalities were correct. The rest area ahead should be an ideal place to test your hypotheses on this matter. It was... half the paper... and never allowed him to fully relax. As a child, his grandmother had told him stories about Eastern Europe during World War II, saying that the land where so much blood had been shed exuded an aura, a palpable sensation. Now he understood exactly what he meant. Make no mistake, though, these people were made of strong stuff. First they managed to successfully repel Hitler during World War II, then for half a century Tito kept his Yugoslavia the most independent of all the countries of the communist bloc. Tito was a real piece of work and a damn cheeky bastard! He famously told Joseph Stalin in a letter to back off: From Tito to Stalin: “Please stop sending people to kill me. We've already caught five. If you don't stop sending assassins, I will send one to Moscow, and I promise you that I won't have to send a second one."—Josip Broz Tito