A new occupation

On an earlier tour of Bosnia I acquired a sideline in addition to journalism -- house sitting for diplomats and other ex-pats with pets who were on vacation or leave.

This time around my second job appears to be surrogate mom. I've become the matronly chaperone in the backseat to young Bosnian women on vacation.

Miranda in Sweden last month: Eldina in Italy this month. It's a racket!

Eldina was invited by her young Italian man to come visit and invited me. I suggested that I might be a tad out of place, that my tagging along would be a downer. I mean, my own kids are not so hot on the idea of traveling with me. But she was insistent and I am not one to refuse foreign travel. And hence last Sunday, just one day back from Moldova I was leaving Bosnia again on a bus bound for Belgrade -- from whence are cheap, short flights to Rome.

Eldina's real mother packed a shopping bag of sandwiches, cookies and a thermos of Bosnian coffee for such a trek. So, we had a picnic on a swatch of grass outside the Belgrade airport. As I shot her picture I remarked to Eldina that we'd be shot for real as terrorists if we tried this at any American airport.