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My main man, Dinko is as Balkan as they come. That being the case, he loves his čevapčići and his pravs. It's in the blood. My father was a super praver whose work still stands at my parents' house despite years of nearly falling apart. Being a second generation Croat didn't stop my father considering bailing wire to be one of the most important tools in his toolbox.       Maybe it's because Dinko is Bosnian or maybe it's because of years living in the west have changed him, but the fact is that Dinko's praving is actually pretty damned good work. One could go so far as to say it's quality and that the only praving lies in the initial approach, which for pravers is somewhere along the lines of, "Hmm, this is going to require my big smashing hammer, the smaller pounding hammer, and a lot of bailing wire." For instance, in his recent job of mounting a flat screen TV, Dinko started out with, "Since I don’t have a laser level, I attached a regular presentation laser pointer to my level using cable ties." Genius. Cable ties, while not my favorite (I stand by bailing wire) are the choice attaching system for a 21st century praver.       From there, you'd think things would start to go downhill and his project would turn out looking a good deal like any Homer Simpson project, but no, the end result was quite nice. You can read all about it, here and see what happens when one strays beyond the principal that, "Any tool can be a hammer".

Damn you Balkan buses. You are all out to get me and I know it. Maybe it's not a conspiracy, but it sure seems like it. First, in 2004, you explode on me. Fine, okay, I can accept this. It was in Croatia and just bad luck. I'm able to walk away from a bad situation with a good story and my life. That's okay. But then, you stupid bastard bus from Belgrade to Sarajevo, you go and screw me as well.       It all started with accepting the fact that there is no train from Belgrade to Sarajevo. Well, there is one. Somewhat. Technically. You just have to get off in Croatia, in Slavonia and then transfer with a wait of countless hours. Not easy. So, we decided to take the bus, which is something like a seven hour long ride in theory. This is not fun because for a good few hours of that, you're in the very flat lands of Serbia, going through small towns and picking up guys who like to listen to MP3's on their cellphone MP3 players on the bus, just to have some noise. Once again, I don't do this all the time, so I could live with it.       Then there's the stop just before the border so that the drivers can have lunch. Great, nearly killing us with passing other cars and tractors for the last three hours so that we can sit at some craptastic roadside cafe and watch the same cars and tractors pass us up again. I don't get this, but these musings are for another article.       So, we move on and then it's the border crossing. This is rather funny in a sad way as you see that you're entering the 'Republika Srpska' which is one of the halves of Bosnia Herzegovina and is crap because you're really entering Bosnia Herzegovina. They act like they're some other country with this sign, which they really aren't. Okay, fine, that's their problem. Let's move on because we sat at the border for almost an hour. There were about 15 people on the bus and ultimately none of us was a problem. Sure, they might have to search the bus for the possibility that Serbian kajmak is being smuggled in, but come on...       Okay, so we got pass the border and head on in to Bosnia Herzegovina "proper", but the bus drivers seem alarmed. "Oh crap", I start thinking, "I've seen that look before and the bus exploded in a ball of flame shortly after the drivers looked like that in Croatia in 2004." Sure enough, we pull in to the next station and the drivers run out to put more water in the radiator to find that one of the radiator hoses is shot on this ancient bus.       So, not understanding what was said, we sit on the bus and head in to a small service garage and wait. Thankfully the mechanic was able to prav some random hose in to place, otherwise, we would have been really screwed. After an hour, we head out, pick up the people who were smart enough to wait at the station and head on.       Thankfully, nothing else really went wrong from here. It just took a long time because the roads in this part of Bosnia Herzegovina are in pretty bad shape. After some time, we pulled in to Sarajevo, but not the center where most buses would go. Oh no, we pull in to Istočno Sarajevo or Eastern Sarajevo (formerly known as Srpsko Sarajevo) which is the Serbian chunk of Sarajevo that's more than a half hour taxi ride from the real Sarajevo.       We shrugged this off because after what ended up being a ten and a half hour ride, we just paid the 5 Euros to the first taxi that was there to get on to where we were staying for a shower and a sleep.

I'm not really sure what is going on here, but the pension owner called me out from eating one day to ask for "help" in tying this piece of wood on to the piece of metal holding up the clothesline. I'm not really sure what this was improving or fixing, but he felt it really shored-up something saying, "Yes, yes, this is much better now."       While certainly not bailing wire, random pieces of wood are also vital elements to a good Slavic Praver. Let me emphasize that the wood takes on any form possible and that the wood selection is not based on the needs of the prav, but the prav is worked around the size of the wood. This may or may not require additional bailing wire, so have some handy just in case.

Bailing wire. It is the panacea of any farmer as well as any good Croat. I know this because I grew up on a small farm in the US and my father was Croatian. There was no end to what could be repaired using this stiff wire. Mending a fence was merely a jumping off point to bigger and better things to stitch back together. I think 30% of any carburetor in our family cars was comprised of bailing wire. The safety catch on the power saw, which stopped functioning, was held out of the way with a good length of bailing wire. And then, at some point, the chimney pipe started to wobble and leak smoke. My god, but bailing wire was a wonderful way to yank that damned pipe back in to order.       People will often ask me why I come back to Croatia again and again. Firstly, it's a beautiful country, but secondly, I feel very at home here as shown in the example below, taken in the old city of Dubrovnik, where a chimney pipe has been tacked together with the almighty bailing wire. Long live Slavic praving.

The door lock where we stayed was problematic. From the outside, you had to turn the key just right and press the handle at the same time to get in. I'm sure it stopped many a would be thief.       Getting out was a bit easier. You just pulled that bit on the left and then opened. It's pure Croat genius in that, because I mean, really, why pay a proper locksmith to fix the thing, when you can wrap an old coat hanger with a bit of electrical wire for a handle to pull out the lock mechanism? I'd bet good money there were a pair of needle nose pliers stick in there for years before this came about though.

For years, I grew up with the impression that my father was sloppy at repairs around the house or on the car. You always knew when he had "fixed" something because it worked, but did so in a rather funky way. For instance, the choke on our old van's carburetor stopped working. Solution? Run a piece of fishing line up by the steering column that you pulled on until the vehicle got to operating temperature. Another one was that power outlets and light switches would be flipped upside down at irregular intervals. While living at home, you would get used to this and remember that the light for the kitchen was backwards to the the one from the living room. When you visited, it was amazing how quickly you'd forget these idiosyncrasies.       It was my first trip to Croatia in 2004, that I discovered that it was not my father's fault he couldn't repair things properly; it was a Croatian genetic predisposition that caused this. In the first apartment I stayed in, there were ten light switches at the door. Only six turned anything on and of those, two were wired in upside down. I felt like I was at home and over the course of subsequent stays, I've noticed more and more of these. I think the most famous one is having the hot and cold faucets switched on sinks and showers. I'm sure this has caught more than one tourist off guard.       So, it's with this, that I'd like to introduce the term, "praving". This is taking from the Croatian (and as far as I know, Montenegrin, Bosnian, and Serbian) word for "to fix" or "to repair" which is "popraviti". That "ing" ending is something I picked up in Spain where they take a Spanish word and toss that on the end for ease of speech. For instance the airline Vueling picks up on this as a mashup of "vuelo" for a flight or "footing" which Spaniards say for "jogging".       I invite any and all submissions on this topic and I suspect that it is not something limited to Croats or the Balkans, but might be common amongst all Slavs. I don't know, but I'll be happy to see if it does and post any pictures of truly great "fixes" that people do. I will leave you with the first in a long line of these examples below, which I feel is the most classic. Note that the faucet is full left. In standard installations, that is hot. In this case, it is cold. Go, go, Hrvatska!