An old, rickety farm tractor is weaving circles on the tarmac of the Podgorica Airport. It’s decorated with multicolor swirls and flames and some googly eyes spray-painted around the headlights. It appears to be lost, perhaps missing from a nearby parade. Then I see the wagon train full of suitcases trailing behind it and realize this is the international airport’s official luggage transportation vehicle. I’m tickled by the novelty until I look a little closer and realize my ski bag is not on it.

Irma, the airport lost and found attendant with a wide gap-toothed smile and ridgeline of eyebrows under dark curly hair, fills out some paperwork for my lost “sledding devices” and hands it to me before getting up from her tiny desk in baggage claim to walk out for lunch. “Do you think it will arrive in the next few days?” I ask. “I’m heading pretty far out into the mountains.”

“Yes,” she says with an even wider smile beneath a devious eyebrow dip. “This is Montenegro.”

I nod, pretending to know what she means…

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