ut nevertheless I'm a long way from home and family, and during the holidays the distance makes more of an impact on the psyche. I had known when I arrived in Romania in September that I would be missing Christmas back home for the first time, but I had planned to compensate for it by visiting my cousins near Dubrovnik, Croatia. Even the best laid plans, however, can succumb to circumstances beyond one's control. The travel warning which kept me from going to Croatia on the Fulbright in the first place was still in effect, meaning that if I traveled to Croatia I would be subject to losing my research grant. There is a possibility that the warning may be lifted soon, now that peace seems to be taking hold. But I can't count on it.

should comment in this report about the peace agreement signed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, on 21 November. This was the day after I began my circuit trip, which had an eerie significance for me personally. This is because it was on the second day of my circuit trip of Europe (Italy, France, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Italy) in 1991--which began and ended in Dubrovnik--that Slovenia and Croatia declared independence on 25 June 1991. I was en route from Bari to Naples at the time, and did not know about the war in Slovenia until I saw it on the hostel TV in Naples. Strange world, this.

hen the geography professors in Suceava offered their congratulations on the peace--because I was an American, but also probably due to my Croatian background--I was quite stunned. I had been following the war closely enough to suspect the durability of any peace agreement, but this one stood out due to the involvement, even the stubborn insistence, of the U.S. No surprise, then, that the three 'blind mice' ended up scribbling their signatures with Richard Holbrooke looming over them like a stern uncle.

n the past week, the UN authority in Bosnia has officially been handed over to NATO, and the first wave of U.S. troops have arrived. Some of them have been struggling with building the pontoon bridge over the Sava river between Croatia and Bosnia due to the bad weather. An American in the Balkans at Christmastime is an unheard-of concept for most of the folks back home, I'm sure. But I'm glad for the company (or Companies, as it were). Peace may not be breaking out all over, but at least with NATO's Implementation Force (IFOR) it has a fighting chance this time.

omania shares a common border with the former Yugoslavia (Serbia to be specific), and the recent events there have been followed closely by the Romanian media. Romania was responsible for enforcing its part of the border under the UN sanctions, with the Danube being one of the prime smuggling routes into Serbia. Of course there were some leaks, large and small, but in general Romania complied with the embargo. The loss of business ties with Yugoslavia had a severe impact on Romania's economy. The rerouting of the major trans-European trucking routes through Romania and Bulgaria to Greece and Turkey cushioned the blow, but not completely.

he press (at least the non-rabid portion of it) has editorialized that the arrival of U.S. troops in the Balkans is a positive sign, and that U.S. influence in the region is on the rise. This, according to the columnists, confirms the wisdom of the Romanian decision to face west and seek membership in the "Euro-Atlantic" institutions such as the EU and NATO. The alternatives are, of course, facing east to the CIS and Russia--the coerced choice of the Repubic of Moldova--or turning inward and choosing a neutral but isolationist option (perhaps the choice of the Ceausescu nostalgists, and believe it or not, they exist).

hat the U.S. IFOR base in Tuzla is only a few hundred miles from Timisoara, and the fact that the main U.S. staging bases are in southern Hungary, are facts which have not escaped Romania's attention. The Romanian government hopes to play a larger diplomatic and economic role in the former Yugoslavia that previously. The prime minister Nicolae Vacaroiu was the first foreign government leader to visit Belgrade after the peace agreement. Romania has offered to send a small contingent of troops to participate in IFOR, and Romanian construction companies are hoping to participate in the eventual reconstruction effort.

here are some lingering tensions over Dayton--especially among the Serbs in the suburbs of Sarajevo (quick! say 'suburban Serbs' over and over as fast as you can). But the 'peace train' seems to have left Dayton Station and picked up a head of steam. Leave it not to derail...