Last week I joined a gym. It is something that I meant to do when I arrived in Montenegro in June, but the fact that the air-conditioning was not up to par, I held off. My colleague, M, and I joined together with the intention of using the cardio and weight machines some of the time and going to aerobics classes sometimes. The gym is a modern facility, very clean, in the center of Podgorica, close to my appartment. The equipment is exactly the same as you might find at any gym in the United States. What is missing is what I like to call "gym etiquette."

The gym-goers at my gym have no idea how to behave towards each other. They don't like to share machines. There is one girl in particular who irks me. She is always there when I am there and spreads her belongings out over various cardio and weight machines. A jacket here, a water bottle there, a backpack over there. I didn't realize it at first because it would appear that those things belong to several different people, right?? Wrong! There are only 3 people in the whole gym, so how can all of these machines be in use at once? She goes from machine to cardio, to machine, while the rest of us have to make do with the left-overs. Let me specify that there are only 4 cardio machines: a bike, two treadmills, and an elliptical thingy.

The first time at the gym, there was only one available cardio machine (there was a man on one treadmill and the girl on the other and a jacket on the bike), so M and I had to trade off on the elliptical. As time passed, it became obvious that no one was coming back to claim the bike that had the jacket draped over the back. We eventially moved onto stretching and situps and left the gym.

On Saturday I returned to the gym on my own. The girl was there and her MO was obvious to me. And all the cardio machines were in use except for the bike. So, noticing that the pink jacket matched the pink workout pants the girl was wearing I said, "Isvinete, ja bih.." and I pointed to the bike (literally "Excuse me, I want"-- not perfect but you do what you can, right?). She shook her head and pointed to herself and said in Serbian "Its mine". I smiled politely and pointed to the treadmill that she was using and said, "Yours" and pointed to the bike and said, "Mine". She shook her head and tried to tell me that it was hers. So I decided to take a new tactic: "Koliko vrijime" (which I was pretty sure meant "How much time"-- again, a bit crude but, hey, I am trying). She said, "30 minuta" so I shot back, "Ja, 15 minuta" (thank goodness I perfected my numbers!) and moved her jacket to a chair and got on the bike...

Perhaps I am being a little culturally insensitive, but in this instance I really don't care. A little gym etiquette never hurt anyone, right?