The Great Crate Adventure Part 1

I'm gonna start this tale from the very beginning: A long time ago (September 2009) in a land far far away (Rockwall) the Stevens family packed a crate.  We were allowed 700 cubic feet, and we packed 200 cubic.  There was nothing important in the crate. We mostly packed kids toys, clothes, games - tons of books, and a very versital side table.  The crate was packed in Dallas and sat in a warehouse, moved to Houston and sat in a different warehouse, eventually was placed in a metal container with other crates coming to Europe and in March of 2010 placed on a boat.  The boat left Houston and traveled up the east coast adding cargo at several ports.  In mid-March it began its trek across the Atlantic (Jen found a website where you could track the boat using GPS).  The boat went to Antwerp and unloaded our crate.  From there the crate went to Hamburg Germany, where it was picked up by the Milsped company of Belgrade.  They brought the crate to Belgrade on April 11th - then the fun began.  I spent the next three weeks talking with Milos.  Milos was a very nice man but he was on a Balkan time table.  This simply means that things move at a much slower pace.  The first thing I had to do was prove I lived in Belgrade and get permission from the OOF (where I had so much fun in Visaland) for the crate to be cleared through customs.  This was a simple process of going to three different offices paying about $30 and getting a letter.  I could not fax the letter to Milos - he had to have the original- so I hand delivered to the Belgrade office of Milsped (Milos works at the warehouse about 20 miles out of Belgrade).  So I talked to a different Milos who told me to take the 44 bus to the super market and he would pick me up there.  This turned out to be a great idea since I never would have found there offices on my own.  The new Milos took me to there office where they made copies of my passport and told me the old Milos would contact me.  Ever the patient guy, I waited about two days and contacted old Milos.  Old Milos said they could not do anything with the crate until I paid my bill.  So he emailed me a bill and Jen paid it at the post office.  Now the crate was to go through Customs.  I have no idea what this entailed - did they xray it, did dogs sniff it, did anyone even look at it?  I got no idea but Milos said this would take about a day.  Well 7 days later Milos let me know the crate would clear customs "in the morning and we will deliver Thursday around 11:00".  Thursday morning I called - drum roll please- "oh it is still in customs, I will call you back"....... TO BE CONTINUED