I went for a Hike. No, seriously.

Last week James and I decided it was time to do what all Slovenians seem to spend their free time doing, namely, trudge up an Alp. So we caught the two hour bus ride to Bohinj, an Alpine valley in north-central Slovenia, which just so happens to be one of the most catch-in-the-throat pretty places I've ever seen. We were somewhat ill-prepared for said hiking up a mountain (case in point: I was wearing black ballet flats, which do not have such good grip at a 45 degree angle). But we were perfectly prepared for the more important part of the trip, namely, swimming in the lake, and so after working up a sweat walking along Mostnice Gorge for two hours we tripped back down to the turquoise blue waters of Bohinjsko Jezero and grabbed us a spot on the (pebbly) beach, amongst the perma-tanned Slovenian mums and althetic looking stari papi.

When I say we went hiking along Mostnice Gorge, I have to clarify and explain that we got lost looking for Mostnice, and only really found it 15 mintues before our descent to the lake. That said, our amble in search of the gorge was pretty nonetheless, particularly as we started hiking up Mount Vogel (an actual Alp) which we only abandoned due to its increasing strenuousness, probably a good thing as otherwise we would have ended up half way to a ski resort. I was once again reminded of how intense Europeans are when it comes to outdoor pursuits (my black flats were to be compared with other hikers big brown boots, hiking poles, state of the art backpacks and special sweat absorbing band thingys flung all over their bodies) which was amusing and intimadating in equal measure. Once we found the gorge, we were disappointed to discover we couldn't get down to the emerald green water running through it (that said, I guess precipitous depth is the point of a gorge really) but we did have an awesome picnic by one of the crevices, and the strolled along it down to where the water flattened out and we could get close. Unfortunately, this just happened to occur in the middle of some poor Slovenia farmer's field, which we willfully trudged through, only realizing our mistake when we came across a picturesque looking Alpine farmhouse. At that point we hightailed it out of there, afraid of a pitchfork weilding farmer or worse, a cow, and ended up in the village of Stara Fuzina, home to the Slovenian Alpine DairyMuseum (which we resisted going in to with difficulty, as I'm sure you can imagine). Luckily, Stara Fuzina was only 10 minutes from the shores of Lake Bohinj so deciding it was time for a swim, we headed down and plunged into the pleasantly warm and incredibly picturesque waters of the valley.

Apart from adventures with cows and lakes, Slovenia has lived up to its reputation of being somewhat sleepy for us, which is perfect as I want to absorb as many zen relaxation vibes as possible before plunging back into hardcore work mode in a few weeks. Highlights of the day continue to be going out for coffee or wine (even better when its catching up with a friend, as we did last night with the lovely Carolin, a fellow graduate student here doing research) and wandering around the old town, up to the castle, and back via the gorgeous baroque churches that are so numerous you basically trip over them going to the corner store. On the weekend James and I hit up the Slovenian Museum of Modern Art which, while no MOMA, was pretty cool, particulary if you have an interest in Yugoslav cultural history, which luckily James does. So he was able to explain the significance of the crazy performance art videos we saw from the 60s and 70s (lesson: Marina Abramovic totally came out of a Yugoslav scene that was rather packed with people doing even cooler stuff than her) and I was able to admire the socialist realist sculpture from the 40s and 50s and compare it with the Soviet stuff I've seen in the marvellous New Tretiakov in Moscow. Visting the Museum of Modern Art also inspired familiar irritation with the author of Lonely Planet guides - the Slovenia guide dude is clearly a philistine, as he described the beautiful modernist building which houses it as 'ugly and bleak' or something. Perhaps compared to the same old Habsburg confections that surround it (not that theres anything wrong with them...) but the building was a gorgeous example of mid century architecture and just the kind of cool, soothing, white-walled and open-spaces environment you go to a modern art gallery for. Humph. Rant alert: I don't know why guide books employ people to write on post-socialist countries who have not an inkling of interest in the artistic and cultural legacy of the twentieth century in Eastern Europe and just want to seek out vestiges of the imperial past. Which is fine, but kind of one sided. Just sayin'.

Same Balkans, new City

After a two year hiatus, Lost in Post-Socialist Space is back, by popular (that is, Lizzie's) demand. Now is a fortunate time to restart it as, while I have been back in Eastern Europe a couple of times since I was last writing this blog in Serbia, it was generally back to places I had already been. Now I am once again experiencing the delights of a new (to me, but also new temporally) Balkan country. I'm in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, referred to locally as the 'city of love' thanks to its name (Ljub- being a general slavic root for 'love'). Paris it may not be, but a more beautiful, if sleepy, place to spend a lazy European break probably could not be imagined.

Ljubljana is unusual for a Balkan city - at least the ones I've seen - in that instead of the regular picturesque jumble of architectural styles from Turkish, Austrian and Communist past's, Slovenia's capital is a rather homogeneous collection of beautiful baroque churches with the occasional smattering of fin-de-siecle art nouveau. Apparently, the city suffered two major earthquakes in the last five centuries, one in 1511 and another in 1895. As tragic as the events were, they had a paradoxically happy outcome for the city's urban planning, as they enabled one re-building at the height of grand Catholic baroque style during the early years of the Counter-Reformation, and another part-rebuilding during everyone's favourite period of artistic decadence, the fin-de-siecle. I became a fount of such architectural knowledge on visiting the City Museum of Ljubljana which, though small like the city, was pretty and empty enough for me to spend three hours wandering around soaking up trivia about the site of the hippy counterculture in 1970s Slovenia (a chocolate factory called Sumi) and the design of Yugo-Pioneer hats of childhood notsalgia. Being an uber history nerd, I was also interested to observe that in the national narrative of contemporary Slovenia, Napolean's invasion and occupation of the region in the early nineteenth century = good, and the Austrian imperial occupation = very bad, despite the Habsburg legacy today apparently mainly consisting of forms of cream-filled cake and ornate Baroque curlicues. Fair enough, I suppose, as the Austrians did run this place with an intermittently iron fist for 500 years, but the glorification of the power-hungry Frenchman is rare in Central Europe and seemed somewhat incongruous in otherwise superlative nationalist narrative of the city's museum.

Apart from nerding it up in the museum, I have been wandering about staring at the sky in order to get a better look at the balconies and iron filigree of the buildings crowding the city's narrow cobbled streets, meeting James for coffee breaks between his work, and occasionally doing some reading/work of my own, when the heat outside drives me into the cool marble halls of the city's main library.

James and I trecked up to the Ljubljana Castle, which we are actually living just in front of (literally - one wall of our courtyard is part of the castle fortifications) which was closed when we got there for some swanky party but which nonetheless had a fab view of the whole, pint-sized city. James and I are about to tuck into an approriately Italian themed dinner made from fresh produce from the luscious city market, which is pretty awesome, and along with the good and cheap wine here and half decent coffee highlights why I now think everyone should plan their next holiday to Slovenia....

Sveti Marko and Aleksandr Nevsky

At first sight Belgrade doesn't exactly strike you as a green city. The centre is polluted and characterised by grey soviet-era buildings interspersed by the odd relic from before WWI, during which Belgrade was almost destroyed (only to be destroyed again in WWII and, at least in part, in 1999). Which is not to say it doesn't have a charm of its own, the half derelict older buildings giving way to newer additions or restorations such as the new National Theatre. Its just not something you would necessarily put on a postcard home.

I had been promised, however, that if I ventured just a bit further afield than my little Vracar-Centre ghetto, I would find a wonderful Oasis of greenery in a park called Tasmajdan, which also contains Belgrade's surrogate cathedral, Sveti Marko church. The real cathedral, Sveti Sava, is still being built over a hundred years since it was begun. So last week I took off to find Tasmajdan and Sveti Marko, a decision which turned out to be a good one for many reasons, not least of which because I found lots of inviting looking cafes along the way.

Tasmajdan itself was not looking its best, I assume, because winter has left the trees bare and the paths icy, but I could see how it could be a lush place in summer. I came across a sombre monument to the children killed in the 1999 bombing, and later learned that there was (still is) a children's theatre in Tasmajdan which was bombed by Nato (apparently there were lots of buildings of strategic import in a municipal park). Apart from that there was little to see in the park itself, and strolling around and eyeing off stray dogs got a bit tedious after a while so I sought out Sveti Marko, a church I could hardly miss as its dark black and ochre striped tower looms over the whole of Tasmajdan in its neo-Byzantine glory.


Since living in Russia and Serbia I've developed a bit of a sensory obsession with churches; partly because they provide warmth on long cold days, partly because they are a great way of tracing the history of these deeply orthodox countries (pre-1917, at least), and partly because, despite not being remotely religious, I love their smell, the dim light and the glow of the icons, and the sound of murmuring voices bubbling around. Sveti Marko was usual for a Serbian church in that there are little to no murals on the walls and so it felt a little bare, but there are compensations like the tomb of Stepan Dusan (founder of the great Serbian state in the 14th century) and enough iconic glory to give me a thorough education on Serbian saints and the various ways they died. I walked in in the middle of a service, which didn't seem to bother anyone, and the priest sang away happily as a small cluster of people stood around him with heads bent. No one took any notice of me as I clattered around staring at dark icons, and gazed up at the huge iron candelabra swaying from the ceiling. I snuck out and the huge wooden door creaked behind me, while I stood on the steps and adjusted my eyes to the sunlight, harsh after the soft glow of candles and incense.

Not satiated, I decided it was time for more of a churches binge, and headed off to the Aleksandr Nevsky church, which I've been intending to visit for ages after hearing it was the Russian church (bien sur, Nevsky being the 13th century saviour of the Russian state against the Teutonic Knights - see Eisenstein's awesome film about it for details) and thus hoping to find someone I could practice my Russkii with. I didn't manage that, but the experience was worth it nonetheless, as I saw the most intense (somewhat disturbing) display of Serbia religiosity yet. As I walked up to the church I saw big queues outside and assumed I had come on a festival day and wouldn't get a look inside, only to discover that they were queues to fill your water bottle with the holy water being sold in large kegs on the church steps. I pushed past people and went inside to find the church a hive of activity, about three separate lines to kiss various icons, including one right up the central aisle of the church, apparently leading to an especially holy relic. A black robed priest stood by this one waving an incense ball, and chanting, while the devoted waited patiently for their turn to bestow kisses. Unlike Russia, where almost everyone I saw in churches was pushing 70, these queues ran the whole gamut of ages, with young Serbian women in low cut jeans having to be careful as they bent over to view the icons. After the austerity of Sveti Marko, I was excited to see that the walls of Aleksandr Nevsky were covered in frescos, which apparently were only completed recently but with their layer of incense soot looked suitably ancient. I sat in a dark corner and watched the action, as people swept past me to get to the shop selling beads and mini versions of the icons covering the walls.

From a purely selfish point of view I love these trips to orthodox Churches, which are some of the only places to see anything older than WWII in Serbia. That said, after leaving Aleksandr Nevsky and telling James what I saw I had to admit the heightened emotions of the devoted I saw inside are hardly a good thing, particularly in the Balkans where the Serbian Orthodox Church was heavily involved in the 1991-1993 war, as well as Kosovo and the recent rise in nationalist violence (just see the pre-Srebrenica film of paramilitaries being blessed by bishops and you'll know what I mean). For many Serbs I think the national church is rooted in a past they want to return to (rather than a past they simply want to know about) and so the fierce passion many hold for it is also the passion with which they cling to Kosovo and denounce Bosnian Muslims. The situation in Russia is somewhat different - although the church is resurgent and certainly associated with new nationalist movements, the communist era did a more thorough job of breaking the back of religion there than in Serbia, where Tito never really tried. People talk about the Church in Russia like it is the bloodline of the Motherland, but you never actually see them inside one. In Serbia people's attachment is much more immediate, and thus I think it would be easier to rally people here on religious grounds than in Russia where the nationalism is ultimately still secular.

All of this I guess is a sombre footnote to my wanderings around Belgrade churches, which I won't be giving up despite their possibly nationalistic overtones. As architectural monuments I think they are the best this poor scarred city has, and as historical ones they are richer than the (perpetually shut) National Museum, even if their historical significance is a little too real for many of the people who line up inside them.

Elections and Cinema

Well, the Serbian elections went off pretty much without a bang, despite me listening intently for the sound of gunshots or riots in the street as I sat watching the results unfurl on the television.

Nikolic, the Radical Party candidate, won resoundingly, although that doesn't necessarily mean that he will win on February 3rd, when the top two candidates have a run-off to see who will be President. Tadic, the second candidate and current President, is doing his best at the moment to present his opponent as an ultra nationalist crazy (well, its pretty much true) who will take Serbia back to the bad old days of war, sanctions and international pariah status.

While this may be fair enough, Tadic himself is insisting that Kosovo will not be allowed to separate from Serbia, and denying (despite much evidence to the contrary) that the EU he is so desperate to join will have any problem with this. We'll see. The President is largely a figurehead anyway, but in the unstable way of Balkans politics this could easily be changed if a strong enough President came into the position. Milosevic switched between Prime Minister and President a number of times during his career, just ensuring that whichever position he held at the time was the one with the power.

It won't do Serbia any good to have Radical Nikolic as President, if he wins on February 3. But then maybe it would certain NATO countries stand up and realise that imposing sanctions on a country so that people reach near starvation point, bombing them, and now preventing them from travelling abroad (Serbs face queues of 8 hours if they want a visa to go to Germany, and are often then refused it) does not a West-loving country make.

In between the times I've been watching Serbian news re the election I've been going to see Serbian language films. This unfortunately does not mean my Serbian has improved, just that I'm developing a lot of patience and becoming good at reading Balkan facial expressions. When I say Serbian films, I mean specifically one, which I went to see the other night with James and his friend Vladimir, a Serbian who grew up in Zimbabwe and is now doing his PhD at LSE, and thus made a very good interpretor for when I really just wanted to know what the hell was going on in the move.

It was called 'Belle Epoque, or the Last Waltz of Sarajevo' and I recommend it to everyone, and really hope that it gets release in the West. The movie was actually made in 1990, and was in post-production when the war began and thus ended up collecting dust in a basement somewhere where it thankfully survived the bombings. It has only just been released, and has had some showings at international festivals in Europe, but hopefully it will get beyond the arthouse circuit so people will actually see it.

The nexus around which the story turns is the assasination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, told through the eyes of a young aspiring filmmaker whose loyalties are torn between his mother, who has cuddled up to the Austro-Hungarian regime, and the girl he loves who is an underground revolutionary working for the terrorist group 'Mlada Bosna'. One thing I was interested to find out through the film was that Gavrilo Princip, the assassin of Franz Ferdinand, actually worked for the Sarajevo based Mlada Bosna, a socialist-leaning group fighting for Bosnian independence, and not the Greater Serb nationalists the Black Hand. I don't know about anyone else, but I was always taught in school it was the Black Hand who killed F-F, not a socialist leaning Bosnian independence group. The lies they tell us! (This reminds me of a quote of Gloria Steinham's I heard yesterday - The truth will set you free but first it will piss you off. Not that Steinham is usually my favourite person to quote, but here I totally agree).

Anyway, the film was actually very moving, and did a good job of showing the tangled web of allegiances that was early twentieth century Sarajevo. The director made a somewhat heavy-handed statement at the beginning about how you need to understand the violent way in which Sarajevo began the twentieth century to udnerstand the violent way it ended it (I don't buy pointless attempts at historical symmetry) but apart from this the film was relatively free of reductionism or didacticism. If it comes out with English subtitles, I want someone to tell me, because if I could understand the dialogue it would mean even more...

Burek and Palachinke, or why going on a diet in Serbia is a lost cause

After six months of breaking every healthy eating rule in Russia (not hard in a country where there is no such thing as skim milk and fruit is what you get inside sour cherry cheesecake) James and I decided to kick the sugar habit and start our Serbian sojourn as paragons of nutrition. We live just five minute's walk from the best fresh produce market in Belgrade, and some of my best experiences in the city so far have been chatting to the vendors in my broken Serbian, trying to explain sweet potato (sladkii potato? potato with sugar? Ne, young girl, not possible!) or being dragged by one seller to his competitor's stall to get better avocados than the ones he was offering.

As a result, we have done a great job of filling our new apartment with pomegranites and oranges from Turkey, fresh nuts, dried figs, and a huge mound of carrots and potatos we buy from a woman who brings them from her farm every day, having dug them up herself. Lack of healthy options is therefore not what is stopping me becoming a zen temple of healthy eating. The real problem, and one around which I can see no way, is our local 'pekara', or insidious purveyor of delicious, melt-in-you-mouth baked goods, smells from which waft in the apartment if I step out onto our balcony in the morning.

The pekara sells what I'm fast learning are the usual suspects of Serbian heart-attack-on-a-plate food. These include burek, something which can essentially be found all over the Mediterranean (in Greece its spanakopita, for everyone back home in Australia), but on which the Serbians have their own twist. Thick layers of buttery pastry encase a gooey mixture of goats cheese, vegetables and (if you want) meat. They cut it like a huge pie and give you an enermous wedge which, if you are a proper Balkanite, you are meant to eat with sour yoghurt as an accompaniment (this may sound strange, but in Russia I got into the habit of having deliciously tart sour cream or smetana as an accompaniment to everything, from soup to a bowl of porridge, and find I can't eat anything decadent without that wonderful sour taste any more). Along with this, they sell freshly baked 'kifla', crescent shaped serbian bread rolls, and the best croissant and pain au chocolat I've had outside Paris.

As if this temptation wasn't enough of a stress confronting me everyday when I walk out the door of our building, each time I go into the city centre I am faced with endless palachinke stalls - thats bliny, or crepes, or pancakes, depending on where you are from. Palachinke are most like the bliny we had in Russia than anything else I've had - huge, and typically filled with sour cream and vegetables, or jam, caramel, chocalate, whatever will give you a coronary basically. I had one on Sunday that was nutella, vanilla icecream and peanut caramel, nearly fainted half way through from the sugar rush and had to throw the rest dramatically away. Wasting sugary rich food is something I never do, so this is testament to the diabetes-in-solid-form nature of Serbian delicacies.

To be fair, Belgraders need something in their lives to cheer them up - they've had bombs, sanctions, and dictators in the last eight years, so I can't really begrudge them a (chocolate covered) pancake or five. It just doesn't really help my new year's resolution to be fabulously healthy. Funnily enough, Serbians all seem very svelte. I have no idea how the palachinke stalls stay in business because no one looks like they've been eating that many of them. Perhaps its some fabulous Balkans diet secret I can make money writing a book about and selling back home. Or perhaps they just have more self-discipline than a two week old puppy. Which is more than I can say for myself.

Serbia as global East, or Why I don't always trust BBC News

As Edward Said famously pointed out, it has long been a tradition in the West to view the East as savage and wild. Serbia, as a global pariah, suffers from this more than most places despite it being on the very edge of what would be considered global East at all (indeed, many Serbians see themselves as one step away from EU membership, but I have a feeling they are going to be disappointed...). A very mild version of this notion of the Balkans as an untrapped wilderness came to light yesterday as we were sitting in sunlight infused cafe having a chat with Igor, a friend of James'. About a week ago the BBC was reporting wild storms lashing the Balkans, and causing havoc on the streets of its major cities. I expressed surprise that the weather had calmed down so quickly, as yesterday it could have almost been spring, and people were striding through the streets with sunglasses or shaking off their too-heavy coats. Igor snorted into his coffee. He shrugged his shoulders and said 'But of course - this is the East. Naturally our weather is more wild, our people more crazy and our politics more absurd.' He rolled his eyes and with that look dimissed any faith I had had in the BBC's neutral reporting skills, at least when it comes to Serbia.

I had already experienced a bit of Igor's frustration at world media myself, while living in Russia. The recent Russian election was a charade, and everyone I spoke to seemed fully aware of this. There was never any question that United Russia would not win by a landslide, and later reports of coerced voting in some regions came as no surprise to most people I knew in St Petersburg (that said, St Petersburgers I spoke to were very proud that their region returned the smalled vote for United Russia, despite Putin being a local - in fact I believe it was the only region in Russia where United Russia did not win the vote, an honour that went instead to the semi-liberal A Just Russia).

You would think the BBC would have enough material from this with which to demonise the Russian electoral process. However, their coverage of the election focussed so disproportionatly on Garry Kasparov and his doomed-from-the-start attempt to register his Other Russia party for the election. Kasparov is a very attractive figure for Western media, it seems, despite the fact that he is (quite transparently) a right-wing neo liberal whose policies reflect the interests and concerns of approximately 0.5% of the Russian population, at least those Russians I have spoken to. What is worse, Other Russia is a party made up not only of Kasparov's party The United Civil Front, but also Eduard Limonov's quasi-fascist National Bolshevik Party, a fact the BBC conveniently fails to mention in its coverage of Other Russia's protests.

None of this is to say, of course, that Kasparov and Other Russia were not completely right to protest their exclusion from the electoral process, and expecially their terrible treatment by the Russian police in the March of Discontent in November. What is irritiating is just that the BBC represent this strange collection of neo-liberals and quasi-fascists as Russia's only hope, and heorise them without interrogating what their ideas are.

As far as I know, Serbia has no equivalent to Other Russia, at least not one that is challenging the presidential election which will take place in seven days. It will be interesting to see how people respond to the outcome - I have seen an equal amount of graffiti supporting Tadic and Nikolic, and heaps along the lines of 'One Serbia. Kosovo leaves us never.' We'll see.

As well as deciphering election posters and graffiti, I've been checking out some of the more aesthetic attractions of the White City, including St Sava's cathedral, apparently the largest orthodox cathedral in the world. It is about a five minute walk from our apartment, and its dome dominates the whole area's skyline (infact, the whole city's). It is all very impressive from the outside, but on the inside its a shell, as they are still finishing the building over 100 years after it was started. Much more interesting is Maly St Sava's (maly=little) which is next to the cathedral and stands in as a surrogate church while building continues. It was finished in 1895 and is a gorgeous church which reminds me of a smaller version of St Basil's in Moscow - the walls are covered with psychadelic murals and the doorframe is worn where the congregation members kiss it on their way in. I wandered in while a service was in process - apparently acceptable in orthodox services, during which everyone stands up anyway and people wander around kissing icons while the priest sings - and let the music and incense wash over me as I checked out the images of St Sava, Serbia's most holy saint.

I'll post again once we know the election results, or something else exciting happens. In the mean time, for anyone for whom my comments re Serbia are inspiring a burning desire to know more about the Balkans (!) the English language website of B92, a major TV network here, is the best source of news I've found. Today its front page is dominated by an image of St Savas from last night, which was the Julien calendar new year, and Tadic's recent pronouncements on Kosovo. I havn't read it thoroughly enough yet to know which side they take politically, but it may be worth checking out anyway. Ciao for now.

Srbija!

Much as I love the nomadic lifestyle, I was relieved on Tuesday to arrive home again, albeit a new home where James and I were, at least for the first night, sans apartment or mobile or any other signifiers of a life. My first view of Belgrade, the said new home, was not overly promising, as we arrived in the middle of a thick fog when no one could see more than half a metre in front of them, and the ground was covered in snow and treacherous ice (I saw at least four Belgraders come to grief on it, which only seemed to amuse them...) If I wanted to be poetic a could say the fog was a good metaphor for my own semi-blindness in a new country, but really it was just annoying as I was impatient to explore Belgrade having heard so much about it from James and Serbian friends.

Luckily, by yesterday the fog had lifted and we had a beautiful day wandering around and exploring before we moved into our new apartment in the evening. Belgrade is both as run down and derelict as I expected, and as vibrant and festive feeling as I had been led to believe by friends who had been here. The best way I could think of to describe Belgrade (having just come from St Petersburg) was the Dublin of the Balkans - not as pretty as the other showcase cities of Eastern Europe, but much friendlier, cheaper, and more quirky. The main legacy of centuries of Turkish rule is a plethora of great cafes, a relief after the hell of drinking coffee in Rossija. Everyone here seems to spend their time, as far as I can tell, sitting in cafes chatting and waiting for the bars to open so they can go, drink rakija and dance the night away. As a result of this, the city has the vaguely romantic yet decaying look about it, as no one seems to want to take the time to clean it up. That said, the few really tourist-tastic sites in Belgrade live up to their hype - we spent the afternoon yesterday wandering around Kalemegdan, the most ancient site in the city. This is where the Romans built a fort in the first century AD, which was later turned into a medieval stronghold and has been crumbling and being rebuilt ever since. One of the great benefits of the aforementioned aversion Belgraders seem to have to beautifying their city is that, with sites like Kalemegdan, what you see is what you get - no one rebuilt it in faux-gothic style in the early twentieth century or anything. You really are wandering over an ancient fort and the effect is magical, something heightened by the position of the site which is on a promontary overlooking the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, the two great Serbian waterways. I wanted to add a picture we took while tripping through the ruins yesterday but unfortunately my camera isn't hooking up to my computer properly at the moment, so here is one not taken by me to give you a feel for the place...



The big news in Belgrade at the moment is the Presidential election, due to take place in ten days. Having just come from a Russia gripped with election fever, I felt a distinct sense of deja vu when I was confronted by the election posters advertising Boris Tadic (incumbent President and quasi-liberal) and Tomislav Nikolic (the candidate for the Serbia Radical Party, which is led by Vojislav Šešelj - Šešelj cannot run for president as he is currently on trial for war crimes in the Hague...) Unlike the Russian election, the result of this one is not a foregone conclusion - though Tadic is likely to win, Nikolic has a lot of support. Flicking through the Serbian television news last night I saw campaign speeches on ten of the fifteen channels, and many people interviewed on the news were voicing their support for the Radicals. Time will tell what the result will be...and what the affect of that result will be on the negotiations regarding Kosovo.