You gotta be pushy...

If you're a mushroom, it definitely pays to be pushy. I walk my dog near this spot every day, and this big guy just wasn't there the evening before.....out he came, overnight.

ABC WEDNESDAY "K" is for "knick-knacks"

Oh, how many knick-knacks I've had in my life.... and now I'm trying to get rid of them all, keeping only the most precious, but which ones....?

This window in Zemun could have been mine at one time...

Do you collect anything?

See more K's at ABC Wednesday.

The pigs that did not go to market

Aren't these cute? They caught my eye the other day in a gallery not far from Kalemegdan Park. These little porkers and many more in the gallery are posing in various exercise positions. I couldn't even decide which one I would buy if I were in the 'market' for a pig.

Haste

I called this photo 'Haste", because it does look like this old man is moving very quickly. It was taken very hastilly from across the street and in very low light, hence the blur. I like the effect. Also, though he wasn't moving that fast, he does cover quite a bit of ground, for a few days later I saw him in a totally different part of town. Or maybe he took the bus. I guess 'Haste' could apply to my speed in taking the photo.

Sunday Bridges--a small but important bridge

Not all bridges have to be big. A case in point here, for passers-by too hurried to go around this puddle can just cross over it.

Check out other bridges, big and small, on Louis La Vache's Sunday Bridges.

Reflections Weekend--reflections at the University

Reflections and a reader in one of the buildings of the University of Belgrade.

Check out other reflections at James'Newtown Daily Photo.

SKYWATCH--Moon and moon cakes

Last Wednesday, according to my new friend Lixiu, (LEE-hyoo) who will soon be leaving Belgrade after her three-week business trip, was the Moon Festival in China. I had bought moon cakes at the Chinese Market when I visited it with her the other week, and so we walked along the river to look at that big, bright moon and then returned to her company's apartment to eat moon cakes. I found that moon cakes very much resemble Fig Newton cookies in taste and texture, and although I thought the Chinese characters might have meant something like "Peace," "Prosperity," or "Health," she told me these simply indicate the cake's filling, which in this case is... "pear."

Check out other skies at SKYWATCH.

A splash in the scum

"Scum" is one of those words that sounds like what it is....ick. But it can also be beautiful, I think, as is the green pond scum in this photo, floating on the surface of the dark water, dotted with orange autumn leaves. The splash of the fountain adds just the right touch, I think.

ABC WEDNESDAY "j" is for "Juxtaposition"

Another hip shot, but just had to catch these two women who were about to pass me by. I love the contrast in their clothing, juxtaposed....

See other "J's"on ABC WEDNESDAY.

Redheads on the wall

Spied these two young redheads the other day on a beautiful early fall afternoon on a wall in Kalemegdan Park. The weather is changing ever so slightly.... Now there will be Indian Summer to look forward to.

"The Struggle"

Browsing the portal the other day I did a double-take when I saw that this same statue called The Struggle (Borba) by Simeon Roksandric (1874-1943) is in Zagreb. Roksandric had made one statue for the great Balkan exhibition in London in 1907. During the transport to or from London, Roskandic got word that the ship carrying the sculpture had sunk. So he made another statue from the same cast.

It turned out that this was untrue and he ended up with two identical statues. The Belgrade City Council decided to buy one in 1912, and Zagreb bought the other.

Like my fellow blogger in Zagreb, I was unable to find any information as to exactly what this statue represents, other than the obvious fisherman strangling a snake. Tried Googling in several languages, nothing!

Anybody know?

Sunday Bridges: the new bridge

A new bridge that will pass over the Sava River to connect New Belgrade with one of its communities, Banovo Brdo, is currently well under way. It is to be a state-of-the-art bridge, and you can read all about it right here.

See more bridges at Louis La Vache's Sunday Bridges.

Reflections Weekend--Boop-boop-a-doop!

My mother loves Betty Boop, I love Betty Boop, and my daughter loves Betty Boop. When will it end? Never, I hope, since Betty Boop is the epitome of feminism, even if feminists might denounce her. This Serbian Betty stands in a window of a fashionable store downtown.

Check out other reflections at Newtown Daily Photo.

SKYWATCH--a man and his dog

A man and his dog enjoy a fall afternoon atop an embankment in Kalemegdan Park.

See other skies at SKYWATCH.

School days...

This street scene reminds me of school days. The paper airplane, the fall leaves, the lines on the street echoing the lines on the paper....

ABC Wednesday "I" is for "information"

The above is called the Little Pyramid, and it stands in the center of Belgrade's pedestrian street, Knez Mihailova, right in front of the Academy of Arts and Sciences. The pyramid bears an inscription saying that Belgrade’s geographic center is situated at 44 degrees 49 minutes and 14 seconds of the northern geographic latitude and at 20 degrees 27 minutes and 44 seconds of the eastern geographic longitude, at an altitude of 116 meters.

So there's your information for today! See how others have interpreted the letter 'I' on ABC WEDNESDAY.

At the Chinese Market

I thoroughly enjoyed taking my new Chinese friend Lixiu (LEE-hyoo) whom I met yesterday (see last post) to Belgrade's Chinese Market. The market consists of three large pavilions crammed with sellers of just about everything, even the proverbial kitchen sink. "He's speaking a southeastern Chinese dialect; she's speaking Mandarin Chinese," remarked Lixiu, as we wandered through the market. Lixiu remarked that the clothing is designed for export and western tastes, and many items you wouldn't find in China. She treated herself to a western-style sweater. In the above photo, Lixiu is buying some vegetables and noodles from the produce sellers between the pavilions. (She's staying in a company apartment with a kitchen.) I bought some, too, and some moon cakes, a sweet typically eaten, so says Lixiu, on the Moon Festival coming up on September 23rd.

An encounter

Went for a walk on Saturday in Kalemegdan Park. I stopped to take a few photos from this vantage point overlooking New Belgrade in the distance and the confluence of the Danube and Sava Rivers when this young woman approached me and asked me to take her photo. I obliged, we got into a conversation, whereupon she complimented me on my English (smile) and was amused by the irony of running across the only person nearby who was a native speaker. Her name is Lixiu, and she's from China. Lixiu (LEE-hyoo) is here on a business trip, and loves to walk. She walked all the way over from New Belgrade from near the tower you can see in the distance. We walked on, and since she was so keen on seeing more of Belgrade, I promised to take her tomorrow to see the...Chinese Market! Stay tuned!

Sunday Bridges--

Another view of one of the bridges leading into the fortress at Kalemegdan, over what used to be a moat.

See more bridges at Louis La Vache's Sunday Bridges.

Reflections Weekend--no visits...

The things you notice when you look up. I never realized there was an embassy for the Most Serene Republic of San Marino here in Belgrade. San Marino is a tiny place, just about 61 square kilometers, with a population of about 30,000. Intrigued, I checked my Neocounter...nobody in San Marino has visited...hmmm...maybe I should pay the embassy a visit!

Those are some buildings on Knez Mihailova, Belgrade's pedestrian street, that you see reflected in the window.

Check out James' Reflections Weekend.

SKYWATCH ---going up

There may be an economic crisis, but new buildings are sprouting up all over Belgrade. In the background here you can see the rooftops of older buildings (plus, of course a satellite dish...) and the hook from a crane on an adjacent construction site. Office building, apartments? I'll wait and see.

Check out more skies on SKYWATCH.

Ow.

Yesterday I said you could tell a lot about a person by his or her hands. You can see here that my friend likes to bake, but who, like many of us rushed wives, is sometimes not careful. This blister is the result of a steam burn she got when removing a casserole dish from the oven....

She told me that she immediately ran cold water over the burn, then plunged her thumb into raw egg white and held it there (two eggs, I believe....) for 15 minutes, which soothed the pain. She says that if she had remembered to IMMEDIATELY plunge the thumb into the egg whites, she would have had NO blister....that's what Serbian folk medicine says...

ABC WEDNESDAY "H" is for "hands"

You can tell a lot about people by their hands. This hand belongs to my new daughter-in-law's father and I photographed it on the sly during a dinner party shortly after my son's recent wedding.

See other H's ABC WEDNESDAY.

Posterity

Have you ever carved your initials and maybe even those of your loved one on a tree or wall? If so, are they still there? I see '60' and '54' on this wall in Kalemegdan Park, so I'm assuming that's 1960 and 1954, which means some of these names and initials have been here for a while...for posterity.

Yankee, go home! (Who, me?)

No offense taken, of course, since the writer is undoubtedly a member of the Serbian Radical Party, a far-right, ultra-nationalistic party founded in 1991, whose leader, Vojislav Šešelj (name in Cyrillic painted on the left of the wall), has been under trial in The Hague for war crimes since 1993.

And besides, after 33 years here, I am home.

Sunday Bridges--before and after

One day fresh paint, next day (or almost) graffiti. This is the fate of many walls in big cities, like this one under a bridge over a highway in Belgrade.

Check out Louis La Vache's Sunday Bridges at his blog!

Reflections weekend-Tesla's ashes

A few weeks ago I visited the Nikola Tesla Museum in downtown Belgrade. A place worth visiting if you come; tours are scheduled in English.

The gold ball above, so they say, houses Nikola Tesla's ashes.

See Newtown Daily Photo for other reflections!

SKYWATCH--Sand martin nests

See the nests?

You won't if you're looking in the trees. These holes in the sandy soil of Deliblato Sands are sand martin nests. Sand martins are members of the swallow family. Deliblato Sands (Deliblatska Peščara) make up the largest sandy terrain in Europe, and were once part of a vast prehistoric desert. Part of the Sands is only about an hour out of Belgrade.

See other skies on SKYWATCH.

The airborne tower

This is Nebojša's Tower (NEH-boy-sha), located just below the Kalemegan Fortress's walls. It dates from around 1460. "Nebojša," which is also a popular boy's name, means 'not afraid of anything.' Legend says when, after a long battle in 1521, the Turks finally seized nearly all of the Belgrade Fortress, the tower rose into the air so that it could never be captured.

THEME DAY: Open-air markets/ABC Wednesday "Goodies for winter!"

Getting ready for winter...the beans are on the market all year round, but jars of pickled veggies are a sign of cold weather to come.

Check out other G's on ABC WEDNESDAY.


THEME DAY: Click here to view thumbnails for all participants