And here you thought the entrance to the Underworld existed only in mythology; the departed descend to meet Charon, who is waiting down there to ferry them across the Styx.
....and maybe some lucky girl's prince by night? Isn't he cute? He couldn't resist posing as I walked by him next to a souvenir stand in Kalemegdan Park, and asked me in English to take his photo. He thought I was a tourist, with my camera.... Little does he know....
Another biker, probably returning to Old Belgrade from some event, bikes over Branko's Bridge.
I've been past the Bayrakli Mosque downtown many times, but never bothered to learn much about it. Here's a paraphrasing of what Wikipedia says:"The Bajrakli Mosque ('bayrak' is Turkish for "flag" ) is located in the Dorcol neighborhood of Belgrade. It was built around 1575, and is the only mosque in the city out of the 273 that had existed during the time of the Ottoman Empire's rule of Serbia.
During the Austrian occupation of Serbia between 1717 and 1739, it was converted into a Roman Catholic church; but after the Ottomans retook Belgrade, it was returned to its original function.
It was damaged after being set on fire on March 18, 2004, during that year's unrest in Kosovo in response to the burning of Serbian churches in Kosovo, but was repaired later."
See other skies at SKYWATCH.
This Jolly Roger has been made even jollier by the addition of the Smiley face flag on this boat docked at Morro Bay. Almost makes you welcome pirates aboard your ship!
This is one of a pair of statues in front of the National Assembly of Serbia and is entitled Black Horses Playing, though I don't think I'd like to play with a horse this way. The National Assembly's construction was started in 1907, with the cornerstone being laid by King Petar I. The sculpture was placed in front of the building in 1939.
I always carry my camera with me wherever I go, as I imagine you all do, too. Sometimes at first I don't see a single thing worthy of a shot, but when I look harder, there's always something there. Such was the case yesterday while I was waiting for the bus after a trip to town. Bored, and still with an empty camera, I turned around to peek through a dilapidated fence and spied this alternate version of the Serbian flag! The flag of Serbia is a tricolor with three equal horizontal fields, red on the top, blue in the middle, and white on the bottom. The same tricolor, in a number of variations, was the flag of Serbia throughout history, and is the National flag of Serbs. I imagine the lady of the house didn't have patriotism in mind at all as she hung out her sheets, but that's the way I saw her arrangement.
I was intrigued by these Tibetan prayer flags, not only because I've hardly ever seen them here, but also because they're displayed around a dwelling way up on top of these stairs, like Lhasa is high in the Himalayas. The chain link fence that I had to photograph through symbolizes for me that Lhasa was once known as The Forbidden City.
Ivo Andrić (1892-1975) was a writer of Serbo-Croatian novels and short stories whose literary career spanned some 60 years. He was awarded the awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961. A Croat by birth, he became a Serb by choice. Ivo Andrić lived and died in the former Yugoslavia, and after his death and the collapse of Yugoslavia, a squabble developed about to whom Andrić belongs. Andrić was of Croatian origin and in young adulthood declared himself a Croat, and the bulk of his early work was written in Croatian. However, the majority of his later works were written in Serbian, and he was influenced by major Serbian cultural icons as Vuk Karadžić and Petar Njegoš. At any rate, Andrić's work is now in the official curricula of Croatian and Serbian literature programs.
This photo dates from the end of July during a protest held by the Serbian Radical Party to protest the sending of war criminal Radovan Karadžić to The Hague. Aside from the actual protestors, these events are often attended by groups of unruly young people looking for a "good time," i.e. wreaking havoc and causing millions of dinars in damage to public property. Indeed, the terra cotta feet I'd posted on August 27th and similar art creations which were on display on the pedestrian street, Knez Mihailova, made handy projectiles.
Cigarette and texting break for this member of the SERBIAN MILITARY POLICE.
