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.
A man and his dog enjoy a fall afternoon atop an embankment in Kalemegdan Park.
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.
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.
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!
Another view of one of the bridges leading into the fortress at Kalemegdan, over what used to be a moat.
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!
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.
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....
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.Purple is the theme for August 2026, and for a while I was avidly hunting something purple. Unfortunately, I found it, sort of. I have MISP...
