It's nice to have friends in high places. I took this view of part of New Belgrade from a friend's tenth-floor window. The large building in the foreground is the municipal building and across the street is Saint Demetrius of Salonica's church, where my son will be married on July 25th.
If you're tired of the run-of-the-mill laptop bag, you might want one of these bags created by EthnoNetwork, an organization created by USAID to help women in villages find sources of income. I was asked to do some photos for them, and so this is one of their many beautiful products that you can see on their site above (not my photos on the site; this was a different project.)
Some artist used his or her literal sense of humor to create zebra crossings in front and beside Vuk Stefanović Karadžić and Dositej Obradović's museum downtown. I've noticed a couple of fancy crosswalks downtown, so perhaps I'll show you more.
Summer's finally here and even the art is hot. Couldn't resist this very happy purple whatever, with steam coming out of his ears.
Hungry? This is what my friend and I had for lunch in Southern Serbia, in a small village near the town of Leskovac, where a rostiljijada (ro-schteel-yee-ya-da) or grilled meat festival is held every year in September. I've said before , for example, right here that Serbs are big meat eaters. I'm not, but enjoy it from time to time.
I've shown you this bridge before, even twice, from a distance, but this shot was taken when I walked across the bridge itself. Its real name is Savski Most (Sava Bridge), but many people call it the tram bridge, since that form of transportation is mainly what crosses it...plus cars, buses, motorcycles, bikes....and pedestrians. That's the main church and patriarchy you see in the distance. And hey, in the background there's Branko's Bridge that links old and New Belgrade.
I wonder if this fellow has been a fisherman since 1973... :)
This is a mother stork who appeared to be cooling her baby (babies, perhaps; but I only saw one) by beating her wings furiously above their nest. Storks are said to bring good luck to the house they nest on.
Unlike the rest of Eastern Europe after War II, Yugoslavia fell under the leadership of Marshal Tito and remained independent from Moscow. It became the only country in the Balkans resist pressure from Moscow to join the Warsaw Pact and remained "socialist, but independent" right up until the collapse of Soviet socialism in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
It had to happen. I knew I'd been taking chances...photographing ladies in bikinis, people unaware in the bus, sleeping in the park....and now I've been shot.
