Belgrade is also home to the largest MacDonalds in the Balkans.
Serbians don't deepfry. Apparently the food there is all very organic and natural, locally grown, etc.
A full report Jean? What to say?
1. There were people at Tito's tomb who were obviously there as pilgrims, not tourists, which was interesting.
2. I have never seen a city as covered in grafitti as Belgrade. It's everywhere.
3. Red Star and Partizan both have nice football stadiums.
4. Orthodox cathedrals are lovely.
5. International conferences, with the earphones and someone in a booth translating into English, are quite exhausting and you can't help but feel you're missing stuff. Foreigners should all speak English at all times. Most of the Serbs could anyway.
6. The use of human rights judgements in countries with less developed policies on victims' rights and victim protection may be very important and useful. This is interesting because it ties in with my own vies about how the HRA will be used in future.
7. Where the Sava meets the Danube is beautiful.
8. The hotel that Arkan was shot dead in is a bit tacky.
9. German gypsies think Scotland and England are the same thing.
10. Serbs and Macedonians like to dance and sing in restaurants, and they treat their guests very well indeed.
11. Slovenians are, at heart, Hapbsurgs. I had a bit of a drunken quarrel with a Slovenian who was insisting that Slovenia was not a Balkan state and that one should never trust the Serbs.
12. The Swedes are a most polite people. The most polite in Europe?
13. Airport security is ridiculous. Why is it ok for me to illegally bring in rikia in my hand luggage, but a half-used bottle of Oil of Olay is so threatening to national security that it requires to be confiscated?
14. The issue of the tallest nation in Europe remains to be settled, with claims on the table from both the Dutch and the Montengrins to be the tallest.
15. The burden of policing international people smuggling and people trafficking falls unfairly on the Serbs because one of the main routes to Western Europe is up through Albania and Kosovo, with the Serbs the first line of defence. (I make the link with the stand against the Turks, where the Serbs were the first line of defence for Christianity.)
16. Slobodan is a common name in Serbia.
Anyway, that's just some initial observations. I don't know if there is a coherent 'report' as such. I will put some photos up on Photofit in due course and post a link.
