Day: May 25, 2016

I was bitching earlier about how some areas of Belgrade are a tiny bit ratty and rundown with altogether too much graffiti, but when you get into the upscale regions (basically in the city’s center) everything is cool, refined and approved. All the spiritual and material perks of any hip town. This is a city, remember, that had the shit bombed out of it by NATO forces from 3.26.99 thru 6.10.99. I never knew before arriving here that everything is spelled with Cyrllic script as well as the Latin alphabet. The U.S. dollar goes a long way here.

Moritz Eis gelato, Vuka Karadzica 9, Belgrade.

Banks of the Sava River — Wednesday, 5.25, 6:55 pm. Belgrade is located right at the juncture where the Sava joins the Danube.

Read more

Hollywood Elsewhere touched down at Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla airport around 2:15 pm. It began raining within 20 minutes of my arrival, and then it stopped 15 minutes later. Now it’s started again. I have to say that I’m not impressed by the architecture in the Belgrade suburbs, which reminds me of the drab northern New Jersey area just to the west of the George Washington Bridge. The city is another story. I’m heading out now with HE’s own Svetlana Cvetko (who persuaded me to pay a visit) and editor/producer David Scott Smith for a walk and a bite. The Airbnb “loft” I’m staying in is about 50% smaller than I expected based on the photos.

Read more