How to Write about the Balkans

Make sure to place yourself, the Western journalist, at the very center of the story. Include anecdotes about being strapped into the seat of some godforsaken regional airline as it makes a bumpy landing on a narrow strip of runway. Detail the sheer terror you feel in the company of your wild-eyed driver, who careens recklessly around the blind curves of deadly mountain roads.

Short, pleasant piece about this beautiful, but troubled region (see what I mean?) The history etched in the wrinkled faces of old men drinking coffee and the passion bubbling dangerously in the youth who swear they would never make the same mistakes.

I could go on for hours

Song of the Day--European Remix

My daughter lies over the ocean
My daughter must not oversleep
My song's in the form of a blog post
Please wake up my daughter for me.

Wake up
Wake up

Wake up my daughter for me, for me

Wake up
Wake up

'Cause it's time for school, Love,  Big D.

Promocija II

Free glass with a four pack of cans of Mythos, the beverage claiming to be "the world's most famous Hellenic beer." Belgrade's most famous Windsor-born ND law graduate is impressed.

Update
According to Wikipedia it is Greece's second largest brewery, and it does not make this list of the country's top 9 beers.

Taco Bell

My boy Matt Yglesias loves the new "Fiery Doritos Locos Taco," calling it, without irony, a "triumph of human ingenuity." Last summer, when the BG and I were stranded in Cleveland, our hotel was near a Taco Bell, and we went there for lunch. We had seen the commercial about the dude (I believe his name was Matt Christianos, although the Gs and I had many discussions about whether he was actually a real person) who drove 600 miles for a taco with a shell made from real nacho cheese Doritos many times during basketball games, and it had been the subject of many jokes that began with "You know what I could go for..." in response to a question about upcoming meal choices.

But nonetheless, I have always been a big fan of the Bell, particularly the bean burrito and the chicken  burrito supreme, and I also enjoy Doritos, so the idea was intriguing, like a Pineapple Express-inspired conversation that had somehow become a delicious reality. The execution, however, was a little gross; it tasted like a taco that had been sprinkled with a more scientific version of the dust in the bottom of the bag. I have never been more disappointed.

OK, I have been more disappointed many times. But despite Matt's enthusiasm I won't be seeking out the new product. Unless, of course, I find myself near a Taco Bell. But I will expect to be disappointed this time, so maybe it will be a pleasant surprise. A year is a long time in the food science industry.

Europe's Best Kept Secret

The WC is hot, according to the Wall street Journal

VISITORS TO BELGRADE often hesitate to tell friends about the city's charms. In the calm of the last decade, the capital of Serbia has experienced a cultural explosion and today it feels distinctly like Europe's best-kept secret.

Wouldn't go quite that far, but perhaps I don't stay out late enough.

Here Comes the Hoss

So it looks like one of the judges whose courts we automated has decided to free Hosni Mubarak from prison. Not sure how I feel about this. From everything I read it looks like the charges were kind of trumped up and due process has been followed. Right?

Nonetheless, he seems like a thug who threw a lot of people into jail unjustly and used his country's assets to enrich himself and his cronies. I feel like a thorough investigation would bring a lot of this to light, but I don't have any hard evidence to support it, just as I don't know for sure that Mohammed Morsi didn't conspire with Hamas to free himself from prison. How can you argue for process when the process itself seems so political?

Any better ideas? I think they both should be freed, and that they should both be allowed to run again, except that the country should eliminate the office of the president and return to a parliamentary system, with the untouchable presidential office retired to the Valley of the Kings.

I am so sad for Egypt. A lot of good people don't deserve this. But some do.

"Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair."

What's So Terrible About MSG?

Apparently nothing. The health effects are pretty much unproven. It's just salt and glutamic acid, which is found in many foods, including parmesan cheese, tomatoes and breast milk. It's the same whether produced in a lab or through natural fermentation; and it's quite delicious.

5,800 words on the subject via the Browser; fascinating from beginning to end.

German Potato Salad in a Belgrade Refrigerator

One of my favorite things to do is to turn misfit items in the refrigerator into something delicious. Half the time it turns into something delicious, though sometimes it doesn't go so well, and others it produces results that can best be described as "interesting." Nevertheless. I don't care; I love it.

I had about ten small to midsize potatoes in the fridge, as well as 4 strips of pancetta and a spring onion that, if it didn't get used this weekend, was getting binned, as the Economist would say.

So I thought of German potato salad. I found a good recipe on Epicurious, and modified it to fit what I had on hand.  Here is the original recipe. My extra crispy version is below. I will say that the pancetta didn't leave enough fat for frying the onions, and 2 or 3 more slices would have made it even better. But that would have required a trip to the market and violated the rules of the game.

German Potato Salad in a Belgrade Refrigerator

Cut 8 potatoes into bite size pieces and boil until done. While the potatoes are cooking, fry 4 slices pancetta. While the bacon is cooking, combine 1/2 cup white vinegar, 1/2 cup water, 2 tsp mustard, 2 tsp sugar, 2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp. pepper. Take bacon out of the pan and set on a paper towel. Add a pat of butter to pan and saute onion for 5 minutes over medium heat.

Add vinegar mixture to pan and cook until reduced by half. Remove from heat. Add potatoes and let sit until mixture is warm, but not hot (it was 10 mins for me). Top with crumbled bacon and one spring onion, chopped. Season with salt and pepper. Admire clean fridge.

Stuff Matters

After golfing for five hours on Wednesday and having drinks with a campaign donor, Obama announced on Thursday morning that the United States was cancelling a military exercise with the Egyptian military and immediately went golfing again. There was no announcement that the administration would cut off the $1.3 billion in annual American aid to Egypt, most of it military.

Ouch. I understand that cutting off the $1.3 billion you give to the group that just killed 500 citizens and is keeping a democratically elected leader under lock and key reduces or eliminates your leverage in the region, but sometimes, if not most times, you should just do the right thing.

Good article from Reuters complementing a piece in today's Times from a former member of President Morsi's cabinet. I had higher expectations of our president.

Eating Out

I've been trying to go out for dinner once a week. Actually that makes it sound like it's work, and it is, to the extent I have to find someplace to go, get there and negotiate the language and culture difficulties. Boo hoo, right?

I've been trying to stay in my neighborhood, since I'm not all that keen on anything too logistically challenging in the evening. That makes me sound so old and boring, but that's no secret. I will wander further afield on the weekends. Last sunday I had an excellent lunch at a thai restaurant, about an hour away on foot.

So last night I was headed for an Italian restaurant called Piazza. I had been there once before, and had a pizza that, like most pizza I've had in the region, wasn't terrible. But Tripadvisor ranks it #34 in Belgrade, so I thought I'd give it another shot.

I got the address from the internet and walked over there at about 7. When I got to 54 Cara Nikola, there was nothing around that resembled the restaurant (Now I see that the address in Trip Advisor is different). I wandered around a little and soon found myself lost in a residential neighborhood. There were, of course, lots of cafes, but nothing caught my eye.

About 20 minutes later, as I was starting to get that feeling that I was wandering ever further into unfamiliar territory, I stumbled out into the Kalenic market, which is just down the street from my house. The eponymously named cafe/restaurant there is a great place to people watch; a couple of Sundays ago, as I was having a beer on the terrace, there was an old Serbian couple and a young Serbian family having lunch, dinner, or whatever you call a meal at four in the afternoon. Both tables looked so content in their own ways--the older couple not talking at all, the family a beehive of activity--that I decided to go back and give the food a try.

They have a daily menu on paper and a bigger permanent bilingual menu, not all of which is available. I ordered the gulasc and a tomato salad. The former was a beef stew, served with mashed potatoes; the latter a plate of sliced tomatoes with cruets of oil and vinegar alongside. Neither was bad, nor, ironically speaking, anything worth blogging about.

But I was hungry and tired by now, so I decided to give it another chance. I wanted to try the veska snitzla (wiener schnitzel) which is a staple of Serbian, among many, cuisines, and that if they didn't have that, I'd try their pleiskavica, and that, worst case scenario, I'd order the chorba, a roux-base soup, off the daily menu.

But they had the schnitzel, and I ordered a green salad, to go along with it. The green salad turned out to be a bowl of lettuce; the schnitzel was a veal cutlet served with fries and a lemon wedge. It had a beautiful breadcrumb coating, but the meat itself was a little tough. Still, the vibe was nice and I didn't go away unhappy.

Next time, I'll try the Karadjordjeva variety, which is more of a cordon bleu-type take on it. I think cheese and bacon would be a good, if not overly healthy way, of addressing the dryness.

It's interesting to see more central european influences here than we saw in Macedonia, where goulash was never on the menu and the bread was not nearly as good.

I see that the restaurant is #138 in the Trip Advisor rankings. That sounds about right. But it's become a bit of a clean, well-lighted place for me.

Plum Brandy

When I lived in South Bend, one of my roommates, Tommy Utah, had a bottle of plum brandy. I don't know why he had a bottle of plum brandy or where he got it, but despite our adventurous natures and general bibulousness, there was something so abhorrent about the idea of plum brandy that I don't think the bottle was ever opened, and it was the subject of countless jokes.

It turns out that the aforementioned plum brandy, known as slivovica here, is the national drink of Serbia and it is served as an apertif at virtually every formal dinner.

It is also quite delicious.

I Can't Believe I Ate the Whole Thing

I asked my colleagues where to find the best pljeskavica --the Serbian take on the burger--in Belgrade. You have to go to South Serbia, they said. No good pljeskavica in Belgrade.

Really?

Well, a quick Internet search suggested some possibilities, and I identified one, Mara that is just around the corner from my gym. So after a quick workout last night, I decided to check it out. There was a line of three young man waiting to order, and a couple of others eating at the counter. I ordered jedna, hoping to get the gender right, and the cheerful man behind the counter grabbed a burger off the grill.

When he asked me how I wanted it, I said "svet" meaning with everything. That seemed to include pickles, red pepper, lettuce, yellow cheese and kaymak, the yogurty stuff that people here are crazy about.

It was pretty delicious, although I didn't actually eat the whole thing. I cut it in half, and cut off another small bite after I finished the first half. I put the remainder in the fridge for breakfast today.

Despite the workout, I'm afraid that my plus/minus numbers for yesterday are pretty bad.

Quelle Aventure

Every so often, you hear a song for the first time, and fall in love. Sometimes it works out; sometimes it's only a brief fling; sometimes you wonder what the hell you were thinking. The Saturday after I moved into my apartment I was walking around, checking out my new neighbourhood. It was a beautiful summer day, and I had the Friday night Wefunk show--which had just finished a couple of hours before (it airs from 12-2 am Friday nights from Montreal)--in my ears.

Anyway, a song came on. It had a classic roller skating jam named saturdays groove to it, and a smooth french rapper, talking about something related to "la vie est dur, mais un aventure" (life is hard but it's an adventure). It was love at first sight.

Normally when this happens, I go out and buy the song. Even if I don't know the title, a quick internet search of a heard bit of lyrics will do the trick. But this time nothing.

The wefunk shows are posted in their entirety, including track information, in a much more professional way, usually about 6 weeks after they air on Ckut, which is the feed I listen to. Usually I'd forget about something like this, but for some reason I didn't this time, and when I went to the site today, the show was there. The song is called "Quelle Aventure" and it is by No Se featuring Menelik, about whom I and the entire internet seem to know nothing. Enjoy. Nothing will capture the vibe of walking around on that sunny Saturday, but maybe this will hit you the way it did me.

Belgrade Guacamole

I brought a can of chipotles in adobo with me, and, since I'm invited to a barbeque on Friday, I decided to make guacamole. I am pleased to report that there were lots of avocados in the supermarket. At $4 for 2, though, they are pretty expensive. I could have got a kilo of spinach for the same price. Do you have any idea how much spinach there is in a kilogram? It's a lot.

The avocados were pretty green, but I put them straight into a paper bag and they have got four days to soften.

I posted the recipe once before, but here it is again. You can make it in 5 minutes. The BG and I like it with 2 chipotles. Worldwide prefers 1. The OG doesn't care for it at all.

Guacamole
Mix juice of one lime, 2 pinches of salt, ¼ cup sour cream, 2 chipotles in adobo, chopped, and the flesh of 2 ripe avocados.

The Tallest Building in Belgrade

I quite enjoyed Momo Kapor's Guide to Understanding the Serb Mentality. He has another book called The Magic of Belgrade, whose title suggested I might enjoy it as well. Apparently it's hard to find in translation, though. I checked the publisher's web site, and it suggested that I could find their titles at the Laguna bookstores. There was one on the Bulevar Krajla Alexandra (King Alexander), and, since it was on my way to the Vero, I stopped in yesterday.

"Dali imate Momo Kapor, the Magic of Belgrade na engliski?" I asked.

"We don't have it," the saleswoman answered.

I asked if she knew where I might find it and she asked if I knew the Zira shopping center, I did, since it houses the Vero, and she told me to check the Laguna store there.

Which I did. But they didn't have it either. "Maybe Delfi," the clerk told me. When I asked her where that was, she asked me if I knew the tallest building in Belgrade. I didn't. "Just ask anyone," she told me, "and they will point you to the tallest building in Belgrade. It's right across the street." When I asked her the name of the street, she mentioned the tallest building in Belgrade a third time.

So I looked it up on the Internet, and it seemed to be on Kniez Milana, which is the street I take to get to the pedestrian zone, where I had found the first Kapor book. I set off yesterday, and I didn't see the bookstore, but I actually found the book at the place where I had bought the first one.

The book has an essay on changing street names; about how after the revolution, Alexander Boulevard, became Revolution Boulevard and Crown Street became Moscow street; how they changed back after the fall of communism; and how it is a badge of honor to know the history of the changes; and that it often leads to confusion.

Today as I was coming back from Ada Ciganlija, a big park on an island downtown, the bus stopped at the corner of Kniez Milosha and Kniez Milana. Out of the window, I spotted the Delfi bookstore I had missed yesterday. I looked out the other side at the building I have walked by many times, and which I now know is the tallest in Belgrade.

Fifty Cents Worth of Basil From the Kalenic Market

Paraphrasing Jaws, I'm gonna need a bigger pestle.

Update
a bag of hazelnuts, a little parmesan, garlic and olive oil and hey, presto:

Picking Through the Garbage in Belgrade

The politics and economics of garbage and recycling are fascinating, and it's always interesting to see what a moral issue the latter has become. The truth is that it's a lot more complicated than recycling good; trash bad. At least I think it is. I do believe that the environmental costs of garbage and disposal are not properly factored into the cost of things, but I also believe that the other side has a point, and that there are good things about landfills, styrofoam cups, burning garbage and other pursuits that do not seem to be so environmentally friendly, at first blush.

I enjoyed Steven Landsburg's The Armchair Economist a year or two ago, although I found it a bit strident at times. He made some good points about recycling, but he took it too far, in my view, when he dashed off a screed to his daughter's elementary school teacher explaining why his family would never recycle anything, and that she should stop proclaiming its virtues to her impressionable students.

His basic position is that if something has economic value, the market will extract it. And that's a good point, although I think it ignores a couple of issues regarding public goods and environmental costs. I'm not sure, but I think it does. He has a fascinating article on the subject that I came across a month ago. Whatever your position, I suspect that it will change marginally if you read it.

Anyway, when we lived in Egypt, the Copts had some kind of agreement with the city to pick up trash in return for the right to feed it to their pigs. That fell apart when the Brotherhood took over and ordered the slaughter of the animals. I think the actual mathematics of the deal are unknowable, but the story of extracting the waste from Cairo's trash and feeding it to pigs is a great yarn.

In Belgrade, it works like this: every block has a dumpster on it, and every day people bring their ubiquitous plastic bags and toss them into it. A truck comes around every day and empties the dumpsters. It seems to work pretty well, and they appear to have managed the problem of stray cats browsing the dumpsters quite, er, efficiently.

Some blocks also have a more modern take on the dumpster, a sort of chute that puts the trash in an underground container. This makes for a neater looking street, and also protects against vermin, I imagine, although I have yet to see any. They are assuredly there nonetheless.

It also frustrates (I think) the many people who spend their days picking through the dumpsters, mostly it seems, in search of cardboard, but really for anything of value. I snapped this photo this morning. I felt a little furtive doing it, but there she was, and I had been thinking about this post on my way to work, so I couldn't resist.

There's something both sad and wonderful about people picking through garbage. It's great that all economic value is being extracted from consumer goods, but, then again, I don't think anyone would wish that profession for their children.

It's complicated, and I am skeptic of anyone who claims otherwise.