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Our first booking made real and other stories..

This week saw the arrival of Ines and Daniel and finally weather so clement I was able to work out in the garden during the day time!

Ines and Daniel were our first ever booking at Barabrith and a delightful pair the are. Amusingly enough it turned out we were entertaining them on the third night of their honeymoon!! We played some pool together after breakfast and then they set off to do the Croatian coastline. They have booked to stay again on their way home so it cant have been too bad for them!
Eighteen burek (pita) might have been a tad excessive but they were a hit with Daniel and Ines and there was enough left over for them to take some away as a packed lunch the next day and for Sanja and I not to have to cook for another 36 hours! Every one of these had a different combination of appproximately fourteen different vegan fillings. In the bakeries of Croatia one is lucky to get a pure potato pita unspoilt by cheese!
I made a Bara Brith tea cake in honour of our first guests, they seemed to like it but not as much as I did!
Having my own pool table and the space to put it was always on eof my dreams. Ive topped that off by purchasing a set of snooker balls and now I am very happy!
Sanja took to snooker like the proverbial duck to water. She kept accusing me of making up the rules to my advantage but then I showed her my KTG Snooker and Billiards book that I was given for my birthday in 1976.
Sanja does like to model/wear/steal some very fine t-shirts from my collection. Amusingly though the larger sized ones tend to balloon in the wind when we go out on bikes making her look like a different being alltogether!
Sanja and her shadow, wearing a non-billowing shirst heads along our scenic route back from the post office.
Donji Budacki’s little chuch is in the middle of nowhere -aka Donji Budacki- but it is on the scenic route that Sanja and I take when coming back from our regular trip to the Krnjak post office. Imagine our suprise one day to find this little grass cutting robot trundling backwars and forwards across the increasingly short neatly cut lawns that surround the church! I was sorely tempted to grab it and pedal off to see what it would manage to do around our estate!
The robot grass cutter up close!
Does this need an explanation? Is there an explanation? Does the word “weirdos” suffice? Nice blue sky though!
There was a bit of wire fence that had been squashed and served as a way to step over and out of our lower field. Sanja and I built a gate in its place, in what I like to call “squatter style”!
I have an idea to replace the rotting wooden planks that are part of my outside staircase with branches from the woods. Sanja and I cut down a few to test the idea out. More to follow!
There I was innocently whittling away on a piece of wood (I was in fact making the shaft of my rake smooth and no that is not a bizarre euphemism!) when one of our dopey hornets came walking up the stick towards me. I say dopey because it turns out hornets are pretty laid back. Sure they are scarily big for a member of the wasp family but Sanja and I have succesfully removed about 9 of them from my room at night by coaxing them on to a badminton racket and then carrying them to the door and flicking them out in to the dark!. True one did sting me one night when it eneded up in our bed but it turns out I’m not allergic to them and so I survived. That was in fact the day I was stung four times by wasps whilst clearing a path in the woods! The hornets have cheekily squatted one of my bird nesting boxes but thankfully it is so high up on a wall with no doors or windows it is not a problem.
We have quite a few apple trees of varying productivity. Some of the newer little ones produce nice red sweet apples which appear to be a favourite of the hornets. Wasps and worms bury in to many of the fruit whilst either still hanging on the tree or fallen. The hornets however leave the skins and eat out just the insides. This can leave shells that look like mini chinese lanterns. Here are three horents busily eating away at an apple!
The cat, Matchka, likes to keep an eye on everything on her estate. And so when we venture up the ladder in to the wooden house’s attic she will often come running up the ladders and join us. She knows she will get a lift down if she asks and till then she likes to sniff around the attic and the survey the scene outside.
They say two heads are better than one but Im not sure it applies in the context of “scary”!
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Mugs, Berries, logs and fantasy.

What can you say about this pair? I blame their parents!

I have often said that my home is where my hi-fi is set up. It maybe that I should add a caveat that adds “and where my mug shelves are”. Finally my kitchen became complete as this week my mugs came out of their boxes, were washed, and installed in their new home.

The tabula rasa of a wall without shelving!!
Originally the plan was to shape the shelves in a tree like pattern but the realisation that I needed to maximise the shelf space meant that  fancy idea was dropped.
“A craftsman at work” would be a bit of a stretch but these shelves are primarily made from recycled wood that we tore off the ceiling from the little room that was in the attic and has now gone! So precision and perfect lines were not a likely outcome with this project. Scoring full marks for ecological cred is however a given!
The kitchen, dining room, pool room, mug museum and lounge is now a truly multi functional room! This photo shows the process of choosing which mugs get to go out on the shelves and which go back in the banana boxes.
A panoramic – hence “the warp” view of the finished mug shelves. Sadly they only have space for half of my collection so more will have to be made!
Sanja tries out a mammary mug.  She is now gradullay working her way, tea by tea – and the occasional barley cup- trying out her favourite looking mugs!
The rump of the wood pile remained out in the sun till at least it was cool enough one evening for Sanja and I to put the last logs away in the wood shed.
This little fellow was happily esconced at the bottom of the wood pile, which had been there for at least a month, and we ruined his day for sure!
Sanja shows off her barbarian credentials. Did she fall in to the magic potion when she was born?
Some of the many black berries amongst the brambles in our lower field.
Sanja picks enough blackberries in our lower field to make tomorrows breakfast yoghurt a rich dark purple!
Sanja charged at me with the new rake, I ducked as the plastic teeth swished over my head and scraped my back. I ran for my life zig zaging across the lawn as garden tools became deadly projectiles hurled in my direction………
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Visitors from afar and projects begun!

Here’s a quick review of the last two weeks. We had old friends from Prague visiting with whom we went to the coast. Then a couple of mates fom Ljubjana called by for a night. Now Sanja and I are alone with the cat whilst Marko and Sunni do their annual holiday to Sibenik etc.

Sanja settles in to my hammock.
Sanja picks onions in the summer sunset.
Our onions are picked, cleaned, topped and tailed and then left to dry.
Some of our onion harvest left to dry out in the workshop.
Its Rakja making time again!

Sanja and I have started the mammoth task of photographing all my t-shirts!

So the idea is that my t-shirt collection be documented, photographed with the help of Sanja becuase there are many, like the one above that I don’t comfortably fit in to anymore. Then I will try and sell those I can part with on Etsy. The above shirt is an original from the early 1980’s given to me by a friend who’s boyfriend was no longer in to such things!
These fragile remains of a t-shirt are approximately 10 years older than the wearer Sanja. My first ever self bought t-shirt it was an “iron on sticker design” bought from a stall on the second floor of the Leicester indoor market in 1979. I added a Damned patch to the other side a year later.
Sanja models my Ant-Nowhere League shirt, the one with I Hate People on the back! This was the shirt I wore most of the way around my inter-rail trip of Europe and indeed the first time I was in Zagreb, then Yugoslavia! passing through on the way from Athens to Stuttgart back in 1987 or was it 88?

 

Sanja the bug eyed smirking reaper creeps up on an unsuspecting old goof!
Sanja and our bikes, she’s riding my Trek with the amazing dynamo that illuminates her and the road ahead beautifully on the night rides back from Karlovac.
Bandit, Lenka, Rad and a strange guy in red lounge around on the slope below the house.
The strange guy in red reappears on top of the Petrova Gora monument with a Replicant from Nexus-6!?
We visit the partizan hospital hidden in the nearby woods quite often. The subtle plaque from the Russian Federation is not our favourite bit but it makes a good prop! Here Sanja and Rad try there best to ignore me and keep smiling!
Dario, in the mask, shows us around the old town and tourist packed sea front of Zadar.
Sanja the reluctant tourist wanders the seafront of Zadar listening to the “wave organ”. – “The Sea organ is an architectural sound art object located in Zadar, Croatia and an experimental musical instrument, which plays music by way of sea waves and tubes located underneath a set of large marble steps.” – It was pretty cool, unlike the weather that day!
The sun comes down on the bay of Pasman island.
Bandit, Rads Husky dog patrols the shore outside the house on Pasman. Bandit gets worried when anyone jumps in to the water!
The silhouette of a friend on top of the Petrova Gora monument, we went twice last week.
Our first proper cycling visitors, unless you count Blazh who cycles everywhere! These two wheeled comrades pedalled all the way from Ljubljana and on to the island of Krk!
Sanja hates shopping, even when I pay for it! But here she is with mask and shopping trolley heading to the Kaufland carpark. Spot the summer essentials, lettuce and watermelon!
Friday saw us up reltively early and off in to Karlovac to buy supplies for the car free week ahead. At the flea market this black accoustic guitar with a Fender logo caught Sanja’s eye! Now she is learning how to play our fave punk rock melodies, folky style!
For many years I have dreamt of learning the accordian. I bought this huge beast of a squeeze box from the long gone Dalston Flea Market. We opened up the box it has been wrapped in for 5 years or more and of course the musical genius that is Sanja picked it up and played it straight off! Do you see how many unmarked buttons there are on it, how the hell am i gonna remember those chords! More chance of learning to speak the impossibly complicated Serbo-Croatian!
Looks good (?), sounds awful !
The screen in the Stari Grad, Karlovac Castle where we saw A Clockwork Orange on Thursday night. That was a little weird for me considering its history of being banned in the UK. We enjoyed a veggie burger and chips at the castle restaurant before the film, the only thing on their menu they could offer that was vegan!

 

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Visitors made welcome and unwelcome!

Sanja is our first official guest! Some friends popped by for a night and we played pool and cutthroat late in to the night. Our killer cat has been hard at work. Zagreb has a new all vegan bakery. See photos below!

What to do when you notice your stock of raw cashews has a bug or two in? Wash them thoroughly and then roast them in the oven with a variety of different flavourings is one option!
Our first official visitor settles quickly in to life at Barabrith
Possibly an Possum? now an ex possum thanx to our deadly feline hunter Matchka, who it must be pointed out is not much bigger than this little creature, was!
A good pool session was played out till 2am the other night, my idea of heaven!
Simple Green (one of the best vegan places in Zagreb) has opened Simple Bake an all vegan bakery, like their restauant its good and inexpensive… hurrah!
I have been using the sewing machine a fair bit of late, firstly sewing up some sporty shorts that had fallen apart. Then turning my attention to the mosquito door net that was falling apart and finally to resizing a new anti flying bug door net for my bedroom door so Sanja can have a view of the garden as she swings in her hammock. Yes indeed! I quite like this pre shave selfie, ….sew happy!
Whiskerless at last! I was brutally bullied by my Belgrade girl until I gave in and she removed my moustache. I feel weakened!
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Belgrade for vegans

This post had to wait for me to finish Altai and I’m fighting the urge not to finish reading the Wu Ming book about Thomas Muntzer right now, both great books.

Belgrade or Beograd as the locals call it is the capital city of a country -Serbia in a region – the Balkans-  that strongly identifies itself as having a meat eating culture, bare that in mind when I get excited about the smallest of vegan discoveries. Sometimes I am reminded of what it was like being vegan in the 1980’s  U.K.! And no the new era of awareness of the effects of meat and dairy farming on climate change and the end of the world as we know it has not permeated the public consciousness over here or they just don’t care!

Having said that there are some vegan delights to be found if you know where to look. Also there is that other factor that harks back to the days when there were very few vegan restaurants anywhere and if those that did exist were often run my religious nutters! Great food terrible leaflets! Serbia has its own Orthodox Christian church just as crazy as the catholic one but fiercely different from it – supposedly! The one thing they do do differently is “Posno” food! On fridays they do not eat anything that contains meat or dairy, they do eat honey and some aquatic animals. It being a church dominated country you can get Posno food all over the place. I was told that some processed cheese that is  considered “posno” actually has  asmall percentage – considered insignificant- of milk in it, so you might want to check. But I have had several Posno pizzas with thick chewy vegan cheese on that was pretty good for the price!

As you may know I do reviews for Happy Cow, so you can see all my Belgrade ones here and of course all the other places, reviews and info too.

I will through up a bunch of photos and describe the food available and give suitable links.

Part of the amazing selection of sugar free vegan cakes (raw) at Zdrawo Slatko. This used to be in the basement of the Millenium centre in the very centre of Belgrdae but now is based at the food market Palilulska Pijaca. The cakes are all great whilst the raspberry cake makes Sanja swoon just at the thought of going back for another!
There are not so many vegan options for those who like to sit out on the streets and wallow in Balkan street cafe culture. That tends to mean putting up with loads of smokers! But the FitBar in the Nušićeva little road which is mainly pedestrianised is a good opportunity to do so! There are not loads of vegan options but they are clearly marked and the staff certainly knew what vegan meant. The food was good but not exciting. FitBar has two other outlets that I’ve not tried yet!
A small Lebanese place with four clearly marked vegan options. Three of which are “snacks” the fourth with falalfel and houmous I have not tried. Simple thin pitta bread with an enticing selection of herbs and spices on them this was an interesting and affordable find!
Our “snacK’ next time I’m in BG, I’ll try the rest!

 

This woman makes what I am reliably informed is the best Rakjia and also a mean Ajvar. The market is a mix of a flea market and fresh fruit and veg with this and a few other homemade food stalls in the far corner. She has a facebook page!
Smokvica has several outlets around Belgrade, all rather posh. We went to one that had only one vegan option – so we gor two!. We later realised their bigger place on Molerova is more vegan friendly. Still the tofu thai curry was not too hot so I was happy but this place was packed with hipster and monied types and I doubt I’ll ever go there again.
Hleb i kifle or Bread and Muffins is a chain of bakeries dotted all over Belgrade. They have a wonderful dark black visage with impossible weird writing on the outide. This makes the big bright vegan sticker in the middle of each window all the more wonderfull and visible. Tey have abunch of premade slads labelled as vegan but the real delight of this place is their mushroom pita or burek. For less than a quid one gets a warm tasty savoury pastry with either potato or mushroom inside. The photo shows a happy Jon with one of each coming out of the bakery on Kneza Mihaila the big pedestrianised street in the centre of town.
Kljuch Bakery is an interesting option for anyone with Serbo Croatian language skills. They have more vegan pita/burek options than anyone else but they foten need ordering in advance. Pictured here are three I got for breakast one morning. They include a spinach and leek pita and a mushroom one made with buckwheet flour. I look forward to trying their other offerings one day.
This Pita Bar is typical of many all over Belgrade. Most will have at least one vegan option, a potato pita and often a sweet one either apple or cherry depending on the time of the year. If you can’t find a good vegan place then anywhere that says Pita on the outside is probably worth checking out!
Lebovski is a bakery chain that does good artisan style bread and three vegan pita options.
These are the rather supierior Pitas available at Lebovski.
Zrno Ra is all vegan which is cool as they don’t speak any English! They specialise in making pastries and the like from buckwheat and spelt flour. Their stall is right next to the Zdrawo Slatko stall in the Palilulska Pijaca food market, a little vegan treasure trove!
Neven is a small friendly helathfood shop with a good range of vegan stuff including tofu, tempeh and seitan. Not all their products are well marked but the staff are friendly. Don’t buy the local vegan yoghurt that comes in a plastic bottle, its terrible! but then again thats the only one available anywhere in Belgrade!
We stumbled upon this place whilst looking for the Kljuch bakery, that is actually next door! Rice kings have several clearly marked vegan desserts. Very nice and not too expensive. They do lots of social media!
A Blueberry and chocolate rice dessert, yum yum!
Ozzy Nuts is a suprising little gem of a shop that does freshly made nut butters. Its almost next door to the 24 hour pizza place below!
The 24 hour pizza shop that has a posno / vegan pizza, thats cheap!
Wok Republic has a couple of places around the world and one of them in Belgrade almost directly opposite the 24 hour pizza place above!  The interior is all flashy Americana and a bit noisy for my taste but the food was pretty good.
The Savannah snack bar is a friendly little joint out in Novi Beograd run by a mother and daughter combo. Its a lovely little place to stop if you’re not in a rush and want to eat at an all vegan place which, Im assured, it will soon be! They do Beyond burgers and lots of potato waffles!
This is a seriously “well meaning, well being” place thats very small and friendly and it’s called Dumbir which means ginger. Most of the food is pre packed ready for a quick service. Its healthy and all vegan and some of it rather good.
The selection of goodies, smoothies and juices in the Dumbir counter.
Mayka is a veggie vegan place in the cafe quarter of central Belgrade. It is not cheap but two of the best meals I have had in the city were had at Mayka. Avoid the upstairs which is full of smokers. There is outdoor seating. Recommended is the “Belgrade Steak” featured in this photo which included a supremely succulent seitan steak in a tasty sauce. The fish and chips option pictured below was also an absolute joy aswell.

Mandala is the fanciest and most expensive hippy retaurant I’ve been to in Belgrade. The food is excellent, the service was also delightful. I would have liked a bit more food on my plate for that many dinar. I almost screamed when I smelt someone smoking inside the restaurant!!! This savoury pancake was a real treat…
… this dark luxurious dessert which was strongly recommended to us by the waitress and she was right! The combination of the sorbet and the super rich but not too sweet choclate was incredible.
This is a posno cheese pizza from a pizza takeaway place. It was big enough for the two of us and there was loads of fake cheese – hiding under the rocket! – these vegan options are often available in pizzerias in BG and relatively cheap.
Ćao Šećeru, or Bye Sugar is an all vegan cake shop that has some superb raw cakes. It’s friendly and has a few seats outside. Often rather busy in the evenings.  I’d love to go here everyday and persuade them to make some new varieties of cake.

There is another cake place that must be mentioned, though I seem to have deleted all my photos from there! Poslasticarnica Suma make their own cakes, many vegan and without sugar. I’m told they also do some very fine wine! It is situated just at the top of the “bohemian” quarter that gets featured on all the adverts for Belgrade, but don’t let that put you off!

more to come!

 

 

 

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A quickie before the next biggie

The Vegan Belgrade post will take a lot of screentime so here’s a quick catch up on my life at Barabrith.

This is what the wooden house looks like when the sun is shining on it but a storm is coming!
Some evenings we are blessed with some spectacular sunsets coming up the valley.
I dont like Chucho much, it’s not “ours” though it desperately wants to be! but it barks a lot at night most of which I am convinced is unnecessary and keeps me awake. This pose or sleeping position snuggled up against one of our steps is however even I must concede rather cute!
A friend stopped the night and was very good guest. Not only did he deign to lose at pool he helped cut down brambles and even tried his hand at the scythe!
My dastardly plan of infusing myself into the Croatian way of life – so they are less likely to chuck me out when Brexit fucks things up for us escapees – took a leap forward this week when I switched my driving licence. It’s a ten year one so hopefully I can stay that long at least!
This was the view from the bridge over the Korana at the local “beach” this morning. I expected it to be busy, it was later on! I spent the day reading the LRB, swimming and unintentionally getting sunburnt!
Today was a good day, the local postie decided they had enough piled up to make it worth coming out to us and I got two letters and two packages both with highly anticipated books in. Marta sent me Hilary Mantel’s last chapter of the Thomas Cromwell trilogy and Rowan from Verso sent me the latest Wu Ming books inc Altai the follow on to their amazing book “Q”.  Many thanx to both!! Oh goodie hardbacks with big text, where’s my hammock!
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Belgrade (not in Croatia)

So I had decided to limit the scope of this blog to the events and lives surrounding Barabrith. But having spent almost a month away in Belgrade and realising that many of you who are considering coming to visit us here may be interested in the capital city of the former Yugoslavia, I decided to make an exception! My recent visit to Belgrade was a little different due to the Covid 19 restrictions so we did a lot less visiting  museums,  theatre and such like. Still below are a bunch of photographs from Belgrade with my usual witty comments and inane insights…..

Here is a colourful maps of the Balkans for those of you like me wondering where the hell I am!              (Barabrith is pretty much where the C of Croatia is on the map above)
A tourist friendly map of Belgrade. My “digs” in Belgrade are very close to the Ice Bar right in the centre. Note the big blue lines, they are the Sava and Danube rivers that “meet” in Belgrade under the watchful gaze of the city fortress.
Some of the Danube has a large promenade alongside it on the city side of the river.
Cycling around Belgrade is great as long as you stay off the roads, those are only for the hardened bike courier types. (Driving standards here are low). There are quite alot of bike paths in Novi Beograd – New Belgrade – and up and down the riverside. The pavements are quite wide and most cyclists use them all the time without upset from pedestrians. Just make sure your bike doesnt have two flat tyres like this one.
Here is Sanja riding across the Zemunski Put bridge with the new “Belgrade Waterfront” development in the background.
And here she is again this time riding past some “art” in Hajd Park and yes that is the Serby way of saying Hyde Park!
An empty plinth demands a statuesque pose! Yes I messed with the contrast on this one, call it art!
This is the entrance to Hajd Park
Adjacent to Hajd park is the Museum of Jugoslavija. This unfortuntely was closed and has been for sometime apparently. But the Garden of Flowers where Mt Tito is buried is always open so that respectful visitors can see the great mans tomb, statues, relay baton collection and funeral photographs.
Titomb
Propping up the old folk! Here I do my bit to ensure these old geezers don’t catch corona virus or fall over entirely.
The Garden of Flowers that surrounds Titos “museoleum” is quite pretty and features a bunch of statues donated by the different states of Yugoslavia and its biggest Trade Unions.
When life feels like a pathway to nowhere and you want to just want to tear down the wall! Or maybe this is a rare bit of surrealist art snuck in to the Garden of Flowers?
Belgrade designers, politicians and the like sure do like a fountain or two. Unfortunatley they dont seem to have the resources to maintain them much of the time. This is the view towards town from the Museum of Jugoslavija.
This fountain is a whopper! and at night it lights up! Quite spectacular. It is part of a large round about that has been recently relandscaped.
The roundabout encompasses the site of an old commies grave. Quite what he would make of the new bank building behind is anybodys guess!
This “antiquarian” bookshop is a real gem and a probably also a health risk. Belgrade has a wonderful number of bookshops most of them serrving the local language only but the second hand and antiquarian ones have lots of English language titles.
Serbia is probably the only state of the former Yugoslavia that would proudly display an old Jugoslavijan sign on top of abuilding in the town center like this.
They local authorities are not averse to reminding us  of where we are and that we should love it! Thankfully when they write things in difficult local languages they are easy to ignore! Unless you’re called Sanja and you live there and your “mate” is embarrassing the fuck out of you by taking such pictures. Te he he 🙂
There is a penchant, or was, for building big buildings in Belgrade. This is The Palace of Serbia!! There is a You tube video all about it here!
This is one of the biggest Orthodox churches anywhere!
This interesting brickwork church is just by the National Assembly Building .
Right next to Sanja (or in this case in between Sanjas!) is the National Assembly of Serbia building. It looks a bit bent because it is and because this is a panoramic photo!
The National asembly building is the place where all political and protest demonstrations seem to end up outside. The road is often closed despite being a main route and often quite a small crowd! It doesn’t seem to matter what the demo is about they always seem to have Serbian flags!!
This big phalic symbol is in fact the “eternal flame of Yugoslavia” which presumably went out back in the 1990s.
This scarily big advert for the Serbian military adorns a building next to one that was bombed by NATO forces and never repaired or replaced.
This memorial statue and garden commemorates the children killed by the NATO bombing in Belgrade 1999.
Keeping on theme, Serbian cemmetries are an interesting mixture of Serbian Orthodox Chuch, muslim, and communist graves. This rather showy one is for a local football hero.
Still on theme, Belgrade has many murals painted by Belgrade Patizan football team supporters of their famous supporters. Here I discover that Joe is dead! Below are two others of local celebrity supporters.

This an amusing piece of street art is apparenting very old and has been refreshed. It is just off the main pedestrian road – Kneza Mihaila – in the centre of town.
At one end of this road is one of these bakeries with impossible cyrillic names but very helpful big vegan stickers in their windows! This is rare in Serbia. They do salads and wonderful mushroom and also potato pita or burek as others call them!
At the other end of the road is the Kalemegdan Park which houses the fortress, a load of busts, statues and tourist nick nack stalls. To get to the park one must cross a main road and tram track. This tram is a new looking one, some look seriously ancient.
Every tourist guide of BG has the fortress as its number one place to visit. It’s a big complex and remarkably much of it has not yet been excavated. Here Sanja lurks in an archway of the outer wall. Much of the walls are lit up at night but inside some area remain amusingly dark!
Dotted all over central Belgrade are pop corn vendors. Not strategically placed outside cinemas, they are everywhere and they are popular! I have seen queues of locals waiting to get fresh popocorn! Different eh! This one is by the sports centre on the banks of the Danube.
Dotted along much of the river banks are floating nightclubs and restaurants.
The banks of the rivers also have quite a lot of park facilities some new some old. This one on the Danube heading towards Zemun features fancy new science and musical parks, this big kid -sorry I mean musical genius- couldn’t resist.
The Milennium Tower overlooks the district of Zemun and in the distance you can see Belgrade and the confluence of the two great rivers.
The view over Zemun from the tower above.
Many of the citys parks and paths no matter how small have statues, busts and even better works of art in them! What is this one about I wonder?
This giant watermelon doesn’t look too fresh but I had to try it anyway. Like much of Belgrade it has seen better days! This one is in the Park Suma Zvezdara.
This is a pretty bit of the Topčider Park close to the “diplomatic quarter” where the big embassy buildings are mostly situated.
The Jevremovac Botanical Garden is very central and though quite small it does offer a lovely respite from the city. Here one can see some outdoor cacti growing.
These plants are in the greenhouse of the Botanical gardens. These ones look like they are on the bottom of the sea floor!
These orchids are also in the Botanical greenhouse.
The Botanical gardens cost about £4 to enter so they are relatively quiet, or at least they were when we were there! We spent a couple of pleasant hours playing chess and eating a picnic.
The most famous Serbian, other than war criminals and tennis players,  is NikolaTesla, you know, the scientist! This terrible photograph is of the museum dedicated to his work and discoveries.
Belgrade has quite a few interesting buildings dotted around the place. This one is the SKC, Student Cultural Centre where I’m told in the old Yugo days Western punk bands used to play.
“Western City Gate, also known as the Genex Tower, is a 36-storey skyscraper in Belgrade, Serbia, which was designed in 1977 by Mihajlo Mitrović in the brutalist style” says Wikipedia. It used to have  acafe on the top but like the BT tower one in London it is no more.
Every now and then a bit of architecture suprises and pleases the passerby.
Every now and then a bit of architecture suprises and pleases the passerby. *2
In the “bohemian” area of town its not difficult to come across buildings side by side that are in very different states of repair.
If thats not enough for you to do in Belgrade – or indeed too much – one can always stay at home and make your own Scrabble board.
or indeed just watch your funny looking cats do funny things….

Thank you Sanja without whom most of that would not have been possible,  up next my guide to vegan Belgrade!

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The Belgrade borders came down!

The border restrictions on my being able to cross in to Serbia were removed, so off I went to see my beloved Sanja.  I’m still here three weeks later but will be heading home soon. There will then be a special Belgrade report and normal service will return thereafter!

 

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Today I rode the road in to Karlovac and back and went to a church in Tusilovic.

I went to see the guy in the office that helps people running tourist businesses in this area. He’s super helpful with all kinds of advice. I took the days mail to the main post office in Karlovac only to discover that the box to go to Ireland can’t be sent because they have a mail blockade on post from here. It makes no sense!  I had to bring the damn thing back! On the ride back I bumped into a snake, said hello to a stork and I investigated the ruined church in Tusilovic. For the photographers amongst you, yes these pictures are less sharp than usual as they were taken with one of my old Sony Erricson C510 pre-‘smart phone’ era mobile phones and not my Ipad that I normally use.

Storks are funny birds to look at and no more so than when they stand in their huge nests that are perched atop lamp posts and electricty posts. They are considered to be bringers of good luck although seeing as this is one of those ridiculous religious based manias that says we must breed breed breed I would say they are a sign of short sighted selfishness and foolishness! Whatever, that is why this telegraph pole has a special structure on the top to encorage storks to build their nests there. This stork refused to stand up and take a bow for my photo but if you look closely you can see his/her bright orange beak.
I almost cycled over this poor geezer. But seeing as s/he is an ex-snake that has ceased to be I guess it wouldn’t have mattered much. I’ve not seen a live snake here as long as this beauty which I guess is maybe a good thing for me but not the snakes!
Just to give you an idea of the size of this poor snake.
Given the messed up history of the Balkans and the area of Korun who knows what might have happened to this church and why but I quite like the result.
Not a bad spot for a picnic! Finding information about this church is difficult but “we” think it was destroyed in WWII, too bad.
A window that was. How the hell is that arch still supporting that weight? And how do aeroplanes fly?
There is no escape from the Jon selfie when you look at these blog posts!

The view from the road of the church ruins in Tusilovic. Just down the road from us!
I think thats more than enough pictures of a ruined church… no hold on, that doesn’t sound right! Well anyway this one has my beautiful Cannodale bike in it so I’ll slip this one in too!
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Closing the barn door.

I spent the last two days making some shelves in the barn. During the night in between I could not sleep and found myself watching the 1995 six part docuentary series The Death of Yugoslavia. It’s pretty harrowing and makes the bullet holes in the buildings we pass on the way to the supermarket rather resonant!

Below are photos of the shelf construction and a few inevitable silly selfies one has come to expect from yours truly.

These doors are pointless as far as we can tell. They can’t open more than a few centimetres because of the fence on the other side  and they are opposite two doors just as big that open on to our “yard”. So they are ripe for redundancy! The space is a good spot for some shelving so we can start sorting out the stuff in the barn and bring in some of the non perishables from the workshop space in the wooden house.
A bit of product placement for my drill. These shelves were built with wood salvaged from the roofing work we had done last year and some bits left over from the gazebo construction. I had an initial plan but I ended up building them pretty much as I went along! I favour screws over nails when it comes to construction and with this job that meant a lot of drill use. I’ve burnt my way through a few power drills over the years but this one is by far the best. It was probably quite expensive but then it was a present from Vanja who has a very generous streak, I made quite a few shelves for her with help from this drill and it’s still going strong.
These last few weeks I’ve been experiencing that wierd audio effect when ones ears block and unblock at random. This means one moment I have extreme clarity of sound and the next reduced volume. In the past I have tried hippy solutions like ear candles with no success so this time I tried something more hardcore.
Doing the drill dance!

It’s a tad annoying how quickly shelves can get filled up and the thought of needing to build more creeps in!