Last Afternoon in Belgrade

Les took us all around Belgrade today in his Mercedes.  He is a wonderful driver, which you’ve got to be in this city, because the streets are narrow and mostly lined with parked cars, and parking is a gymnastic exercise.  Intersections seem a little chaotic too.  But Les drove with aplomb and skill and only occasionally losing his cool.  Belgrade is far greener and prettier than I expected, with a lot of new buildings like this one:
This is the modern art museum, where the Serbian surrealists, constructionalists and so on are exhibited.  It is very interesting to see the crazy imaginations of all of these artists at work, and the museum on this Monday afternoon was almost empty.  It is very beautifully designed and I am surprised there weren’t lots of people there.  

We saw the six units of studio apartments that Les owns in a neighborhood of Belgrade.  He manages these apartments himself, but is unfortunately embroiled in some futile law suits against the dishonest person who sold them to Les.  A long story...These apartments rent for about 250 euros a month, which is about as much as anyone can afford, since salaries are often not much more than 600 euros a month.  Actually, everything in Belgrade (except for gas, I guess) seems very cheap to anyone coming from the San Francisco Bay Area.  A nice glass of wine is 2 or 3 dollars.  The only really bad deal was the hotel breakfast, but even that I suppose didn’t cost much compared to prices elsewhere.  

We’ll go out to dinner with Tijana, Les and Marko tonight.  And that’ll be it for Belgrade, as we leave tomorrow for our drive across Northern Serbia and Hungary to Budapest to check into the fancy hotel we’re staying at for a couple of nights.