Plane, originally uploaded by bill kralovec.

Earlier this week I snapped this photo from my balcony in Dedinje. Two planes were flying over the suburb spraying chemicals against mosquitoes. I’ve seen them do this in previous years over the Sava River and Ada Ciganlija, but never over my neighborhood. As you can see, they were quite close to the ground and were covering the area in a grid pattern.

I am wondering what chemicals are being sprayed and are there harmful side effects? There was an short news item in the Belgrade Insight this week stating that a full analysis of the spray will be done in 2013. Why so long?

In my research on line, I see that the Swedish Chemical Agency is working with the Serbian government on this to have Serbia comply with EU standards on mosquito control. Here is a powerpoint presentation done by Lilian Tornqvist regarding the Belgrade spraying. She points out that one of the chemicals, Lambda cyhalothrin, is a carcinogen. If any of my readers have more information, I would be interested. I’ll be following this story.

Photo from my balcony

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Above is a photo of the Hotel Petrus in Paraćin, Serbia. We stayed in the hotel during the shooting of the movie. What an architectural classic of Socialist Realism! Besides being an awesome monument to the communist era of Yugoslavia, it was a nice place to stay. It is located on the river and has a very pleasant restaurant overlooking the river. Another cool thing about the hotel are the hallways, that go in a complete circle on each floor. I will never stay in a hotel like that again. The stairs and elevators are in the center of the tower. I would have loved to explored the roof and basement of this hotel. I made a video (link here) of a bit of the inside of the hotel.

The city had a great vibe. There is a walking street nearby and lots of people were out and about. Across the river the hotel, there is a nice Serbian Orthodox Church (St. ) and another Socialist classic, this fine statue commemorating 30 years of “freedom” after World War II. The communist youth figures are holding up a bright red flame. They look more like Atlas than figures happy to be free. The concrete, box apartments in the background complete the scene.

A nice little town we hope to visit again.