I took this photo on Monday evening at sunset. The sun sets around 4:00 PM here and I was heading to basketball practice on our campus. It shows a crescent moon, venus right below it, and Jupiter to the upper left. Although it looks like they are close, they are all actually millions of miles away from each other. Later on in the evening, the moon blocked venus (called an occultation) which is a rare event. Thanks to my wife for sending this link, which explains more about it. An interest in astronomy is another thing we have in common.
On Sunday we drove to Mount Avala which is about 8 miles south of Belgrade. The mountain is a state park and it has some walking trails, war monuments, and a hotel that looked closed for the season. Being about 500 meters higher than Belgrade, there was still snow left and we had a good snowball fight. Owen showed his tropical upbringing, and he refused to get out of the car, prefering to stay warm with mom. We are both sick this week and driving in the car gives us a break with watching the kids so the trip to Mount Avala had an alterior motive. Behind Ollie and Ocean is the Unknown Soldier monument dedicated to the Serbian soldiers killed in WWI. I noticed some of the marble blocks were chipped. This was from the 1999 NATO bombing raids that targeted RTS state television transmission towers. They are building a new tower that looked like the CN Tower in Toronto, so perhaps there will be a restaraunt there.
We are loving our new car. We bought a GPS also, and I am a believer in it! It is so much easier than old fashioned maps, although I love maps. The GPS tells us exactly when to turn, etc., and you can zoom in and zoom out on the map. It also has pharmacies, supermarkets, etc. Amazing! Below we are shown filling the car up with gasoline. The neighborhood gas station is very low key, so much different than the big, lighted, American gas stations. The Serbian gas stations on the highways are similar to the US gas stations, but the ones found on side streets are like the one below.
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