Last night I took the kids to the Red Star versus Radnićki game in the Adriatic Basketball Association (ABA). Radnički are the Detroit Pistons of the ABA, being from the motor city of Serbia, Kragujevac. They beat the Belgrade hosts, 83-79.
I was disappointed in Red Star and their American import, Adam Morrison. I heard a lot about the ex-Gonzaga player and was anxious to see him perform. He spent most of the game standing in the corner (see above) while the rest of the team handled the ball. They set no picks for him and he did not move without the ball at all. They also had him guarding the top player for Radnicki on defense, which got him into foul trouble in the first half. If you are paying for an import, you should use his strengths in the team’s offense. I was not happy with Morrison, he didn’t make much effort to get into the game and spent most of his efforts arguing with the officials.
The most impressive player for Red Star was a young guy off the bench, Andreja Milutinović, a 21-year old guard. He looked about 15 years old, but drove to the basket strongly and had a nice outside shot. Red Star is falling down the standings of the ABA and it doesn’t look to be a good year. It is hard to support a team that is not putting out a full effort. I should be cheering more for Partizan who this week came from 21 points down in the second half to beat Armani – Milan in the Euro League. I want to support Red Star but they are making it difficult.
Owen and Ollie had a nice time and we had great seats with our friends Jeff and Travis.
Nadia and I attended my daughter Ocean’s conferences today. I snapped this photo of her playing with her friends in class. Ocean attends the International Nursery School of Belgrade three days a week. Her teacher reports that she is making friends and is happy at the school. One of Ocean’s best qualities is her empathy towards others. She is always trying to help others. Another of her strengths is her language. She loves to talk. I think she gets that from her mother…
We are very proud of her and love her very much. Way to go Ocean!!!!
I took this photo Saturday evening while coming back from New Belgrade. All six lanes of traffic were open for the first time in many months as a large repair construction project was completed 7:00 PM on Saturday. The Gazela Bridge is one of the main bridges in the city connecting the old part of Belgrade with the New Belgrade. Besides being used for intra-city traffic, it is also part of two major highways crossing Europe (E70 and E75) and so besides Belgrade traffic, there is lots of foreign cars cruising through. The bridge has more cars crossing it than it was designed for.
The bridge built in 1970 was in desparate need of reinforcement and it looks and feels much better. The project did however, make everyone’s lives a hassle because of the limited options in crossing the city. Hopefully with all six lanes open, this will cut down on the traffic delays that were a daily part of many Belgraders lives.
The city is working on another bridge across the Sava River (see photo below) which should be done in the next few months. It will be interesting to see how this affects traffic flow. There are only two other bridges going across the Sava in the center part of the city. The bypass project, which would divert E70 and E75 traffic is still in the planning stages.
By the way, the name “Gazela” comes from the fact that on a side view, the bridge does look like a gazelle running.
View from the river, of the almost completed Sava Bridge (August 2011)
I just finished reading All About Tesla – How Nikola Tesla Invented the 20th Century by Michael Krause. I have heard much about the scientist and it was good to read a complete biography of him. His picture graces the 100 RSD note and the airport is named after him. The book is a bit dry, but Krause does a good job of covering the details of his life as well as mixing in his personal experience during the research on his life.
The famous "Blue Portrait" of Tesla, circa 1916
I would compare Tesla to Steve Jobs of today, but with bad business sense and a bit of autism/depression in the mix. He was one of the superstars of a new technology, electricity, and fortunes were made as the young industry got its start. It would have been amazing to live at that time, and the book captured the sense of society’s first reaction to electric light. Like the internet and computers of today, it fundamentally changed the way we lived. Before reading the book, I was under the impression that it was Thomas Edison versus Nikola Tesla to determine if direct current (DC) or alternating current (AC) would become the dominate form of electrical circuitry. But in reality, there were many more people involved than just those two. Tesla’s contribution was producing a motor that George Westinghouse used to become rich and have AC be the current of choice. Tesla’s big mistake was selling Westinghouse the patent and not collecting royalties. The generator allowed Westinghouse and then others produce enough power to transport the current over distances. Like Jobs, Tesla was famous for his presentations. He gave lectures all over the world that were known for his showmanship. He wowed crowds with his demonstrations of wireless transfer of electricity to light early fluoresent light bulbs.
Publicity Photo of Tesla in his Colorado Springs Laboratory - circa 1899
Tesla is a “rags to riches” story. His father was an Orthodox priest in a small village in Croatia. Tesla barely got into university in Austria. His uncle pulled some strings and he got in on a military scholarship. Like many peasants in the late 1800s, Tesla fled the Austro-Hungarian Empire (my ancestors did a few years after Tesla left) to go to the US to make his fortune. He eventually became a world-class inventor and scientist, and also a huge celebrity. He lived large, living in luxurious hotels his entire life, and gave lectures demonstrating all sorts of electrical phenomena, like flourescent light bulbs lighting without being plugged in. He was good friends with Mark Twain and other famous personalities. Due to his extravagant living, it was constantly a boom and bust for Tesla. Many venture capitalists like J.P. Morgan, invested in his research and development laboratories, but because he as a wacko and didn’t focus on products that could be sold for a profit, he lost a lot of people a lot of money. The lectures and his articles for New York journals, made him quite a celebrity. He lived life large!
Serbian currency with the measure of magnetic field unit named after him
Tesla did come up with many patents and his ideas were ahead of his time. His ideas contributed to someone else making money in the fields of radio, x-rays, hydro-electric power, remote-controlled submarines, etc. As he got older, he got more out there, focusing all of his experimentation on impossible schemes. He was obsessed with a tower in his lab in New Jersey. He had the idea of a super tower that could send electricity across the world, as well as being a weapon, kind of like a laser death-ray of science fiction. Indeed, many of his ideas were used by science fiction writers of his time. In comics in the 1940s, some writers based their “evil scientist” character on Tesla.
I loved his idea of tapping into the cosmos’ energy, kind of like being able to power devices on cosmic rays or dark matter or the collective consciousness of living beings. Maybe someday this will be a reality.
He had many strange quirks. He was celibate his entire life. He worked insane hours with little sleep (10:30 AM – 5:00 AM) and avoided all sunlight. This led to periods of exhaustion and depression. He had to put pieces of rubber under his bed for a time, because of his hyper bat-like senses wouldn’t let him sleep because he detected the friction of the bed posts and the floor.
He was also proud to be a Serbian and in his later years, the Yugoslavian government supported him. I learned from the book that his name may be Ukrainian, because Tesla is not a typical Serbian surname. He was a fascinating fellow to say the least and Serbia and Yugoslavia should be proud of his contributions to the human race. I really want to go see his museum here in Belgrade. I’ll do a post on my visit there.
This will be my last leaf posting. One of the reasons we moved to Serbia was for the kids to enjoy the change of seasons. Ocean and Oliver got “fall” and it was fascinating to see Ocean make the connection. She saw the leaves falling and accumulating in the yard. She said this must be autumn and she also gave me the word in Spanish (otono) and in Serbian (jesen). They must have been discussing it at school. The best thing about this video is the infectious laugh of Ocean. She is a fun-loving girl and she got a big kick out of throwing leaves at me.
My son Oliver is trying a peach slatko last weekend at the restaurant Stari Majdan.Slatko is an interesting traditional Serbian fruit preserve. It is like a jam but with chunky pieces of fruit and it is served with water. It is very sweet and immediately afterward, one needs a sip of water. I guess that is why it is named slatko which means “sweet” in English.
It used to be served to guests when they arrived in a Serbian home. Today, it is only found in rural areas in Serbia or occasionally in green markets in the city. Nadia absolutely loves it and we usually have a jar in the kitchen. I’ve seen that strawberries and figs are the most common types. My friend mentioned a watermelon (lubenica) slatko that I would like to try.
Update – July 9, 2012 – I read an article in the Spring 2012 edition of BelGuest that mentioned slatko comes from the Sephardic Jewish community of Belgrade before World War II. The Spanish (Ladino) word for the desert is dulse and the Serbs adapted it from their interaction with the large (22,000) Jewish community in the city.
This week we received the official school pictures of the boys. Above is Oliver’s first grade picture and below is Owen’s third grade picture.
As you can see by comparing how they looked in 2008, their first school pictures I posted on the blog, they are growing up. We will be getting Ocean’s first school picture later this month.
We are in the peak color season in Belgrade. In Europe, as opposed to my birthplace of Michigan, the colors are mostly yellow. The theory goes that there are more tree species in North America that gives more colors and the ice age killed more of red-producing pigment trees in Europe than in North America. Despite not having the reds and oranges, it is still a beautiful time of year. Above is a photo of a wall at our school.
It was great this morning. I was walking with Ocean to our car and she said, “it is leaf day today.” There were leaves literally falling all over the drive way. It has been great to experience the change of seasons, especially for the kids.
It has also been foggy this week in the mornings. Below is a photo of our yard yesterday morning.
The kids are shown above in their Halloween costumes. Owen and Oliver wanted the skeleton outfits from the Chinese Market and Ocean went both as a Princess and Hello Kitty. I think the boys loved the plastic battle axes that came with the costume.
It was a full weekend of parties. It started with the school’s party with spooky carnival games and trick or treating through the rooms. We then went to the US Embassy Halloween party which included going door-to-door trick or treating and a nice party at the end of the evening. The kids loved going through the neighborhood, which is owned by DIPOS, the Diplomatic Housing Enterprise that rents to US Embassy personnel.
The weather has been spectacular with sunny skies and relatively warm temperatures. We raked leaves and jumped in the pile. We also had a camp fire and played a lot of sports outside.
I saw this well done mural on an old building near the Sava River on a bike ride home from Ada Ciganlija earlier this week. The caption reads as follows:
Živ je Draža – umro nije – dok je sprstva i Srbije!
As long as there is Serbia and the Serbian Spirit – Draža lives!
It pictures Serbian military hero Draža Mihailović. Mihailović fought in four wars in his lifetime. He was a young man in the two Balkan Wars and World War I. Especially in World War I, when there was the very real possibility of the loss of the Serbian nation, he fought on the front lines from Corfu, through Albania and back to Belgrade. He is most remembered for World War II, but I feel he shouldn’t be. He was almost 50 when the Nazis invaded in 1941. He fled the Yugoslav army and led the resistance group called the Chetniks. They differed from the more famous Partizans in that they were mostly ethnic Serbian, loosely supported the Yugoslav King in exile, and avoided direct confrontation with the Germans. Draža believed the German reprisals against Serbian civilians were not worth the minor gains in guerilla attacks. I agree with this and he was waiting for the Allies to eventually come and take out the Nazis.
Unfortunately for him, the Partizans won control of the country after the war and Tito had him put on trial and executed. One research study suggests his body is buried close to the mural, on the entrance of Ada Ciganlija. Mihailović and several of his commanders were dumped in a mass grave in a secret site.
He was used as a source of inspiration by Serbian military groups, both formal and informal in the wars of the Secession of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. This has made him unjustly, a controversial figure even today. It is similar to the World War I battle hymn, March on the Drina , which should be the Serbian national anthem, but due to its use in the wars of the 1990s also, is considered too controversial.
Mihailović’s final words were “I wanted much; I began much; but the gale of the world carried away me and my work.”
He lived a hard life to have it disrupted so violently with four major wars. He deserved a better fate than to be executed by the communists. He should be rightly honored for his resistance against outside major powers trying to take over smaller Serbia. Perhaps his ideas of a looser federation of Yugoslavia with stronger autonomy for the ethnic republics would have resulted in a longer existing Yugsolavia.
On a lighter note, he should be depicted on t-shirts more than Che Guevara, the Argentinian bum turned Cuban Revolutionary hero. The beard, glasses, and Šajkača are a very “cool” look for Draža. I’ll look to see if I can find his image on a t-shirt or make my own.
Morrison versus Scott, originally uploaded by bill kralovec.
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