I may not know art....

[Suggested caption: Culture, distilled to its purest, hedge-clipped-in-the-shape-of-a-bear form]

We'll we've made it to Belgrade (which for those of you who are unsure, like our putative Romanian travel agent, is the capital of Serbia, which also happens to be the COUNTRY right next to Romania - colour me concerned about Romania's focus on western/EU Europe) armed only with Pete J's favourite Serbian phrase (which Christina informs me I am not to reproduce in polite or possible Serbian speaking company) and are having no luck at all finding the Chinese embassy. Perhaps we should ask the US military, who seem to be able to do so quite by accident.

Before Belgrade though, there was Sibiu, [one of the] Cultural Capital[s] of Europe [for 2007]. Let's just say that culture, like nostalgia, ain't what it used to be, and now comes primarily in giant yellow octopus sculpture form - and while I don't really like opera, at least I feel like a philisitne for failing to do so, which doesn't really apply to the octopus. It's hard not to suspect that the whole "installation art" thing, which was Sibiu's primary contribution to European Culture [2007] is a subtle ex-communist dig at the corrosive effect of capitalism on art - "sure, we persecuted, and often murdered our artists, but at least there were significantly less octopii".
Otherwise, nice city. Plenty of churches, etc, etc.

There was also, briefly, Timisoara, lying just beyond the small town of Faget, which I found myself celebrating rather too enthusiastically in the presence of our flagrantly gay Danish cabin mates... Timisoara is an heroic city in the Timmy O'Tool sense of having been in the wrong place at the right time and ending up starting a revolution. We got in at 10pm and left again at 5am, so we were unable to determine whether the spirit of revolution was something in the water - though I did experience some cramps on the train the next morning.

Belgrade is deeply cool, quite a change of pace from the new EU entrants (so far we rate it's putative membership application a qualified yes) and with plenty going on. Check back tomorrow to see the world's most awesome tourist experience recapped...