Back in 2001 my boss (an Irishman) planned a visit to Belgrade from Brussels. As was the custom, he sent me a list of names ahead of time so that I could arrange meetings for him. Among this list were all the usual suspects….government ministers, political party leaders, people from the NGO sector, journalists, officials from OSCE, Council of Europe, the EU, etc. As I went down the list I came across the name Zoran Živković.

A Canadian friend of mine who is a journalist for a major international newspaper has lived in Belgrade for nearly eight months, and has yet to visit a single splav or "hot" night spot in Belgrade. He spends much of his free evenings hanging out with other foreigners at a certain café in Silicon Valley where the waiters wear kilts, wondering why he and the others are bored to death. One evening as I was passing by they saw me and persuaded me to join them for a few moments. They were doing tricks with drinking straws on the bar. One English correspondent from a world-renowned news service was particularly adept at a trick lifting two straws with one straw. It seemed that the more beer he drank, the better he got at it.