Shhh.... Belgrade has gone to sleep.

There was a time, though, when the White City on the Danube woke up at midnight. It was perfectly normal for people to make arrangements to meet at and around midnight when the movable feast of clubbing and cafes and bars and even restaurants would bestir itself, singing and playing into the wee small hours of the morning.

Let it come to no one as a surprise: Novak Djokovic did NOT walk on the moon.

Nor did he cure tuberculosis, invent the wheel, pave the Information Superhighway, or single-handedly create the heavens and the earth in six days. To my knowledge (and I could be wrong), Mr. Djokovic was not responsible for the breaking down of Apartheid, the lifting of the Iron Curtain, or the forging of lasting peace in the Middle East.

He may, of course, have assassinated Bin Laden. No one knows quite WHAT happened there...

Announcer: We are now arriving at Paris Gare de Lyon. Please make sure you have forgotten NOTHING on the train....
Passenger: Wait!

We've all seen them. We pass by. We do not speak to them.

The cows around town, on Trg Republike, on Knez Mihajlova, generally mind their own business. They accost no one for theatre subscriptions, tissues, or wilted flowers. They do not ask the time or directions to Delta City. They look straight ahead into their forward progression or innocuously feed on the weeds growing from cracks in the paving.

So this is goodbye.

Chances are that the world will have ended by the time I finish this sentence. No? Ok, I can probably get a few more paragraphs in before the cataclysm and what St. Matthew calls the time of "great tribulation" (clearly a biblical Star Trek reference, indicating how well he could see the future).

The big question must be HOW the world is going to be ended.

Elvis lives there. He is 76 years old. Jim Morrison too. And now Osama Bin Laden.

For reasons of confidentiality, I am unable to reveal the whereabouts of The Home. Suffice to say that it is a rather large and stately affair ensconced in a semi-rural area, detached from the rest of the world, where the residents live out normal lives far from the prying eyes and fingers of fans, paparazzi, and prosecutorial investigators.

And it has a very nice sound system, too. Oldies mostly.

When hunger does not do the trick, let's eat then.

After a week of undue media attention - and, yes, ok, I am part of it regrettably - Toma has come back to the dinner table, seeing that no one else was going to show up at the negotiating table. The spin seems to be that he has called attention to the need for Serbia to move forward. On to the main course, as it were...

If I stopped eating for two days, most people would call it a DIET.

Toma Nikolic, after what seems to be 48 hours of hunger striking (although I cannot be sure of the accuracy of media reports) in an attempt to bring about early elections in Serbia, has been hospitalized. Even Dr. Atkins says that you need at least three days before the body starts feeling the effects of hunger.

We are not bears.

Unlike bears, we do not sleep through the winter months. Unless watching parliament on RTS counts. But now, as the weather begins to warm, we awaken like the bears from a state of hibernation. We take to the streets. We wear brighter colors, fewer layers, we check each other out. Eyes open.

There was a time (he said, adopting an avuncular, if not grandfatherly, tone) when travelling by airplane was something of a prestigious or luxurious experience. The little tiny soaps in the bathroom were novelties. The bathrooms, while we are the subject, were kept clean. The stewardesses were lovely and smiling and charming. And the whole experience was rather pleasant...