[petre]

You were in Belgrade looking up italian ice cream, so who cares? Just point your finger at it. You weren't reading menus in cyrillic trying to decipher the difference between regular and cheese filled pljeskavica while an overweight shabby guy was playing acordion to a couple at a neighbouring table and the waiter was trying to remember the English word for krastavitsa. Actual experiance in Skopje.

[Brendinooo]

Nah, turns out a lot of people in Belgrade speak English well enough, Claude translated Cyrillic, and, the last night I had dinner on the Danube in Zemun, a live band was playing American classic rock. Apple Pay or my Visa card worked in about 75% of the situations I found myself in; Apple Maps and international roaming meant I'd never get lost.

Plenty of places have smashburgers instead of pljeskavica now, and I had a couple of moments where I thought I had found some authentic cultural thing only to realize that young, progressive Belgradians have the same kind of regard towards historical stuff that plenty of young Americans tend to have as well.

All of that informed my reading of this article. The author laments the kind of changes that came to his land but we visitors don't necessarily want them either!

I think we're all wrestling with the downstream consequences of a shrinking world.

[petre]

> I think we're all wrestling with the downstream consequences of a shrinking world.

You should totally visit Skopje if you get the chance. Belgrade is a bit too cosmopolite. The bad is that they still allowed smoking in hotel rooms back before 2020 but otherwise I liked it a lot. Also I don't get the big statues and the anti Greek animosity. Should be anti Bulgarian by now.