For the last ten years, I have been coming to sunny and opulent Monaco for the odd weekend here and there. My mother moved here following my parents’ divorce.

Monaco a strange place, rather like Disneyland. It’s full of mega rich businessmen (like Stelios Haji-Ioannou of easyJet), royals (not only local ones, but the Kuwaiti royal family as well), super models (such as Karen Mulden), as well as the odd film star (Roger Moore lives just above the public beach). Unlike tourists, these people are here not to gamble and take in the sights, but to benefit from zero taxes.

Monaco is Monte Carlo. I’m sure once upon a time Monte Carlo was a town in the middle of the countryside, but now that real estate has become so valuable, every inch of Monaco has been built on, and the country has been swallowed up by the city.

Even the harbor is being expanded so that more yachts can anchor there. Not to mention an island being build out on the sea, with a surface area of some 275,000 square meters. This new development might take the pressure off the Monegasque property market, which has some of highest real-estate prices in the world: a 3-bedroom flat costs up to 5 million euros!

If you do not own any property here, you can stay in fabulous hotels: Hotel de Paris, the Hermitage, or the Metropole, to name a few. Every other weekend there’s some wonderful event going on, such as Red Cross Ball or the Bal de Ete, with expensive tickets attached. Or else there are sporting events such as the Tennis Master Series, or the Monaco Marathon, not to mention the Grand Prix. Read More »

No. 42 was once an elegant house. Its crumbling façade exuded an air or mystery and romance. As I stood on its cracked marble doorstep I felt I had arrived home.

For sixty years, No. 42 was the home of my Serbian great grandmother, Granny Spasa. Like today’s Belgrade, Granny Spasa was original, colourful, beautiful and never, ever dull.

A visit to modern Belgrade is full of surprises, beginning with the drive from the airport. My guide was Milo, a handsome young charmer with hedgehog hair who wore a bright blue leather jacket.

Milo drove his 1960’s Mercedes as if he were practicing for an F1 race, speeding to the heart of a city along tree-lined boulevards. Here, many buildings are scarred by bomb damage, and some have been reduced entirely to rubble. These sights are sad reminders of Serbia’s recent war troubles. To make matters worse, many ancient Ladas and Skodas still dominate Belgrade’s streets, making the air harder to breathe.

And yet, such problems are quickly forgotten when one encounters the joyful vitality of the new generation of Belgradians. Serbs, I would discover, party hard. One guy told me: “Darling, if you have any trouble with men, you tell me and I deal with them” - “Deal with them?” - “Never you mind, this is Serbia, it’s the jungle.” I had the chance to reflect on that statement later.

I wasn’t thinking about men as I went up to my great grandmother’s wonderful apartment. The next-door neighbor told me that Granny Spasa loved fish so much that she used one bath as a fish tank, dipping in when she was ready to cook and eat a particular specimen. She kept the other as a bathroom as her washroom, thank God. The hot water came from a small boiler tank, sometimes leaving one with a lukewarm bath; fine for fish, but not so good for humans. Luckily, five star hotels like the Hyatt and Hotel Yugoslavia don’t have this problem.

In the town restaurants, gypsies play romantic music on accordions and you are treated to delicious Serbian specialties such as Cevapcici with Ajvar (Serbian meatballs with red pepper sauce) or Pasulj (Serbian bean soup), Gibanitiza (Cheese pie) and so on. After getting through such a menu, I had to dance it off.

This is how I found Black Panther, a nightclub located on a barge in a district called Splav. I was told that guns are sometimes fired in the air there, but assuaged by assurances that this sort of thing is done only for show.

Nightclub barges in Splav have different atmospheres, but male exhibitionism is the dominant theme. Read More »

I arrived in Warsaw by train from Krakow. I forgot to take a book for my train ride, but this was a blessing in disguise, because Polish people have devised a wonderful system for book promotion:

Instead of doing signings in bookshops, authors can sit in a specially designated train carriage, and have the travelers come over and get their books signed. It’s a clever promotional tool and it makes traveling by train in Poland incredibly fun.

From the window of the train, Warsaw initially struck me as ugly. This was confirmed on a taxi ride to my friend’s apartment. However, the elements of ugliness are both palpable and understandable.

Warsaw was largely destroyed by the Germans during WWII, and its reconstruction mostly took the form of large, concrete communist-style blocks scattered all over the city. There is lots of Russian architectural influence, but other traditions have a presence in Warsaw as well.

For example, France gave Warsaw the gift of a lovely bridge. And today the European Union is stepping in to repair roads and the city itself. A large sports complex has been created, and a concert hall is in the process of being erected in the center of town in the place of an old hotel.

On the first night, my friend took me to an underground bar. He told me about working as a journalist, following in his mother’s footsteps. His mother had been exiled due to running a printing press against the communists. On a more cheerful note, the bar we met at turned out to be having a cheap selection of new flavored vodka, mixed with apple juice so sweet it tasted like its name: Apple Pie.

The following day, I took a walking tour around Warsaw – my friend was my guide. We met in Lazienki Park situated in downtown Warsaw. We entered the park near a statue of Chopin (Poland’s most famous composer), which is surrounded by benches and a rose garden. Every year a Chopin concert is put on here.

We strolled through the park- which boasts royal baths, an orangery, and a sculpture gallery. The old bathhouse is also known as the “Palace on the Water,” and is located on an artificial island on the Lazienki Lake. The island is connected by two arcade bridges to the rest of the park, and regal peacocks roam the outside. Prince Stanislaus Lubomirski lived there first, then sold it to Stanislaw Poniatowski, the last King and Grand Duke of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Poniatowski transformed the place by bringing in minor works by Rubens and Rembrandt, as well as frescoes. Sadly, the Germans undid much of the work by blowing up the first floor with dynamite.

Driving towards the Old Town, we passed many memorials for those who fought against the Nazis and, in most cases, perished. Read More »