He is upset about the loss of Kosovo, and he would like President Slobodan Milosevic, whom he supported until two years ago, to leave office. He is taking a risk, he acknowledges, because even the normal restaurant crowd is spending less. During the 78-day bombing war, Belgrade seemed almost normal in the daytime, with restaurants and coffee bars jammed until about 4 P.M., when there was an eerie exodus for home, before the air raid alerts, lightless streets and thudding detonations. Most people have replaced their broken windows and roof tiles and cleaned the shards of glass from their courtyards, where their children play. Jovanovic complains that people are ordering less.
Friendship is still the prime virtue here.
As Belgrade went through an unseasonably chilly few days of rain last week, people started to worry openly about this postwar winter, when a city that largely heats itself with electricity expects to have serious difficulties. But to use a stove, you need ventilation. In Novi Beograd, or New Belgrade, where hundreds of thousands of people live, the apartment buildings were not constructed with chimneys or much storage space for wood. Their building was built with a chimney, but it is now useless. A few years ago, the owner of the apartment two floors above ripped out the flue to build himself a wet bar.