"Serbia has always been on the border, right in the middle of the divide. Between East and West."

What better evidence can I give to back up the words of my friend Zivko than the intensely Orthodox religiosity of this country? Christian, like the West, but with a touch of mysticism, which has trickled down through time from the legacy of Byzantium.


And Belgrade has been the heart and soul of the modern Serbian nation, the country with an identity crisis, between East and West.


They may use the Cyrillic alphabet, but you forget -- say, for example, when you are walking around the Beograd Zoo, which has all the trappings of a modern Western animal prison -- that you are in what many consider to be the "East" every minute of the day.



But I love Serbia, whether it knows itself truly or not.