The girls are growing. So different from one another. Marlene speaks like a five-year-old and tends to scream her head off when she doesn't get what she wants. Getting a new word from Una is like pulling a tooth - hard and painful - but her temper is milder. Marlene is all girly - a shoe fetishist before the age of two. Una is a tomboy: her favourite toys are things with push-buttons and all kinds of electronic appliances. Marlene likes fruit. Una prefers meat.

In less than a year, they'll go to different kindergartens and make new friends. But right now they're as close to being best friends as a pair of two-year-olds can get.

...but mostly Serbian (with a little German here and there) so if you don't understand our native language, you'll miss out on the entertainment. I'm going to quote only the words she mispronounces, because this is where the comedy lies. Goes without saying that I can't remember each word, these are just the highlights:

guza - guđe

cipele - cipce

čarape - capce

auto - ato

nos - noj

sok - sos

pije - pi

baka - bada

pelena - pene

puzle - pu

sneg - gen

slon - son

maca - kate (Katze)

na poslu - polu

svetlo - selo

zubi - supa

meda - memi

kengur - kelju

cveće - seće

sveća - seće

šećer - seće

Moby* - bode

Robbie* - opi

By the way, Una's pediatrician thinks she doesn't speak enough (the method of determination whether the child is up-to-the-standard is a list of thirty-something random words; if a child uses 90% of those words by the age of two, it gets a TÜV seal of approval and can happily toddle on home. If not, it is invited for a check-up three months later to see if progress has been made. I don't know what will happen if Una "fails" the list once again.** Nobody mentions that she's probably confused by being constantly exposed to two languages (she hears enough German to be able to understand about 80% of what people tell her). The doctor claims she's "seen worse". Ah those wonderful words of comfort that each parent is secretly hoping to hear!

* As in pop stars.

** Come to think about it, will she be given a different list? I'm sure they wouldn't want us to cheat on the test.

J. D. Salinger died yesterday. He was one of my favourite writers and the author about whose work I've written most (during the studies as well as in secondary school). The Catcher in the Rye holds a special place in my heart although I'm not a teenager. I say that because this is the greatest insult that thousands have hurled upon it: it's a book for adolescents. And not even for adolescents of today - they find it dated and boring.

This may very well be true. Come to think about it, how could it not be true. Holden Caulfield was a teenager with principles; principles that were opposed to the ideals of the materialism, social prestige and the general "phoniness" that used to be considered embarrassing in the fifties but has been moved to a pedestal in the world we live in. The very things he despised most are the epitome of cool to the 21th century adolescent. It is quite understandable that Salinger shunned fame and stopped publishing more than forty years ago - everything he stood for was becoming "dated"; just like Holden who was toying with the idea of spending the rest of his life working on a gas station in the middle of nowhere, pretending to be a deaf-mute so that people wouldn't bother him, Salinger spent the rest of his life in rural New Hampshire with almost no contact to the public. And unlike Holden who goes back home at the end of his wonderful novel, Salinger saw no reason for optimism in times that were coming. His death marks the irrevocable end to the long-dying hope for the world we would have preferred to live in.

My mother has recently moved to my grandfather's old flat. It's where I grew up. Pictured below is just a fragment of the view from our balcony. Although the neighbourhood looks ancient, so much has changed in the last few decades.

On the left, there are the very fashionable wind-chimes that lull you to sleep when košava chills the night. Although the wind chimes are not a new invention (as a matter of fact, they're probably as old as mankind) no one thought of them in the eighties. I hadn't even seen actual wind chimes until I went to London in 1991 and bought myself a small set at Camden Market. Why?

The green plastic cover around the tree also suggests that someone cares about that yard. This is not a private space; either a rich neighbour decided to make his own and thus everyone else's living space more appealing, or they all chipped in to save the tree and enjoy the soothing music of the wind.

What has turned into a private space is our very own courtyard. When I was a girl, I used to play there with other kids from the building. My eighth birthday party was marked by a fight between someone and Dragan Milošević, who is nowadays a judge but used to be an awful cry baby in those days. It took place in the yard while some of us were watching from the balcony (not to worry, he was later consoled by my family and given an extra piece of cake). In the meantime, the neighbour who owns the shop at the front has had a vicious dog living there and I suppose he's the one who put up the basketball hoop. For his own leisure activities, because he has barred the entrance to the courtyard by building a private storage place in front of it. Which means, only he gets to go there. I have no idea who died and put him in charge. My mother says that the residents allow him to use this space (both the hallway and the yard) but knowing the local mentality I can't imagine they weren't given some sort of compensation (also known as bribe).

These two back yards are exemplary of the city that Belgrade is today: in so many ways a nicer place than before, although one may tend to see one's childhood through pink-tinted sunglasses. People love trees and wind-chimes, things we didn't care about much when I was a kid. On the other hand, the asshole who bars the door to the garden is thriving and his neighbours don't really care. You need to look no further than nextdoor.

In the past few months, I've got hooked on a couple of food blogs. It's fairly simple - people (in this case, mostly women) share their recipes and post pictures of whatever dish they're currently presenting. A semi-food blog I've been following for a while is Ilse's, although this one is not typical - she does write mostly about food, but she's not taking it too seriously. Perhaps her casual approach to cooking is what I like about it - it reflects her everyday life and it doesn't seem she's on a holy mission to make the world believe she's the ultimate master of the ladle.

But if you really want to learn something and get to grips with that recipe you've always considered too difficult for your skills, there are plenty of blogs that offer advice and tips galore as well as very professional and precise instructions and measurements. The same ambition is reflected in the photographs that accompany the recipe: sometimes shot with what seems to be professional studio lighting, sometimes carefully photoshopped and everything around the subject wiped out to create an illusion of pure negative space (which looks kitsch when it's not done properly, but that's an altogether different story). The blog authors tend to swoon over their works - each recipe they upload is the best ever. The competition is tough. And because I know that the few blog entries I've written about food were the most demanding undertakings, I can only assume that the work they're doing is incredibly time-consuming, let alone difficult in many other ways. I get the impression that the food blogging community is incredibly competitive and complex: it has sub-communities dedicated to different genres: the haute cuisine, the national cuisine, the pastry aficionados, the eccentrics etc.

I'm not trying to say that it makes you lose your appetite, because there's a lot of stuff out there that's very useful and well, mouthwatering, but sometimes I can't help but wonder who gets to eat all the stuff they're constantly stewing, reducing, mounting, deep-frying, poaching, baking, blind-baking, caramelizing, glazing, flambéing and sautéing. When I see the photos of those slender fingers holding the perfect cube of caramel pie, I honestly doubt they belong to the consumer of that sugary masterpiece's 4-digit calorie count.

Pictured above is just a part of the savoury offering at my aunt's birthday party. It was all delicious and all made by herself in two days. Yes, that's thirteen dishes, without the nibbles and the dessert. I'd personally much rather read about her struggle with this endeavour than about cooking a perfect chocolate ganache over a bain-Marie (and what to do when the cream reaches the critical temperature of 72.3º C).