Last night, Skopje entered a post-modern time warp, which might have put a symbolic end to the transition period. At last, the city – alas, not the rest of the country - has entered the post-modern era of media-tized staging of political operettas. Welcome! We were waiting for you to join.

A recent Balkan Insight article, reporting Serbian President Boris Tadic’s attendance at the inauguration of Milorad Dodik as the new President of the Bosnian Serb entity, the Republika Srpska, on 15 November 2010, described the two men as “close allies”.

There are situations in this country, I admit, where faced with overbearing bureaucracy, a pig headed doorman or one of Serbia's peculiarly unhelpful band of shop assistants when I am driven to offer up a muttered “t***” and at times I even squeeze out a curt “b******” under my breath as I turn away and consider my next move.

I remember watching the Farm in Mali Rit as a series when I was a kid. There are sentences and names from it that we still use.

When I arrived in the Trg Susan Sontag, the square in which the theatre sits, I was almost the only person there. In front of the theatre, some technicians were setting up hot-lights and camera equipment, while a handful of curious office workers, presumably journeying home, were milling curiously about; otherwise, though, the place was deserted.

We came home after that holiday and I asked my mum to find me an English language teacher. There was this great teacher whom my mum knew from work, Varja, and she took me in.

The sun was blazing, drenching me in sweat and delighting the mosquitos that had covered my arms and legs in myriad, itching bites. Suddenly, limping, I crested a hill and saw below me an unmistakable sight: the uniform white rows of the cemetery at Potocari, across the road from the old battery factory.