For centuries now, cats have been the real rulers of Istanbul.

Many locals see them as community animals. You'll often find bowls of food and water on the streets, and occasionally you'll spot cat houses, sometimes even ones maintained by the city. But you'll have better luck finding them in quiet alleys rather than on the busiest streets.

The cats are super social and not scared of people at all. Usually stray animals are more wary of strangers, but not here. Almost all of them are totally fine with being petted. And if you stumble upon a whole group, you might even catch some funny moments of jealousy, where one cat won't let the others near a person.

There's no way to really cover this topic with just a couple of photos in one post. I really recommend checking out the Turkish documentary Kedi about 7 Istanbul cats. It's in Turkish, but there are tons of subtitles available, including Russian. Even though it's about animals, it really emphasizes their relationships with the locals. It totally changed how I see the city.

Somehow I ended up in Istanbul, much to my own surprise.

I checked, and it turns out they really did dig the metro from IST airport into the city. And it actually works (though not completely yet; they still haven't opened one station). You can't get to the center without transfers, but I liked it way more than the bus. You definitely won't get stuck in traffic.

I couldn't help but notice Erdoğan's ads on the handrails. He personally opened this thing. Hopefully they'll take them down at some point.

I'm back in Belgrade, but all those photos I took of New York weren't for nothing. I'll share some pictures here.

The area is full of small, completely typical little towns—it feels like you've stepped into an American movie. People clearly live a bit closer together here, but it's still more like a village than a real city.

If you ever need emergency help, an ambulance or police will take about 20 minutes to reach you. And the firefighters? They're all volunteers out here. They only get paid salaries in the bigger towns where the budget can actually support that kind of thing.

This place is so remote that there's basically no mobile signal anywhere. Locals have wired connections, which also allows them to set up additional mini-stations from the mobile operator. But if you're just passing through as a tourist, it's better to be safe and download offline maps beforehand.

A colleague invited me to spend the weekend at his country house in upstate New York. It's totally different from anything I've seen before in the States.

Garbage on New York City streets hasn't gone anywhere. Plus, during COVID they suspended routine rat control operations. As a result, rats multiplied so much that the city hall was looking for an entire director of rodent control back in December 2022 (they took down the posting now, probably found someone, but the job description promised a salary range of $120-170 thousand a year).

It's surprising that one of the world's largest cities can't solve such a straightforward garbage disposal problem. If they put trash bags in containers instead of on the street, it would be harder for rats to get to them. And the rat population should naturally decrease. But this measure would noticeably reduce the number of parking spots. Apparently, the authorities aren't willing to do that. Maybe I should've sent them my resume?)

I guess I got a bit caught up in work, sorry about that. New York is still here, it's not going anywhere.

Made it to Chicago. It's really convenient when there's a metro connection from the airport to the city.

I decided to get off at an earlier station and take a walk around. As I was leaving the metro and hesitating for a second about which exit to take, this girl suddenly comes up to me and starts asking where I'm headed so she can give me directions. After I tell her the address, she goes: "You've got another whole station to go, don't get off here, there are way too many crazy people on Chicago's streets". And it's like, literally just a 15-minute walk (and it's not that much closer from the next station anyway).

When she realized I wasn't going to listen to her advice, she made me promise to be careful on the street (though honestly everything was fine, the neighborhood seemed pretty decent).

PS. Other than that, so far it just looks like your typical American city with massive skyscrapers and huge cars.

I'm kind of losing my mind over the prices here. I forgot to bring an adapter for local outlets. At the first store I came across, they wanted $50 for it. I walked around a bit more and found one for $18. Which, you know, is still a lot, but I paid it thinking "well, it's not that bad" (:

It seems like every Serb is at least 50% made up of Plazma cookies, and they eat them in pretty much any confusing situation. They're literally everywhere here.

This story started back in the 1960s in Italy, where they were making (and still are) the original — Plasmon. Then Heinz bought the manufacturer and immediately laid off a bunch of employees. One of the people who lost his job was Petar Tutovac. He went back to Yugoslavia and, with government support, started a confectionery factory. No point in letting all that experience go to waste, right?

It turned out the Italian recipe was too expensive to produce, so they swapped out a ton of ingredients for cheaper alternatives and named the product Plazma (so nobody would catch on). But the Yugoslavs loved the result so much that generations have been happily buying it ever since.

Pretty soon the Italians got wind of it, and the lawsuits started. It all ended with a ban on exporting Plasma from the country. But then in the 90s, they figured out that if you export it under a different name, the ban doesn't apply. So that's exactly what they did. Look for Lane in your stores.

Or just come visit the Balkans — we've got cookies here :)

Serbs typically don't exchange gifts on Christmas Day itself. Instead, they do it over three consecutive Sundays leading up to Christmas Eve: dětinjci (gifts from the kids), materice (from mom), and oci (from dad).

Gift-giving happens as a sort of ransom game. In the morning, you sneak up on the gift-giver, tie their hands and feet with a towel or scarf, and they buy their freedom with a present.

It's all done as a playful joke. Don't picture families tying people up like bank robbers with bruises left behind afterward. Kids often can't hold back their laughter when they're supposed to tie up their parents, who pretend not to notice and keep sleeping. A Serbian friend told me his dad would actually start running away, and the whole family would chase him down to finally get their gifts.

Kids sometimes get toys or just a small bill that inevitably goes toward candy. Parents usually get a promise to behave better next year as their gift, though kids sometimes just skip giving it altogether.