As much as I love Washington, I’m embarrassed to admit that the people dress far better in the capital of Serbia than in the capital of the United States. Of course, people who know Washington well may consider this faint praise. Washingtonians tend to be very liberal people with extremely conservative tastes. We’re the type of people who give a standing ovation to a play at the Kennedy Center because we read in the Washington Post that it was well-reviewed in the New York Times.

In contrast, Belgrade’s citizens, like New Yorkers, put far more effort into their appearance. Even though this a poor country with much unemployment, there are lots of stores hawking the latest styles from Italy, France, and the U.S. And people buy them. As one woman explained to me: “Clothes are our religion.” Years of socialism only succeeded in enhancing Belgrade’s love of labels. America’s bombing of the country five years ago also does not seem to have reduced the appeal of American attire or sports teams. Apparently, there are fans of the Chicago Bulls in Belgrade. I smiled the most, however, when I saw a Serb teen sporting a FUBU shirt.

Belgrade is a lively city. Even on a Sunday, when most stores and sights are closed, the streets are filled with people walking and sitting in cafes. Today, some gathered to watch the Tour Serbie. I joined those watching the cyclists sweat up the street by Kalmegdan Fortress. My favorite part was watching the Bulgarian coach egg on his team as he followed behind them in an ancient auto.

Ten years ago, I spent a Sunday in Ljubljana, the capital of then-newly independent Slovenia. Big mistake. While Ljubljana is much prettier than Belgrade, the city was so quiet on a Sunday that it looked like someone had dropped a neutron bomb on it. I remember being able to look up and down Slovenska cesta, a major street formerly named after Tito, for about a kilometer in each direction and seeing no cars or people. Much to my amusement, the one person I did encounter at an intersection nevertheless waited for the light to change before crossing the street.

Like Humpty Dumpty, Yugoslavia is broken and cannot be put back together again. However, one hopes that Belgrade’s links with the other fragments of former Yugoslavia will nevertheless gradually strengthen so it doesn’t become like Vienna during the Cold War – the still sizeable capital of a shrunken country cut off from its previous links. Relations with Croatia must have warmed somewhat with as one can at least now take a bus directly from Belgrade to Zagreb on the ironically named “Brotherhood and Unity” highway.

Relations cannot be that great yet, however. The relatively short trip from Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro, to Dubrovnik, now located in independent Croatia, requires taking a Montenegrin bus to the border, getting off and dragging your luggage through customs, and then boarding another bus to finish the journey. I’m glad that my trip the other day from my home in Maryland to Dulles Airport in Virginia was not nearly so complicated.