BELGRADE, SERBIA and ST SAVA

                                              A Prospering City

      After WW I Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia became known as Yugoslavia. Various countries were added until in 1946 Yugoslavia consisted of the original three countries plus Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovinian and Macedonia.

       St. Sava Orthodox Cathedral is the largest orthodox cathedral in the world. After 50 years of construction, it still is not complete. The domed building, with a white marble and granite façade is set in gardens. It is not a cathedral in the technical  ecclesiastical   sense, as it is not the seat of a       bishopery. In Serbian it is called a hram (temple), which in Eastern Orthodox is another name for a church. In English, it is usually referred to as a cathedral because of its size and importance.   The Cathedral of Saint Sava is the

most recent addition to a historic line of important architectural monuments and places in Belgrade. The church is centrally planned, having the form of a  Greek Cross. It has a large 70-meter high central dome. The main 12 meter high gold plated cross makes the dome 82 meters high. The church is visible from all approaches to the city. There are 18 other gold-plated crosses of various sizes, while the bell towers have 49 bells.      The Cathedral can receive 10,000 faithful at any one time. The choir gallery seats 800 singers. The basement contains a crypt, the treasury of Saint Sava, and the grave of   Saint Lazas. The façade is in white marble and granite and, when finished, the inner decorations will be of mosaics. The central dome will contain a mosaic of Christ. To give a sense of the monumental scale, the eyes will each be about 4 meters wide.

      Three hundred years after the burning of Saint Sava's remains, a small church was built at the future place of the Cathedral in 1895. It was later moved so the construction of the Cathedral could begin. In 1905, a public contest was launched but all designs were rejected. Wars delayed further construction until 1919. New appeals for designs were made in 1926. Forty years after the initial idea, construction of the church began in May 1935. The work lasted until the invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941 when work ceased altogether. The occupying German army used the unfinished church as a parking lot. Construction began again in1985. The greatest achievement of the construction process was the lifting of the 4,000 ton central dome, which was built on the ground, together with the copper plate and the cross. The lifting, which took forty days, was finished on June 26, 1989. Most of the church is complete. The bells and windows are  installed, and the facade is completed. However, work on the internal decoration of the building remains unfinished so visitors are not allowed inside.

     We were in Belgrade on a Sunday. We walked up the 130 steps from river level to mall level where there was a great environmental exhibit. Done by photography students, it showed pictures of unbelievable trash heaps. The students were trying to tell people we cannot continue to trash our earth. It was very well done.

Impressions:

Small cars.    Traffic was light and drivers were civil 

 High literacy rate.

Looks prosperous, although young educated people have difficulty finding jobs with decent pay.

Some litter in certain areas.

 Lots of pregnant women        

 Lots of cigarette smokers

Yards are well maintained         

 Gorgeous architecture

COFFEE, More About

                                               A Fun Costa Rica Visit
    At Café Britt we watched an entertaining live presentation about coffee in the theater.  Britt is a large coffee company that makes many coffee related items. Their coffee liqueur is an excellent one. Their coffee and other items can be purchased from their website. 
    Coffee was discovered in 1500 in Ethiopia and came to Costa Rica in 1750. In the 19^th century coffee plants were given to anyone who wanted to grow them. It takes three years for the plant to produce beans and the plants produce one crop a year. The same field is picked 4-5 times each season, at three weeks intervals. Only the red bean is picked. They are ripe during the dry season, December to March.  
     All coffee beans are picked by hand. Pickers strap a large basket around their waist that when full it weighs 25 pounds. The beans are processed the day of picking. They sit in water 24 hours. Eventually the beans are sun dried for seven days, then can be held up to a year before roasting.

    Coffee grows at elevations between 800-5600 feet.  Some areas are shaded by larger trees, others are not.

     Tomas Acosta first introduced coffee in 1805. In 1821 coffee plants and land were given to people in the Central Valley, but the land belonged to the government. In 1831, the government deeded the land to anyone who had been farming it for the past ten years. At that time the only country trading for coffee was Nicaragua.  

In 1832 Jorge Steeple transported 25 ton of coffee to Panama via mule, where it then went to Chili and then on to England.

In 1844-45 William Lalacheus linked the Central Valley to the Caribbean. The trip from Caldera, Costa Rica around Cape Horn, to England and back to Costa Rica took 18 months.

     In 1900-14 coffee prices dropped and did not go back up until 1939. 
     The Rohmoser brothers owned large coffee plantations and paid their workers with tokens. At the end of the day the workers could turn the tokens in for colones (Costa Rican currency), but the tokens were also used as cash. 
     At one time Costa Rican economy was often referred to as a dessert economy or a coffee/banana economy. 
     I have visited coffee plantations/ facilities in several places but Britt is one of my favorites. Coffee is a labor intensive crop as the coffee beans are picked by hand and most often by women and children. Today many countries export coffee.