BELGRADE—"If you are Serb, you are Orthodox. If you are Orthodox, you are Serb."

Goga says this in invisible quotation marks as she wipes her fingers of the coffee that has just abandoned its cramped and shrunken cup. Though this remark is one of the truisms that allows for the perpetuation of Balkan broad strokes, or as my friend and travel partner Marisola would say, "prescriptive identities," it is true enough. And so the conversation between the three of us—Goga, Marisola and myself—takes place in a greasy spoon unadorned with any Christmas decor.

Christmas is coming, but not until the seventh of January. Baby Jesus is still remembered, but within a different consciousness; whereas Christmas in the West is preceded by forty days of shopping, here it is preceded by forty days of fasting. And when it does come there won't be a particularly orgiastic display of reindeer and Elvin forced labor. The holiday to beat here in the East is Easter. So though I write this on Christmas Day, the climate, both literal and symbolic, does little for my Christmas spirit (which was exorcized at the age of five anyway).

Belgrade (Beograd/Velegradha/Dar Al Jihad) is a city in which I breathe easy, though I couldn't quite tell you why. I felt the same way in Berlin. The two capitals have a similar character. They both house the same beast: there is a grime and a fog that slithers around the city. A grey, hazy basilisk. The French would boobytrap the Arc de Triomphe to rid themselves of such a monster. I find him to be a trustworthy companion.

I've spent three days in Belgrade with Marisola; she's been living here, writing and researching. She has impressed me endlessly with her grasp of Srpski and her intimate familiarity with the city. We've been around the place, from Tito's House of Flowers to the Studentski Kulturni Centar, a club that is more vibrant and trendy than its name suggests. Today we visited the May 25th Museum, currently hosting a gallery of dissident artwork from "behind the Iron Curtain."

Henryk Musialowicz, War Against Man, 1960

Jacek Sroka, Gestapo, 1982

Alfred Lenica, Without Preparation, 1970

Eduard Gorokhovsky, Lenin-Stalin, 1989

Jan Dubkowski, Closed System, 1980