If I were you, fellow traveller, comic poem by Angela Lansbury

If I were you

I would speak Chinese

And not waste time

Saying thank you and please.

If I were the king

I'd make everyone speak the King's English

I'd ban Korean, and Greek

Bad Grammar, Creole, Russian, Vietnamese and Singlish. 

On second thoughts

We would learn Esperanto in school

An international language

Would be such a handy tool.

If I were you all the buses

And Sundays newspapers would be free

But f I were you

I would not be me

If I were a bee

I would make flavoured honey

Give beehives to every gardener and farmer

We'd all make lots more money

If I were a bird

I'd sing in tune, and parrot every word

Teacher's lessons repeated, re-heard

If I were not a bird-brained bird

If I were a horse

I would run fast of course

And neigh 'til I was hoarse

If I were an internet, animated, 3D horse

If I were a cat

I'd sleep on the mat

Catch mice as cat food, save money on that

If I were a cat

If I were a cloud

I could not laugh out loud

I'm sure it's not allowed

If you are a digital cloud

If I were a tree

How odd that would be

Much more animated than me

If I were overprinted on a 3D tree

If I were a fish

I'd swim in the pond or sea

Then be preserved in a car key ring

How lucky I am that I'm me.

Two colour suitcase in red and blue block colours. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

If I made travel goods

And make them all block colours

To go with matching clothes

Yes, I really would

If we had to start again

Maybe we'd all be men

All cocks and no hens

Pack unisex clothes, if we had to start again

Lastly, if I were you

That would never do

You know that it is true

For I'm me, and you are you

If you were in this room

And not just on Zoom

You could stand on the balcony

And watch tropical flowers bloom

Travel websites, now we've thought about it

Always tell the truth, I know you'll never doubt it

The museums closes Mondays, but on the web we travel far

Today I travel online, and love things the way they are.

-ends-

As the old Irish jokes goes, when asked the way, a bystander replied, 'If I were you, I wouldn't start from here.'

Serbia - see Beautiful Belgrade and more sights, North and South

Map of Serbia.

As the map shows, Hungary is to the north of Serbia. Romania and Bulgaria are to the East. The north is at the top of the map.
You would think that having north at the top of the map would be standard and obvious but it isn't. We drove around Vienna arguing. The driver looked at the road signs and said, "We must go right. I looked at the map and said, "No we go left." Finally, the driver pulled in and grbbed the map. He looked at the arrow and found that south was at the top of the page!

We also have a train line running West-East and East-West in London, called the Central line. On some trains the maps are designed so that the maps on each side of the train are mirror images, showing you the direction of travel, with the front of the train at one end of the map. Some people think that is logical. Others find it confusing. As the Irish joke goes, "If I were you, I wouldn't start from here!"

BELGRADE



























































Belgrade Fortress. Gardoš Tower. (Gardoš rhyming with gosh!)


Belgrade -  (the name means white city) is the capital of Serbia.
Belgrade was previously the capital of Yugoslavia. The river Danube flows into Belgrade.

Novi Sad (the name means new plant) is north of Belgrade.

You are likely to fly into Serbia towards the south at Niš (pronounced like niche or neesh). If you keep looking at the twon and airport name, it is easy to remember that the bowl shape on top of the s - š - is pronounced SH.

To type it, the lower case s3, hold down the s key on a laptop keyboard. You are offered a choice of three types of s: ß ś š . You get them by holding down the s with your left hand and simultaneously tapping the keys 1 or 2 or 3. If you are typing a lot of Serbian words and placenames, it's easy to remeber that s3 is three. You hold the s down with your second finger of your left hand and reach over and tap three with your second finger of your right hand and there it is, bingo,  š! Niš.





Žiča Monastery
Exterior of žiča Monastery. Photo from Wikimedia. Photo by Vera Bukvic.

This place is a photographer's dream.
It's also a typist's nightmare. I had trouble typing the capital Z with the diacritic above. So I copied it, cut and paste, from somewhere online.

The monastery is near Kraljevo. Where's that? Looking back at the map of Serbia, you can see that Kraljevo is south of Belgrade, in fact half way between Serbia and Niš.

Medieval Castle in Golubac. Photo from Wikitravel.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.