Walking along Krunska Street from Resavska to Kalenić on Monday evening was a real amateur semi-steeplechase in extreme winter conditions. On the sidewalks in places thick, long layers of ice, along the sidewalks drifts of frozen snow which had to be jumped over to get to the other side of the street when parts of the cleared sidewalk could be glimpsed there. The endeavor required good balance, skating basics and decent soles. The road was much better cleaned, but it also froze in places.
Advice appeared on Tik-Tok to spray the soles with hairspray in such conditions. A fellow citizen tried it and got the impression that it had a certain effect. Someone suggested using ski poles for added stability when sliding. The people of Belgrade could also get a jar of industrial salt, so that when they come across ominously frozen sections, they spill it in front of them. The next pedestrian would certainly appreciate it. Help yourself, and God will help you, when the city government won't.
A pensioner who lives in a steep street in Mirijevo has not left her house for days. There is no chance, he says, she wouldn't survive, the snow has turned into a sheet of ice. There is no help for her.
It's all a lie
For Belgrade's city fathers, this is all normal and who has to complain that it snowed in January and then hit a minus. God's will is a higher power, they say to the citizens of Belgrade, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a dilettante, as said by the mayor, dr. Aleksenadar Šapić.
Regime media say that decent citizens - those who are not evil blockaders - have realized that the government is doing everything it can and that there is no need to be angry about snow and ice during the winter. State officials led by Aleksandar Vučić describe to us a situation different from the one we see with our own eyes, like that of an economic tiger and that life has never been better in Serbia.
When everything is based on a lie, even a broken upper arm doesn't hurt, and whoever doesn't dare to go out on the icy street can imagine a sunny spring day and Šapić swimming in some Trieste pool with a water polo cap on his head.
Grinding according to progressive politics
Citizens are slipping on ice these days, as they have been grinding progressive politics for a decade and a half.
For the virtuous Essenes, ten centimeters of snow and minus five in Belgrade are elementary disasters. What would happen if 20 or 40 centimeters fell, and the temperature dropped to minus 11, say?
It doesn't matter. Here the thaw is announced, so God's will, as it caused the ice, will also remove it.
Why didn't the city cleaning workers shovel the snow from the sidewalks, before it turns into ice, as it used to be done, when the City had not yet acquired the appropriate machinery? The answer to that question leads through icy roads to the question of why the canopy in Novi Sad collapsed.
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