Over at Teekay’s

Istanbul, 5/29/06

Originally uploaded by teekay.

A bit of a shock really — from 30-degree, sunny Istanbul (my favorite city in Europe and second only to New York) to 10-degree, rainy Zurich today. Ah, the marvels of air travel…

…for many people in Podgorica, Europe’s youngest capital city, though not everyone will be happy. According to Montenegrin TV, reporting one hour after the polls closed, the yes camp pulled off just under two percentage points more than the 55 percent needed for the independence referendum to succeed.

Head over to East Ethnia to check out why I think the European Commission has done the right thing by giving Romania and especially Bulgaria a few more months to shape up, something that (judging by the reactions there) is well understood in Sofia and Bucharest but less well by Western experts.

Sorry, folks, to all of you who kept checking back only to be disappointed. I haven’t been lazy, just lazy with the blog — and I guess I still am, or else I wouldn’t just give you a list with stuff I’ve written in the meantime, but here it is anyway:

“Balkan Growing Pains: EU hopefuls Bulgaria and Romania have some work to do,” TCS Daily, May 18, 2006

“Gunned Down in Sofia,” Wall Street Journal (Europe), May 15, 2006 (no link, for subscribers only)

“Another Nation-State? Why should Kosovo gain independence, even against the wishes of its Serbian minority, while the same may be denied to Montenegro?” TCS Daily, May 2, 2006

“Constitutional Reform Falters: Bosnia’s parliament rejects constitutional amendments in a major blow to internationally-supervised reform,” Transitions Online, April 27, 2006 (with Mirna Skrbic)

I hope to write more in the coming days. If not, I’ll promise to post pictures from Istanbul — my favorite city in Europe — where I’ll be going with Mrs. Teekay next Thursday.