Towards the end of the 20-minute drive from central Belgrade to Nikola Tesla airport, travellers with time to spare can explore the inside of a huge steel and glass doughnut. A curious piece of architecture, the Aeronautical Museum Belgrade appears to have split: as you pass by, you are separated from the museum by fences and then an aeroplane graveyard – a jumble of planes and helicopters that track the history of Serbia’s (and the former Yugoslavia’s) – air force all the way back to the Second World War. Perhaps the museum was once going to be bigger. Perhaps it’s a marketing ploy: ‘if this is what we leave outside, just imagine the stuff we keep out of the alternating summer rainstorms and new year’s blizzards.’

Inside the museum are further examples of aircraft from Serbia’s somewhat tumultuous history. But it’s the three shabbiest exhibits that are given pride of place, dangling on wires, or propped up at dramatic angles: trophies of the 1999 Nato...