Belgrade
Belgrade
16 Aug 2014 – 23 Aug 2014
For more mediocre photos taken with fancy cameras, take a look at our Belgrade set on flickr.
Noha
Why did you come to Belgrade?
During the time of the Yugoslavia wars (1991-1999), I was still in Egypt. I didn’t care to hear or read the news, but I often overheard about it. The headlines or the way it was explained to me was always something like this: The serbs and Croats are carrying out massacres on the Muslims in Bosnia. I grew up thinking of Serbs and Croats to be all evil people who kill muslims. Back then, no one explained to me the concept of stereotyping and racism. I mistakenly thought that racism just meant not liking black people (having read “Roots” and watched many American movies that was the only context in which the word was used) and that as long as I am sympathetic towards black people, I can safely say that I am not racist. I was also young and stupid enough to think that the governments (especially non-arab governments) carry their people’s wishes, and that it must be that all Serbians wanted muslims to be killed. During my first year of my master’s degree studies in Chicago, I met Natasha. At the time, I was not very good at discerning accents, and she spoke a strong british accent which got me interested in talking to her. I asked her if she is British, and she responded that she is Serbian. My first reaction was internal alarm (I was wearing the veil at the time). A short time later, we were both in a class with difficult assignments. I asked her to get together and partner up on the assignments to which she agreed. From there on, and for the last 8 years we have been friends. She was even my maid of honor.
Natasha and I. New York, October 2012
Natasha spoke a lot about her love for Belgrade. I could sense that she left out of necessity and that her heart remained there. Her manners reminded me of home, she is very warm, has a strong sense of duty and generosity towards her guests even if it inconvenience her, making me baklava and other sweets whenever I visited Chicago, picking me up at the airport everytime. She is very loyal to her friends and dutifully puts her family above her own personal happiness. It was knowing Natasha that I learned how close the Ex-Yugoslav is to the Eastern character. This how I initially got interested in visiting Belgrade.
While traveling in Europe, I read alot about the Blakan wars, and it made me curious to visit the country(/ies) with the most recent history of war and see real people who have gone through such difficult times.
What is your impression of Belgrade?
I wish I was a better writer to better capture my complex impressions of Belgrade. Of all the cities we have visited, Belgrade is one of my favorites if not the favorite. Belgrade gave me many impressions: Parts of it reminded me of Poland, Budapest and St. Petersburg.
Nothing is polished about Belgrade, it has many imperfections, not thoroughly clean. The imperfection is just enough to give it an interesting air but not so much to make it undesirable or inconvenient. To me, this is the magic formula for a city. Perhaps this justifies why I didn’t like perfect Stockholm.
The center shows strong traces of past glory. It conveys much more of a big strong capital with eventful history than Warsaw for example.
It seems to be one of those capitals that will satisfy everyone’s cultural tastes: cinema, literature, music, diversity in restaurants of international cuisine, cool hidden hangout spots etc…
It has some of the elements present in every European city: the same shopping brands, the big luxury shopping streets (even though it lacks Starbucks for e.g. which is a good thing).
Knez Mihailova street
It also has some of the elements that are present in Cairo and (I am assuming) all developing countries (unfortunately, Cairo is the only city I know from the third world): kiosks selling newspapers, refreshments and sweets (they call them Trafika); open air book sellers ; stray dogs and cats; window air conditioning units in every window in every residential building; exposed buildings under construction; run down building facades; cafés and restaurants in residential streets, cars parking on the side walk.
Belgrade lies on the Danube and the Sava (which meets the Danube by Belgrade). In summer, most of the population hangs out by the river in restaurants and bars.
The two important churches are Saint Sava and Saint Marks. These two churches are grand from outside, but almost empty (under construction) from inside. Almost every Serbian we met joked about the the fact that they will be under construction forever. The self deprecating humor about one’s country’s own failings is another characteristic similar to Egyptians. You wouldn’t find such humor popular against Americans.
Saint Sava
Saint Marks
It has a Bohemian part being compared to Paris’ Montmartre (Skadarlija) which I found a bit too touristy.
Across the river is a beautiful residential neighborhood called Zemun.
At night, like Cairo, Belgrade is at its best, the imperfections are less visible and the city lights work to its advantages.
Whom did you interact with?
We rented a room on airbnb from a girl called Marija. She is an archeologist currently doing her Phd. She seems to be struggling to find work to support herself and works part time as a waitress. She doesn’t seem to be optimistic about her future in Serbia and is considering to improve her life by going elsewhere. Before airbnb, she did couchsurfing for years, but had some unpleasant experiences in Paris which made her stop hosting.
We also met Nikolai and Ana, a nice young couple that previously surfed with our friends Fred and Yann in Paris. They were very sweet and we enjoyed their company very much. We only met them for half an hour as they didn’t have more time, but I wish to see them more next time we are in Belgrade.
How did you feel about this surfing experience? What were your interactions with your hosts like?
Couchsurfing does not seem as popular in this area and after some incidents in Paris, we felt the need to rent instead of being hosted in order to have more control over our accommodation circumstances. Marija’s approach to hosting was a lot different from our airbnb hosts in West Europe. I felt like it was our home. For example, we spent most of our time in the living room, as opposed to locking ourselves in our room in those situations. She didn’t seem bothered by our presence at all, and made an effort to talk to us and get to know us. She was very generous with the checkout arrangement and didn’t impose on us to leave by a certain time.
The apartment was very nice and clean. Our room was looking on an enclosed building shaft (not sure what to call those things) which made the room stuffy sometimes (especially if someone cooked smelly food in another apartment). Also, it was a little hot and there was no air-conditioning. But the fact that we could lounge freely in the living room which had a healthy stream of air coming to it, made up for it. Usually, I try to be accurate in mentioning these issues on my airbnb commentaries, but I didn’t have the heart to write anything negative given how sweet Marija was, and how much I knew she needed her airbnb business.
How did you spend your time in Belgrade?
We had a great time in Belgrade (a little reminiscent of our time in Prague). We stayed up late, woke up whenever we wanted. We saw the city in a relaxed pace, mostly did and saw everything we wanted to do and see. We lounged in cafés sometimes, and we got to try out many restaurants.
Amazing veggie burger at Radost Fina Kuhinjica
We also took a day trip to Smederovo, a nice town with a beautiful fortress on the Danube.
Smederovo
Smederovo
What did you like about Belgrade? What do you think Peter liked about Belgrade?
Of the many places we visited, I think Belgrade is one of our favorite cities. I can’t put my finger on the exact reason but I can list many things I loved about Belgrade.
Like I mentioned, the similarity to Cairo makes it very endearing to me. I asked Natasha for her house address to go and see the street where she lived. Ironically, she lived on a street called John Kennedy (and ended up living in the U.S.). Her street was again a strong reminder of residential streets in Cairo, and I felt that she had a very similar childhood to mine. She told me to look for her favorite Ice cream which is called “Plasma”. At first, I couldn’t find it, then I found that they have a brand of cookies called “Plasma”. I tried it and it was again, very similar to the manufactured cookies in Egypt, very simple and not overly sweet. I finally found the ice-cream flavored after the cookies and I liked it alot.
In front of Natasha’s house in Belgrade
Natasha’s home in Belgrade
Serbians were very friendly and kind to us, whether in shops or restaurants, etc…. One particular memory I am fond of is a salesman at the post office. We were looking for a particular type of stamps to send to our friend Jean in Paris (who collects stamps of birds and Nobel prize winners). The salesman saw me looking at a display of stamps and offered to help. I told him what i was looking for, and he brought it to me, as well as gave me the whole book to look through. This was not the type of friendly service where he was looking to sell me more (I doubt he profits from me buying stamps from the post office), he was simply a good natured and sweet man.
Belgrade is very affordable for us compared to the west. One Euro makes around 100 Serbian Dinars. We could eat a good meal at a good restaurant for 15 Euros. A similar meal would cost at least 60 Euros in Paris.
Belgrade has far less tourists than Prague or Budapest. There is not even a Fodor’s or Rick Steves guidebook for it. Most of the other tourists seemed to be from the Ex-Yugoslavia. While this is not good for Serbia’s economy, it was perfect for me. I don’t like cities when they become a popular tourist destination because they lose their authenticity and start catering only for tourists and setting money traps.
Peter particularly enjoyed the Serbian language and learned Cyrillic and have been practicing by reading signs, menus, etc…
Is there anything you disliked about Belgrade? Do you think Peter disliked anything about Belgrade?
We were eaten alive by mosquitos! On the night we arrived, we went to a restaurant to have dinner. We were seated outside in the garden and I was wearing a dress. In the hour that we were siting there, all the mosquitos in the neighborhood must have smelled my foreign blood and gathered to feast on my legs. I think I was bitten on that night more than the collective bites of my entire life. After that first night, I have been bit enough times for the rest of my life.
Belgrade has a good number of stray dogs. While living in Cairo, I have always feared stray dogs and had the notion that they would chase me and bite me. A sight of a dog, used to throw terror in my heart and I believed that they can smell my fear, which makes me even more afraid. I was actually chased by dogs twice in Cairo. (Add that to my fear of flying, fear of descending on rocks, the list never ends).
Smoking is allowed everywhere, and it seems like the majority of the population smokes which makes it unpleasant sometimes in restaurants and cafés.
I mentioned above the friendliness of the Serbs. While the ones we meet in the street, restaurants , etc… are very warm and friendly, it seemed like they go through some sort of transformation once they are in an administrative or public sector job duty. Two stories to illustrate my observation:
Sotry#1: Since I hold an Egyptian Passport, I am deemed a worthless human being who needs a special permission (i.e. visa) to go to most countries. My residence permit in France allows me to visit the Schengen countries. Since Serbia is not Schengen, we went to the Serbian embassy in Paris to apply for a visa. We had called prior to going to ask how long the process takes and how long they keep the passport. They said that it takes two days.
When we arrived to the embassy, just like the Egyptian embassy, you step in and you are in a little piece of that country. Things looked shabby and disorganized. The guard (also used as receptionist and to filer out the people coming) told me to go to Window #3. For a whole hour, there was no one sitting behind window #3. Finally, an employee emerged and took my paperwork. She came back to talk to me in the waiting room (not from behind the window which is a dimension I noticed western embassies never break) and told me that she needs my residence permit card in France. She said that once I get her the card, she will process the visa and give me my passport in two days. I returned two days later with my card. I was told to go to window #3 where, again, there was no one sitting there. After the obligatory one hour wait, the employee emerged and took my paperwork again. After another hour where everyone who came after me was seen to, she called me, asked me to pay the visa fee, and told me to come back to retrieve my passport (with the visa) after two weeks!! I reminded her of her many past promises that it only takes two days. She said that they were busy and cannot do it before two weeks. Knowing that this is how things work in Egypt, I resorted to the Egyptian way of solving such issues: Yelling!. I expressed my anger, and I insisted that she keeps her previous promise. it worked of course and she said to come back in two days to retrieve my passport. She emphasized to come after 2:00pm to retrieve it (note that the consulate hours are 10 to 12). I returned after two days and the office seemed closed. I knocked and knocked until they opened and expressed in surprise that they don’t handle the public at these hours. I insisted that I was told to come at this time. A different employee than the one who dealt with me before, told me to wait. I sat in the waiting room and watched him carry on with other work for one hour. Then, he called me and asked me what is my name and nationality. I told him and he grabbed a folder from a drawer that had a lot of passports, and handed me my passport with the visa in it. It remains a mystery why he made me wait an hour if the passport was sitting there ready the whole time, but I am guessing that they have a rule that no one can be seen to in less than one hour (again just like Egypt). Of the three (Serbia, Bosnia and Montenegro) , I was treated best at the Serbian embassy so I actually walked away withe feeling of gratitude towards Serbia.
Story#2: While in Belgrade, we wanted to take a day trip to a town called Smedorovo. We went to the bus station ticket counter and asked for tickets to Smedorovo. The woman didn’t speak English, so we simply said: Smedorovo x 2. While waiting, we realized that she sold us bus tickets to a town called Valjevo. We went back to the same woman on the counter, waited our turn (hence missed the bus), gave her the ticket and said: Smedorovo. She acted frustrated and started yelling at us in Serbian as if to say that we are confusing her and that we changed our mind or didn’t say the name of the city correctly. As you might notice, these two names have nothing to do with each other (Smederovo; Valjevo), plus we never heard of Valjevo before so we could not have said that by mistake. Instead of simply apologizing and changing the tickets, she gave our wrong tickets to another counter and told us to go there. We had to wait our turn at the other counter, then when it was finally our turn, the woman asked in broken English: Where do you want to go?
We said Smedorvo. She started making math calculations on a piece of paper in front of her (not using a calculator) , doing what looked like a lengthy addition and subtraction operation of carry over and all that stuff. I figured that she is calculating the difference in price between the tickets to Smederovo and Valjev. She handed us an amount less than what we had paid originally and motioned that she is done with us. We were confused and asked her to give us our new tickets to Smederovo. She seemed frustrated with us, called a supervisor who came and said to us: Where do you want to go? !!! We again said (for the 100th time): Smedorovo. She took most of the money she gave us back and gave us the new tickets. At this point I understood that the second woman was initially just giving us a refund (which was less than what we paid) and not selling us the Smederovo tickets. I tried to ask for them to give us the correct refund since Smederovo ticket was obviously much cheaper (two thirds cheaper), but it turned into a shouting match and Peter didn’t want to pursue us getting back our money.
Those two stories while frustrating at the time, make for funny stories in retrospect. The mosquitos, smoke, stray dogs and government employees are nothing to make my love for Belgrade any less.
How did the reality compare to your expectations for Belgrade?
It was as interesting and stimulating as I expected it to be.
I didn’t expect the people to be friendly based on our experience in Croatia. I also didn’t expect the strong similarities to Cairo.
Did you exercise?
No, I had the chance but I didn’t.
Any regrets?
Natasha had recommended a boat tour but I completely forgot about it. She had also recommended a tour called “Nikolai Tesla” tour, and to visit the Waldorf Astoria for a Tesla dessert called “Electricity” but the tour was only in Serbian, and the hotel (which is now called Square Nine now and not Waldorf Astoria) only served the dessert (which is actually called Tesla, and not electricity) starting from September. I think apart from that, we managed to do all of Natasha’s recommendations. Most of all, I wish she was there with us.
Did you learn anything new?
Life is good in Belgrade if you can afford it. It seems that finding a job in Serbia is very difficult and requires strong connections. Most of the income seems to be coming from the service industry.
The people we met seem to feel that Serbia is being unjustly blamed for all the wars pinned as the sole wrong-doer in every situation. I do agree that the reality is much more complicated than the black and white picture always painted by the media. It is a lesson I learned from the current events in Egypt as well.
I would like to talk about the war but this post is getting too long already so I will bore you with that in the next post.
How do you feel about this experience so far?
I am a little sad to leave Belgrade. I wish we could stay longer. Being in Serbia is one of the most stimulating places I have been since St. Petersburg. I wish we had more time to explore Serbia, but as usual the paperwork in Paris made us lose one week (when we had to go back after Budapest) and is limiting us to be back to Paris by mid September.
Additional comments?
Being in Belgrade was bittersweet for me as it reminded me of the Cairo of my childhood. Since then, Cairo took a turn for the worse and became much more chaotic and random due to many political and corruption reasons. But Cairo didn’t suffer a war in the nineties, embargo, sanctions, etc… I am not sure why Belgrade (Serbia) can emerge out of all this in better shape and Cairo (Egypt) can’t work it out. What is it that is blocking us so much from development?. I was very impressed by the public transportation in Belgrade (contrary to Natasha and Marija’s poor opinion about it). Belgrade does not have a subway, however, the buses ran frequently and efficiently. The payment system worked well, and the buses were relatively clean. I learned from Natasha that some of the buses (the yellow ones) are a donation from Japan on a condition that they are kept clean. While all the Serbians I met seemed displeased with it, I found that it was a lot better than some countries like Latvia. Also, the traffic rules seemed to be obeyed for the most part, and the traffic itself is not as overwhelming as New York for example, or Cairo.
Serbian food consists mainly of grilled meats. A typical meal is 80% meat, 15% carbs (a side of potatoes for example) and 5% vegetables (optional). After eating twice a traditional Serbian meal, I felt unhealthy after eating so much meat, which made me decide to stop eating meat until the end of our stay in Belgrade. I heroically resisted all types of meat and restricted my diet to carbs and refined sugars (ha!).
While Nikolai Tesla was born in Croatia and immigrated to U.S. (i.e. never lived in Serbia), the fact that he is born in the Orthodox faith makes him Serbian (note that the identity between these balkan entities seems to be dictated by faith and not by birth). We visited the Tesla museum in Belgrade. We were told that we have to take a guided tour (which I usually hate). While waiting for the tour, we looked around the museum, and realized that it is very small and not that interesting. It mostly had benches with electrical devices that reminded me of our Physics lab in my Engineering university. This was not like the museums in the west, full of self explanatory displays and information. At the beginning, they showed a movie about Tesla’s life which felt like a Propaganda movie. However, the strength of the museum came from the showmanship of our tour guide. He turned the boring display alive with some impressive demonstration of Tesla inventions, and some funny jokes. While I regretted going there five minutes after we bought the tickets, by the end, I was happy we did.
What are your expectations for Novi Sad?
A small city dominated by a fortress and not much of a historical center (either small or non existent).
Peter
Why did you come to Belgrade?
I think we’ve wanted to come to Belgrade for a while. In the first place, Noha’s friend Natasha comes from Belgrade and had plenty of things to recommend that we see. It’s also a former communist capital (but recall that Yugoslavia wasn’t part of the Soviet Bloc) which we like seeing. And of course, it’s an intriguing place to visit after all of the 90’s Yugoslav wars, with a lot of dark recent history that is more interesting (to learn about, not to live through) than the shinier, happier stories of the Western European countries that we’ve spent most of our time in.
What is your impression of Belgrade?
Like in Budapest, things are big in Belgrade. Huge communist apartment blocks and rounded building facades at street corners. The imposing Hotel Moskva (Moscow). St. Sava, the largest Orthodox Church in the world. Even the post office looks like a monument.
At the same time, downtown Belgrade felt relatively small: the apartment where we stayed was very close to St. Sava, and from there we could easily walk to Knez Mihailova, the main shopping street, and then to Kalemegdan, the fortress and surrounding park at the confluence of the Danube and Sava rivers, in well under an hour. Across the Danube in Novi Beograd (‘New Belgrade’) are the more residential sections of the city, including Zemun, with waterfront restaurants and the Janos Hunyadi tower. To be honest I have some difficulty trying to sum up Belgrade in a succinct way, because there’s such a variety of things to see there.
Whom did you interact with?
We stayed with an AirBnB host, Marija, a Ph.D. student in archeology. We actually didn’t interact with her that much given how long we stayed there, but we had a few conversations when we are in the apartment together and she was very friendly and helpful.
We also had a brief time with a couple whom Fred had hosted once in Paris, Nikola and Ana. Ana had just come back from two months working in Dubai when we contacted them, and they were about to leave to visit relatives in central Serbia (Ana told us, a little embarrassed, that her family makes rakija, brandy made from fermented fruit, which seemed to me a very typically Serbian/Balkan thing to do), so we only had time for a drink together. They were very nice and we talked about traveling and so on, it was too bad our times didn’t overlap more.
How did you spend your time in Belgrade?
The day we left Paris (Fri 15.08.2014) we had lunch near Place Gambetta before heading to Gare de l’Est for our train to Munich. The train ride to Munich must have been uneventful because I didn’t take any notes about it, and I only vaguely recall some annoyance with the luggage racks. We arrived to Munich and had a meal at Burger King while waiting for the overnight train to Zagreb. When it arrived we got into our compartment and for a few minutes we thought we would have it to ourselves. But a young Polish girl came — she was friendly so it didn’t seem like such a big deal. I’m not sure why she was headed to Zagreb but I think she worked in Croatia. She told us a story of Serbian border agents giving her a lot of grief and going through all her things, most likely because she looked suspicious to them, having dreadlocks at the time. Technically she shouldn’t have been on our train — she had a Eurail pass but didn’t have a seat reservation.
Around 1:00 AM (so technically Sat 16.08.2014) after coming to Stuttgart we heard three German backpacking guys having an argument with people in another compartment; it seems they were rejected because they also lacked seat reservations. They wandered around and eventually came to our compartment and asked if we had three seats available. We said yes but gave them some pretty hard stares, and they came in, meek as milk, sitting quietly (and in one case, hugely) in their seats and trying to sleep. The ride was pretty bad and I found it almost impossible to sleep. Around 8:00 AM or so they got out at Ljubljana, giving us a little bit of space for the last few hours to Zagreb. When we arrived we bought train tickets to Belgrade and then got some greasy pastries at the station, and ate them at an outdoor café, before boarding the train to Belgrade. The ride was fine, rather slow, and border control didn’t give us any trouble. We arrived to Belgrade and after some typical initial confusion with the trams and buses we found our way to the apartment, where Marija’s mother greeted us, showed us around the apartment, speaking in Italian because it was the closest intelligible language for us. After she left we settled in and later went out for a mediocre pizza, where we had our first experience of Serbia’s ravenous mosquitoes.
We woke up late the following day (Sun 17.08.2014), and pretty much every day after that. While I was sitting in the living room Marija came, so we said hello, and then she left again shortly afterwards. We headed out to see the city, taking the bus to Students Square (Studentski Trg), then walking around Knez Mihailova.
Noha needed a new pair of jeans, as her old ones had huge holes in them, but the Diesel store that we had been hoping to go to on Knez Mihailova was closed for renovations. From Knez Mihailova we walked to Kalemegdan, walking around the park and fortress and taking a few pictures by the river. It was quite hot so we didn’t walk around very much.
From there we went to Skadarska street, often described in guide books as Belgrade’s bohemian quarter, or its Montmartre. Actually we found it to be mainly a street of touristy cafés and restaurants, like one we had seen in Zagreb, though it seems that some of the restaurants are quite well-known now. At the lower end of the street we found a decent café for coffee, tea, and a dessert, and tried to decide where we would have dinner later. The café had wifi, another thing that we’ve noticed in Serbia — free wifi is available practically everywhere, in contrast to several other Western European countries (e.g. France). We decided on Radost Fina Kuhinjica, a vegetarian restaurant, because we knew that the Serbian national cuisine contains a lot of meat and we wanted to make sure to eat something lighter first. We were the only people in the restaurant, which was odd because the food was excellent and reasonably priced. After the meal we took the bus home.
In the (late) morning the next day (Mon 18.08.2014) we did our laundry and went out to an American-themed diner nearby. It was only for convenience, I don’t think either of us feels any nostalgia for American diners. We came back home to hang the laundry then went out to St. Sava, the huge Orthodox church close by the apartment. It is still undergoing construction and the inside was almost empty.
We returned downtown to visit the Fresco Gallery, containing replicas of various frescoes from monasteries throughout Serbia, but of course since it was Monday it was closed. We stopped by the small post office just off of Knez Mihailova then had coffee nearby, and then walked to the bus stop close to the bridge to go to Zemun across the river. In Zemun we walked around, finding another smaller pedestrian area, and up to the Janos Hunyadi tower.
On the way back to the bus we saw a small cat toying with a mouse — it kept chasing the mouse, letting it get ahead and then chasing it again; we followed the pair (which briefly became a trio as a bigger, older cat started following curiously) and inadvertently saved the mouse’s life by scaring the cat away with our stalking.
We returned to the Old Belgrade side across the river and ate at a restaurant called ‘?’, which is well-known and serves traditional Serbian food. At first it seemed like they did not want to seat us but after waiting a few minutes we got a table. The food was OK, very heavy for us, and when I asked for the leftovers the waiter packed only the meat, as if the vegetables and potatoes were worthless.
On Tuesday (19.08.2014) I ate the leftovers for lunch, and while we were eating Marija came to ask us about a couple, Brazilian and Filipino, who wanted to rent the room for eight months. She didn’t know how much to ask, so she wanted our advice. It later turned out that the couple had only about 120€ for their monthly budget in total, which is pretty insane, and I have no idea how they expect to live in Belgrade which is cheap but not that cheap. We stayed in for much of the afternoon to do trip planning, then went downtown for postcards and bad lemonade at a café before getting dinner again at Radost Fina. We walked home, stopping by St. Mark’s church to see it lit at night.
The next day (Wed 20.08.2014) we went to the Tesla Museum.
Tesla was a Serb born in Croatia, so both countries claim him — in Zagreb we saw at least one statue of him in his characteristic pose, head cradles in his left hand. At the museum, which is very small, we watched a 20 minute movie about his life that played like propaganda, making him out to be a saint. Then the guide made a demonstration with a Tesla coil, making fluorescent bulbs held by observers light without without being plugged in. The museum also houses Tesla’s ashes in a spherical urn, and Noha managed to get a picture before the guide told us that it wasn’t allowed. From the museum we walked to St. Mark’s to see the inside, but like St. Sava it was practically empty and under construction.
The main post office was next door so we went to ask about stamps — our friend Jean in Paris collects stamps, particularly those with birds and with Nobel prize winners (imagine if a bird won a Nobel prize). We thought we could find a stamp with Ivo Andrić, author of The Bridge on the Drina, since he won the Nobel for literature in 1961; his parents were actually Bosnian Croats but he wrote as a Yugoslav, and the Serbian post office does indeed have a stamp with him on it. A surprisingly nice post office employee let us look at a whole book of stamps and pick out the Andrić and bird ones. We walked from there to Hotel Moskva and had drinks and desserts outside, and later had dinner at Stare Hercegovina, which Nikola had recommended to us (through Facebook, as we hadn’t met yet), then walked home.
We went to the mall on the Novi Beograd side the next day (Thu 21.08.2014) to get Noha’s jeans and some shoes, since those were also falling apart, then went down to the river to walk and take some pictures of Old Belgrade and Kalemegdan. Afterwards we took a bus further into Zemun to find Natasha’s apartment, which she still owns despite not living in Belgrade. We got a little lost but eventually found it, in a nice residential area with lots of children and families playing outside.
We took a bus back to the Old Belgrade side to meet Nikola and Ana at Mixer House, a fancy looking club where they had planned to meet some friends to watch some kind of one-man show. We had a drink nearby and chatted. Ana told us about Dubai and how she turned down an offer to work there long term — I assume that it would have been only part of the year, but even that was too much after her experience there in the summer. They told us how difficult it is to find a job in Serbia (they are both economists), and a little about their experiences in Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro, and also Paris, &c. We parted back at Mixer House and they offered to help if we needed anything else while in Serbia. We had dinner at an organic food restaurant that seemed to be under the bridge to Novi Beograd, then took the bus home.
Our plan for Friday (22.08.2014) was to go to Smederovo to see the fortress on the Danube (another one). We went to the bus station next to the train station, but they directed us to another domestic bus terminal. At the terminal I asked at the information booth about the next bus to Smederovo, and then we went to the ticket counter. The woman sold us tickets and we went to the bus platform, then got on the bus when it arrived. I asked the driver if it was the bus for Smederovo and he said no, and took me to another one. We looked more closely at the tickets and realized that the woman at the ticket counter had given us tickets to Valjevo, not Smederovo. We got on the bus and the driver scanned it and then again pointed out to us that it was for Valjevo (I had hoped that it wouldn’t matter), so we had to go back to the ticket counter. This led to an argument where the first woman acted as if we had said Valjevo and not Smederovo, then handed us off to her colleague, who seemed confused and gave me money back, but not as much as we had paid for the tickets in the first place, and no tickets. Another woman with some English came and got the second one to give us tickets to Smederovo, and I thought everything was square. Actually as Noha suspected they should have given us more change back (they shorted us about 400 RSD). Anyway we took the bus to Smederovo and took some pictures at the fortress, which is right next to the bus station and contains a park inside its grounds. The original fortress is much smaller, occupying a corner of the park, and requiring a small fee to see. After walking around the walls we wandered through the town a little bit, then took the bus back to Belgrade, where we had some leftovers for dinner.
Our last full day in Belgrade (Sat 23.08.2014) we walked to look at some of the buildings bombed by NATO in 1999…
then to the Fresco Gallery, which had free admission. I think it’s a great idea, especially since most of the original frescoes can’t be photographed, but of course the frescoes lose a bit of their power and interest when taken out of their context.
Next to the Fresco Gallery was Square Nine Hotel where we tried to get a ‘Tesla Dessert,’ a chocolate cake with different kinds of ice cream layers, but the waiter told us they only serve the ‘Tesla Menu’ starting in September, which seems odd. We went from there back to Radost Fina for the third time, and after a long dinner (they really need to hire more waiters) started walking home. On Knez Mihailova we passed by an ice cream stand that had ‘Plazma’ flavored ice cream — Plazma is a brand of biscuits, and Natasha had specifically recommended we try the ice cream. It was pretty good, and after that we took the bus home.
In the morning (Sun 24.08.2014) we packed and got out of the room by 10:00 AM so that Marija could clean it for the next guest who was coming that morning. He arrived, from Taiwan, and Marija let us stay in the apartment for a while until our ride to Novi Sad. I fell asleep until around 1:30 PM, and then we took the bus to our meeting point for our ride, and ate at a restaurant next to it while waiting.
What did you like about Belgrade? What do you think Noha liked about Belgrade?
I really liked Belgrade. Even though it’s not a conventionally pretty city, like Paris or Vienna or Budapest, and doesn’t have the long history of those cities — Rebecca West makes it sound like it was basically a dirt road village before the late 19th or early 20th century — there’s something very appealing to me about its hodgepodge, ramshackle nature. I don’t think there’s any sight I liked in particular.
I think Noha probably liked Belgrade in general, and especially liked going over to Zemun to see the residential areas where Natasha lived. As with anywhere in Eastern Europe, it’s also nice to feel like one’s money goes further, and we can afford to eat at a nice restaurant without fretting over the bill. The flip side to this is that the food in grocery stores or in cheaper places is often poor quality or greasy, so we almost have to eat at a nice restaurant if we don’t want to eat crappy bread and cheese or lots of oily meat.
Is there anything you disliked about Belgrade? Do you think Noha disliked anything about Belgrade?
Mainly the aforementioned food issue. I suppose there must have been better groceries in the Novi Beograd side.
By the way, not that it bothers me very much, but non-food items and brand name stuff costs the same everywhere. One can’t really make a trip to Eastern Europe to get cheap luxury items — maybe one can still do that in Asia, but then again maybe it’s no longer true there either, or else it’s all knockoff stuff.
Oh, actually, there are some things that we both disliked — the heat (but it’s August, what can we expect), and the mosquitoes. People say that because of the recent flooding the the humidity of this summer the mosquitoes are much worse than usual. We had a problem where we felt hot in the room at night but if we opened the window we risked being eaten in our sleep.
Also, Noha doesn’t really like stray dogs in general, and there are a ton of them in Belgrade.
How did the reality compare to your expectations for Belgrade?
I thought we would enjoy it a lot, and we did.
Any regrets?
The heat prevented us from seeing much of Kalemegdan. I think we could have seen a little more of it.
Way back when we were first planning our Balkan trip I started listening to Pimsleur Croatian — spoken Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian are almost identical, the major difference is that Serbian is written in a Cyrillic alphabet. I wish I had continued with it, but we got bogged down with stupid Paris stuff and I lost momentum.
Did you learn anything new?
Speaking of Cyrillic, the Serbian alphabet is easier than the Russian one. I feel like someone looked at the Russian alphabet and said, ‘Well, these letters are dumb/pointless. Let’s just not use them.’ None of that nonsense with e/ë/э, the ь character got smushed into љ and њ, no ъ, no я or ю or ы (my least favorite vowel), no щ, й got turned into j. Unfortunately they couldn’t leave well enough alone, and had to add џ and ђ (hey guys, can you really hear the difference between these?), and ћ (again, is this really different from ч? y’all are faking). But, somewhat surprising to me, the latin alphabet is used almost as much as the cyrillic, at least in quotidien matters like with menus and signs, though in official documents only cyrillic is used.
Serbia seems like it’s in a real rough patch, politically and economically. A lot of corruption and it seems impossible to get a job. I didn’t ask but I imagine there must be some sort of nationalist parties that try to blame everything on foreigners or minorities, or everyone’s favorite punching bag, the Roma, as we saw in Hungary for example.
How do you feel about this experience so far?
Good. The first few days it felt a little weird that we didn’t have any Paris visa-related tasks to be doing. Of course we eventually had to start doing more trip planning but that stuff is much less stressful than visa stuff. So we feel a lot more at ease now.
Additional comments?
There’s a street named after Gavrilo Princip, right by the bridge to Novi Beograd. In the west I think he is normally portrayed as either a villain or a pathetic fool, but I guess the Serbs still think of him in a positive, heroic light.
What are your expectations for Novi Sad?
Well, we had originally thought about skipping Novi Sad, then we thought about making a day trip from Belgrade, but then when we realized that we wanted to see both the Fruška Gora and Sremski Karlovci which are both much closer to Novi Sad then Belgrade, we decided to go for a few nights. I think it will be a lot quieter than Belgrade. I hope we can manage to see some monasteries in the Fruška Gora.
For more mediocre photos taken with fancy cameras, take a look at our Belgrade set on flickr.
Un très long voyage de noces | A Very Long Honeymoon 