Belgrade - Day Trip to Zemun and Departing For Sofia

Me at the Tower in Zemun

Today we decided to take a short trip outside of old Belgrade.  From the fortress in old Belgrade, you can see, in the distance, past the "brutalist" (communist architecture) buildings of New Belgrade, the faint shape of an architecturally-odd tower.  This tower, Gardos, marks the small town of Zemun.  Zemun, 6 km north of Belgrade, is the southernmost point of the Austro-Hungarian empire.  The town is very distinct from the surrounding area because of the clear Hungarian influence and style.

First we took a bus to New Belgrade and disembarked at the Hotel Jugoslavija, what used to be a very nice hotel but is now just a skeleton of what it used to be.  From there we walked along the riverfront past many of the bar/restaurant floats.  When you reach Zemun, it's clear.  On one side of the street is a grey, drab, communist-era building and on the opposite side of the street is a Hungarian-style house with a reddish-orange sloped roof.  After walking through the local market and getting lost in the back streets of Zemun, we made our way up the hill to the Gardos.  It's an odd tower because it stands alone but looks as if there should be several similar towers, connected by large city walls.  We also stopped in the Church of Sv. Nikola, a very cool Orthodox Church with some impressive iconography inside.

Afterwards we made our way back toward the Hotel Jugoslavija and stopped for lunch on one of the floats, the Yachtsmen's Club.  The food was mediocre but the coolest part of the float was that it was two stories with a pool on the top deck with a slide into a larger pool on the lower floor.  Then we made it back to Old Belgrade and stopped by the oldest bakery in the city, in the bohemian quarter, but were sadly disappointed because nothing looked overly appetizing.

At the moment, it's about 5:00 p.m. and we're relaxing around the hostel.  We're taking the night train to Sofia, Bulgaria tonight.  It leaves at 9:15 and arrives at 7:30.  Unfortunately, all of the sleeper cars were booked so we had to settle for regular coach seats.  It should be a trying night of poor sleeping, but at least we'll make it to Sofia.  This is the first night train either of us has taken and I'm a little anxious about making sure shady characters don't wander into our cabin while we're sleeping and steal all of our stuff, but I'm sure it will be fine.  We're just killing time before heading up to the fortress to grab a bite and catch the sunset before making our way to the train station.  Wish me luck,  Kati never has problems sleeping while we travel but I definitely don't sleep well on trains or without a bed.  We'll catch you in Bulgaria.

Exploring Belgrade

Me at Tito's Mausoleum

Yesterday was our first full day in Belgrade and we made it count.  We started the morning with a typically Serbian breakfast: burek and yogurt.  A burek, ubiquitous in the Balkans, is a filo pastry stuffed with cheese, meat, spinach, or mushrooms...or anything else.  Then we were off to explore the city.

Our first stop was to join a free walking tour of the city.  We did a pretty solid lap around the city, starting in Republic Square.  We walked up Knez Mihailova, the oldest street in the city and the main pedestrian through way.  Then we headed down to Skadarlija, the bohemian quarter, a cobble stoned street lined with cafes and bars that rings with the sound of Serbian trumpet music at night.  From there we headed to Dorcel, the Turkish quarter.  We saw a monument to the event giving rise to Serbian independence from the Ottoman Empire.  A young boy went to draw water from a fountain and was mistakenly killed by the Turks, which caused an uproar in the city and led to a revolt.  We also saw the only mosque in Belgrade...only one of originally 273 mosques remains in the city!  Even this one has police posted outside 24-hours a day because of the violence directed toward the mosque when Kosovo's independence was declared in the 1990s.  We also walked by what the Serbians call "Silicon Valley," (Strahinjica Bana) named not for the technical nature of the businesses located there, but instead for the caliber of the women who frequent the bars on the street.

The remainder of our tour was spent around the Kalemegdan, the fortress, from which you can see the confluence of the Sava and the Danube rivers.  We've been to so many cities situated on the Danube, it's crazy to see where it actually meets another river.  Along the riverbanks you can see floats, essentially barges and rafts that have been turned into bars and nightclubs, the heart of Belgrade's nightlife.  We also saw "?," the oldest cafe in the city.  It's called ? because when it changed ownership the new owner wanted to name it "the cafe near St. Sava's church" but the priests threw a fit and made him change it, so he put a ? above the door until he could think of something, and it stuck.

After the tour ended we grabbed a quick bite to eat and headed out to the two sights I was most excited about: Tito's Mausoleum and Sv. Sava's Cathedral.  Tito's Mausoleum was incredible!!  It's amazing, in the States, Tito is very negatively associated but over here, even after the fall of communism and Yugoslavia, people in all of the former Yugoslavian republics still say that things were better under communism and worship Tito.  We went on the right day, they were opening a new exhibition so we got in free.  We saw the ceremony to unveil the wall with a giant map of the non-alignment countries on it (Those that refused to side with the US or the USSR).  The Serbians do it right; there was no red tape, no giant scissors, just a plaster wall hiding the map that the Minister of Culture took a sledgehammer to.  The museum was really cool, it had all of Tito's old suits and uniforms, gifts that had been given to him by world leaders, and tons of pictures.  The mausoleum itself was even better.  Besides being absolutely stunning, the "House of Flowers" contained a number of batons.  On Tito's birthday every year, people from all over Yugoslavia would participate in relays to run a lavish baton with good wishes inside to Tito.  Tito accepted all of them personally and eventually changed the event from a day celebrating him to a day celebrating the youth of Yugoslavia.

Kati at Sv. Sava

Sv. Sava was equally cool.  It's the second largest Orthodox church in the world!  It's still under construction and the vast majority of the inside is undecorated and you can see people working on it all the time.  But the outside is unbelievable.  The sheer size of the church is mind boggling.  The giant church was built where it stands because the Turks destroyed many valuable and religiously significant relics there.  After seeing the church we stopped by the hostel for a rest before dinner.

For dinner we went to Little Bay, a seemingly unimposing cafe restaurant.  Yet you step inside to the sounds of Italian opera music and the two-floor building is decorated like an opera house.  You can eat dinner in your own private opera box and, later in the night, they have live opera music.  The food was fantastic.  Afterwards we stopped by the Yugoslavian Federal Association of Globe Trotters, a bar I was told I had to go to because it embodies "eclectic cool."  We had to walk down a street that no longer had a sidewalk until we found a very small sign on the door of an otherwise nondescript building.  Skeptically, I rang the bell and was buzzed in.  Eclectic cool is the only way to describe this place.  Everything was extremely old-fashioned and mismatched.  There was a "garden room" that, despite being in the basement of the building, was open-aired. This hole-in-the-wall bar was really neat.  It's one of those places that you know people only go to if they're regulars or if they learn of it from someone who's already been there.  The musical selections (all classic American) were great as well.  We finished the night with a nice walk down the bohemian quarter to soak in the atmosphere and the Serbian music.

Србија & Београд (Serbia & Belgrade): Visiting the White City

We left Montenegro two days ago by train for Belgrade, Serbia.  With our entrance into Serbia came a new level of confusion: the substitution for the Cyrillic alphabet for ours.  The Cyrillic alphabet, invented by two of the most important Bulgarian monks, Cyril and Methodius, mixes Ancient Greek with the even older Glagolitic alphabet.  Cyrillic is used in a limited list of countries: Russia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia, and, of all places, Mongolia (Most of the Russian-esque languages also use it).  Adding Cyrillic to the mix essentially adds another level of necessary decryption that we have to go through to convey what we want or figure out what's going on.  I've taught myself Cyrillic by looking at train station signs and road signs throughout the Balkans, but I'm still far from a mastery and there are about 5 letters that I just don't understand (Luckily they're more rare in words).

Our trip from Montenegro to Belgrade was exhausting.  We were originally going to catch a night train, but Ghorgie convinced us the views are worth traveling during the day.  We woke up at 6:30 in Budva and caught a 1.5 hour bus to Podgorica (pod-gor-eat-za), the capital.  In Podgorica, nobody spoke English but we managed to get train tickets and figure out where we needed to be.  Our train was supposed to leave at 10:00.  It didn't show up until 10:30.  We were supposed to arrive in Belgrade just after 7:00, but we finally rolled into the station around 10:30 at night.  The train would just randomly stop nowhere near a station for extended periods of time.

We got in, exchanged money, and took a cab.  The cab driver kind of ripped me off ($9 instead of $4, so not too bad)...I knew better too.  It could have been completely avoided but I was so exhausted I wasn't paying attention.  Our hostel, Hostel Monmartre, is great.  The guys that run it are super friendly and outrageously helpful.  They greeted us at the door with a shot of Rakija, the local liquor of choice.  As I was standing around the common room waiting for the owner to finish with the formalities, I heard a girl's voice come up from behind me, "You're from Kentucky?" (Clearly commenting on the UK shirt I was wearing).  It turns out that she was from Independence, Kentucky (Near Cincinnati) and was in Belgrade with her brother and a friend, all of which went to OSU.

Kati at Pizza Hut

We were starving.  We hadn't taken dinner on the train with us because we thought we would get into Belgrade with plenty of time.  Now it was 11:00 and we hadn't eaten anything since lunch.  Independence (I never caught her name) told us about a secret place just down the street that we had to check out: Pizza Hut. It was the nicest Pizza Hut I've ever been to!  Unlike in the States, it was a sit-down restaurant with waiters, fancy menus, a full bar, and much healthier food than the pizza they serve at home.  It was fantastic, both because it was just ridiculous and because at 11:00 at night it doesn't matter what you eat, it's all going to be good.