Belgrade
Belgrade, as it is not served by any low cost airlines, is spared the stag dos and hen dos that fill other eastern European cities. As such, its tourism is lower volume and less crass. The city is served by a good network of Trams, which are surprisingly thiner than the average tram in other cities.
The streets are full of vendors, selling books, bracelets or food from walls or small displays. They don’t bother you as you walk by, expecting you to be interested and the content is generally targeted at locals.
Gambling is a huge past time here it seems and there are a great number of slot machine venues scattered around the city.
Day 1:
I left work at the usual time and flew to Frankfurt. Its not a great airport to use as a transfer hub due to its size, but this time I had enough to get to the gate and have a quick sandwich in the nearby restaurant.
When we landed in Belgrade, i managed to be the last person to get in line at passport control, and so it was late by the time I got a taxi to the hotel and checked in. Taking a taxi was a mission in itself, I was told by the driver he couldn’t take me anywhere until I got a voucher from the desk back inside the airport. I was issued the needed paper slip, which was never checked by the driver before, during or after my journey.
I’d been given a room upgrade at the Metropol Palace for my stay, and was in a lovely suite with a sofa and a walk in shower. This was ht first time in my 12 city travels that I’d been given an upgrade on my bookings so that was a nice touch.
Day 2:
After the long journey out to Belgrade, it was a late start to the day. I decided against the hotel breakfast and instead went to a nice little coffee place around the corner from the hotel. It was then I discovered that smoking is still allowed indoors in Belgrade.It was really quite unpleasant.
After coffee, i headed to the Tesla Museum, which was closed at the time with a very long queue outside waiting for it to open and for the mandatory tour. I decided not to spend too much time handing around and instead walked into town.
I walked past Tašmajdan park and stopped at светог Марка, the Church of St. Mark. a large blocky orthodox church right by the park.
The weather was scorching hot and I stopped for a small beer in the shadow of the church, also to give a few museums a chance to open as quite a few open late.
The first museum I went to was the Историјски музеј Србије, the Historical Museum of Serbia. It had three exhibits, one in each small wing. The first was about the Assassination of a famous Serbian leader. The second was regarding a colleague of Teslas, a former scientist and photographer to lead the rapid electrification of areas of Serbia. The final element was around the NATO bombing of 1999. Two artists created they impressions of the bombings. There is still a lot of hard feelings about the bombings.
I then headed to the Republic Square for lunch in an outdoor Italian. the pizza was great and the beer was cheap and cold.
I then went to Народни музеј Београд, the National Museum on the Republic Square. The ground floor has an excellent archeology exhibit with really high quality items from the history of the region starting at the neolithic period and moving through to the end of the Roman period. The floors above are an art gallery. Its a good collection, at one point a curator proudly pointed out that they had a Picasso and a Van Gogh in case I had missed them. It makes you realise the danger of becoming blaise when you travel a lot. I’ve seen a great many Men Gogh and Picasso pieces on my recent travels, but that doesn’t make it any less special to the local museum to own some.
I then walked down he street to find Skadarlija, the famous bohemian street in Belgrade. I stopped for a drink or two and to people watch before heading off to the Science and Technology Museum (Музеј науке и технике). The venue was totally empty except for a couple of older people in white shirts and red neck-scarves like boy scouts. The top floor where I started is full of various historical items, mostly from soviet manufacture, such as cinema projectors, cameras, telephones and a complete dentists office.
On the lower floors area series of vehicles, the most interesting being a boat that navigated around Europe through its canals as the pilot attempted to impress a women he had a crush on.
There was also a series of interactive experiments. A room on a slant that tested how well you deal with vertigo as it tricks your brain into thinking you are falling. A series of pulleys that allow you to lift yourself up easily or a way to see your weight on different planets.
Outside there was a disassembled plane, some buses and other machinery. All slowly degrading unfortunately.
I then headed back to the hotel, through the park to have dinner on the rooftop restaurant and look at the view. The food was very good, but there was no outdoor lighting on the balcony so it was very dark. They could have done with some candles.
Day 3:
It was a reasonably early start, but the route I took to find a cafe seemed to have been one of the only routes around Belgrade you could find that didn’t have cafes on every corner. I was almost at the Castle by the time I found somewhere for a croissant and a latte. I did stop at one place about half way and sat down for about ten minutes waiting for some kind of service with no luck. There were some photographers taking pictures of people drinking the coffee so the owners seemed to have been focused on promoting his business rather than doing business.
The castle is in the upper corner of the city, and faces a bend fork in the river, giving it a dominant location over three directions. It's old, but still heavily used with a cafe, restaurant, various museums and a number of basketball courts in the grounds.
Inside the castle, the first thing I found was a small ‘natural history museum’ which actually was just a series of macro photos of various insects. The photos were good and the exhibition was free so its unreasonable to complain, but I’d expected something else. I then went to one of the corners of the castle and visited the Military Museum. Outside there are numerous machines of war. tanks, anti-aircraft batteries, and boats. Inside, there are 52 rooms, some quite small, and some spacious dedicated to military matters over the past centuries. Starting with Roman and Celtic equipment and moving up to Yugoslavian in the modern age. There are tablets scattered through the building offering Augmented Reality views of various things to help put the collection into perspective.
At this point, I stopped for lunch at the Castle restaurant which had outside seating on hewed wooden benches. The food was good and local, though you pay something of a premium due to the location. The beer was cold and excellent.
From the castle, I went next door to the Belgrade Zoo (Београдски зооврт). It was a little sad, the larger animals did not have a huge amount of room, and the weather was so hot most were hiding in whatever shade they could find. I noticed both here and at the Alpine Zoo I had been to at the start of the the month in Austria that I have a marked preference for photographs of predators. There is a grace to them that is missing in prey. That said, the Elephant reaching out over the moat to make friends with the tourists was adorable. A recent investigation has shown that the same part of our brain that lights up seeing a cute cat or dot, lights up when people are seen by an Elephant. To them, we are cute. There were a few American racoons in cages, with warning not to get too close. This was ignored by a number of people who’d not encountered racoons in the wild and so didn’t know how smart and dexterous they were. One woman almost lost her iPhone to a racoons grab.
From the Zoo I headed back into the castle through some of the more ruined areas, the Zindan gate (Зиндан капија). It is here you get a really clear view of the meeting of the Danube and the Sava. At the top corner is the Victory Statue (Победник), a monument to the end of the Balkan wars and Serbia’s victory. It looks across the river towards the modern art museum.
It was a long walk back down and into town, as I decided to go down the steps near the statue and along the outside of the castle. There was little to see on this walk which was a shame, until I reached town and a religious procession heading to the Holy Archangel Michael Church. As this was blocking traffic on the road, i took a different route and stopped at The Black Turtle for a home brewed blueberry beer. I’m not normally a fan of fruit beers, but this was refreshing in the heat.
I then went to Muzej Zepter, an art museum near the centre of town. Set over three floors, with some political art it was really good, though almost empty. There were even a couple of paintings of Margaret Thatcher in the collection.
I then stopped in at Gunners Pub and listened in to two brits talking to two locals about various nonsense.
I’d decided early in the day that I’d be going back to Skadarska for dinner and went to Dva Jelena (Two Deer) for a meal. When I posted a photo, it turns out a friend had been to that exact restaurant recently. Small world. There was good food, huge portions and live local music.
I then headed back to the hotel and made use of the sauna and spa facilities before they closed. I was in there with three French guys, who only used the sauna, so I had some quiet in the steam room. When I took the lift back up to my room, it stopped on the ground floor and an embarrassed American tourist refused to get into the lift with me and told me to enjoy the spa.
Day 4:
The travelling of the last month caught up with me and I didn’t get checked out of the hotel until 10:30. Again I tried the Tesla museum, and again there was a long queue waiting for the tour guides so I decided to head somewhere else.
I walked down to the Temple of Saint Sava (Храм Светог Саве), a huge building that can easily be seen from my hotel’s roof terrace, well lit in the evenings. It wasn’t until later in the day I realised I’d overblown all my photos of the temple due to leaving the ISO at a very high setting the evening before. Outside the temple, there is a series of low fountains, which were a favourite way for a little dog to keep cool in the blistering heat.
I headed back into town, past a series of statues and stopped for a drink in the Cafe Moskva before reaching the Republic Square. In the middle of the square, in the heat of the day, a half court basketball game was going on with cameras and spectators. I watched for a while, but just standing in the direct some was exhausting.
I had lunch at a restaurant called Opera nearby, a cheese starter, with stuffed steak for main and some local wine. It was a good final meal in Serbia. Unsure where to get a cab to the airport, I stopped for a quick beer at a nearby Irish bar and got directions to the nearest taxi rank.
The airport is fairly small, and they only scan the bags at the gate, not going through customs control, which actually makes little difference to how long you are waiting as the delays always seem to be at the gate. Its not a bad way to operate. I had a craft beer in the airport for 810 dinar, which was more or less double the cost of a drink anywhere else I had been in Belgrade, but did use up most of my remaining cash.