Our flight was fine last night. It was a tiny plane so we boarded quickly and actually took off 15 minutes early which was nice. We arrived in Belgrade, Serbia and got our luggage. Unfortunately airline staff had hacked into my zips instead of unlocking my TSA lock for some reason, so my lock is stuffed and it’s hard to lock the zips. Very weird and disappointing!
Our taxi driver drove like an absolute maniac, so we were at our hotel within 15 minutes despite the 20-25 minute estimate google provided us. On arrival it was dark and I think we felt a little invaded due to the bag. It didn’t help when we got to our hostel and our room STANK of cigarette smoke (even though there is a no smoking sign on the door). But we slept ok and woke up feeling relatively fresh. Unfortunately for Mum, she has now been the one to be attacked by mozzies. We are not having much luck! They’re very aggressive over here.
What a difference some daylight and a friendly walking tour guide can make. We started the day off by ourselves walking around, commenting on the mixture of different architectural styles and how Belgrade reminded us slightly of Istanbul. First we visited Bajrakli Mosque, then walked to a few churches and a small part of the Kalemegdan (fortress park). We then strolled down Knez Milhailova Street, a pedestrian street which was fairly quiet at this early stage. We had a quick toilet stop and were a little stressed out when the gender listed on the toilets was in Cyrillic alphabet. We had to wait for a man to come out of one door to confirm we needed to use the other!
After a quick supermarket/snack stop, we joined the free walking tour at 11am by the Knez Milhailova statue. Our guide was Jovana and she told us that Knez Milhailova translates to Prince Michael. He liberated Belgrade from the Ottomans in 1867 after about 350 years. Overall, Serbia was occupied by the Ottomans for around 500 years, but they arrived first in the south and took a while longer to get to Belgrade. Belgrade was then one of the first places liberated. This Ottoman occupation explains why we thought Belgrade looked a little like Istanbul! Knez Milhailova also invested a lot of time and money into creating the national museum and national theatre, which are both adjacent to his statue.
Jovana told us that Belgrade has had the most battles/wars out of any European capital, 114. As well as this shocking statistic, the city has been destroyed and rebuilt a whopping 44 times. This explains why there is such a strange mish mash of architectural styles. Some buildings are beautiful 19th century built during the time of Austro-Hungarian rule, others (few!) are older than that from the Ottoman or Turkish times, and others are hideous and from communist times. To be fair though, a lot of these buildings were needed quickly at a minimal cost post World War II when 60% of buildings had been destroyed, so it makes sense that they aren’t “beautiful”.
One of our stops was Skadarlija, sometimes referred to as the Montmartre of Belgrade. It was originally a poor area where artists, dancers etc started off living due to not having much money. However, the area soon became very popular due to the artistic vibe that came about. Jovana said that there are many musicians who play while you eat here, and a tacky way that people sometimes tip them is by sticking bank notes on their sweaty forehead. If it doesn’t stick, they don’t get to keep it! We tried some rakia here as well. It’s an alcoholic drink that is very strong, but this taste was sweetened with honey so was actually pretty nice. Serbs and other Balkan people use it to cure sore throats etc as well as for drinking!! For a short time, it cured my sore throat I had woken with!
We saw a house from the first half of the 18th century which is the oldest house in the city. Considering how much conflict there has been here, it’s incredible it has survived.
We learned that the Cyrillic alphabet used here was used because it was adopted from monks in Bulgaria that settled here. Unlike Russian, all the characters used in the alphabet here are single sound characters and there are 30 of them. Russia’s Cyrillic alphabet has more characters with some more complicated sounds. On closer inspection and with the help of Jovana’s explanation, some of the characters are symbols we use in Maths. Pi is a ‘p’ sound, gamma a ‘g’. I remember a few others that are some of the simpler ones from Russia. P is a ‘r’ sound, H is a ‘n’ sound. It’s tricky not to read them in the way we use the Latin alphabet, but I’m having fun trying to decipher some of the signs here. Latin versions of all the streets and signs usually appear as well, because later on when Serbia joined Yugoslavia they wanted to make it so all parts of Yugoslavia could read things here. Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian and Montenegrin are 97% the same aurally, but Serbian is written using the Cyrillic alphabet typically, why the others use the Latin alphabet. Interestingly, we also found out that “Yugoslavia” translates to “southern Slavs”, referring to the Slavic people that settled in this part of the world. Any country around here with red, white and blue only on their flag is a southern Slavic country.
We ended our tour at the fortress. The fortress is like a giant onion, with Roman ruins, with a Serbian later, an Ottoman layer and an Austro-Hungarian layer. All of these were added over time by different rulers of Belgrade to bolster the fortress’ strength and make it more safe. Belgrade (or ‘Beograd’ or ‘беoград’) gets it name from the Roman ruins, as they were made from white stone and Beograd directly translates to “white city”.
We are going to check out the fortress properly tomorrow, but the tour took us for a brief walk around. It’s quite extensive and offers a great view of the two rivers that converge here - the Danube and the Sava. The Danube runs through 10 countries and 5 capitals, while the Sava runs through a lot of Serbia. From the viewpoint we could also see Great War Island, which has nothing but forest on it due to it flooding during winter. Though most people will know that the event that sparked the domino effect eventually culminating in the beginning of World War I was Archduke Franz Ferdinand being assassinated in Sarajevo (we visit there on Friday), the first shots of the war were fired on this island. Serbian has been a part of many devastating wars. Apart from all of the battles fought here which have destroyed the city time and time again, World War II cost Serbia 60% of its male population.
As I mentioned the other day, the war for independence in Slovenia lasted just ten days. In Croatia and Bosnia it lasted four years, but in Serbia there was still a lot of conflict even up to 1999 with Albania. As a result, in 1999 NATO bombed Belgrade to end the conflict. I’m hoping we learn more about this tomorrow when we visit the Museum of Yugoslavia.
After the tour, Mum and I headed back down the pedestrian street. By this time it was hottttt (28 and sunny!) and very bustling, with lots of amazing buskers playing great music. We enjoyed an ice cream before heading to the Nikola Tesla Museum. The 2pmtour was full, and we found out the coil wasn’t working today so decided we will try again on Thursday.
Instead we headed to the Church of St Sava, the largest orthodox cathedral in the Balkans. It was huge! It was constructed on the site where St Sava’s relics where burned by the Ottomans in 1594. Constructed began in 1935 but had a lot of hold ups due to World War II. It was completed in 1989. Today, the entire interior except for the dome had scaffolding up and was being cleaned. We are lucky though because we were reading about the immense project it was to make the mosaic in the dome, which we did get to see. The diameter of the dome is just over 30m, and the tiny mosaic tiles cover a total area of 1248 square metres, making it one of the biggest mosaic projects in the world on a curved surface. The project cost €4 million which was donated by a Russian oil company. The mosaic in the dome was stunning, as was the crypt which was so colourful and had lots of gold.
Then we went to the Church of St Mark and walked through the park nearby. We ended up at the Parliament of Serbia building, in front of which was a wall of pictures about the people that died in 1998-1999 in the conflict with Albania and then NATO. Also had posters up about not letting Kosovo become independent. After a quick look at the old and new city hall, we were super tired! We headed back to the hostel for a rest which was well deserved after 25,000 steps.
Tonight we had a lovely dinner at a Serbian restaurant in the Skadarlija area. Luckily, we escaped the musicians serenading us with music and instead had a laugh at how awkward the people who were being serenaded were. I had chicken medallions stuffed with ham and cheese and wrapped in thin ham as well, and Mum had beef. Both yummy! We also had a shot of rakia each. If you come to this part of the world you have to! Just as I remember from the Greek islands, it tasted like permanent marker! Mum hated me for it haha.
Now we are watching Columbia vs England in the World Cup. England just scored a penalty. Suppose I should support my second home!
Love to all
Claire
Xoxox
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