Party in Belgrade

I had a lovely stay in Belgrade. The only issue is remembering all of what happened... thankfully the camera stands as my witness and even has date stamps to help me put it all together. Today looking back at it, I had even more fun than I generally remembered. Awesome.

The day the Dutch girls left, I started hanging out with a British backpacker named Simon. He's a schoolteacher who's traveling for a couple weeks before meting up with his wife and child in Istanbul. Nice guy, handsome, and pleasantly gregarious. He kind of reminded me of my friend Tim. We walked to the bohemian street and had a few beers in view of some fine art and the upper crust of Serbian society. Nearby is a street that the locals refer to as 'silicone valley' in reference to the tricked out women that attempt to meet and marry the wealthy men who drink there. Later that night we met up with another group of backpackers to have a few beers at another local tavern with a pretty awful paint job. One of those others that made an impression on me is a London based artist who's card I seem to have lost. Oh well.

The next day I made the trip out to the Nicoli Tesla Museum. Tesla was of course a famous inventor who worked with Edison and blessed the world with the electric motor, power generators, AC, radio, and remote controls. He was born in Serbia and late in his life he gave the building and many of his models to Belgrade to preserve his legacy. They're pretty proud of him here and he's on their 20 dinar bill. The airport is named after him too as well as a street in every city. It was hard to get a great picture of anything there, but I got a picture of some an electrical field lighting up some florescent tubes from a distance and a lightning bolt. Not great, but whatever.

In the afternoon I hung out at the hostel with one of the workers there named Igor. He's a Croatian who's been living in Belgrade for a long time and is generally a pretty awesome guy and makes a mean cup of Serbian Coffee. It's mostly the same as every other coffee in the region, but better. The hostel also has a very friendly cat who likes his belly rubbed.

Later that night I went to a football match with Simon, and two others from the hostel. I've never been to a match before but I was hopeful that I'd get the full experience with hooligans, chants, and silly outfits. I got all that. The game was between the local team, Partizans, and the visiting Helsinki team. We had some cheap seats in the side of the stadium but a kindly janitor opened a side gate for us so that we could get into the area with the die-hard Partizan fans. The were singing in unison for the entire match, screamed with the best of them, and welcomed us with open arms. Thankfully the home team won 3-0 so the riot police on had weren't needed that night.

The next day I woke up late and walked all over town looking for a pair of winged Adidas shoes that I saw once but had no luck. I walked through the park, saw men playing timed chess in the shade, young boys playing with fountains, and treated myself to some ice cream. I also made my way over to the nearby military museum inside the Kalemegdan Fortress. The museum was really good, but there aren't a lot of English signs explaining what I was looking at. Still, they had weapons and artifacts from the 7th century on and a lot of local history about where and when they were used and against whom. They also had a lot of spare tanks and artillery WWII and before and also a captured NATO hummer from the latest conflict.

Later that night I met up with another group of people going out to dinner from my hostel and joined them. There were two Canadians named Luke and Shnazi, a Mexican named Carlos, and an Oregonian named Sofie. Luke and Shnazi were traveling together for the last few days but are on short trips otherwise. I'm not exactly sure what Carlos's story was but I liked the guy. Sofie is living in Budapest for the last few months and came to Belgrade for the weekend. I liked the whole lot of them and we went out clubbing down on the Danube river on floating barge bars. The barges are all parked next to each other alongside a city park and I hear that there's even a hostel on one of the barges. They don't really move or shake so it's really just like a regular club with great ventilation. We went to several of them and stayed out until 5 am dancing and chatting and enjoying the night air. I wasn't even tired when they eventually threw us out in the morning. I must be getting better at this.

This morning I naturally got up very late. I did a walking tour of the city with Sofie and an Australian luthier named Ryan. He's in a rock band too and was a generally interesting guy. The lot of us got some good burek, visited the bohemian street, the fortress park, the so called 'torture tower' (tragically under renovations), the main shopping district, and bade it back to the hostel just in time to start drinking some beers. This special time of the day changes from day to day. That night I watched Across the Universe at the hostel using my laptop, an hdmi cable, and the communal plasma screen. I'm really spoiling myself with this tech gear I'm carrying.

The next day I had to leave the hostel. I'd been there for a week already and didn't reserve a bed far enough in advance and they kicked me out to take in some new people that reserved on Hostel World. That's just as well because I had a new traveling partner, Sofie. We took the bus up to the northern city of Novi Sad and I got to hear a lot about her philosophy which I find unusually interesting. She's well read in areas of Philosophy and had a lot to tell me about her views on the workings of the mind, the universe, fate, love, religion, and other subjects. I don't read philosophy books at all and am generally lacking in any consistent philosophy and really enjoyed hearing her ideas.

She gave me a book called 'New Revelations: a Conversation With God' that I've since started and shockingly am really enjoying. I wouldn't have guessed it about myself, but I think that I'm generally interested in becoming more spiritual in some way, hopefully a practical but unconventional one, and this book scratches this itch well... or at least the first 50 pages have so far. The book is what people would call 'new age' but it makes a good case for its own existence and I think that I'm going to enjoy finishing it and getting another one of a similar genre.

So we got to Novi Sad early in the afternoon, checked into a decent but empty hostel, and set out to explore the city. We had greasy Serbian sandwiches, shared some waters on this most hot and humid day, and walked all over town. It's fairly small but has a well built center with several strikingly beautiful churches and government buildings. We also hiked to the top of the local fortress and gazed at a magnificent sunset over the city skyline. It was a very satisfying day and later that night we sat at a couple different street cafes for dinner and beer.

The next morning Sofie had to rush home to Budapest. She's living there with a family that paid for her to come there to teach their child English, but since then she's been working for a kindergarten and soaking up the local culture. She's also working on becoming a yoga instructor. I took the rest of the day off to update this blog, answer many emails, and to indulge in some heavy reading. It's been a relaxing but sweltering afternoon. Some new backpackers checked into my hostel so maybe tonight I'll have company though yesterday the place was almost empty save for a couple dutch guys who walked here from Holland and are continuing to Jerusalem (not a religious pilgrimage) over the course of 9 months or so. Everyone who sees them in the countryside of Serbia recognises them since they were featured on the front page of the local paper after a chance encounter with a journalist.