Bangin' Belgrade

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Once again, it was touch and go as to whether I would even make the flight.
I missed the transit bus by seconds from the train station to Luton Airport, was then forced to withdraw cash at the cost of £1.65 to pay for the next transit bus, where I got stuck in the middle of a huge load of people and luggage meaning I was the last person to exit the bus. Ran through the airport, paid for a priority pass to get through security quickly, only to get pulled over and asked to provide a sample of my toothpaste (why do they do this to people with priority passes when such people are obviously in a huge hurry?). For heaven's sake.
All that to find out my flight has been delayed by three hours. You f*ckers.

So it was a long journey and like all other Eastern Europeans, the plane full of mainly Serbs applauded upon landing.
I had been told to agree a price to my destination before getting into a cab as you apparently can't trust the taxi drivers in Belgrade - so I diligently agreed a price of RSD1200 (1200 Serbian Dinars. £1 = RSD130).
When we arrived at the hostel, I gave him RSD2000, as the ATM at the airport only gave me denominations of RSD1000.
"Thank you", said the driver.
Um...my change?
"You said RSD2000", replied the driver.
"No, we agreed twelve-hundred dinars", I told him.
He didn't seem (or pretended not) to understand what 'twelve-hundred' meant. What was I going to do? He wasn't gonna give me change. You f*cker.

The hostel had the dodgiest entrance ever, a pitch-black, covered alleyway leading to some sort of courtyard carpark where you expected gangs of hooligans to have face-offs or mafia men to make drops. But sure enough at the back of the carpark behind a fun and welcoming straw-gate entrance was the Manga Hostel. In the front porch, I was greeted by a silent group of about 15 people. It was too dark to make out any faces. It was kind of an awkward entrance. From the dark, silent group, a voice called out, "hey Del". Another voice then said, "welcome Del."
Once my eyes had adjusted to the dark, I realised that the first voice was Gkee and sitting next to him was Davies.
"We're about to head out soon", said Gkee.
"Cool, I'll get changed", I replied.
A long journey had just come to an end, but a new one was just beginning.

Our guide for our night out was Moritz, a German from Hannover that Gkee had just met at the hostel. From our conversations with him, we ascertained that he was not the most travelled person we had ever met, and he was more than willing to give us tips and advice to stop us getting ripped off by the locals. A bit too late for me.
We decided to get a taxi and when none seem to be forthcoming, Moritz decided to ask two dodgy-looking locals for some advice. The locals then motioned us to follow them to two cabs, where they proceeded to have conversations with both drivers.
"OK", stated one of the dodgy guys, "you two (Moritz and Gkee) come with me in this cab, you two (Davies and I) go with my (scary, bald and stocky) friend.
We all kind of looked at each other before Gkee shrugged his shoulders and got into his cab with Moritz.
In our cab, I looked at Davies.
"You sure this isn't dodgy?" he asked me.
Neither the taxi driver nor scary, stocky and bald Serbian man, could speak English. I was kind of praying that they weren't going to take us to the middle of nowhere before pulling out a gun and extorting us. Or worse.
We reached our destination and Davies paid the fare. Thankfully, Gkee's cab was there too.
The two Serbian guys then motioned at us to follow them again.
"We need to lose these guys" said Davies.
We followed them, keeping our distance which was a bit easier due to the number of people around.
"We should not follow those guys", Moritz chimed in.
"Looked like they've f*cked off", said Gkee as we saw the two guys walking away in the distance.
They had scabbed a free taxi ride off us - and I wasn't about to let them scab anything else off us. I really wasn't getting a good first impression of Serbian men.

"The girls here are so hot", said Moritz. "They are very open-minded too".
He certainly had a point. Most of the women walking around us were slim, statuesque, tanned, and on the tall side.
The great thing about the nightlife in Belgrade, is that it's all on water. On the banks of the Danube are several floats and barges, all with high-tech nightclubs on them. Awesome, what a concept.
"The clubs down this end are more techno and electronic music, and the ones down the other end are a bit more like rock", said Moritz. We opted for the rock boat.
Walking across a footbridge onto the rock boat, the boat was certainly rocking. As everyone heaved up and down with the music, you could feel the whole boat beneath you literally rocking. On the front part of the boat, the floor actually slopes down from the centre of the boat and there are small griddles on the floor that could easily trip you up. Very dangerous after a few rakijas, which we had of course, done. Gkee and I had decided the strategy tonight was to have a shot of rakija with each beer. I mean at RSD140 (£1) a shot, why not. They all went down very hot and it certainly brought back memories of the first time I ever did rakija. Our strategy was working like a charm, helped no-end by the DJ, was spinning some wicked mash-ups. Think Nirvana mixed with Beastie Boys and Bon Jovi mixed with Prodigy.
An advantage about partying on a boat is that when there is a queue for the loo, the boys can just piss off the side of the motherf*cking boat. It was a strangely exciting and liberating feeling.
Back on the dancefloor, Moritz was certainly right about Serbian girls being *cough* open-minded *cough*.
After telling me "not to show my money around", the mistrustful Moritz then took off. We were under the impression he was going to get another round of shots. He had told us that he felt bad about us buying him shots and beers since he felt he was too poor to get rounds himself, being a poor student and all. At a pound a shot, we assured him it wasn't really a problem. We never saw him again.
Time flies when you're having fun and at about 4am, we decided to try somewhere else. I can't remember (now there's a surprise...) the name of the club we got into, but I do remember talking to a group of Australian girls there (as you seem to everywhere you go in Europe) as we danced and drank some more. Drinks were about double the price in this flashy, white, techno club. One of girls in the Aussie group was a statuesque blonde that Gkee thought looked like Orlando Bloom. OK then. She was rather attractive.
As I looked out onto the river off our nightclub barge, I realised that the sun was up! 5.30am. What a good night.
We somehow managed to walk our way back to the hostel, stopping for a burek on the way - the traditional Balkan end-of-night munchie.
The hostel workers looked a little astonished when we stumbled back in. We looked a little sheepish when we stumbled back in.

No prizes if you guessed that we didn't exactly wake up early the next afternoon. To make things worse than we were feeling, the water had been turned off at the hostel due to a burst pipe, meaning we couldn't shower or use the bathroom.
It was a gloriously hot day however, and we spent it looking around the city's main attraction, the old citadel. The immediate area surrounding the citadel is basically a park and there are worse things to do when you're hungover than walking through a park, watching people playing football, Serbians trying their hand at cricket and watching an old man jump off a cliff. Thankfully he was paragliding and not suiciding.
The highlight of the citadel was the array of tanks and cannons they had on display there.
Another interesting feature of the citadel was a brass band of what looked like Mexicans, all dressed in casual suits, playing tunes. Earlier in the day, there was a similar band dressed in purple polo shirts playing outside St Mark's Church. I thought they were part of the wedding party there until they were angrily brushed away by the bride when they went right up to her, playing their tunes right down her throat.
Built into the citadel was a lovely bar on a roof garden overlooking the park where we enjoyed a drink before finding a restaurant for dinner.
We stopped by at a locally recommended restaurant called "?". We all decided to keep in theme and order food that we had never heard of before. Davies tried cevapi for the first time while I had the mućkalica which is basically like a casserole. We all had Serbian salads with cheese (similar to a Greek salad). Gkee commented that Serbian food is very heavy. I tend to agree - not exactly what you want when the weather is so hot (28+ degrees and rising). We all felt a little underwhelmed by the food to be honest.
Thankfully, when we got back to the hostel, the water was back on as we were all feeling manky and smelling rank.

So what do you do when you're in the party capital of the Balkans on a Saturday night even though you were out until 6am that morning? You go out again of course!
There was a hostel-organised pub crawl and Davies was leaving the next day so we thought we might as well. We would've been dragged into it by the other hostel dwellers anyway.
The first place on the crawl was miles away from the hostel. Our warm-up beers at the hostel had certainly worn off by the time we arrived. On the way, we walked past some buildings that had been shelled during the war by NATO. They have deliberately been left in a state of disrepair as a memorial. They were very intriguing in a morbid way.
Among our number at the pub were a couple of Australians, Hugh and Mark; Tom, an English guy cycling his way from London to Istanbul; two more English guys, James and Dave; Sebastian, a German; Wil- I mean James, another Englishman who is a ring in for Will from The Inbetweeners; and Rex, a Peruvian-Canadian. The most interesting conversation was one I had with James No. 1 (not Will), who had been in Pristina, Kosovo, before coming to Belgrade. Of course, there was the war in Kosovo in the late 90s where the Kosovans were trying to breakaway from the Serbia, so as a result, Serbia does not in fact recognise Kosovo as it's own country. So if you had gone into Kosovo from a country other than Serbia, you will be asked at the Kosovo-Serbia border how you got into Serbia because you don't have a Serbian stamp in your passport and your Kosovan stamp is not recognised. You are likely to be taken in as a result. We all kind of agreed that it is a bit childish. Most of the people in Kosovo are Muslim, but there are loads of important Serbian Orthodox churches in Kosovo, which is why the Serbs are reluctant to let Kosovo go.

The outdoor pub we were drinking at was a cool place. Hidden behind a corrugated iron fence on an industrial looking alleyway, you would never know it's there. It is placed directly next to train tracks and it's a novelty to have a booming cargo train go past while you're sipping your beer, interrupting (though not negatively) your conversation.
The pub also had a ping-ping table which was fun - I don't really play table tennis but you should know never to take on an Asian at table-tennis. Cool place, cool place.
Then it was back to the riverside to hit the clubs.
Unfortunately the rock boat had a huge queue outside, so we went to a place called "Plastic Light" instead, a techno club full of glammed-up, high-heeled Serbian girls. We even spotted Orlando Bloom in there (no, not that one. Yes, that one.). I met a local guy in there who claimed he was "mafia" and could hook me up with anything I wanted. He was hilarious.
Though the DJ built-up the music and dropped the beat well, techno isn't really my scene. I prefer a singalong and/or songs I actually know. We were tired and hungover as well, meaning that the alcohol wasn't going down easily (less so the rakija) and no matter how hard we tried, we weren't getting drunk. Our numbers started reducing slowly but surely and we were fading. When James No.1 (not Will) left (on his birthday no less), his mate Dave was well pissed - and well pissed off. "He always pisses off early", exclaimed Dave.
We had a go at one last place that didn't have Jaegermeifter, so instead of a Jaeger bomb we got Amaretto-Red Bull Sours. That was the straw that broke the camel's back and we were home by 5am. Not a bad effort considering.

The next day therefore didn't start too early either, but at least we had showers this time. The first sight of call today was St. Sava's Cathedral, the largest Orthodox cathedral in the world. It's so big that it's hasn't even been finished yet. Inside the cathedral is nothing but a concrete shell, scaffoldings, and piles of building materials. There are a few small chapel areas lit by Orthodox candles and some paintings of Christ, but not much else. The size of it from the outside is certainly impressive, perhaps even providing a small sense of awe.
We were told that a good place to go on a hot summer's day in Belgrade was a place called Ada Ciganlija, by the river. Using our well-used internal compasses and map savvy, we thought it'd be possible to walk there from St. Sava's. Our walk took us through the more 'real' Belgrade, out in the suburbs. Like a lot of former communist states that I have been to, just about everything is made from concrete, whether it be playgrounds, fences or hospitals. Passing through the university, the buildings were also made from concrete in that ugly, yet intriguing 60s/70s style, much like the University of Auckland.
We ended up at the hospital, and though my reading of Serbian Cyrillic sucks, I could make out that we had somehow ended up outside the gyneacology department, where just about all the female patients were out smoking fags. It's pretty much useless having roman-alphabet street names on a map if all the street signs are in cyrillic. It was at this point that we acknowledged that we were well and truly lost, the river nowhere near in sight. The cab only cost somthing like 10€ between us and we were happy we took one, as we were miles away.

Ada Cignalija is a river island that has been turned into a huge leisure and recreation park that can have over 100,000 daily visitors over the summer. We jumped on the cute, little choo-choo train, electric vehicle that can take you around the 10km circumference of the island. There are all manner of sports facilities on the islands including amenities for football, beach volleyball and a driving range, and watersports activities including cable-skiing along the water and bungee jumping. The best part about the place for the less physically-inclined is the artificial beach lined with lounge bars that all have their own array of comfy tables, booths, cabanas and hammocks. I wish I had brought my beach towel and board shorts - I just never thought I'd be at the beach in Belgrade!
Hopping off the 'tourist train' we settled ourselves into some cushioned chairs in the marquee outside a bar, from where we enjoyed some drinks, the heat and the view - watching the girl- I mean the world go by. Oh, come on, if you were a guy enjoying a drink surrounded by unbelievably hot, scantily-clad Serbian girls at the beach, you would too. Just about the perfect afternoon then.

For dinner, we walked down to quite possibly the nicest part of Belgrade, the bohemian quarter. Cobblestoned street and medieval-looking buildings were the order of the day down here, very reminiscent of places like Prague and Tallinn. Some bits even had a Parisian-feel about it.
The restaurant we settled on was the same one that Davies and Gkee had eaten at on the first night, while awaiting my delayed arrival. It had a band/barbershop quartet belting out traditional folk songs, and they really seemed to be enjoying it. Certainly a lot more than the patrons they were meant to entertain. Not for the first time, the food served at our table did not match what I ordered. The old waiter who looked like he was actually part of that band/barbershop quartet and who had a passing resemblance to Colonel Sanders, did not speak to much English, but he pretty much ordered Gkee's meal for him.
"Can I have that please?" asked Gkee.
"No, you should have that", recommended the waiter, "you will have that".
My meatballs looked more like a mixed grill - I was slightly annoyed, but not enough to demand my meal be taken back. Oh well. It was a nice way to sign off, for Davies anyway, as he left us at our table to catch his flight back to London.

Two big nights in a row had really done some damage to us, so both Michael and I vowed we weren't going out again that night - it was a Sunday after all.
Back at the hostel, Tamara, the girl working there kindly offered us some coffee and we got talking. The group slowly grew as more hostellers started coming back including two tall English guys we had not met before, a very loud Aussie girl, Tom the English cyclist, and two other hostel workers, Luke and Ivana. Well, you know one thing lead to another and before long we were doing free rakija shots. Michael had the sense to go the bed there and then - Ivana talked the rest of us into a few drinks at the pub.
We were going to the ping-pong pub by the train tracks again, which meant a long walk. I spent just about all of it having a good old chat with Luke. He was Irish and he basically spent his summers working at the hostel and living in Belgrade. Belgrade is really cheap - food, drinks, accommodation - he said he really enjoyed living here, and that he could get by easily. Back in Dublin, he's supposed to be a student, albeit one that has spent a lot of time there without making much progress. He was into his football and rugby too, (as was Ivana - Liverpool fan though, boooooo) so we had plenty to chat about at the pub as well.
I was really enjoying myself just chatting to people, and I really should have just called it a night there - however, most of the crew had not been out the last two nights, so to the riverside it was. On the way, had a funny chat with the Aussie girl about The Rising Cock in Lagos, where she had unsurprisingly stayed. Ah, the memories.
The club we went to first was Freestyler, one we couldn't get into on our previous two nights. I have trouble believing that anyone in Belgrade actually works - the club was heaving on a Sunday night. There were a lot of people in the club out to be seen - WAGs and mafia types lounging on the white couches, bottles of champagne on ice on the tables. Freestyler even had dancers on a mezzanine, attempting to work the crowd into a frenzy.
I really should have called it back at the pub - I couldn't drink anymore. Ivana and Luke weren't drinking either. Everyone else was having a great time. The call was then made - to go to the rock boat. If the rock boat couldn't get me going, then nothing would. The rock boat wasn't nearly as cool or as packed as it had been on Friday night - probably because it was playing drum 'n bass instead of cool mashups. Unfortunately my body has become completely tolerant of rakija - it was now time to call it.
On the way back to the hostel, I got a free lesson from Ivana and Luke on how to read Serbian Cyrillic. Am getting the hang of it now, replacing certain letters with other letters and symbols - it's pretty straightforward.

My overall impression of Serbian people is that they are not the most forthcoming or the most friendly, and getting ripped off twice in the space of my first two hours in the country really didn't help in this respect. It really made me very distrustful of the local population. Bar workers and waiters were not the most polite. I certainly didn't feel as comfortable here as I did in say, Scandinavia. In saying that, I think that the Serbs can be friendly once you get past their steely exteriors. I do believe that this is a very Eastern European trait.
Of Belgrade itself, I have to say that there isn't a lot to see during the day here - it's not the prettiest city nor does it really have any unmissable sights. It is really cheap though, the women beautiful and the nightlife amazing. Gkee said that he was surprised that there weren't more stag do's here like there are in Prague, Tallinn or Riga. Luke said that more and more of them are slowly starting to hit the place. To be honest, I was glad not to see a slew of English stag do's and hen parties.

There was a very big reason why I really shouldn't have gone out three nights in a row. The seven-hour bus journey to Sarajevo the next day...

Do videnja,
Derek

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Photos

St. Sava's Cathedral
The largest orthodox church in the world.

Belgrade Nightlife
Belgrade's nightclubs all float - uniquely awesome.

Rose Church
Church inside the citadel and popular wedding backdrop.

Shelled Building
Shelled during the Yugoslav Wars in the early 90s by NATO, the biulding has been left alone as a memorial. Really hit home that I was walking through the heart of the former Yugoslavia, a place I wouldn't have thought I'd go as a kid.

Freestyler
One of the clubs on the water with dancing girls.

St. Mark's Church
One of Belgrade's two big churches, 100m from the hostel and where Mexican marching bands gatecrach wedding parties.

St. Petka's Church
Another church inside the citadel.

Kalemegdan Citadel
The old citadel that protected the town was built mostly in the 17th century.

Paragliding Over The Danube
An old man jumps off the cliff from the citadel. Nice view.

Ping Pong Pub
Cool outdoor pub next to a major train track.

Ping Pong
The Aussies have a game of table tennis at the pub.

Plastic Light
The scene inside one of the clubs we were at on our second night out.

Ada Ciganlija
Belgrade's "beach".

Chillaxin' At Ada Ciganlija
Relaxing in one of the many lounge bars along the beach.

Bohemian Quarter
The nicest part of Belgrade.

Ulica Knez Mihailova
Main pedestrian street in Belgrade.

Inside Freestyler
The crowd parties hard on a Sunday night.

Lepinje
Crispy-ish Serbian bread served with hot kajmak, a hot, clotted, creamy cheese.

Serbian Cyrillic
Renders maps in roman alphabet useless. A delightful visual reminder of the culture and language here though.

Town Hall
The rather bloc-like town hall.

Parliament
Just across the road from the town hall, the stately parliament building was undergoing restoration.

Nikola Pašić Square
Named in honour of an old mayor.

Show Us Your Guns
PArt of the military museum inside the citadel.

"?"
Cool traditional restaurant we ate at.

Drab Building
Belgrade is littered with ugly, yet strangely intruiging buildings such as this. They have a strange, neglected beauty about them.

Cable Skiing
So you don't need a speedboat to go water-skiing - though you will have thousands watching you from the beach.