Blogs from Belgrade, West, Serbia, Europe - page 4

Hotel Moskva, my hotel in Belgrade, is pretty central in the Old Town, so I took the day to explore some of the more renowned sites in Belgrade. I don't really know if there are any "renowned" sites in this city, except maybe the cathedral (which I see on every postcard or online entry about Belgrade). The cathedral was my first stop, but it's pretty remote from all the other places I wanted to go. So I made a morning of walking to the cathedral and back to the hotel. Since this is my last day in Eastern Europe, I took advantage of the price differences. If you've been following my blog, you know how cheap the past couple of weeks have been - not that I haven't tried to do all kinds of things. It's ... read more

Many cities in the world have gone through difficult times in various periods of time, but very few still bear visible scars like Belgrade. There are also not that many places where historical layers interact with the landscape in such a beautiful way. Built on a strategic location it has served as a border town between two confronted cultures: Ottoman and Habsburg (Austro-Hungarian) for more than three centuries. Some would argue that this duality is still present in the mentality of its inhabitants. Urbanism Topography conditions the form and urban grid of Belgrade. In the middle of the city two large rivers, Danube and Sava, meet each other and divide it in three parts. The largest portion of the city is located on the southeastern bank, where Old Belgrade lies. The other parts include the southwestern ... read more

What an interesting day. The events that transpired included: -sleeping in until breakfast wasn't available anymore -getting stuck in the elevator when it ground to a halt between floors 5 and 6 (shortly to be followed by Dave also getting trapped in the elevator between floors 5 and 6) -getting lost on my run -visiting the Nikola Tesla museum and being (literally) shocked -Meeting the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, who also happens to be a paratrooper -Riding on a boat on the Danube -Taking tequila shots for a friend's 21st birthday at midnight -trying to stay awake after staying up until 4 last night All in all, I would call it a successful day. The trapped in the elevator part was maybe not the coolest thing that's ever happened to me, but it's a ... read more

One down, one to go. Today's disputation was on the Office of the High Representative and was very well performed and received. The long and short of it is: there's no right answer (which is of course why we hold these debates; there'd be no point if there was a right answer). The team in support of removing OHR won out, but it could have gone either way. My team, for its own part, has been preparing for the debate tomorrow: writing questions, examining our own prepared points (which we did before knowing we'd be judges), and considering possible arguments we may have missed. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view -- we've had a lot of free time because of it), there's only so much we can do to prepare; much of it ... read more

A tip for anyone planning on traveling to the Balkans in summertime: plan for heat with random intermittent thunderstorms during the day and every night. Also, do your best to not need to wear pants or long sleeve shirts: it's that much worse, and odds are that your destination will not be air conditioned. Not that I'm referring to anything that may have happened today, when it was about 85-90 degrees and we visited the un-air conditioned Parliament building, of course dressed business casual. That was actually our second meeting of the day; we first visited the Zoran Djindjic Fund. The Fund is in memory of the first democratically elected prime minister in Serbia, who was assassinated in 2003. It exists to aid in international relations, student exchanges and internships abroad, and furthering Djindjic's vision. While ... read more