A Small Slice of Belgrade

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As this is the second time I have written this blog after not saving it, I wouldn’t expect too much. Frustration aside, I will begin again…we arrived in Belgrade after a beautiful train trip where we basically had the entire cart to ourselves so we were able to spread ourselves out quite comfortably. When we arrived at the train station we knew which tram we needed to catch and where to get off, but we could not at all find ticket stations, so we just hopped on and had a free trip, the driver seemed to be happy for us to not pay. We were happy with the location of the hostel being in the centre and close to everything we wanted to see and do.

We arrived to a hostel owner who was keen to tell us about all the problems he had been having with guests to his hostel and after half an hour of this we decided to bail on him as quick as we could (he did however give us free beer). Belgrade is split in two by the Danube much like Budapest (without the same grandiose) with the old centre on one side and the new business skyscraper side of the town on the other. We walked on the outskirts and saw many communist style buildings, Yugoslavia style (basically the same as any eastern bloc country) and through the main pedestrian street. It was a very interesting city and did not at all have a touristy feel; everyone we came into contact with was very nice and willing to help us if we asked any questions.

We made our way to the fortress which is on a hill facing the new city across the Danube. Here locals were gathering to watch the sunset over the river so we joined them, it turned out to be one of the best sunsets we have seen on this trip and was totally unexpected for us. The river is lined with bars on the water and the lights really looked special at night. We had some Italian and were so tired we went to bed.

The next day we woke up took our lake Malawi tablets which were due as it had been six weeks since we had come into contact with the water. It was about six horse tablets each which we ate with a decent breakfast as instructed. We then took off to the walking tour which was very interesting as this was our first Yugoslavian country so its history was a bit different to that of other European countries. About three quarters of the way through Mikaela got a splitting headache that would not go away, so we decided to leave the tour early and head back to the hostel. By the time we had returned to the hostel and Mikaela had taken her panadol we both could not keep our eyes open and passed out on the bed without even taking our shoes off. We awoke five hours later with what felt like the biggest hangover, confused at the darkness outside we realised that this must have been our reaction the medications we had taken earlier. We felt like we had wasted a day so we went out into the city and had an enjoyable night.

The next morning we made our way to the post office as we needed to lighten our bags. Well it was a bit of an experience; let’s just say that I got so frustrated at cranky old ladies that I needed to remove myself from the room. We also had some fun filling in all the forms as they were in Cyrillic and no one in the post office spoke much English, but after filling out the forms about three times each we had posted our parcel, now just the wait to see if it arrives home.

We had a look around a few different parts of the city, Mikaela was able to sniff out a few markets and then we made our way to the airport to catch our flight to Lake Ohrid!

Looking over our last blogs its obvious we have become quite lazy with our camera often opting to leave it in the hostel. I noticed this especially in this blog where our collection of photographs is rather pathetic. No more laziness from now on!

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Photos

Collection of tanks
Military Museum

Zindan Gate
Belgrade Fortress

Train trip
Very relaxed