Blogs from West, Serbia, Europe - page 13

Belgrade - apart from a few perceptive pieces in the travel sections of the weekend broadsheet newspapers and a growing reputation amongst the dedicated followers of the club scene, it doesn’t usually get a glowing press. As a rule, it seems to suffer from the reputation which the previous tensions in the area brought about and unfortunately our visit coincided with some more international bad press after football related violence before a Europa League game in mid September and threatened violence around a subsequently banned civil rights march. I had read a number of pieces of travel literature and previous blogs on the subject of arrival at Nikola Tesla Airport, so along with the above reports fresh in mind and the warnings about over enthusiastic taxi touts it was with a bit of trepidation that we ... read more

DAY 103 Flying to Belgrade this morning!! We are on our own for the next month. No more having to fit into other peoples schedules. We are up at 5:45 and leave the hotel at 7:00AM. We take the metro to the bus station. It's an hour ride to the airport. We are flying JAT airlines. This is the Serbian Airlines. We have no idea what to expect, but everything seems to be just like all the others. Going through security they pull out our water bottles and my hand cleanser that is 110 ml bottle, although is not full. They scrape off the price label to mind the # of ml, now this is being very conscientious. They fail to notice the 200ml bottle of sunscreen Angie had forgotten to put her in check bag.l ... read more

Belgrade day 4-5 (July 1-2) A very local train to Belgrade (plastic seats) but comfortable enough for the short journey. Then a half hour local bus to our hotel, who didn’t have our booking and they were full from having the European Youth Games in town. While our leader sorted it out, we went in search of coffee and a toilet (the hotel refused to let us use theirs!). Fortunately, the coffee shop had no problems letting us use their toilet, even before we’d ordered so our faith in Serbian hospitality was restored. We took taxi’s to the alternate hotel that had been arranged for us. This was in a much better location in the centre of the city, even though it was a rather tired hotel in need of renovation. We were now very late ... read more

We took the overnight night train to Serbia. Realising that we had no money on the train we panicked as we thought we needed a visa to enter Serbia. 'Take credit card?’ doesn’t really cut it at the border at 4am. Visions of being dumped off the train and having to wait over night at some forgotten station in no-mans-land began running though my mind…Doah!! Luckily when the police arrived in the cabin, the EU membership thingy seemed to hold a lot of weight especially for ‘wanna be members’ - No visa requirement at all for existing EU members. Nice one! Nicola got singled out though for special treatment as the police seemed to think she could be some sort of fugitive. The police officer radio’d back to base ‘Keaneee, Keaneee’ after reading her passport. We ... read more

So, da bin ich wieder. Naja, eigentlich bin ich sogar seit 12 Stunden wieder da, aber irgendwann braucht der Mensch ja auch seinen Schlaf ;-) Vorgestern um Mitternacht war ich mit Ivan ins Kosovo aufgebrochen. Mit dem Minibus gings dann über Raska nach Mitrovica. Der Bus war zwar eigentlich ziemlich komfortabel, aber irgendwie hats bei Ivan und mir mit dem Schlafen doch net ganz hingehauen. Gegen halb 6 im Morgengrauen kamen wir in Zvecan, einer mehrheitlich serbisch bevölkerten Gemeinde im Nordwesten von Kosovska Mitrovica an. Über der Stadt, auf einem Bergkegel, der kegeliger wirklich nicht aussehen könnte, stehen die Ruinen der alten Burg. Im Cafe bei der Bushaltestelle meinte Ivan, dass es sich eigenlich lohnen würde, auf den Berg hochzusteigen, aber dass es erstens dunkel wäre, und er zweitens davon ausgehe, dass es mir sowieso zu ... read more