Blogs from West, Serbia, Europe - page 6

Apparently air conditioning is only partially invented here. I know it exists, because I've felt it in a few buildings and rooms. But I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist in my bedroom, and I'm quite sure it doesn't exist in the room that our meeting today was in. At a guess, I'd put the temperature there at somewhere around 412 degrees centigrade, and the humidity around 136%. Regardless, it was an interesting meeting. The Center for Applied Non-Violent Action and Strategies does this most years and they seem to have an idea of how to do it. They walked us through how non-violent action works (and how much better than violent action it is, in terms of results and number of casualties), then had us start working on our own, hypothetical non-violent campaigns. My team chose ... read more

Hello, Belgrade! Since I promised several of you readers that I would post on my blog daily, I will stick to that promise. Here's my blog post for today: Nothing happened. The end. But actually, though. We left the hotel in Banja Lukaat 10:30and sat on the bus (or got off for momentary pit stops) until about 6. Technically I can say I've been to Croatia now. If you want to count getting out at a rest area and stretching my legs on my way through as "going to Croatia." To be honest, we could have been in Ohio. Cornfields and flatland all around. Regardless, Belgrade is an interesting city to be in. It's much more industrialized than any of the other cities we've hit. It actually honestly looks like it's stuck in the 1990s...lots of ... read more

The bus back from Sarajevo had the benefit of leaving room the Main Bus Station. We were spared going back to Lukavica at an unearthly hour. The Lasta bus pulled out on time and we headed up into the hills. There was still a frost on the ground at the first service stop. There were signs warning of landmines just beyond our service area. We arrived at the Lasta bus depot in Belgrade, which was handy for checking the new Ticketline office to see if there were any Partizan v Fenerbache basketball tickets left. There were blank looks all round…..so that was a No then! A similar experience was encountered in the hunt for a Red Star pin badge at their downtown shop. The receptionist treated us like long lost friends at the Slavija – at ... read more

At the end of the last year’s visit and my 2nd eternal derby, the Man in the Middle posed the question ……….. “is that the Belgrade derby out the system then?” I pondered and concluded that it was probably time to move on to pastures new. Never say never again! A year on and we find ourselves on the 9.28 Belgrade express once again. The merry band of 2 has grown to 3. The Man in the Middle is back and we are joined by Football Travels With Ross, keen to check out the Marakana for his first competitive action there since the heady days of 1989. In those days before the internet made fixture spotting relatively simple and visas were required, this was an achievement in it’s own right. We passed the time away talking ... read more

Beautiful Belgrade...what a city! I have to say, when we first got off the bus and started walking to our hostel we were really not sure about the city we were in. Abandoned buildings, graffiti everywhere, we felt a little unsafe as we made our way down the backstreets of Belgrade to the Spirit Hostel which was to be our home for the next few nights. But the longer you spend there and the more you understand the history of what the city has been through, unattractive though it may be on the surface, the more the beauty of it grows on you. It is a city of contrasts with small underground bars found next to blaring, show-offy ‘Silicon Valley’ and by the time we left, we both thought that the longer you stayed there, the ... read more