Visiting Belgrade, Serbia

An English gal’s experience of visiting Belgrade, Serbia. (It starts off sort of bleak, but don’t panic guys- it swiftly improves).

What do you know about Serbia?

As an extremely English twenty-something year old lass (I’m all about that cream tea life), my only prior knowledge of Serbia was pretty limited. In fact to be honest it was mainly garnered from what flashbacks I could recall from watching Newsround- back in the days when TVs only had four channels. The Test Card Girl patiently waiting next to her chalk board game of noughts and crosses throughout the night until it was time for TV to start again in the morning. Remember the 90s, pals!? What a time to be alive!!

I knew that not long ago Serbia was involved in a war. Although I wasn’t really sure who they’d been at war with, and I was pretty sure I’d heard the term ‘war crime’ used fairly often next to Serbia’s name. I knew it was located in a part of Europe which was once called Yugoslavia. (About seven years prior to my visit I’d written a Facebook status declaring that one day I’d make it to Yugoslavia simply because I liked the sound of the word ‘Yugoslavia.’ So I was genuinely extremely proud to be able to fulfil this Facebook dream in the closest way possible- considering that Yugoslavia no longer actually exists.)

I also went to secondary school with a Kosovan lad who’d escaped almost certain death in his home country by crossing Europe and entering England via the Channel Tunnel in the back of a lorry. I was pretty sure that the situation in Serbia had something to do with him needing to seek refuge here.

If you were to ask me what Serbia looks like, all I had to offer up were images of Belgrade on fire. Piles of ash and rubble along with shots of hungry looking children and camouflage jackets.

Fast forward to 2016. The last war is long finished (there have been several throughout Serbia’s history), and I’m working and living on a ship with a whole bunch of people from across the world- several of whom are from Serbia. It’s pretty strange to talk to a person the same age as you and hear them referring to their childhood as being ‘during the war’, with stories of starvation and queuing in the street for hours for bread the norm. And of family members camping on a bridge in an attempt to prevent the bombing of one of the only routes in or out of the city and the subsequent cut-off of supplies. I mean, not only are we talking people of the same age as me but also from the same continent. The only people I’d ever heard talking about ‘The War’ in such a blasé way up until then had been my great-grandparents.

Let’s face it guys, all this combined doesn’t make for a great advertisement at the best of times, does it. So why on earth would I want to visit Serbia!?

Driving from Budapest to Belgrade

We drove from Budapest to Belgrade on a freezing cold day in December just before Christmas. The ground in Budapest had been covered in a thin layer of ice, and snow was falling as we left the city. By the time we made it to the Serbian border the snow that makes everything seem slightly more magical than it actually is, was falling no more. I was pretty certain that the ground in the grey fields around us would have been solid as a rock and completely impenetrable if anyone had tried to dig into it.

In my mind, which has a habit of making things seem far more cinematic in hindsight than they actually were at the time, everything was in black and white. Or at the very least in differing shades of grey.

Talking of that road trip: What to do in Budapest, Hungary

The sky was that dullish pale grey colour that sticks around for weeks and sucks the colour out of everything. The fields were grey, with sprigs of dry grey grass attempting stubbornly to stay alive despite Winter’s best efforts. The odd skeletal tree stooped over in the distance like wizened old men in the chilly air, determined to stick it out despite the risk of hypothermia. The ground was completely flat as far as I could see.

This doesn’t paint a brilliant picture, does it!?

After miles and hours and miles of flat grey, we were nearing Belgrade.

And that, pals, is where I realised that my first impression of Serbia was wrong.

The history of Belgrade

One of Europe’s oldest cities, (people have lived there since back in Ye Olde Prehistoric days, so we’re talking old old), Belgrade has really drawn the short straw in terms of being under attack.

The entire city has been destroyed and rebuilt a grand total of 44 times since it’s humble caveman beginnings. And it’s been conquered at various points in time by Romans, Goths, Byzantines, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Slavs, Bavarians, Turks, Austrians…to name BUT A MERE FEW. And after all that palaver, things kicked off even more with the rise of Communism, a casual dictatorship, and a good old-fashioned bombing by NATO.

However, Belgrade is defined by its resilience and ability to rebuild itself again and again and again no matter how many times you knock it down. Like a magnificent Eastern-European PHOENIX! I feel like the individual people are pretty much the same to be honest.

There is new and downright raucous life to be found in Belgrade, and let me tell you it’s a gigantic contrast to the countryside that we’d driven through to get there. Nowadays Belgrade is a hub of liveliness and jolly good times, and the nightlife in particular is something the city is increasingly well-known for.

Belgrade city centre is busy, and although Christmas in Serbia is celebrated in January (the majority of Serbs are Serbian Orthodox, where everything happens a little differently), leading up to Christmas in December the lights were up and everything had a bit of a rosy festive glow to it.

Communist architecture in Belgrade

I’m gonna get straight to it here pals: Belgrade is not a particularly pretty city. (Soz, Belgraders) It’s heavily dominated by buildings that were all the rage back in the days of communist Yugoslavia. Cheerless high-rise Lego blocks sitting squarely side by side in concrete sharp-cornered and sometimes graffiti-splattered peace.

(For a bit of background info, Yugoslavia was a socialist republic made up of Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia and Bosnia Herzegovina)

Novi Beograd (that’s New Belgrade to you and me, folks) is an area which was built over several decades after the city’s destruction in the Second World War. Each block of housing (or blockovi as they’re actually called), sometimes holds thousands upon thousands of residents.

Driving or walking around these concrete areas made me feel as if I’d stepped back in time a few decades or was suddenly on the set of This is England. It was all a bit 1980s with a touch of Handmaids Tale thrown in for luck.

(Image by Peotr Bednarski)

It’s not all communist blockovi…parts of Belgrade are BEAUT.

I’m not gonna lie, my preconception was that due to its communist days as Yugoslavia, pretty much the whole of Belgrade was molded out of concrete. AWKWARD. Obviously that’s not the case; the city centre is somewhat different to all that concrete business. In fact I’d almost describe it as downright resplendent!

Although there aren’t many buildings older than a hundred and fifty years old or so, the House of the National Assembly and the square that it sits on is very much on the majestic side, and wouldn’t look out of place in somewhere like Paris (or at the very least Budapest, its next door neighbour).

The Church of Saint Sava is another incredibly impressive building and landmark; a Serbian Orthodox Church whose foundations were laid in 1936 but which then took up until last year to be fully built. Every time they started building, a war would break out and construction would halt until it was over.

How downright unfortunate, to put it lightly.

The best places to visit in Belgrade

Kalemegdan Park is the home of Belgrade’s Fortress- also called Kalemegdan- which has been sat on a cliff overlooking the meeting of the Danube and the Sava rivers since the dawn of time. (Maybe not the dawn of time exactly, but definitely for bloody ages, with people setting up on this spot back in the Roman days. The fortress has been added to, taken away from and reconstructed much like the rest of Belgrade, countless numbers of times.)

It’s kind of remarkable that it’s lasted so long in a city which must have felt very much like an easy target at the best of times. (Just FYI there’s a Torture Museum in an underground portion of the fortress which is quite terrifying in all honesty but intriguing nonetheless. Humans are so weird.)

Finally if you fancy getting away from the hustle and bustle of the city you could head out towards Ada Ciganlija, the beach next to Belgrade on the banks of the river. In the Summer it turns into party central station, with water sports, nightclubs and all the sunbathing going on; but in winter when I was there it was more of an extremely cold but pretty situation, with a few quiet coffee shops or restaurants open overlooking the water.

Food and drink in Serbia

It’s pretty normal in Serbia for the food you eat to be fully seasonal and very often, homemade. (Even things like pickles, sauerkraut and jams which nowadays most of us lazy English folk would just buy from the supermarket. Meaning I left the country with several jars of my pal’s mum’s jam smuggled into my hand luggage.)

Most of the food I experienced during my short wintertime visit to Belgrade involved a whole lot of pastry, pork, cheese, and an even bigger quantity of red peppers. They full on love red peppers, I’ll tell you that for free, and I’d highly recommend sampling ajvar- a dip-style-side-dish made of red peppers and olive oil.

Coffee in Serbia is, as with most places, the best way to start your day; the coffee scene is drawn from Serbia’s day’s spent under Turkish rule, and Turkish coffee is some mightily strong stuff. If you’re brave enough to try it, the good news is that hopefully someone will be kind enough to read your fortune in the coffee grounds at the bottom of the cup.

True story. Madame Trelawny would be proud of this fair country.

What about the alcohol in Serbia then!?

Now. Onto the drink. I hate to be stereotypical here, but I’ve now worked with and befriended many a Serb in my time, and I am yet to meet one who doesn’t like an alcoholic beverage. Belgrade’s drinking culture is embedded into the walls of every pub and bar and street corner, and I had a bloody marvellous time with pals old and new in several hilarious nights out in Belgrade.

Rakija is the Serbia’s traditional drink of choice. Essentially it’s an incredibly strong and intoxicating-smelling Brandy made from fermented fruit.

And although I did try it a few times you wouldn’t want to spend an entire evening on that stuff as you legitimately might die.

There are reminders of war all over Belgrade

Call me crazy but once I’d got used to the fact that Belgrade is actually a very modern city, the Newsround images of my 90s childhood had vanished from my mind; and I’d got on with having a jolly old time exploring, checking out the Christmas lights and meeting more of the locals. Joyous!

But you don’t have to look far to see that the city is still very much connected to its past. The first moment of realisation on my part was when someone stuffed a titovka on my head after I became fixated by a cart in Kalemegdan selling army-based souvenirs. Titovkas are the green felt hats which were part of the uniform of the Yugoslav People’s Army, so it seemed strange to me that they’d be selling them as a sort of war souvenir.

Go even further into the fortress and you’ll find a war museum housing equipment, weapons and general artefacts from throughout time, including a few NATO shells and US army jackets found after the bombing.

But what was the war in Serbia about?

When NATO bombed parts of Belgrade in 1999, it was more than a little bit controversial. NATO was accused of targeting civilian buildings, and they also didn’t have the backing of the UN. So, many pointed the ‘war crime’ finger at NATO itself as well as at the Serbian government.

But why were they bombing Belgrade? Without going too far into detail (mainly because I’m no expert on this matter, but also because I’d like to reserve judgement on a state of affairs I know hardly anything about). When Yugoslavia began to break up- as more of its countries wanted independence- it sparked a whole chain reaction of events. What started off as general civil war (which let’s face it, is terrible enough), ended up as ethnic cleansing and a genocide of the Kosovan people at Serbia’s government’s hands.

There are some who claim that the scale of this ethnic cleansing was exaggerated propaganda in order to back up NATO’s decision to bomb the hell out of a city full of innocent civilians. But to me the only thing which is clear , is that whichever way you look at it- to put it bluntly- a whole load of innocent people were murdered, on various sides.

This was also a war that was built on propaganda.

In fact to be fair I think pretty much every war is.

One of my pals showed me some clips of pop songs and adverts from back in the day which explicitly urged Serbs to fear, hate, and quite literally rape and kill, Muslims and Catholics in neighbouring Croatia and Bosnia. Stories were broadcast across the country of how Muslims and Catholics were attacking and murdering Orthodox Serbs in the surrounding former Yugoslav nations; stories which were often actual lies.

The government ran the media, so it could broadcast whatever news it wanted, even if it was completely fictional. Sound familiar, guys?

NATO recognised the media as a weapon of war when it chose to bomb the Radio Television of Serbia HQ in the city centre, amongst various other targets. Several of these buildings (of which there were many) have been left abandoned in their post-bombed form, windows blown away. A cross-section of each one is now visible, like destroyed concrete dolls-houses. Guys. It is MENTAL.

My pal, who was doing his absolute best to fill me in on an incredibly complex situation, took me to see one of the bombed buildings, which looked more than anything to me like a savage giant had come along and taken a bite out of it, as if he was tucking into a chicken leg. At least, I preferred to think of it like that instead of the reality that people had been killed there.

In conclusion…Belgrade one intriguing city

Aside from the fact that the city is an intriguing looking place with such an insane history, the people are what make Belgrade the place it is today. Hilarious, lively, and incredibly welcoming; proud of their country but also generally somewhat self-deprecating.

Tourists are gradually venturing into the Balkans, though Serbia is still fairly low on people’s list of priorities to visit- which was also made it a draw for me. Whilst Belgrade clearly hasn’t completely forgotten about its bloody history, I’m quite glad I know a bit more about this brilliant city than I did as a child of the 90s. And at the very least have some happier images to add to those horrific ones of the past.

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LOGISTICAL STATISTICALS

• Currency in Belgrade is Serbian dinar, and £1 equals around 130 dinar.
• Nikola Tesla Airport to Belgrade is about half an hour’s drive.
• An airport bus costing 200 dinars leaves on the hour every hour going from Nikola Tesla Airport to Belgrade city centre.
• Not only is English not the first language in Serbia (duh), but neither is the alphabet. Signs, menus etc are written in Cyrillic letters, though often at the very least an English-alphabet version of words will be provided as well so you know how to pronounce things.
• Within Belgrade it’s possible to find plenty of English-speaking people to help you out. However out in the countryside this might not be so easy. DEFINITELY attempt to learn a few words just to be a nice human being and also to broaden your mind.