September 2023

Six Weeks in Beograd

Beograd, capital of Serbia, is a beautiful city. Especially where I'm living, at the confluence of the Danube River and the Sava River. Right across the street, it's the Kalemegdan, the largest park in the city. Inside the park, overseeing the two rivers, there's the Beograd Fortress, originally built in 279 BCE by the Celts who lived here. It was rebuilt and expanded in 535 by the Roman Emperor Justinian I, and expanded again in 1403 by the Serbian Prince Stefan Lazarević. Today it's a charming park with many trees, and that's what I see from my fifth floor windows. The neighborhood is mostly residential, but I'm three blocks away from Knez Mihailova, a long pedestrian street full of shops and restaurants. Also, on the other side of Kalemegdan, on the riverfront, there's the famous Beton Hala (Concrete Hall), a series of former industrial buildings turned into fashionable restaurants.

You may have noticed that I write Beograd and not Belgrade. That's because there's no L in the original word. Beograd means White City in Serbian.

View from Kalemegdan

Nikola Tesla, pop star inventor, is a national hero around here. There's the Nikola Tesla Airport, there's the Nikola Tesla Bulevar, his face is on the 100 dinar bill, there are Nikola Tesla t-shirts everywhere, and there's the Nikola Tesla Museum, with his inventions and hundreds of books, photographs, garments, and even an urn in the shape of a sphere containing Tesla's ashes.

Nikola Tesla

I also visited other museums, of course. The National Museum of Serbia is very interesting. On the ground floor there are artifacts from pre-history to the Roman Empire. The next two floors contain a large collection of art, both local and foreign. They have Bosch, Canaletto, Renoir, Monet, van Gogh, Gauguin, Picasso, and many other famous artists. The Museum of Contemporary Art only had Serbian works and was quite engaging, especially the building created by architects Ivan Antić and Ivanka Raspopović. The Museum of Yugoslavia shows many objects from the time when Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro, and Macedonia were just one country. Right next to it there is the Kuća Cveća (House of Flowers), burial place of Josip Broz Tito, the man who kept all those countries together with an iron hand. I also visited the Museum of Science and Technology, the Auto Museum, the Chocolate Museum, the Residence of Princess Ljubica, and a couple of historical christian orthodox churches, the Temple of Saint Sava and the St. Alexandar Nevsky Church.

Museum of Contemporary Art

I didn't learn any Serbian other than the usual zdravo (hello), hvala (thanks), dobro jutro (good morning) and laku noć (good night), but almost everyone here speaks English. And my little experience with the Cyrillic alphabet in Bulgaria and Macedonia helped a little too. I particularly like to see how they write foreign names.

Starbucks

Marx, Freud, and Einstein

And the food?

What I ate the most here was the traditional ćevapi (pronouced "chevapi"): grilled minced meat, usually beef but sometimes also lamb or pork. I don't think I ever went to a restaurant that didn't have that on the menu. It's commonly served with tomatoes and onions, and with kajmaku (a kind of Serbian cream cheese), and sometimes also with pomfrits (french fries).

Other good dishes I had in Beograd: mućkalica (pronounced "moochkalitsa") is a pork stew, with mushrooms, bacon, paprika, and onions, served in bowl made of bread; pljeskavica (pronounced "plieskavitsa") is the Serbian version of a hamburger, served with fine chopped onions and pomfrits; krsmanović (pronounced "krismanovich") is a pork fillet rolled and stuffed with ham and cheese, served with mushrooms and peppers demi-glace sauce.

The local Serbian wine I tried was Prokupac (pronounced "prokupaz") but it was too light bodied and lacking tannins for my taste. So I've been drinking Macedonian Vranec, which is popular here too.

And what about side trips?

I visited a few places not too far from Beograd. The most impressive was the Golubac Fortress, a beautiful medieval castle perched on the Danube River, on the border with Romania. On the same trip I also went to Lepenski Vir, an archeological site dated from between 9500 and 7200 BCE (the almost lovecratian sculptures are the best part).

Golubac Fortress

I went to Novi Sad, which looks suprisingly small and provincial for being the second largest city in Serbia (about 350,000 people). The view of the city from the Petrovaradin Fortress, on the other side of the river, is nice. On the same trip I stopped at Sremski Karlovci, a small town (about 8,750 people) of historic significance, as it was the site of a congress that ended the hostilities between the Ottoman Empire and the Holy League. The main reason for going there was a wine tasting at the Vinum winery, to learn about the local fortified wine Bermet. Good, but too many spices for my taste, especially clover, which makes it a bit bitter. There was a loud Texan tourist there, who bought a bottle of their most expensive sparkling white wine and then told the manager he would drink it mixed with orange juice. The woman was horrified.

On another trip, I went to Mokra Gora, to take the Šargan 8 train, a 15.4 km ride at 30km/h and through 20 tunnels, the most difficult part to build in the railway between Beograd and Sarajevo during the First World War. Not far from there, I visited Kustendorf, also known as Drvengrad (Timber Town), a traditional Serbian village built by Emir Kusturica for his movie Life is a Miracle (which is terrible, by the way).

Šargan Eight

I also went to Zemun, which technically is part of Beograd but it's so far from where I live that it feels like another city. Especially because I walked all the way there and back home, for a total of 22 km. That area is very different from the rest of Beograd, and until 1934 it was its own city and part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (everything on that side of the Sava River used to be Austria-Hungary and on this side it was the Ottoman Empire). I had a nice lunch there, watching the Danube, and visited the Gardoš Tower, built in 1896, from where you have a nice view of the river.

Lunch by the Danube

And after Beograd?

After three months in the Balkans, tomorrow I move to New York. But that, of course, is a story for later.

Bye for now!