A Trip to Brograde

It's been a long day at the office.

I'll admit that I'm tired from the endless hours of sitting in the library, staring alternately at unreadable Bulgarian texts and my own computer screen, but, my glut for torture has brought me to this point, to faithfully deliver to you the latest succulent narrative of a trip to an exotic, distant land.

Seeing as how I failed to fulfill my goal, last month, of visiting a new country every month for the first time, I resolved to remedy the situation by taking a trip this past weekend and crediting it to November. The destination of my intrepid compatriots and me? Belgrade, the former capital of Yugoslavia (May It Rest In Peace) and current capital of Serbia. Our host for the weekend? Keša - our old friend from FISI, law student, and party animal.

With this trip now officially in the books, I can say, without fear of retribution from the gods of Fate, Luck, Karma, or Hubris, that it went off virtually glitch-free. We ran into no problems getting our tickets, Keša booked us a cheap hostel (more on that to come), everything ran according to plan, and our travel time ending up being significantly shorter than we had expected. Though we did run into a few surprises along the way, we were able to navigate them more or less smoothly, owing to the benevolent attention from the aforementioned gods and more than a few entreating expressions.

We woke at 6 AM Friday morning and left for the bus station at 7. Our first surprise was the bus that pulled into the lot to whisk us away to our destination: Instead of the standard coach we've gotten used to in these parts, up rolled an 18-seat minibus. A mite confused, we boarded, but an hour later, we made it to the border. Not having left the Schengen Area or the EU since arriving here, we weren't sure what to expect, but the crossing went swiftly and painlessly (and, to our substantial relief, tarifflessly). Two hours later, we arrived in Niš.

My understanding of the schedule had been that we would be resting there for two hours, but upon appealing to the information desk, we were told--in Serbian, which is, fortuitously, close enough to Bulgarian that we were able to understand the general gist of what was being told to us--that we actually had to board a bus which would be departing in three minutes. The lady helping us asked for our tickets, and to our horror, ripped them out and printed us new ones. Somehow, this must have been part of what was supposed to happen, because, completely baffled by the process by this point, we presented our new tickets to the bus driver, and he welcomed us on board the bus to Belgrade. We departed, and, despite our lingering confusion, arrived in Belgrade at 2 PM.

Keša, whom Alex and I hadn't seen in 4 months, and whom Laura and Hannah had never met, was waiting for us at the station, and we went from there. Let me say this: Though I know that correlation does not necessarily imply causation, I noticed that we had a much easier time conducting ourselves around this country--of whose native language we possessed little knowledge--being accompanied by a native speaker than we had on our last trip (to Romania, a country of whose language we possessed similarly little knowledge), when we enjoyed no such company. We were successfully and easily able to reserve our return tickets, and we made our way to the hostel.

It was cheap (Costing us only 1000 Dinars per person per night, which I'm sure will sound like an astronomical sum until I tell you that it only comes out to 10 Euros), afforded us easy access to approximately 649 coffee shops, and was, all in all, a pleasant little affair. We got a room to ourselves, though we shared a (rather thin and not at all sound-muffling) doorway with a group of evil unpleasant Serbians who made a point of talking as loudly as possible as soon as 7:30 AM rolled around. After checking in, having only an hour of daylight left (Serbia apparently being a land of 3:45 sunsets this time of year), we went out for a brief foray around the city.

We passed a few of the attractions we were to see in more detail in the coming days and made our way back to hostel, where we, to our comprehensive benefit, had the opportunity to take naps of a decadent magnitude. I certainly took advantage, passing into a veritable coma for an hour, before we roused ourselves to head out to dinner.

Dinner on the first night was a cozy little affair at the "?" Restaurant. After spending the 2+ requisite hours eating and catching up on our activities of the last few months, we headed out to a bar in the old city, where we met several of Keša's friends (all law students). There, we got to spend the next few hours listening to an excellent cover band, learning about our hosts, and generally having an awesome time of it in our new, friendly, entertaining city.

After staying out later than was advisable given our lack of good rest the night before, we were roused the next morning by the probably-intentionally-disruptive susurruses of our aforementioned doormates. After heading out to a ridiculously cheap and delicious breakfast, we made our way around the Old City, spending the bulk of our morning on Knez Mihailova street, a pedestrian-only Shoppers' Paradise.

All dressed up for Xmas

This new camera is turning me into a hipster, but DOESN'T IT LOOK DELICIOUS

I just thought this was cool.

From there, we proceeded over to Belgrade Fortress, overlooking the spot where the Danube and Sava Rivers meet. Nothing I can say will really do it justice, so instead of giving you a 6000-word description, how about I just give you the equivalent in pictures?

Entering the Fortress through Stambol Gate

The meeting of the Danube (right) and Sava (left) Rivers, New Belgrade in the background

Along the Ramparts

With a layer of mist rolling in

Steeple

Despot Stefan Tower, with New Belgrade in the background

Tearing ourselves away from this Piece of Awesome, as we had other things to see, we made our way back to the center of the Old City, stopping at St. Michael's Cathedral, the seat of the Patriarch of Serbia.

The Patriarch's Palace

St. Michael's Cathedral

Detail of the Steeple

After a walking through the Belgrade Ethnographic Museum (which yielded some interesting information pertinent to my research, though I won't sully the wondrous nature of this entry by delving into it right now) and a quick dinner, we headed down to the Cathedral of St. Sava. Incredible is the only way to describe it.

There are no words

Inside

After walking past some other Extremely Cool Things (including a Beatles tribute band playing to a packed outdoor skating rink), we met up for a few hours with some of the people we had met at the bar the previous night, and headed back to our hostel.

Our final morning in Belgrade dawned damp and cold, but we managed to salvage a few more hours of sightseeing before we had to make our bus at 12:30. It was on the way back to the bus station that I saw probably the most striking thing of the entire trip - the bombed-out shell of some structure, right across the street from a seemingly-untouched, beautifully ornate government building. It was then that it hit me that this place, for all of the beautiful and wonderful things it had shown us over the course of the two previous days, had bombs dropping on it barely more than 10 years ago. 

It was a stark reminder that for all the peace and security we enjoy in the States, people in many other places live far more tenuously. Just within Belgrade, an entire generation of innocent kids--members of ordinary families that had nothing to do with any of the violence in Kosovo--grew up in an environment approximating warfare, including Keša and all the people we had met. It was a jolt, similar to the one I experienced when I visited Mt. Meron in Israel (which bore the marks of bombs that had fallen on it just the previous summer), that woke me to the fact that devastating events--that cause people to live in constant fear--take place all over the world, right in people's own back yards.

L - R: Alex, Hannah, Laura, and Keša at the head of the street. All of the following pictures were taken within 100 meters of each other. Note that, in this first picture, nothing bears any marks of damage.

50 meters down the road. Note the shells of the building on either side of the street.

The south half of the bombed-out structure, with the untouched government building across the street.

Close-up of another crumbling part of the building.

Another side of the north half of the building

It was a sobering end to our trip, but an important thing to have witnessed. It reminded me that history is always at hand in this part of the world, and the best thing we can do is to learn from it.

Our trip back to Sofia was as thankfully uneventful as our trip to Belgrade, and we made it back around 8:30 Sunday night. My three companions left for their respective cities from there. Overall, it was a terrific, and entirely too short trip. Belgrade was certainly one of the coolest cities I've been to so far, and you can be sure I'll go back when I can. Definite, unmitigated GREAT success.

Next entry - all the Fulbrighters gather in Sofia on Friday for a year-end conference. Stay tuned for a recap this weekend. Thanks to all of you for coming along for the ride.