Bumbling around Belgrade
The Guinness
I took the chance of not taking the customary ‘emergency can’ of Guinness with me. This was partly because I already made a phone call to the Three Carrots, the only Irish bar in Belgrade, who assured me they sold the black stuff. Also the Bush-Bin Laden tiff was presenting me with some additional logistical challenges. Security clampdowns following recently uncovered terrorist plots meant that carry-on luggage could contain any liquids.
The Three Carrots - I never did find out why it was called that.
After a bit of a search the following day I found the Three Carrots and Mikhail, the young barman, poured me a wonderful pint of Guinness. He impressed me from the outset with his general knowledge, especially geography, even knowing where the Faroe Islands were!
Mikhail letting my Guinness settle.
A Welsh flag adorned that wall next to the Cork flag, both left by past visitors. He soon grasped what I was up to and after pouring me another pint set to his task of picking my next destination which turned out to be Zagreb, Croatia. As somebody commented on later – ‘what a load of Balkans’.
Cheers! - enjoying my second Guinness at the Three Carrotts
Getting There and around
I flew Lufthansa from Birmingham via Munich. On the way out my Birmingham flight was delayed meaning I missed my connection so ended up flying back to Frankfurt and then onto Belgrade. I got talking to a girl who was on the same contrived Birmingham-Belgrade route as me. It turns out was an Oxford graduate who now had a business designing and selling Christian fridge magnets. No I’m not joking, she even had a website.
Late summer tulips in Belgrade
Arriving in Belgrade airport at midnight put paid to my plan of getting the cheap bus into town and meant I had to resort to being ripped off by the taxi drivers. I took the normal precautions of trying to establish that his meter was working before I got in but hadn’t bargained for the ingenuity of this one. True he had a meter but it looked like it had been assembled using instructions from a 1980s edition of Practical Electronics magazine. It may have been a 30 Euro rip off but he was an interesting character. He knew Cardiff as being the venue where Serbia had beaten Wales recently at football – which he referred to on more than one occasion. He had a sister living in London and had once driven over to visit her in the late-1980s. Determined to make the most of his holiday, he used to drive hundreds of miles each weekend to explore different cities. One weekend he decided to visit Belfast but nobody had told him about the ‘Troubles’ and he couldn’t believe what he ended up driving though up the Falls Road, being searched many times. The ironic thing was however that he then ended up doing four years military service in Serbia in the 1990s at the height of their conflicts. He had the look of a rugged worn out soldier, old before his time but tough underneath. I didn’t argue about the fare.
The classic buildings of Belgrade
Team Makeup
My Belgrade marketing campaign hadn’t been a great success and failed to attract any travelling companions.
Accommodation
I stayed the first night an old hotel. My room had the standard antiquated plumbing with an industrial style valve to flush the toilet. The floor had been carpeted by the thriftiest carpet-fitter in town who had used an off-cut measuring 4 inches wide and half a mile long. Breakfast was a tasty omelette. When I returned to Belgrade after going to Montenegro I moved on to another hotel, the Hotel Astorija which was better.
View from my hotel Europa window in Podgorica
Sightseeing highlights
It seems that whatever period of history one looks at Belgrade is on the border between any hostilities and therefore always gets it in the neck. It’s been occupied more times than a toilet at King’s Cross Station. The Huns and the Goths have had their turns - and there was me thinking that the later were just teenage girls dressed in black with lots of make-up.
View from my Hotel Astorija window towards Belgrade station
Belgrade - I liked it; admittedly there were a fair number of communist style concrete buildings but there was plenty of classic European architecture around too
My bearings weren’t proving that easy to find. This was somewhere where Lonely Planet and the Rough Guide had not yet ventured so I was using the Bradt Guide to Belgrade, well written but not strong in the cartography department. . Things weren’t helped by the fact that the street signs were once again only in Cyrillic and my guide book only had Roman script. I spent three hours getting a general flavour of the place, seeing the impressive statues and buildings. The ‘bloke on the horse’ in Trg Slobode (Freedom Square), which became my orientation point during my visit, turned out to be, Prince Michael Obrenovic III who liberated Serbia for the Turks in the 1800s. I say orientation point, but there were times during my visit when I swear they moved to statue to other locations just to confuse visitors like me.
Prince Michael Obrenovic III - I'm sure he kept moving around
After seeing the city centre, visiting statues and sculptures I headed up to the hill and Kalemegan fortress that towers over the city and offers great views down over the Rivers Danube and Sava. In the 18th century the castle marked what was thought to be the edge of western civilisation.
View from the castle over the Danube
The light was fading when I returned to the city centre and as I rounded a corner and there dead in front of me were the bombed buildings resulting from the NATO campaign of the late 1990s. It was an incredible stark reminder of the county’s troubled past. It bought home to me the history of the place more than any statue or monument could ever do.
The bombed buildings in Belgrade centre
Quirky momentsThe currency in Montenegro is the Euro; somewhat strange considering that they are not even in the EU. I’d been saving up small change from my recent business trips to Brussels etc, so that when I needed to make purchases here in Montenegro, I could hand over a few coins rather than run the risk of handing over a large denomination note and not get the correct change. This plan came to a crashing halt however when the trustworthy looking lady in the bus station ticket booth asked me to open my hand and show her my change. I thought she was just going to take a few coins but she then swept it all off away, counted it twice and gave me a ticket and a ten Euros note in return! That set her up in change for the day and left me feeling guilty for not trusting people.
A novel way of making a ladder longer!
In Montenegro I visited the old capital of Cetinje. On my return by coach from there I sat by the window I was able to fully appreciated the excellent views down into the valleys and out towards the coast. We only stopped once, to put out a fire. The coach coming in the other direction had found the incline a little too much for it and its engine complained by bursting into flames. As calmly as you can imagine, our driver stopped the bus, got the fire extinguisher from the luggage compartment and discharged it into the engine of the other coach, got back on board and drove us away as if it was an everyday occurrence – perhaps it was.
Looks like someone had had some wood delivered
Lasting Memories
As I waited for the bus back to the airport I contemplated my time in Serbia and Montenegro. It had been frenetic, perhaps a little too frenetic. The people I’d met had all been very friendly and welcoming.
Out of the City
Montenegro and Serbia had announced their split just as it was picked out as my next destination in Lichtenstein and since then the split had taken place. I wanted to honour this new found country by paying it a visit.
Suspension bridge in Podgorica
The thing that attracted me to the Belgrade-Podgorica option was not only its value for money, just £14 for seven hours travel, but also the fact that the guide books describe it as ‘a truly spectacular rail journey through deep ravines and high bridges’. It turned out to be a journey I’ll not remember so much for the sights, which I found somewhat disappointing. Although a fantastic piece of railway engineering, all I could often see was a rock face, tunnel walls or trees. Instead the people in my new compartment were fantastic. They were evidently strangers at the start of the journey but soon were talking incessantly to each other, making me feel most welcome and sharing all their food. They seemed quite offended if I dared to refuse one of their offers. ‘What, you don’t like our Serbian cheese crackers”? They were also very tactile people – I hadn’t had my knee touched so much for a long time.
