After having been in Bosnia and seeing all the things I saw. I was ambivalent about the Serbia trip. But I had told Russell and Emily that I would come and meet them in Beograd and that we would go to Pančevo to meet their Serbian friends.Upon arrival in Beograd at 5am I was sort of disoriented but they had a room at a hostel and I managed to catch a bit of a snooze there (technically I couchsurfed a hostel HA!) until we awoke and made our plan for the day which was check out and head for the suburban town of Pančevo where her friends live. So we did and checked into quite possibly the strangest hotel, Tamiš which I guess had been destroyed and was still under reconstruction. The third and fourth floors looked like a bomb had been set off and were under massive reconstruction. The lift was dodgier than Bernie Mac as a used car salesman and was an adventure in itself. In fact it seemed like it only wished to operate for me at times and even then it wasn’t quite certain where the ground floor was and would periodically decide to stop.
In fact, even though I had been touching the doors as they went by, for there was no interior door, the lift proceeded to function well enough. But when Emily decided to do the same thing, it stopped. She then became slightly unsettled as we attempted to make the elevator go again. In the end we had pushed every button on the panel, including the bell which did not ring of course and still hadn’t succeeded in getting it to move. Finally, pretty much of its own volition, the elevator decided that it had had enough of us, or of trying to freak Emily out, and happily moved on. Even after that little adventure, we continued to use the lift.
It would slow when reaching the ground floor and generally come to a rest about half a floor up. You would then have to hit the button for the first floor (which was really like the fourth) to go back up. Then when you arrived there hit Zero again for the ground floor. It was all rather entertaining to say the least.
After some fun with the elevator, which was of course after we had to walk all the way up to the 6th floor (which was really the 8th) because it simply did not answer the first time we attempted to call it, somewhat like a bratty child or a poorly trained puppy, we headed out to get a beer which I believe was sorely needed by all involved. Except of course for the elevator who really just needed a good servicing or a stern talking to. That lead us to the train bar which Emily remembered from her previous visits which was actually a train (see gallery). A bit of the old liquid courage and we were once again right as rain and headed to the restaurant which was in a windmill. Yes, a bar in a train and a restaurant in a windmill, how very interesting indeed.
The meal at the restaurant was more than we had expected (portion wise) and we were all fairly well stuffed from that. Emily was unable to reach her friends by phone so we went to one’s flat. He wasn’t there but his mother, Branka, was. She rustled up one of the neighbors, Miloš, who spoke English to act as a translator. She then plied us with food and drink and was prepared to carry on cooking for us into the night. However, I had work that needed to be done and the others wanted to freshen up. So we fed up on the proffered meat, cheese and warm breadsticks, drank some Rekija (grape brandy, like grappa) and then made our way back to the hotel.
OK the hotel. It has eight floors, but the first two floors are not used by the hotel from what we can see and basically contain offices or something. The whole building looks like a concrete bunker straight out of a star Wars film (see gallery) or a communist military installation and was in general disrepair. We learned that the owner bought it cheap from the government after Communism and there just isn’t a lot of tourism there. It’s a 180 bed hotel with two stars, but I question the validity of that second part.
After a bit of work at the train bar everyone started showing up to get down to some serious fun. In a country where a lot of people don’t like America it was nice to feel so welcome and meet so many great and open-minded people. Why don’t they like America you ask? Well it might have something to do with the bombing of Beograd back in 1999. They believe that there was no reason for it to be done. It was part of NATO operations in the area attempting to end the Kosovo War that was raging at the time. The city was bombed continuously for several months
Honestly I don’t really recall much of it. So we all talked about the difference between people and government, the war in Bosnia and lots of other things. Eventually, I needed some more lighthearted discussions so I jumped over my seat and landed at a table full of young Serbian women and we all had a chat about why I was there, what we all do for a living etc…
Somewhere in the middle of the evening we were informed that Michael Jackson had apparently died. It was later confirmed that he was in fact dead. I’ve never been a fan of him or his music. Sure some of was OK and I wish death on no one, but everyone has to die sooner or later.
Later we took off to a place called Hades. It was a fairly accurately named place. Where the Train Bar was the hip and trendy place, Hades was less so. But even so we still had a good deal of fun and I even pulled a ‘Have you met my friend Bebo?’ with some girl he wanted to talk to heh. Alright that was all. There was some other strange stuff that needed to be done, but hey, I can’t tell you everything…you’ll just have to do some travel on your own and find out.
Well, here are all the images from Serbia. There will be another post about it but sans images.
KPICASA_GALLERY(BeogradDay1)