Europe Trip part 2 - Belgrade
Belgrade was the highlight of the trip for me. I was born there, and I haven't been back for 20 years! The city was basically all new to me, but my old street was familiar.
We left on an evening flight and got into Belgrade's Nikola Tesla airport near midnight. My aunt and uncle's friend Milos picked us up. He has a nice car, but one of the doors doesn't work. "Welcome to Serbia". We stayed in my uncle's old apartment (which he still owns, but a friend of theirs lives there). It was pretty warm, so we had the windows open the entire time.
The next day I woke up with a headache, so we had a slow start. Milos dropped us off in the city center and we walked around a bit. There are lots of very pretty old buildings. The nice thing about European cities vs NZ cities is that they use their old historical buildings for stuff, like banks, post offices, and government! Unlike Dunedin, with it's abandoned post office building and other historical buildings being used for strip clubs and such.
This is the central post office in Belgrade:
We walked around for a while, and then headed to Kalemegdan, the old fortress where Belgrade was initially settled. Now it's a big park, and nicely done up! There is also a war museum there. They have a bunch of artillery pieces lined up outside of the museum:
This is the tower. It has an observatory built into it!
That evening, my aunt organised meeting with various relatives at a restaurant. Otherwise we would have spent the entire 3 days visiting people and not doing very much else! The view from the restaurant was very pretty, overlooking a lot of the city. We ate BBQ there (since summer is BBQ season and that's all restaurants seem to have). My dad's BBQ is better, but I'm pretty sure he's the king of BBQing.
The next day, we went to my old neighbourhood. My parents sold their house soon after we moved to NZ because they knew at that point that they weren't going to return, and we needed money to buy a house. Now it's been sold again, and could meet it's end because people have mainly been buying old houses there to knock them down and build much bigger new houses. A bit sad, but what can you do! Our old house hasn't been maintained at all, and a lot of money needs to be put in. This is the house:
We couldn't go inside because no one was there, but we walked around the garden. I wrote this on the wall before moved to NYC! (In Cyrillic, H = N)
Up the road from our old house is my aunt's house. They currently rent it out to other people. Across from that house is my old kindergarden, which is still there! Also off the street is a market where I remember my grandma taking me when I was little. It's been kind of upgraded now and has a roof. My aunt is on the right in the photo:
I should mention at this point that fruit and veggies from the former Yugoslavia are the best I've ever had. The tomatoes are extremely sweet, fruit is all much more flavourful, and it's all cheap! They also have 100% juice, which is totally awesome.
After that, we went to St. Sava's cathedral. It's new. I thought that no one built new buildings like this anymore, but they do! It's not finished yet. The outside is, but the inside is only partially complete.
After that, we had a hilarious taxi ride to another restaurant where we were meeting some of my aunt and uncle's friends. My uncle was in the front, and Tonic, my aunt and I were in the back. A bee flew into the taxi and landed on my uncle's shoulder while the car was moving. My aunt started freaking out and told the driver to pull over. Instead, he just looked over and whacked the bee with his hand. It fell down onto the seat behind my uncle, and the driver reached over to grab it (no pulling over involved). The bee then stung him, and he flicked it away. My aunt was now freaking out even more and said that he needs to pull over and put ointment on it, etc, but he just pulled the sting out with his teeth and spat it out the window (still while driving). She insisted on getting tissues and putting water on them for the driver to put on his thumb, and he begrudgingly took it.
The restaurant was more of a bar with food. A word about restaurant staff in Serbia: waiters do not give a fuck about you. They usually act like you, the patron, are just an inconvenience. This restaurant sort of had a single copy of the menu, but they didn't have more than half the items listed. We spent something like half an hour trying to order food. We would ask if they have one thing, and the waiter would go check with the chef and come back. Then sometimes he said they did have it, and then come back later and say that they don't after all. I think you're just supposed to order BBQ in Serbia in the summer...
The next day we went to the cemetery to visit a bunch of graves: my uncle's (dad's side), great grandparents' family plot, and my grandfather's family plot. We met up with my great aunt (dad's side) and also had a chance encounter with another relative.
Obligatory black and white graveyard photo:
Towards the late afternoon, we went to another restaurant for early dinner. After dinner, Tonic and I wandered down the river side and photographed pretty sunset colours:
In the evening, we wandered down to the Belgrade beer fest, which was on while we were there. We didn't go inside because it was really crowded, but we popped into the adjoining carnival and looked around. We played some carnival games. We won some junk, but got one funny prize that we gifted to Jono. It's a communist pig. A little finger puppet that's a pig with a hammer and sickle hat. Hi-larious!
Another thing we managed to bring back to NZ is a drink called rakija. It's made of plums and is a bit like brandy. In the country side, they have it for breakfast. You have a shot of rakija and a cup of black coffee for breakfast in order to shock and kill the germs in your stomach. This keeps you healthy!
That's all for now... more Europe posts later! Again, all photos are here.
We left on an evening flight and got into Belgrade's Nikola Tesla airport near midnight. My aunt and uncle's friend Milos picked us up. He has a nice car, but one of the doors doesn't work. "Welcome to Serbia". We stayed in my uncle's old apartment (which he still owns, but a friend of theirs lives there). It was pretty warm, so we had the windows open the entire time.
The next day I woke up with a headache, so we had a slow start. Milos dropped us off in the city center and we walked around a bit. There are lots of very pretty old buildings. The nice thing about European cities vs NZ cities is that they use their old historical buildings for stuff, like banks, post offices, and government! Unlike Dunedin, with it's abandoned post office building and other historical buildings being used for strip clubs and such.
This is the central post office in Belgrade:
We walked around for a while, and then headed to Kalemegdan, the old fortress where Belgrade was initially settled. Now it's a big park, and nicely done up! There is also a war museum there. They have a bunch of artillery pieces lined up outside of the museum:
This is the tower. It has an observatory built into it!
That evening, my aunt organised meeting with various relatives at a restaurant. Otherwise we would have spent the entire 3 days visiting people and not doing very much else! The view from the restaurant was very pretty, overlooking a lot of the city. We ate BBQ there (since summer is BBQ season and that's all restaurants seem to have). My dad's BBQ is better, but I'm pretty sure he's the king of BBQing.
The next day, we went to my old neighbourhood. My parents sold their house soon after we moved to NZ because they knew at that point that they weren't going to return, and we needed money to buy a house. Now it's been sold again, and could meet it's end because people have mainly been buying old houses there to knock them down and build much bigger new houses. A bit sad, but what can you do! Our old house hasn't been maintained at all, and a lot of money needs to be put in. This is the house:
We couldn't go inside because no one was there, but we walked around the garden. I wrote this on the wall before moved to NYC! (In Cyrillic, H = N)
Up the road from our old house is my aunt's house. They currently rent it out to other people. Across from that house is my old kindergarden, which is still there! Also off the street is a market where I remember my grandma taking me when I was little. It's been kind of upgraded now and has a roof. My aunt is on the right in the photo:
I should mention at this point that fruit and veggies from the former Yugoslavia are the best I've ever had. The tomatoes are extremely sweet, fruit is all much more flavourful, and it's all cheap! They also have 100% juice, which is totally awesome.
After that, we went to St. Sava's cathedral. It's new. I thought that no one built new buildings like this anymore, but they do! It's not finished yet. The outside is, but the inside is only partially complete.
After that, we had a hilarious taxi ride to another restaurant where we were meeting some of my aunt and uncle's friends. My uncle was in the front, and Tonic, my aunt and I were in the back. A bee flew into the taxi and landed on my uncle's shoulder while the car was moving. My aunt started freaking out and told the driver to pull over. Instead, he just looked over and whacked the bee with his hand. It fell down onto the seat behind my uncle, and the driver reached over to grab it (no pulling over involved). The bee then stung him, and he flicked it away. My aunt was now freaking out even more and said that he needs to pull over and put ointment on it, etc, but he just pulled the sting out with his teeth and spat it out the window (still while driving). She insisted on getting tissues and putting water on them for the driver to put on his thumb, and he begrudgingly took it.
The restaurant was more of a bar with food. A word about restaurant staff in Serbia: waiters do not give a fuck about you. They usually act like you, the patron, are just an inconvenience. This restaurant sort of had a single copy of the menu, but they didn't have more than half the items listed. We spent something like half an hour trying to order food. We would ask if they have one thing, and the waiter would go check with the chef and come back. Then sometimes he said they did have it, and then come back later and say that they don't after all. I think you're just supposed to order BBQ in Serbia in the summer...
The next day we went to the cemetery to visit a bunch of graves: my uncle's (dad's side), great grandparents' family plot, and my grandfather's family plot. We met up with my great aunt (dad's side) and also had a chance encounter with another relative.
Obligatory black and white graveyard photo:
Towards the late afternoon, we went to another restaurant for early dinner. After dinner, Tonic and I wandered down the river side and photographed pretty sunset colours:
In the evening, we wandered down to the Belgrade beer fest, which was on while we were there. We didn't go inside because it was really crowded, but we popped into the adjoining carnival and looked around. We played some carnival games. We won some junk, but got one funny prize that we gifted to Jono. It's a communist pig. A little finger puppet that's a pig with a hammer and sickle hat. Hi-larious!
Another thing we managed to bring back to NZ is a drink called rakija. It's made of plums and is a bit like brandy. In the country side, they have it for breakfast. You have a shot of rakija and a cup of black coffee for breakfast in order to shock and kill the germs in your stomach. This keeps you healthy!
That's all for now... more Europe posts later! Again, all photos are here.