Adventure in the Balkans. Belgrade

I feel like every time people think of Eastern Europe, the Balkans and of course Romania, they imagine this little grey cloud always being present above this area. A lot of people are still under the impression that Eastern Europe is this place where nothing interesting happens, a place destroyed by the Communist Era and that has nothing to offer to the tourists. Wrong. As Romanians we claim that Romania is one of the most beautiful countries and the whole world should visit it. But did we stop for one second and think about what our neighbours can offer? Our Serb neighbours seem to be just our neighbours and nothing more. We’re under the impression that we have nothing in common but the Communist dictatorship and the fact that we share a border. You can even see this more clearly at the Eurovision Song Contest . When did Romania ever give Serbia 10 or 12 points and vice versa? You see? Not even the fact that we’re neighbors helps us in this case. So we decided to put stereotypes aside and go visit Belgrade.

Too much Itlay, Spain, Greece and other popular destinations. We wanted to see what our Balkans neighbors have to offer and see if we’re really that different. So we took our family and a friend and hit the road by car, some sort of a road trip on a budget that took us all the way to Croatia. We followed the Dragasani – Craiova – Drobeta – Portile de Fier-Golubac – Pozarevak – Belgrad route and it took us about 6 hours to get there, with all the stops when we saw a landscape worth a picture. In Serbia you don’t have to pay the vignette, just the highway. From  Pozarevak to Belgrade that’s 180 dinars for 70 km of highway, about 1,50 euros and you can pay in euros, dinars or with your credit card. By the way, Serbia is not a member of the EU and because of this it has huge roaming costs (for surfing the net it’s 9.00eur/MB compared to 0,20eur/MB in the EU).

We had decided to stay on a smaller budged because we were going close by to the Balkans and have  sort of backpacking through Eastern Europe experience, but with our suitcases in the trunk, so we chose Air BNB. Air BNB is a pretty cool website where you can rent houses or apartments, having the option to have the house to yourself or share it with the owners. We found a cozy apartment closer to the city center, we met the owner who explained us how to get to the sights we wanted to visit and recommended us a few restaurants.

Hotel Moscow

We went with our traveling friend to explore the city and left our parents to rest, meeting them afterwards for dinner. The city is situated at the mouth of the river Sava in Danube and is divided in two by the Sava river, Stari Beograd (the Old Belgrade) and Novi Beograd (the New Belgrade). We took the bus and all the way to the city center we were trying to see where the St Sava Cathedral is, the biggest one in South Eastern Europe. The owner told us that we couldn’t miss it, but you know what, we did, with all our efforts to be on the lookout. It was on the way back that we saw this humongous construction staring at us and we couldn’t stop wondering “How on Earth did we miss it??”

The Danube and Sava River

Knez Mihaila street

The main walking street, Knez Mihaila, is a few kilometers long with terraces, restaurants and stores on each side, being the oldest and most important street in Belgrade. It takes you to the entrance of Kalemegdan park, where you can find The Fortress, the Zoo, and the Military Museum. Before we reach Knez Mihaila street we come across the famous Hotel Moscow, dating all the way back 1908 and having a remarkable architecture.  We discovered a nice café with a hidden garden, Jazz Basta, we stopped for a lemonade and headed back to the apartment for dinner. We had heard about this restaurant with traditional Serbian cuisine, Kovac and wanted to try it and to our surprise it was near our apartment. On some level, the food is somewhat similar to the Romanian one, the atmosphere as expected in a traditional restaurant, with a mini folk ensemble that came by each table and played traditional Serbian songs.

Hotel Moscow

Hidden garden

Kovac Restaurant

The next day we had to leave Belgrade and head to Zagreb but before that we visited it with the whole family for a while. We took the car to St Sava Cathedral and found a parking spot in front of it (lucky us), but we had nowhere to pay. Eventually, the driver next to us helped and told us that you can pay by text but as we didn’t have a Serbian phone number he paid for our fee also and told us that we can visit the cathedral and stay for one hour. Very nice and hospitable these Serbs.

The St Sava Cathedral was built in 65 years, between 1939-2004. The cathedral is among one of the imposing cathedrals in the world, surpassing the St Sofia Cathedral in Istanbul or the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. In front of the Cathedral you can find the traditional souvenirs stands from where we bought fridge magnets and a snow globe for our collections. Near the Cathedral there’s Café & Factory, where you can apparently find the best coffee in Belgrade so we went inside to have our coffees/tea and a late breakfast.

St. Sava Orthodox Cathedral

We took the car and found an underground parking and went to discover the city. We pulled out the map and realized that the Parliament is close by and decided that there’s where we’re headed. In front of the Prliament there’s Toma Rosandić’s sculpture from 1939, Igrali se konji vrani (“Play of Black Horses”). The Parliament was built at the beginning of 20th century, first being the Parliament of Yugoslavia, then Serbia and Montenegru’s, and from 2006 Serbia’s.

The Parliament

Toma Rosandić’s sculpture

From there we went towards Hotel Moscow and took a few pictures and we crossed Knez Mihaila street to go to Kalemegdan Park. The park itself is quite big, you need more than a day to visit it. We had only 2 hours until we had to leave for Zagreb so we chose the lazy people route, as we liked to call it, taking the mini train that took us across the park, at the Fortress (placed on the Danube and Sava River shore), we saw the Military Museum from the outside, spotting the cannons and war vehicles collections. We stopped for a bit to take pictures with The Danube and Sava River behind us. From here we headed to the Zoo for those who wanted to visit and back from where we started. The whole ride took about 20 minutes, but when you don’t that much time to visit, it will do.

Military Museum

Military Museum

Military Museum

Belgrade is a nice city, with cool people and fashionable women, they seem like they were stepping out of a fashion magazine. We were impressed by it. We had heard that Belgrade has night life compared to the one of Bucharest, but unfortunately we couldn’t test this theory. We come just as tourist to explore the city. Maybe the next time we’ll visit Belgrade we’ll just pass time in cafes and  clubs. This time we were on a limited schedule, at 3 pm we had to go to Zagreb, on a scorching heat that not even the AC in our car could stand. But we’ll talk about it some other time. Until then, dream about your favorite destination. It’s free!