May 13, 2024

Another week in Serbia well spent. I’ve had plenty of calm, idle time in the oasis of Belgrade. My roommate Sarah posted a quote along the lines of “Belgrade doesn’t pose”. It’s a modest city, but its soul is deep, gritty, and just behind the surface. Perhaps similarly to a lot of people in the balkans, the intimidating, uninviting facade is paper thin and easily broken, almost always revealing an honest, authentic, and warm core.  A few times on travel influencer pages, I’ve seen posts along the lines of “These are the 5 places I would NOT go back to”, and more often that not, Belgrade makes the list. I can’t say I don’t understand. I don’t think it’s a top place to just visit,  to just travel through. But as a place to live, it’s really sublime. As the closing of my time here draws nearer (two weeks from today!) I can’t help but feel a sense of sadness. There’s a lot of bars and restaurants and museums and churches and neighborhoods that I know I won’t get to on this trip, and I have to make peace with that fact. It’s also such an interesting counterpoint to the more hurried city-crawl I performed these past few months. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with getting just the basic kind of understanding of a place without squeezing every drop out of it, and I do think that I got a good sense of almost every place I visited. There’s just such a lot of world to see, both wide and deep. As with many things, the key is probably in balance, and not the kind of balance a tightrope walked faces, the compromise between two extremes, but rather the kind of balance shown in a fascinating stack of stones, the generative creativity to combine distinct aspects into a piece of art. 

Enough waxing (insert adjective of choice). The past couple weeks, while calm, filling, and relaxed, have not been absent of exploration and discovery. Last Saturday I rented a bike (pretty cheap!) and took myself down the Sava, including through some unexpectedly rugged jungly bits on the Sava Island that had me fantasizing about amazonian adventures in the future… Sunday was Orthodox Easter, and Sarah and I celebrated by walking around to look at a few churches, including the Saint Sava Orthodox church, a new and massive orthodox church that is the biggest in Serbia. The week was the first time back in the office in a few weeks, but was mostly devoid of work aside form preparing a presentation I’ll be giving to Dr. Lee’s Croatia-Bosnia DOC in a couple weeks (scroll down about a year. See blogs 68-70). On Monday I went to see a blues band at a bar called Blues i Pivo, which was a blast. On Friday I went to Novi Bioskop Zvezda (new theater star). Check out this, lifted from their wikipedia page: “Novi Bioskop Zvezda is a squatted cinema in Belgrade, Serbia. Built in 1911, it is the oldest cinema in the city. After a period of dereliction, it was occupied in 2014 by the Movement for the Occupation of Cinemas. The squatters received international support and a documentary was released in 2018 about the occupation.” How badass is that?. I’ve seen two films there, The Matrix and After Hours. Both sensational experiences, the theater seems like it hasn’t changed since 1911. The screen is a stretched canvas, nothing seems to be in good shape, there’s graffiti on the walls, just completely like time travel. 

This weekend was quite full of adventures! Zoe (coworker, friend) rented a car and was kind enough to drive me around in exchange for splitting the cost and my awesome company. What a sucker! On Saturday we drove about an hour east to an animal sanctuary/ petting zoo/ nature preserve. It was a gorgeous sprawling field of yellow flowers and verdant grasses. There were horses, cows, and pigs, but the main focus was on the Serbian Donkeys, a specific local breed. Funnily enough, a big feature on the menu was their famous Donkey stew and sausage! When in Rome… It was really delicious. Stomachs full, we drove north to Subotica, a small city almost on the border with Hungary. A town totally out of a fairy tale, just insanely stunning. So many trees and boulevards, it seemed like every resident of the city was out enjoying the lovely weather. Sunday was no less stunning. With Zoe’s friend Andre, we drove south to a mythical pyramid shaped mountain near Rtanj, which is supposedly an ancient civilization’s neglected stronghold. That or it’s simply a pyramid shaped mountain! There’s simply no way to tell… At the base of the mountain we made friends with a pack of five just disgustingly cute puppies, three of which insisted upon following us all the way up the mountain! We got a little worried for their health, given a lack of water and food, so we called the hike short. This ended up being totally fine though, since we got more time to explore the area, stop to take in the views of the more mountainous east side of Serbia. On the way home we stopped for dinner in Sokobanja, a small town in the heart of “Green Serbia”, that was just beyond cute. A hearty meal saw us through the commute back home, and that leaves me here, on Monday afternoon. 

I’ve got a busy week planned, Budapest, Mom visiting, and a Balkan mini-road trip, all kicking off with a 9-ball pool tournament tonight! Fingers crossed I don’t win and take a bunch of money off the burly regulars at the pool lounge… Sounds dangerous