Erasmus Road Trip: destination Serbia

Beograd, capital of Serbia

Hello folks, sorry for the belayed post of Beograd, but I have been quite busy this week, anyway, here goes the adventure to Belgrade, tha capital of Serbia.

As I was saying in the last post, it took us like 10 hours to travel from Sarajevo to Belgrade, and why is that? There are several reaosns, the first one is that we got lost at the beginning, there are no clear signs to travel from one place to another, so with were pretty much driving with our instinct, 2 hours or so, until we arrive to a dead end, is when we realized we were kinda lost. So after trying to find the way the hell out of there, asking in the petrol station, local people that didn’t speak a work of English, (obviously is not their fault, whenever u go most of the time the people in villages don’t speak any English), we managed to find the right way, but the second obstacle came, curvy and poorly paved narrow roads, dozens of trucks, so that meant no more than 50-60 km/hour speed.. that is why it took us in total 10 hours for a 500 km distance…

6th Floor Hostel

Anyway, after arriving finally to the city around 8:30-9 pm, we went directly to the hostel, and hopefully for us it very good located, next to the train station, and we neither had to worry about the parking because the hostel had a private parking for guests. So we registered in the hostel, rested for a while, and we went out to do some night sightseeing while we were looking for a place to have dinner… We didn’t stay long coz we wanted to rest well and wake up early to joing the free tour on the morning.

Belgrade itself it looked baronial buring the night, with all the mixed cultures from the Turkish conquest, Austrian invasions, with a strong touch of Communist Yugoslavia and some ugly buildings from the post-communist era.

During the night it looked amazing the city, but I must say that the city is quite ugly during daylight, because there are many buildings abandoned or poorly preserved, and the pollution of the city didn’t help much.

The hostel by the way, was very good, clean rooms, kitchen, with free internet, and the most important thing, continuous hot water ! it was a nightmare showering in the hostel in Sarajevo with barely warm water..

Trg Republik

On the next day we woke up with enough time to get to Trg Republike (Republic Sq.) at 11am to join the free tour, on our way for breakfast some of us took local delicatessen like cheese burek for breakfast or simply a sub. About the free tour, it is totally free of charge, the guide was a student from the university of Belgrade, it’s like any other freetours, is is only based on tips if you liked the tour. The guide was pretty good, since she was also a young student, she showed us the main sites and also the hidden ones, it lasted for 3 hours more or less. As I said, we started in the Republic Sq., we continued to Knez Mihajlova street, Belgrade Fortress, Kalemegdan, Kralja Petra Street, and so on, and we finished in the Studentski trg, we received a wide and rich historic class of Beograd and Serbia, with this kind of tours it makes one even more interested in History.

After the tour, we went by ourselves to to do some tourism, and later we went to a traditional Serbian restaurant recommended by the guide, to have traditional Serbian dinner with traditional Serbian beer. Very very tasty  !!

Sarma

Serbian beer

Later on we just went back to the hostel to rest for a little while, take a shower and get ready to hit some clubs in one of the 5 best cities in the world to party !

We went to a live music pub called Tranvy, also suggested by the guide, and because it wast one of the few places open, officially Mondays are the resting day for party animals.. although the pub was quite full to be a non-partying day.

On Tuesday 9^th we had to pack our stuff again to hit back to Ljubljana, but not before we spent the last Dinars on snack for the trip.

The way back to Ljubljana was way much better, with highway directly to Ljubljana via Croatia.

For a non planned trip I must say everything went pretty smooth, with no big incidents, beside getting lost in the deep Bosnia, and one-way crappy tunnels in the middle of nowhere. 

Crappy Tunnel somewhere in Bosnia.. 

I totally recommend people to visit these places, specially before it gets crowded of tourist, and also before it gets changes to any other regular capital full of shops and malls.. 

See u in the next post !