How
I met Nevena?
Yes last time I was left alone in the plane,
maybe trying to read “The Lighthouse” by Virginia Woolf to keep myself busy, a
book which I could not finish due to some bad translation... Let’s not talk
about the ultra-delicious micro-sandwich and juice of JAT Airways. However the
flight taught me an important lesson which none of my professors had been able
to teach me till then: I finally understood why we have been learning all those
courses like vibration course, you don’t want your organs shake like a
belly-dancer inside. I think Boeing should have made some bad choices in the
past by employing engineers like me who passed the vibration course with the
lowest grade possible.
Anyway
since all the best things come to an end, 3 hours after the takeoff, starving
to death, the lights of some suburban places around Belgrade were to be seen. It
was really interesting to watch, the view was completely unlike Istanbul which looks
like a huge continuous universe full of stars other than Bosphorus of course, Belgrade
was more like a collection of galaxies with some refreshing spaces in between. I really liked the view of the city from the
top by night and it gave me a psychological boost just at the end, but by then
I guess I was at a low so anything could raise my spirits.
When the plane landed to Belgrade there was
a familiar scene from Turkish Airlines; an applause immediately! However I
think the pilots really deserved it by being able to land it safely. Better
late than never. When I was waiting for
my luggage after the quickly passed passport controls an unpleasant surprise
expected me, actually it was not a surprise, after some years of life
experience you recognize that one of the fundamental laws of the universe is
the Murphy’s Law; “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong”. I couldn’t find
time for checking whether my cell phone line was activated for using abroad or
not but it was of course not working. Adding
to this nuisance the memories of my last backpacking experience where the very
first night cost me a watch I simply decided to take a cab directly to my host,
for the first and last time. I was tired after all. I withdrew some Serbian
dinars from the ATM just at the exit of airport and jumped into one of the
taxis.
The taxi talk with the driver is almost a
must in my country; especially for man.
If you are unable to talk about politics, municipality, weather
etc. you better take a minibus :) This
rule is I guess the same in Balkan countries although I really cannot
generalize from one example. After a nice brief talk however when the driver
asked me about where I come from there was a sudden change of tone in his voice
as he heard my reply “Turkey”, he really tried to hide but I could sense it
somehow. Before visiting Serbia I really
was curious about the view of Serbian people regarding us, people from Turkey.
I knew of course that the hundreds of years of Ottoman rule -add to that the
Bosnian War and Turkey’s active support for Bosnia- had a huge negative effect but from the
Serbian couchsurfers I had hosted in Istanbul
like about a month ago I had some reasons for a hope that they,
especially younger people, will be friendly. I wasn’t wrong about it, actually
all of them were much friendlier than what I expected, but the very start was a
little bit scary :) The talk stopped and at last I had a chance to watch
outside from the viper. We were driving on a highway and the highway and around
were completely dark until we finally crossed a bridge. It was my first meeting
with downtown Belgrade and its bridges :) After some minutes with the help of
GPS system the driver could find the address of my host. I said “Good night”,
paid something like 1500 dinars (100 dinars=1 euro almost) and got out. Like
many other houses around, my host’s was a single-floor house with some “avliya”,
in Serbian “garden”, in Turkish “avlu” with similar meaning but more commonly
used as the free space before a building. Just when I was wondering where
exactly they live, because there were 2 different doors, my host, Nevena came
out, apparently she heard the sound of the cab and got out to check whether
it was me, the expected unknown guest
from Turkey :)
So I entered the house; which is home to a young
architect, the lovely Nevena, who is working as freelancer like most of the
Serbians have to due to economic crisis and her elder brother Ivan, who earns
his life from photography. I should admit
Serbian hospitality can be quite competitive with the Turkish one as Nevena
kept on offering me things continuously which I gladly accepted, well even if I
wrote that I rejected them because of politeness, my friends wouldn’t believe
me, since they have hardly seen me rejecting any kind of food :) It was the
nicest start possible to a trip, an indicator of what I was about to experience
in the coming weeks after that. After
some nice little chat I went to sleep like Nevena did. Needless to say I slept
like a baby on a very comfortable bed, soon it would be a luxury for me but I
didn’t know that yet :)
First
Day: A lonely tour of sightseeing
After a delicious breakfast and my first
but not last experience with snacks from “pekara” (bakery in
Serbo-Croatian-Bosnian which are all the same actually), on my very first day,
I was alone and had simply nothing to do. So as expected from a lonely traveller
I decided to see a little bit of the city after getting some advice from Nevena
who unfortunately, but fortunately for her of course, had to work for a project.
So I bought a ticket –and a Serbian sim-card from the company called Telenor-
and took a bus to the city center which is like 10 min away from the
neighborhood of my host. I knew I had to validate my ticket but when I get into
the bus I couldn’t figure out how since no one was doing that, I expected a
modern system of validation actually, that was my problem, the next day I saw a
lady validating her ticket by just pulling out the mechanical handle of a small
black box while holding the ticket inside thus making some holes on the ticket
marking certain numbers special for each ride. Anyway I got off at a square
called Slavija, the square where Nevena told me to get off. After a brief look around I decided to follow
the buses hoping that they would lead me to the famous pedestrian zone and the
even more famous fortress called Kalemegdan, which takes its name from Turkish
language. (Kale=castle, meydan= court,
square) It turned out that I guessed correctly and after some 15-20 min of walk
I was walking on Kneza Mihajlova, the big street for pedestrians. It’s like a
smaller version of Istiklal Street, many street musicians and performers etc.,
with some Baghdad Street-like poche flavor too; if I have to compare Kneza
Mihajlova with the famous streets of Istanbul. There is one big difference
however, guess what?
Yes, the girls. In terms of beauty the
Serbian standards should be one of the highest in the world. I mean I don’t
want to insult Turkish girls because they are also more beautiful than many
European girls but with Serbia it’s a completely different thing. (Can’t resist quoting a stupid joke here: “How
do you understand that you crossed the German border? When the cars seem to be
more beautiful than girls”) The Serbian girls all look like models, tall and
all the curvatures of the body are beautifully drawn. After seeing all those
beauties one can understand why Ottomans ruled there for 500 years :)
From testosterone driven writing back to my
cool sociologist personality. The most amazing fact about Serbian women for at
least someone coming from a country like Turkey is simply their number rather
than their beauty. If you walk on streets of Belgrade there is a 75%
possibility that the human being coming towards you belongs to the gentle sex.
You can only envy the level of emancipation achieved in Serbia, liberation for women that’s
what I preach preacher man…
If you walk till the end of the Kneza
Mihajlova like I did you arrive to Kalemegdan, the main sight to see in
Belgrade. It has a nice location, just where the two rivers, Sava and Danube
intersect and thus has a beautiful view as well. Not surprisingly many young
couples choose Kalemegdan to share some beautiful moments of love. It is also
the most touristic place in whole Belgrade but thank God tourism is not yet
developed so that nowhere in Belgrade is overcrowded with huge stupid tourist
groups. I could just walk around freely
and peacefully in the park inside the fortresses. One building of interest for
people from Turkey is the “türbe” (tomb) of a famous general, Damat Ali Pasha,
in the Ottoman army. The building is repaired with the financial support of
Turkish government and one can even read some Turkish information on the wall
of the tomb. One more interesting thing, though not historical, is the open air
tennis court just next to the walls of the fortress. Just from this fact you
can deduct that tennis is among the most popular sports in Serbia, mainly
thanks to the not so sympathetic number one, Djokovic of course. Ranging from small children to old men
everyone seems to have a passion for tennis. If you consider the size and the
athletic genes of Serbian people it’s clear why they produced players like
Ivanisevic and Djokovic :)
So much for Kalemegdan; I visited it almost
every day, with Milos and with my friends who have joined me later on. Just buy
a “pivo” from the small kiosks in the park and drink it while enjoying the
sunset at Kalemegdan, that’s my not so original advice. For the first day I
decided to come back a little bit early so that I could cook some stuff for my
hosts. Having enjoyed their warm hospitality I had to find a way to thank them
and mostly that’s my way to do it :) Generally the vegetable section of the markets
are not very diverse in Serbia, they are mainly a nation of carnivores eating
grilled meat like the famous “pljeskavica”, the delicious and giant Serbian
hamburger. I also prefer meat to vegetables as almost every sane person in the
world, so at the start I was quite happy to eat different types of pljeskavica
like gurmanska(with cheese) all the time but then again I understood that it
has a limit :) So it was a wise choice from me to cook some veggie meals like
celeries, green beans or boranijas for a somewhat healthier diet. Add to those veggie meals, rice too, cooked in
the Turkish way where you fry rice first and only then let it boil in water.
Actually I don’t remember exactly what I cooked for Nevena, I only remember the
shopping part in the market but what I clearly remember is the filled meat
stuff made by her mother, a mixture of pork and chicken which doubles the
pleasure of eating meat :) Anyway it had to be my second and last night at
Nevena’s place since her boyfriend would come the other day so there was no
place for me anymore. So I had a real
problem, simply where to stay? The answer was to be found much later…
Second
day: Milos, Beer Festival, pre-meeting
with Ivana and being homeless…
The next day I was to meet a Serbian guy
called Milos, the only person from Belgrade who responded to my message on
Couchsurfing group of the city. So I met him at Slavija in the afternoon, but
before that I left my host with a nice feeling and a hope that I’ll see her
once again. Well of course I was a little bit uncertain about the night but I
wasn’t really worried somehow, having nowhere to sleep is something you
shouldn’t be afraid of, especially if you are travelling by Couchsurfing, it
might always happen.
With Milos we walked again down the same road
I had walked the day before, but this time he mentioned a previously opened
“baklava” shop called “Istanbul” owned by a Turkish guy. You can find baklava
in Serbia and Bosnia but they are not the same like the Turkish version so the
special feature of this particular shop was that it was done in Turkish style.
So I decided to give it a try and taste it. Well of course those “baklava”s
were not good as I expected before but at least the waitresses were sweet. With
Milos we had an impression that the Turkish boss hired them for a reason :)
Anyway the boss was really friendly, offering us some Turkish tea and a little
chat. The funny thing was that he ordered one Serbian waitress to cook the tea
but she just put leaves on the top and didn’t pour water to the bottom part :)
The boss said: “I taught them everything but to cook tea”. Kafa(coffee) is much more common than caj in
Balkans, especially crni caj (black tea) so you can forgive the girls mistake
easily :)
Together with Milos we walked till
Kalemegdan again and sit somewhere looking at Sava and had a nice chat about
life in general. It was a very nice conversation and the time passed rapidly
and suddenly it was sunset time. The first concerts in the park at the other
side of the river were by then over, one of those bands was actually a Turkish
one called Manga, but since I don’t like them and their kind of music, I wasn’t
too unhappy about it. Milos kindly left me at the bridge above the Sava which
led to the park where the beer festival took place. After saying goodbye to
each other with a promise to meet again either in Belgrade or in Istanbul, I
joined the huge crowd crossing the river with my heavy backpack looking like an
idiotic tourist which wasn’t a false impression after all…
After getting through the security control
unchecked, after all I had a bottle of rakı saved for my next host in my
backpack, I entered the festival arena, a nice park with many beer and food
stands on it. I bought a beer and went to the area before the stage, it was so crowded
that I could hardly find any place on
that field, I was just at the very back watching people, barely seeing the
stage and that from the big screen, not the actual one. Ivana, my host in
Temerin, had informed me about her coming for the first night of the festival
before so soon I mer her and her friends Miroslav and another guy from her
workplace. I can’t say that music was
very good, a language which you can’t understand and which isn’t soft and
melodic like Italian or Spanish with some fairly standard rock music is not the
best music in the world, but with Miroslav constantly trying to translate the
songs it was more than fun. The songs of the band on the stage was known by
everyone, since the band, Riblja Corba,
used to be one of the most popular bands in ex-Yugoslavia and then in
Serbia, so it’s not hard to guess that I was the fool of the concert when
everybody was singing all lyrics by heart. Although I must admit some of the
lyrics as translated by Miroslav were quite funny as far as I can remember.
After Ivana and her friends went back to
Temerin, I was alone again. Spending some more time sitting on grass, talking
with all the drunken people to whom I must have seemed awkward and checking
some places to sleep were some of the activities I did until 4 o’clock and but
I began to feel really sleepy. Sleeping alone outside with a backpack in a city
you don’t really know is something scary, so I decided to sleep somewhere
really public and open to have at least a little bit of security. The place I have
chosen was Trg Republike (Republic Square), the very center of Belgrade. There
were many people, some homeless people sleeping on benches and some lovers
loving each other. After some observation of people I decided that it was a
good place to sleep, lied down on a flat stony bench with my sleeping bag. My
passport and money was as usual in the small bag hanging from my shoulder which
I put in my underwear during all my trips and my backpack was under my head
like a pillow with my arms safely passing through the hangings . Other than the
cold of the early morning I had no reason to complain, I slept until 8 o’clock.
I was feeling good since finally my friends were coming to Belgrade…
Belgrade
with Friends or how I was about to lose the bulgur at home while going to
Dimyat for rice.
There are friends with whom you just hang
out and then there are best friends whom you can also trust completely. We have
grown up together with my friends from the “gymnasium”, sharing more than half
of our lives together. None of people
with whom I became friends later felt so close and trustable like them. So it’s
explainable why I was happy about their coming…
By the way I feel like I have to cut it
short from here on a little bit since it’s getting huge and out of control :)
So I’ll try to be more picky about the things from here on…Let’s hope it works.
Anyway I met Kaan in the early afternoon,
again at Slavija, in front of McDonalds. We walked together again the same way
leading to the Kneza Mihailova and Republic Square. After having a quick look
around we had to find a hostel, since I promised Kaan before to arrange
somewhere to sleep through CS but even I was without a home, so a hostel seemed
like the only solution. We decided to go to the hostel which was reserved by
another friend of ours, Can, who was to come later that day and make a small
surprise for him. The location of the hostel, Time Hostel, was very good, very
near to the Republic Square and the price, 15 Euros per person, was also not
bad. Considering that it would be nonsense not to stay with my friends I also
paid for the hostel and decided to spend the night there thus for the first
time breaking my rule of not paying for accomodation. It won’t be the last one,
but by then I had some hopes for that..
We
asked for the room of our friend and took two beds in the same room which was
for 6-people. The remaining three were shared by two British with whom we had a
small talk before they left for sightseeing and a lonely Dutch traveller. I can’t remember what exactly we did
afterwards but we got in contact with Can who arrived late in the evening so we
met him at the Beer Festival. We hadn’t seen him for the last 2 years or so but
he was funny as usual with some strange stories to tell :) Together we tried different brands of beers of which we liked most were: Jelen and Niksicko dark, but maybe I will write a seperate entry about the food and drinks so let's keep it for that. The most interesting part of the festival was that totally against our all expectations Serbians were not that crazy and eager to fight after getting drunk, you have always some false impressions of people from outside. If such a festival happened in Turkey I can't imagine the events happening. That night my
Serbian friend Igor came to see me and the British called me as well to meet us
in the festival so we were quite a bit of a group. After Igor left we stood there for a little while and decided to go due to the bad music
The time we left was again 3 o’clock and we
headed towards our hostel together with British. While we were on the way to
the hostel, just after crossing the bridge a girl said something in Serbian to
me to which I replied of course “Sorry I can’t understand” and then we began to
talk in English. She had two friends with her as well, together they drank 20
beers to get two of the t-shirts which were given if you drank 10 beer. The
girl to whom I talked was drunk but her friends seemed quite sober, anyway while
talking with her we got apart from my friends. We walked together till the
Republic Square and she invited me to her home which was very close to the
square as she told me but the mean sober friends as usual intervened and put
her aside. So we had to say goodbye. That’s why the smart lions make their prey
separate from the herd :)
When I was on the way back to the hostel,
trying to get in contact with my friends, a man about his fifties asked me
something in Serbian. When I again replied “Sorry I can’t understand”, he told
me that he was asking about the bus to his home. The usual talk with a
foreigner like me began again, “Where are you from? I’m from Turkey. I have been to Istanbul before, it’s a
beautiful city etc. etc. “ When I told
him I have to go to my hostel, he told me he can accompany me to there, he knew
where it is, not that I would have had any problem with finding it but why not?
So we began to walk together to my hostel talking on the way about his family
problems etc. When we came to the hostel
I stopped in front of it to say goodbye. Just at that moment he told me
“Why won’t we walk like 15 more minutes?” while touching my arm with his hand and moving
it gently around. What the fuck? Wasn’t it me who was going to a girl’s home to
have some fun like 10 min. before? Life is really harsh, I understood it in
Belgrade. And one more thing, I quickly recalled our saying in Turkish: To lose
the bulgur at home while going to Dimyat for rice. Since rice is pricier and
has a better reputation it means that if you want to have something fancier
than what you have you may lose the one at your hand so you should be content
with what you have. In this case let’s change rice and bulgur with the word
“ass”. And add to that the guy who offered me his couch in Pancevo, a town 20
km away from Belgrade, although I had no intention of staying at his place he
called me again and again, saying that he cooked for me, he’s waiting for me
etc. I was scared :)
I had to insist on leaving him and escaped
quickly to the hostel. It was not very dark outside and people were walking and
shouting, with music in the background, it was a funny night after all…
The next morning, Friday, Ozan came from
Zürich to join us. He made a reservation at a hotel near the train station for
3 people and I was to stay for free of course :) We went quickly to the hotel
to put our backpacks and went out for sightseeing again.
I can’t remember the order and on which day
we did what but here are some of the things we did together:
We have seen the most disappointing
cathedral in the world St. Sava Cathedral, the bohemian zone which was not very
boheme and the Tesla Museum which was worth to see with a Tesla coil inside and
some basic interactive experiments.
We met a small, crazy, alternative girl with blue hair who looked like a boy. She was staring at us strangely and when I asked why she was looking at us, she told that she had seen us in the Beer Fest which could partly be true since Ozan just came to Belgrade. Anyway for the next hour or so she tried to sell us some weed and we waited for her friend to bring some weed a little while but then simply couldn't stand her non-stop talking about the shitty things in which she was involved before; ranging from drug to pyramid scheme type businesses. She seemed like pretty high, it was fun at first to talk to her but then our brains were fucked up so we promised to meet her later to buy the weed and went away. Needless to say, we didn't meet her again, but even if we wanted to it would be really hard to meet someone at the beer fest. Ironically together with Kaan we saw her that night at beer fest again, but didn't let our brains to be fucked up again and just walked away.
We went to Beer Fest with a group of Polish
people although they were not the best group in the world. I have to say that
the most fun we had during the beer festival was when a Blues Brothers tribute
band from Italy played. We danced a lot together with Kaan especially, among the
sober Serbians standing and watching we were dancing like crazy.
We attended a very unsuccessful CS meeting
of which I remember the Turkish guy who was trying to hit on two Serbian ladies
and the Italian man giving us a seminar about the privacy issues of Facebook
and the Italian mafia for hours. When my friend Igor came to meet us we wanted
to leave actually, so after Igor spent a little time there too we left with the
Turkish guy and the two Serbian ladies who also came at the very last moment.
We were quite hungry and wanted to eat something special at the oldest
restaurant of Belgrade, named “?”. Yes question mark, because they first named
it something like “Next to the Father” when it was first found in the early 19th
century because it’s just opposite to a cathedral but then the church
complained about the inconvenience of the name. So they changed it again, this
time to “Next to the Church” but it wasn’t accepted too. The solution they
found was to name it as a question mark, it should have made fun for them :) We
ate some special Serbian food which was pretty tasty, especially after all
those pljeskavicas of which we were bored by then.
After that restaurant we met Igor and he
took us to an underground pub near the railroad. The Turkish guy and the two
Serbian ladies were there too, and also Milan and Danilo my other two friends
from their surfing experience at my home. It was really a very nice pub, a kind
of which there are only a few in Istanbul if any. A funny thing was that the
machinists of trains rang the bells of
the train while passing just next to the pub! It tells a lot about people from
Balkans, I can’t imagine a German machinist doing that :)
We went to Ada, a fake lake made for people
to swim and enjoy the sun. The water was not so good and swimming was not very
fun, but Can losing his glasses in the ”lake” and the cold and most importantly
free juice saved our day. When you are with your friends any action is fun
actually so it didn’t matter at all what we did. Maybe that’s why I can’t
recollect the stuff we did together in order.
I hope I could sum the most important
things up in a short way but of course there are always some more things to
tell… On Sunday Ozan and Kaan left Belgrade but since Can had his flight on
Tuesday he decided to see Novi Sad with me. So we went to the bus station,
bought our tickets and began our short journey to Novi Sad. I was going to see the city again at the end of my trip, this time with a feeling like I'm home there already, quite used to its streets and my feet knew exactly where and how to go..That's why I can say now: Ja sam u Beogradu!
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