18 - Daytrip to Kalemegdan

Today we faced the unknown and ventured out to see what all this fuss about Kalemegdan is all about. To fill you in on a bit of history here is an extract from the Serbian Tourism website.

"Although Belgrade, is a very old city, known as Singidunum in the Roman times, it hasn't got many monuments from the past. It has been the target of many invaders throughout its history, so that was destroyed and rebuilt many times. There are almost no structures dating back to the old Roman times or medieval monuments. There are some monuments dating back to the times under Turkish rule. The best preserved of the latter is Kalemegdan, the old core of the Belgrade fortress. Apart from some Roman foundations and walls dating back to Despot Stefan's period (early 15th century), almost all its other fortifications were built in the 18th century by the Austrians. The complex system of extensive heavy ramparts, towers, bridges, turrets, moats and passages encompasses a number of fine fortress gateways, a clock tower, an old Roman well, and the Ruzica Church in the upper part; and a baroque gateway and the medieval Nebojsa Tower in the lower part. The fortress has been turned into a city park offering a wide variety of monuments from more recent times. Particularly attractive is a sculpture by Ivan Mestrovic - Pobednik (The Victor). The Military Museum in Kalemegdan, has a large collection of weapons and documents illustrating the history of Belgrade and Yugoslavia from the earliest times to date."

We found Kalemegdan to be a wonderful peaceful place. It was quite something to see the Danube, which is such a famous river (though more because of Strauss and Vienna than because of Belgrade). The Danube seems to have played an important part in a lot of the history around Belgrade. It was the border of the Roman empire with the Barbarians. It was also a good defense against invasion.

Walking about we did however, miss knowing the history that happened around this place and one would have loved a guided tour or audio guide. Something that seems to be lacking in Belgrade. They are not very focused on tourism. This is understandable though, looking at their turbulent history and recent wars. They are currently renovating a lot of the fortress structures and I would love to come back in 10 years and see how Kalemegdan has developed in this area.

The absence of English descriptions of what you are looking at is also a bit frustrating. Although we have stared to figure out the Cyrillic alphabet, we still don't know the language that well and understood very little. Even in the military museum which had such awesome exhibitions, a lot of it was lost on us because we could not understand the information given.

At the end of the day we had a lovely experience and our interest into the history of Kalemegdan and Belgrade was higtened.

11 - First Sunday in Belgrade

Our first Sunday in a brand new city. Everything is foreign and they don't even use the same alphabet! It made me feel very homesick and unsure of myself.

The day was spent taking a walk down the street our hotel was located in, Bulevar Oslobođenja, and seeing where it goes. We acquired a tourist map of Belgrade from the hotel and then we where off like Christopher Columbus looking for India.

Our first discovery was the church on the photograph above. This is St Sava's Cathedral and is quite impressive with it's white tall walls and green roof. We were fortunate to be next to the cathedral at noon and were blessed with the thundering sounds of three immense bells ringing out.

Why do churches have bells?



Unfortunately they are restoring this spectacular building and the inside of it has been stripped to the concrete. But what and experience....

We then left St Sava and headed further along Bulevar Oslobođenja. On our little map we were aiming for the tourist information centre. On the way there we were lured away by the big golden "M". Ordering Macdonalds in a foreign language was in interesting and liberating experience. It seems that there is a language like Macdonaldese.

At the tourist information center we were given valuable insight into the inner workings of the bus system. So we decided to climb mount Kilimanjaro and take the bus home. By now our lower backs and feet were telling us that we have walked much further than we realized. So we bought our two bus tickets home - and actually made it there.

10 - Arrived Alive!

The rest of our journey went much better. We had a nine hour flight to Zurich with a stop over of 6 hours and then we flew to Belgrade. We both slept well on the plane but were still very tired by the time we were flying to Belgrade.


Our impressions of Switzerland and Belgrade were as follows:


Hermie:
Switzerland is very beautiful (the little part a saw of it - the airport and its surroundings). But my main impression is that everything is extremely expensive! The Swiss-German language is actually very similar in a lot of its words to Afrikaans and with my little bit of German I actually found it quite easy to understand a lot of it. For Belgrade I didn't really know what to expect. In places it looked a lot like the Townships back home (except for the shacks). It is a odd mixture of buildings and areas that are extremely run down and brand new very modern buildings and then, of course the very old beautiful historic buildings. Very interesting. ;->

Adan:
Man! 10 hours in cattle class ain't nice - no matter how you slice it. ;-) The food on Swiss is also a bit ho-hum. Except the choccies!! They rock! We pulled into Zurich at 06:05 local time and it was dark, cold and wet. It brightened up quite a bit - surrounding hills a nice green. (When we left for Belgrade - I had a window seat - I was impressed with the town layout. Very nicely integrated with the greenery/nature. Everything seemed crisp and in its place.) For future reference, the best value meal at Zurich Airport is the Long Cheese Burger Meal at Burger King - CHF 12.00 for a 8" stretched burger, mayo, fries and a coke. Thats about R 140 for 2 burgers. Man, we even licked the paper towels to "optimize our investment"! ;-))

As for Belgrade... we saw blurry impressions of interesting bits, thanks to our Taxi driver, Bogie (Serbian for Bogart). The trip from the Nikola Tesla (famous physicist and magnet fundi) Airport to the Best Western "M" Hotel (18 Km) cost us 2000 Dinars per couple. Thats about R 230.00. But it was worth it. In the 10 minutes it took to cover the distance, we learned about the new Belgradska stadion, the bridge over the river Sava, the war and the bombs the americans dropped. We even know there are 2 million Belgrads. Or Belgradians. We are not sure what to call them yet. We do know, however to say Dobre Dan, when you see one. That means "Good Morning". Hlava means Thank you. As you can probably gather, we have thanked a couple of Belgradians for the Good Morning. ;-) The best for last: We have established, beyond any doubt, that passing in the emergency lane is not restricted to South Africa. Yes, good 'ol Bogie, spent many minutes there, pulling many really cool passing manouveres in his Champagne coloured 1990 Mercedes 2.3i (W124 series).

09 - Our very fast departure to Belgrade

We knew it was going to happen soon, we have been on standby for weeks. But then, this morning while I was still watching my CSI for the day the sms from Adan came. “Start packing my dear I’m sitting in the Embassy and they have approved our visa”. We were booked to fly out this evening.

But how did we get to this point?

It all started one Tuesday in January. Adan was approached by his boss to go to Croatia on a project. That evening we discussed it and decided it will be a spectacular opportunity for us! The next Morning, while I was having lunch with my mother in law, Adan sms-ed me that we were due to leave for Croatia in Febraury! I was stunned at how quickly this was happening as it was only two weeks to February. There was so much to organise before we left. But, as these things go, our departure was postponed to the beginning of March. That at least gave us a little more time to sort everything out before we left. We could also attend Corné (Adan’s sister) and Michael’s wedding.

In applying for the Croatian visa, we encountered a few hiccups to the extend that we had to go to Serbia till the Croatian visa could be sorted out. Now we had to get the Serbian visa which was also a bit of a challenge as Serbia and Monte Negro just departed ways and therefore it was a “new” embassy. So there we were scheduled to fly to Serbia this evening but still not sure whether we will be able to as we were still waiting for visa.

That brings us back to Adan’s sms of this morning.

With a few seconds of intense panic, I started to get everything ready to pack. By twelve o’clock I was packed and was sorting out the perishables in the fridge and getting the house ready to be left for 7 months. Now I was just waiting for Adan to come home and fill me inn. By 14:15 Adan was still not home. Our flight was 20:25 in the evening, but with the very bad traffic to the airport at five in the afternoon we wanted to leave at 16:15. Adan then phoned me and we arranged that I pick him up at work a 15:00. By 16:00 we were still waiting for the for-ex driver to arrive with the all important travel money. My poor husband still has not packed and we wanted to leave for the airport in 15 minutes. Needless no say we didn’t! We arrived home at 16:15 and left for the airport 16:45. Adan managed to pack in 30 minutes! Quite impressive I should say!

So there we were all packed and on our way to the airport at 20km/h! Peak hour traffic has struck again! What could we do but just breath!

By 6 o’clock were booked in on our flight to Zürich and then on to Belgrade the next day. What a day! I think that was the first time we breathed all day...