This week’s trip post has to start with an apology: Mere, I’m sorry.
Background for most of you: one of the best parts of being in Prague has been getting closer in touch with my Czechoslovak heritage. One large part of that identity (beyond the food, few words we can say to each other in Slovak, old family Christmas ornaments, etc.) is our Slovak view of the Balkans. In our family, whenever something doesn’t go exactly the way we wanted, my grandmother is liable to say, “Oh well, it could be worse. You could be in Bosnia.” The point of this is to be grateful for all of the good things in our lives; the implication is that being in Bosnia is the worst possible thing that could happen to a person.
This weekend, I went to Bosnia. And it was awesome.
It’s been a big deal for me to really get a feel for Central and Eastern Europe while abroad, and this weekend did exactly that.  If I’m being totally honest, the idea of this trip pushed me out of my comfort zone: like many Americans, my conceptions of Serbia and Bosnia are straight out of the 90’s during the war. But, to put things in perspective, I’m also a product of the 90’s, and I daresay I’m very different now from what I was then (I can read! and tie my own shoes!). With my intrepid travel buddies, Mattie, Becca, and Casey, I left school Thursday afternoon and flew from Prague to Munich to Belgrade, Serbia.
The leaving directly-from-class ended up being a godsend, as Becca and I had given a presentation on a Polish novel during which we made the class make a web of yarn to show the connections between characters (once a middle school teacher, always a middle school teacher). With the yarn we were able to tie the zippers on our backpacks together throughout our adventures– would-be pickpockets had met their matches!
When we arrived in Belgrade, the first steps into the airport was the biggest culture shock I’ve experienced since being in Europe. You know how in cartoons, sometimes, they’ll show a terrifying and depressing post-apocalyptic world by making a formerly Technicolor world black and white? That’s basically what happened. I don’t know exactly how, but everything was shades of gray and post-Communism. Also, the Cyrillic alphabet perplexes me greatly (more on that later).
We were literally swarmed by (illegal) taxi drivers upon entering the baggage claim area (uuuuuncomfortable) and instead asked the kind woman at the taxi stand to call us a legitimate one. Legal or no, it was a terrifying ride to Belgrade proper, particularly as we drove past dilapidated billboards with advertisements hanging in shreds. So far, a little unnerving. Nevertheless, we made it to our hostel which was, in a word, adorable. Miloš and Beka were excellent hosts– going so far as to make sure that March Madness was on TV for the visiting Americans! We called it an early night, as we’d gotten in around midnight and didn’t quite have our bearings yet.
We did pass the time with Serbian Monopolly! Clearly capitalism is catching on. (The best part is that Park Place, in this version, is replaced by Amerika.)
The next morning we were up and at ’em early, ready to experience Belgrade and all it had to offer. Our first stop was a big open-air market not far from our hostel, and then on to a bakery nearby for some breakfast.
At this point we received our crash course in the Serbian language, which is probably like Czech if you’re a native Czech speaker. If not (like us!), it’s a bit more difficult.
Perplexed.
Fortunately, my dearest darling Mattie knows some Russian and did a magnificent translating job on all the Cyrillic we came across, particularly all of the street signs. (For those wondering, the bag in the picture above says “Chleb a Kava” = “Bread and Coffee”)
Thus fortified, we began our rambling about the city and you know something? It is beautiful. For all that crumbling Communist architecture still exists (and there are a few bombed-out buildings in the city center still, guarded by soldiers to make sure you don’t take pictures), Belgrade has elements of Paris-and-Prague-esque architecture and has a major metropolitan hustle & bustle very similar to New York City.
In this part of town we met a Serbian man who sells books out of this sweet movable storefronts. He was pretty excited that we were American, but less from any major pro-American sentiment than from surprise that we’d made it all the way out to Serbia.
Our next order of business was getting to the bus station to buy our tickets for the overnight bus to Sarajevo. Once we’d finished up that ordeal (fortunately, in Europe, when people say they speak ‘a little’ English, it’s more than enough to get by) we went into tourist mode in the bohemian quarter of Belgrade which was adorable. The main axis of this quarter is one downhill, badly-cobblestoned street lined with shops and restaurants. There’s also a sweet signpost with directions and distances to other similar districts in other cities (i.e. Montmartre, Ilot Sacre, etc.)
Then this series of events happened:
These two Serbian guys walked past my tourist photo and basically photobombed it (not pictured).
They were very nice, and also stoked that we were Americans in Serbia.
We had a moment.
It’s times like these that I’m very proud of how much Czech I do know, not that it was of any help in Serbia. Otherwise I would’ve been able to express my fear that, “Tak, Miloš, myslela jsem Ĺľe mÄ›li jsme nÄ›co specialnĂ, ale chtÄ›l jsi jenom moji zelenou kartu!” (Oh Milos, I thought we had something special, but you only wanted my green card!)
We had lunch outside in the Bohemian quarter (we had gorgeous weather that day) and then wandered up the main pedestrian zone/shopping district toward the fortress. The other three have the best photos of us overlooking the river, but I got a nice artsy one of Mattie!
From there we caught the train out to Novi Beograd, a suburb of Belgrade, for dinner with Becca’s family friends. The train ride was a bit of a trip– the trains were hilariously 70’s to us, perhaps because they actually were from the 70’s. As part of reconstruction aid, other countries have given their used trains to Serbia, so the trams throughout the city are liable to say things like “A Donation From Japan” or “The City of Basel Greets Belgrade!” We also drove by a Roma camp on the way out of the city, which I’ll be talking about in a lot more depth in the next few weeks. The Roma, better known as gypsies, constitute a major ethnic minority in most of Central and Eastern Europe and face ridiculous levels of discrimination. This camp was basically a trash heap/shantytown, from which the Roma will soon be expelled to develop that land.
Becca’s friends live in old Communist bloc housing in Novi Beograd, which is extremely intimidating from the outside. It basically looks like the projects, but on the inside is really quite comfortable. Holly and her daughter Ruthie were wonderful hostesses– dinner was delicious, and hearing their stories about living in Belgrade (all the places they’ve traveled! they lived in that apartment during the U.S. bombings!) was incredible. We spent the evening at the cafe they own trying the national liquor of Serbia (rakija, a sort of plum brandy) and enjoying delicious delicious desserts. This was also the point where I realized that Eastern Europe has the exact same taste in music as my parents– there were quite a few Steely Dan songs in rotation, not to mention the entire Flashdance soundtrack. At 10:30 that night we boarded our overnight bus to Sarajevo! We’d been assured by Holly that the buses were the most reliable and safest transit option in the Balkans– the trains are slow, never come on time, and more often than not are used for smuggling. Yikes.
We arrived in Sarajevo at 5:30 the next morning. We felt a little like this:
It was SO COLD in the bus station, but we decided that we should stay there until the ticket window opened so we could be sure of getting our return bus back to Belgrade that night. This seemed logical, as the ticket window was due to open at 6. However, this is Bosnia, so instead the guy got to work around 8:30. Nrrrrgh.
After a good deal of trial and error and some judicious Google Translating, we got our bus tickets and realized that we were in the international bus station, about 12 kilometers from Sarajevo proper. (Full disclosure: I’m still not really sure how far a kilometer is.) Undaunted, we figured out the local bus system and got in to Sarajevo!
Our first destination was the Latin Bridge, which many of you may recognize as the location where World War One began with Gavrilo Princip assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
Over the bridge is the Old Town of Sarajevo, now a large bazaar area. The Turkish influence was extremely pronounced in the whole city! Though of course in Sarajevo, Turkish coffee is known as Bosnian coffee (in retrospect, I should have asked if Turkish delight was called Bosnian delight).
Turkish coffee was the first order of business from there– it was freezing cold and raining, so that pick-me-up was just what we needed (not to mention it gave me a chance to put on another pair of jeans over my jeans– there’s something to be said for carrying all your worldly possessions with you). We had coffee and pide, little meat and cheese pies that are very typical Bosnian food. Becca, the brave Wisconsiner, also tried jogurt, which is basically drinkable Greek yogurt.
[The photo uploader’s being silly, pictures to follow].
We continued our tour of Old Town with a visit to the Long Bazaar and a quest for our own Turkish coffee sets (gorgeous). From there, we toured the New Town of Sarajevo, particularly the beautiful churches and mosques. Still, it was really cold and wet in Sarajevo, and rather than getting back to Belgrade at 5 the next morning (it’s really hard to sleep on those buses!), we opted for the earlier bus and had a wonderful night’s sleep back in Belgrade. The views of the country outside of Sarajevo are spectacularly beautiful [again, photo to follow]. Unfortunately, we couldn’t hike there because not all of the landmines have been cleared yet.
That would be a terrible sentence on which to end this blog post, so some concluding thoughts: I’m so glad that I made this trip. It was very much a once-in-a-lifetime experience and helped to enrich my understanding of the region and its history, not to mention the fact that it broadened my perspective on the Czechs and their experience under Communism. Czechs say that they’re guarded and don’t smile because they learned to be mistrustful under the Communist regime. The Serbs arguable had it just as bad, but they are SO friendly and smiley. As with most of my other stories of my time abroad, this was quite the adventure.
Cici in CZ 