01 September 2007
Quote:
"Freedom's just another word for nnothing left to lose..."
Belgrade
I got up at 3:30 AM because I had a flight at 6:30 from Sarajevo to Belgrade. There is a one daily bus connecting the cities, but the transport logistics between Bosnia and Serbia are still not coordinated, and the journey may take up to 10 hours across the mountains... so I cheated and booked the 40 minutes flight instead because otherwise I would have had no chance to look at Belgrade at all.
I did catch some sleep and would have caught even more had there not been the most violent thunderstorms during the night. Luckily it had stopped raining by the time I was catching the taxi. It proved to be no problem to find a cab at that time of the night after all. I had been worried I might get stuck without transport to the airport. You never know! The hotel guy kindly called me a taxi, but there were many driving around as well.
I was at the airport in time, but they didn't open until 5 AM. People were queuing up waiting to get in. Sarajevo airport is obviously not a good choice to spend the night. The flight was super-quick and eventless. Belgrade was clouded as well, and quite fresh. The JAT shuttle bus dropped me at the station where my extra-cheap scruffy hostel was located. I had booked a bed even though I was only in Belgrade for the day, but I needed somewhere to dump my stuff and maybe take a shower etc.
Funky!
I went into town, visited the citadel (or what's left of it), the Ethnographic Museum, and had too many coffees and a sandwich that lay in my stomach like a stone. I felt like a balloon all day which isn't the greatest feeling for me. Belgrade is big and everything is massive. Everything looks more Soviet style with grand boulevards and monster public buildings and churches. The Orthodox church is apparently the biggest in the world, and it does look like a nuclear plant plus cooling towers could easily fit inside. I did not visit the Military Museum which boasts bits of the shot-down US Stealth Jet.
When I got to the church, a wedding was taking place and a brass band was playing very loudly. It sounded like hard-rock speed folk, not bad at all! Trumpets and drums, quite energetic. Serbians seem very nationalistic, they have flags everywhere. All the wedding guests arrived with huge flag poles mounted to their cars. I guess they feel like they have to justify themselves all the time because they are seen as the aggressors, when they would probably claim that they are in fact the victims, like all the others.
So far I have not seen as many signs of the war as in Sarajevo, but then they might not have bombed the city centre... I hope not. There are bullets holes, and some wrecked buildings, but no obvious front-line damage. Economically the city looks thriving, with lots of high-street shops and stylish caf¬Ûs in the pedestrian areas.
In the evening, I took the night train to Sofia. At first I thought I was lucky because I had a sleeper department all to myself. It even had a sink! But then the conductor came and insisted that I bribe him or otherwise he would put more people into my cabin. I gave him my last Serbian money (far too much), and was annoyed because clearly the sleeper wagon was not fully booked - far from it! There were still loads of empty sleepers.
Surprisingly, Serbia seems
to have the worst internet situation of all the countries so far. It may
just be bad luck but I begin to wonder if it is deliberate. Maybe
censorship?
I wanted to go online and
found a caf¬Û that had wireless access, but they
had blocked Hotmail and Facebook and Yahoo so I couldn't check my e-mail
or upload my blog. I went to an internet caf¬Û,
but they had no wireless access and wouldn't let me use my USB stick, so I
still couldn't upload my blog. I wrote a long e-mail to Stephen, but by
the time I wanted to send it, the internet connection went down, and
didn't come back before my time was up. How annoying!
Back in the hostel, I asked to use the only computer, but it didn't even
have a USB port. I composed another e-mail message to Stephen, but
couldn't send it either! The weirdest messages appeared, and then it
wouldn't connect anymore, so I gave up.
