Arrival in Serbia
Trip Start
Jan 06, 2006
1
52
120
Trip End
Sep 02, 2008
Beograd,
Serbia and Montenegro
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
The way to the JAT bus isn't that hard to find. It is a wide road serviced by a number of tram lines. The sidewalks are wide except for one spot, where scaffolding makes the pedestrian walk on the sidewalk. This exception is a reminder of the NATO air campaign in '99; the scaffolding isn't for a building under construction but one falling down.
"Holy S***!" I heard myself say.
A gaping hole with a half dozen collapsed floors was in the building to my left. Concrete floors were dangling by the rebar connceting them to the remaining floors. All the windows were missing, there was evidence of fire and there was a couple of years of overgrowth sprouting from the roof. I think this is what the victim of a cruise missle looks like.
The building across the street was a similar victim, albeit one struck slightly differently. The remaining structure was built to look like a mirror image of the one across the street, but it was bombed in a foyer and now only the facade to the foyer remains. The rest is a pile of rubble. In addition to missing nearly all of its windows, there was a hole the size of a boxing ring in the side of the building on the 3rd and 4th floors. Some manner of a fence surrounded these buildings and later I would see a soldier guarding them.
I kept walking toward the JAT bus stop. The rest of the buildings did not look that bad. I picked up some Serbian money from an ATM and made it to the JAT bus only a few minutes before it left. The ride to the airport took me down a highway, over an abandoned rail yard cum shanty town, over the Danube, past some monolythic socialist style buildings, past yards of Duran Duran posters {they play Belgrade October 17} and through kilometers of prarie fields of recently harvested crops. The elm and poplar trees reminded me ever so slightly of home. The bus turned off the highway to the airport and drove past the air force museum with a yard full of old MIGs before dropping me off at terminal one. I took a seat in the clean and white arrivals lounge to wait for my brother to arrive from Cologne.
About thirty minutes later he arrived and we exchanged greetings. We waited for the bus to take us back to Belgrade. While waiting we were accosted by all manner of taxi drivers who told us that the bus to Belgrade wouldn't come, that it charged extra for luggage, that it charged way more than it did, that they could bring us to Belgrade for cheap, for just CSD 1000 {CDN $20}, etc. It cost me CDN $3 to get to the airport and it cost the same back.
The first goal of Bro and I was to get a place to ditch our bags. The LP guidebook showed a hostel at the centre of town and. The tram not coming readily enough convinced us to walk. On the way we got a hamburger and coke (500ml) each for a grand total of CDN $5. At the point on the map where LP was showing a hostel there was none. We walked around a bit more and found the place in the book. At the office we found out that it wasn't a hostel but only the headquarters of Hosteling International (HI). No rooms. We asked and found out that we were only two more of many other backpackers looking to find rooms there (LP will be getting an email soon).
When we finally found a place at the Hotel Dom, we ended up taking a nap. Bro hadn't slept since he left Spain the day before, and as comfortable as my train from Vienna was, I hadn't slept either. We woke up for dinner at a recommended local establishment and ate meat heartily, but we went to bed again right away! So much for our first day in Serbia.
