White City

  Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro
Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Getting to Belgrade from Sarajevo was more difficult than anticipated. It had been assumed by the JnR World Tour logistics & transportation team that all major former-Yugoslav cities would have good links with Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital. Not so Sarajevo. The train takes 10 hours and goes via Croatia - madness! It seems the direct line was destroyed in the war and the two sides are in no particular rush to link their capitals again. Even the buses were not simple - Sarajevo bus station doesn't serve Belgrade, one must instead travel to Lukavica - a suburb that crucially falls inside Republic Sprska which is the ethnic Serb administered part of the Bosnian federation (confused yet?).


So after 8 hours on the bus traversing the beautiful northern Bosnian mountains and valleys we arrived in Serbia which is flat as a pancake, and motored into Belgrade. This is a town that knows how to go out. There are bars everywhere, the river is chock-a-block with barge-clubs and apparently most of the 'coolest' venues are still hidden away in unmarked basements. With no budget airlines serving Nikola Tesla airport it is also pleasantly lacking in British stag dos.


We took in central Belgrade's main sights in a day - by far and away the most impressive is the Kalemegdan Fortress which sits on a hill overlooking the rivers on one side and the city on t'other. Aside from its great defensive walls and Museums, 90% of the complex is a park great for just strolling around and enjoying the view.

The next day we awoke bright and late and caught a bus out to Zemen, a suburb upriver on the Danube. This was the old front line which marked the southern extent of the Austro Hungarians from which, atop their fortress, they would keep a beady eye on the Ottoman empire in Belgrade. Now it's quite a funky town with a string of restaurants/bars/clubs all along the river. We took a 3-hour lunch and then strolled back along the river path all the way back to town, enjoying the greenery and marveling at the ever more elaborate barge club/restaurant contraptions moored up all the way.


That evening we quit the Green Studio Hostel (another one situated in a commie-era residential block) and boarded the 21:15 to Sofia, our first overnight train.