Beautiful Stranger

To say Belgrade is the new Prague, or the new Budapest (itself the new Prague to many lazy travel hacks), or even the new Ljubliana, would be a lie. After a number of years of political, ethnic and political turmoil, though, Belgrade is, in many ways, a new Belgrade.

It's not a stunningly beautiful, picturesque city, and I don't think most people expect it to be. The words and phrases most people still associate with Belgrade - political despots, war-torn and troubled – are uniformly bleak. Which, I suppose is why, when we stepped off the overnight train at 6:30am this, quirky, vibrant, fun loving city, and welcoming city was quite a surprise.

I'm not sure what I expected from Belgrade, but with an eclectic mix of architecture, every corner is a different surprise. Beautiful Baroque Hapsburgian edifices stand side by side with turn of the century Art Deco masterpieces, while a street away sixties Communist monstrosities and sky scrapping modern buildings housing multinational corprorations rub shoulders. There is the  crumbling and historical next to the fantastically graffitied, clean and new next to bombed out buildings, which have stood for a decade, unchanged still with the concrete hanging. A stark reminder of Serbia's recent history. Just walking around this city is an education in itself.

Whilst I'm not sure it's quite reached weekend break territory yet, Belgrade is fast becoming a very popular backpacker destination. As one of Europe's safest cities, with a young and vibrant feel and a fantastic nightlife, it is easy to see why. Indeed, staying at the simply wonderful Manga Hostel as we did, was reason enough to visit. Superbly located, brilliantly kitted out and the first real home-from-home we've found on our journeys so far, it well deserves its status as Serbia's best. And Igor's Turkish Coffee will blow your socks off.

We arrived early on Sunday and were delighted to find out that it was the last day of the Belgrade beer Fest. I thought how lucky we've arrived just in time for a local festival. I've since found out that they seem to have a different festival every week. That said the beer festival was massive (with the most visitors of any European festival this year) and great fun. Entry was free, beers from across Europe were around £1.20 a half litre and the best Balkan DJs and Yugo Rock bands performed til 4am. A good time was had by all.

Feeling a bit worse for wear we hit the sightseeing trail the next day visiting the fantastic fort with beautiful views out over the Danube and Sava rivers and visited a selection of stunning Serbian Orthodox churches, including possibly the largest Orthodox church in the world, which, more than twenty years in the making, is still being built.

Belgrade has a small selection of museums, of which we chose to visit the rather wacky Nikola Tesla museum, dedicated to this national hero, a Serbian who invented an array of things by all accounts, from an early version of the internet to the remote control. Sadly, he seems to have never got the credit for many of those achievements. He does, however, have a truly barmy museum bearing his name, which is not too bad a legacy.

It's fair to say Belgrade does not have as much in the way of traditional sight-seeing as other European capital cities. With a city so rich in hundreds of years of history you would expect it to have a few more galleries or museums, a  sign maybe that some of that history is still to recent to be confined to a museum.

The real joy of Belgrade is just walking about and soaking up the atmosphere. From the Bohemian cobbled streets of Skadarska, to the narrow streets of the Baroque old town, from the underground maze of shopping centres to the old market, and from sitting in one of the hundreds of street cafes to drinking Serbian beer in to the night in one of the many clubs and bars, we found it a fascinating and positive city.

And despite it's recent history Belgrade has the feel of a city looking very much to the future.

See you in Bulgaria...

Luke and Louise

(Posted by Louise)