Belgrade

Sveti Sava Church, Belgrade, Serbia
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So Sarajevo has a huge train and bus station, you would think you could get anywhere you need to go from there, especially Belgrade which is the largest city in the Balkans and about 8 hours east of Sarajevo. This of course was not the case. We were informed that in order to go to Belgrade, which is in Serbia, we had to go to the Serbian part of Sarajevo which has it's own bus station...I never fail to be amazed at how things work in Eastern Europe...or how they don't sometimes! We left the wonderful people at our hostel in search of the bus stop that would take us to the Serbian bus station. We found the stop and our bus came about 20 minutes later, it then took us 45 minutes to get to the actual bus station where we waited at the ticket counter for about 15 minutes before someone showed up to sell us our tickets. After we got our tickets I went in search of some snacks trying to get rid of the rest of my Bosnian money but all I managed to find was some melted chocolate and greasy potato chips, definitely not what my stomach was hoping for. We had now also entered the realm of the Cyrillic alphabet as opposed to the Roman alphabet which can be very confusing. I actually had mastered Cyrillic last year while I was in Eastern Europe and Russia but had pretty much forgotten most of it. Fortunately, it came back pretty quick and is actually quite fun, I feel like I'm doing constant word puzzles (yes, I know I'm a dork!!) Well anyways, we found our bus which was pretty miserable looking but quite comfortable and were on our way for our eight hour trip to Belgrade.

Pedestrian area, Belgrade, Serbia
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Andrew had met a bunch of Serbians last year when he was in Greece and they were nice enough to invite us to stay with them. Miluz and Jovana met us at the bus station in Belgrade and took us to his apartment where they immediately gave us some large shots of I forget what and some good Serbian beer (everyone in the Balkans seems to welcome you with large bad tasting shots!) After the best shower I had in 3 weeks they took us out to a traditional dinner, where I think they ordered everything on the menu for us to try...and of course, more shots! The restaurant was on a cute old street with traditional music, great food and waiters that looked like they were from a 1940's B&W movie. After dinner we met up with somemore of their friends and headed out to some bars and clubs. Belgrade is pretty famous for it's nightlife so it was really nice to be with people from there to show us around. In the summer all of the clubs and bars move outside and most are set up on docks or boats on the river which is really nice.

The next afternoon, we walked around Belgrade to the Sveti Sava Church which is the huge Serbian Orthodox Church and walked through the city to Kalemegdan, which is the citadel, the Military History Museum, the old well and through the pedestrian area. After an unsuccessful attempt at the bus station to figure out how each of us were getting to our next destination we then managed to get ourselves lost trying to find the bus stop back to our friends apartment. We finally broke down and took a taxi. When we got back they had cooked us a traditional Serbian dinner with a pretty spectacular cherry pastry dessert. After dinner we headed off to the bars again which were all a blast, especially the gypsy dive bar that we ended up at where the guy singing had his back to the bar and was singing to the wall or the bar with all the Serbian guys who play American rules football singing along to techno versions of American songs from the 60's, 70's and 80's (hilarious to watch!) We finally made it home about 5AM where I took a quick nap before I had to say goodbye to Andrew and our Serbian friends so I could catch my 8AM, eight hour train to Budapest.