Belgrade Walking Tour

On Wednesday I did the walking tour and pub-crawl, as I thought it would be easier whilst staying in the city. As per usual, the walking tour was great.

We started in the main square and were told about the different monuments and buildings and how the National Museum had been closed for renovations for 12 years. It now has a clock on the front of it counting down until it will open, apparently September 2016. We wait in anticipation!

The main square is a central meeting point for the locals, who refer to the area as 'let's meet at the horse’. This is because there is a giant horse statue in the middle of the square. We talked about a few of the different statues in the square, although the guide failed to mention the four quite random art statues that looked like transformers haha.

From the square we headed to Skadarlika where we learnt to do a traditional Serbian dance. Our guide told us that back in the day this was the area where the gypses used to live. As the city got bigger and more commercial, it was decided that the area should be persevered. And so it has.

Along this road is Dura Jakšić’s house; he is a famous Serbia poet, painter and writer. He has a statue of himself out front and apparently during the summer young poets stand beside him and conduct readings.

We pasted a famous green market and walked through some of the streets I passed last night, looking into the cute little cafes and bars as we made our way towards the castle.

Today was a day of national mourning to remember a number of soldiers who had died on this day in Croatia during a war in the last 15 years.

As the bells signalled out at midday we paused for reflection. She then began to tell us the history about the most recent wars and her experiences with the NATO bombings. She was child living in Belgrade at the time.

Her version of the events did not particularly match up to those in my guidebook. I wasn’t the only one who noticed, as later on at the pub crawl a couple of the others asked me if I thought her story was quite biased to Serbia’s innocence in the process … haha oh well. That’s why we travel, to see and hear all perspectives and make a decision for ourselves.

From here we went into the castle grounds and took in view over the Save and Danube rivers, the floating nightclubs and the other side of Belgrade. We wandered through the big park area, down past some government buildings and to our final stop.

I waved goodbye and headed to a small restaurant I had heard about for lunch, before wandering back through the city taking in the sights and smells and returning to my hostel.

PUB CRAWL
Nightlife doesn’t kick off in Belgrade till late, so our guide didn’t pick us for the pub-crawl until 9:30pm. I almost considering going to bed, but I got talking to two American Turkish guys and decided to go along. As it was a national day of mourning no music could be played, so at each venue we want to, aside from the two floating night clubs which illegally played music, there was no music anywhere. It was rather dull.

But luckily the conversation wasn’t. I met some really interesting Europeans. We stopped off at two bars and two floating nightclubs. We received shot at each and got to taste the local, lethal spirit. I didn’t really enjoy the floating nightclubs, mainly cause the music sucked and it was so far away from everything else. So the guide took me back to my hostel. Overall a very good night indeed!Read more