Sometime in Belgrade

Apart from the crap time with accommodation situation I have had a really good time in Belgrade and would happily recommend it to anyone visiting the Balkans. It has a great nightlife, great food and lots of interesting history to learn about.

I arrived on Tuesday afternoon and after striking up a conversation with a lady on the bus shuttle she walked me to my hostel. I think she was very excited to meet someone travelling really. She told me all about Belgrade, places to visit, where to buy a bus pass from if I wanted to travel around and food to eat.

After checking in to my hostel I headed out looking for dinner and to get a feel of the town. There is a huge pedestrian area in the city with loads of restaurants and shops everywhere. Outside of the pedestrian area are lots of little bars and cafes. It reminds me of Melbourne.

There is a famous street and area known as the old bohemian quarter, it's called Skadarlika. My guidebook says it's referred to as the Montmartre of Belgrade. It was a beautiful cobbled stone street, full of restaurants with character with live music and local food. After dinner I walked around for a bit before heading back to the hostel.

On Wednesday I was up early to do the walking tour of the city and then planned to do the pub crawl tonight as it would be easier to get back to my hostel while I was based in the city instead of the suburbs.

Thursday and Friday I was at the Airbnb place. It was out in the suburbs, but had great views from my room over the city. After spending most of the day chilling in my room I headed out to visit the Tesla museum. I walked from the house around the streets passing some lovely cafes, shops and a great green market.

The Tesla Museum is quite small. There is a guided tour every hour in English. In the rooms are Tesla’s stuff, a story of his life, magazine articles and photographs of him, his equipment and his ashes.

Some of the cool things I learnt were:

- In the first Star Wars movie they used a Tesla coil to light up the light sabers

- He was OCD and needed everything to be in 3, he even stayed in places that had something to do with it

- He wanted to create free electricity, which is why JP Morgan pulled all funding from his project, he wanted to make money

- He had papers destroyed in an accident & scientists today still can't work out what he was trying to do

We also got to test out the coils. There was a really big one in which 500,000 volts go through and a small one with 100,000. For the first experiment 4 of us stood near the coil with light blubs. When the machine was turned on we were used as conducts as the bulbs light up!

For the second experiment you could feel 100,000 volts go through you. There was a tall rod and when you hovered your hand over the top a line of electricity would jump out at you and stay consistent. It was awesome!

The third experiment saw us use two guys as conductors for electricity. One held their hand over the rod, and the other held onto a light blub. When both of them held hands and turned the rod on, the electricity when through both boys and lit up the light.

I really, really liked visiting here and would like to learn more about Mr Tesla. What a very interesting man.

I continued my walk into town and passed by some Government buildings that looked as if they belonged in wartime. Which is exactly where they are from. After the latest wars in Serbia, it was decided to leave these buildings standing in their destroyed form, as a reminded of what war does. It was quite impressive.

On Saturday I moved back to the city and into a new hostel. I took a bus ride out to Zemun, an area across the river, but it didn’t look that appealing so I just did the round trip and headed back to my hostel.

Tonight I’m shouting myself a nice dinner. It’s European style food and there was supposed to be a live opera style thing happening, but as per most other cultural things, this doesn’t appear to take place over the summer.

After dinner I walked around for a bit taking some last minute photos of the area, before finding myself at a cool bar I spotted in Skadarlika earlier in the week. I had a G&T and sat back and watched the evening disappear. A wonderful way to end my time in Belgrade.

When in Belgrade:
Opera restaurant - http://www.littlebay.rs/about.html
Some cool photos - http://www.buzzfeed.com/sofijazz/42-reasons-you…
Tesla Museum: http://www.tesla-museum.org/
Walking Tour: https://www.facebook.com/FREEBELGRADEWALKINGTOURSLeer más