Stari Grad

We had another delicious breakfast at the hostel before heading out on another walking tour. Today's tour was called the '20th century walking tour’ and focused on the parts of the city and history throughout the turbulence of the 20th century. This period is incredibly complicated (with at times multiple conflicts and political tensions occurring at once) and people have varied perspectives on this part of history. It was interesting hearing about Yugoslavia and people's perspectives of this interesting country.

We met a different guide, Milan, who was from the same company as our tour the previous day. He took us in the opposite direction as yesterday, venturing through the diverse city centre, past the Albanian skyscraper, Moscow Hotel, Parliament House, St Mark's Church, National TV station and finishing at the very impressive St Sava Church, the third biggest Orthodox Church in the world.

Our tour guide, Milan, was very informative, provided many perspectives on the wars and after nearly 4 hours, he had definitely conveyed a lot of information to us.

We started with the Albanian skyscraper which was built in the 1920s and was the first skyscraper in Belgrade and the tallest building in Belgrade at the time. There was a tavern that was there before the ‘skyscraper’ which was named Albania.

We also visited the Moscow Hotel which is a four star hotel which is one of the most expensive places to stay in Belgrade today (it doesn't have the fifth star because it does not have a swimming pool). The hotel was supposed to originally be the headquarters of a Russian insurance company but it went bankrupt. It was turned into a hotel and it had the name the Moscow Hotel throughout most of the 20th century, except for a very brief period during the time that the Nazis occupied. Apparently, people in the city joked that this was the only "Moscow" that the Nazis would be able to take over so the name was very shortly changed to Hotel Serbia to avoid this!
Our guide used this opportunity to discuss Yugoslavia's relationship with the Soviet Union and then life and times in Yugoslavia. Some points which we remember from this talk include that:
- In 1948, Stalin and Tito (the leader of Yugoslavia) had a falling out and Stalin accused Tito of betraying true communism. Tito held good relationships with thr West which Stalin did not approve and he wanted to spread communism throughout the world. The relationship was very rocky from this point forward and there looked as if there would be an war between Yugoslavia and the USSR but this never eventuated.
- In the 1950s, Yugoslavia had a strong relationship with the US and, in fact the US were selling fighter jets to Yugoslavia. Tito did not choose to form ant formal alliance with the US.
- In 1961, Yugoslavia, Egypt and India declared that they were neutral to stay out of the Cold War.
- The guide explained how the standard of living in Yugoslavia was quite high. Although it was a communist country, people still had access to Coca-cola, rock n roll (without any censorship) and jazz and enjoyed free education and healthcare. Milan explained how, although his grandfather was not in the community party (so couldn't progress in his jobs to higher roles), the salaries were high and he was able to buy a new car with a months' salary and pay off a house with a couple of years' salaries. Further, the Yugoslav passport was considered one of the best passports in the world as it enabled free travel through many countries without visas so many people travelled frequently.
- However, of course, there were obviously a lot of difficulties with this period. There was no freedom of speech (so you could not say anything negative about Tito, communism or Yugoslavia) and there were Yugoslav versions of gulgags where people were sent if they spoke out. In these places (called "naked islands"), people faced horrific conditions including working long hours in the sun without adequate food and rest. Further, police brutality was a real issue during this period. As a result, many people died as a result of the communist regime. For this reason (and many others), Tito's legacy is very very complicated.
- When Tito died in 1980, the country was in crisis and people believed that would be the end of Yugoslavia (as the country was largely synonymous with Tito). In fact, they chose no one to replace him and there was no president for 11 years which, of course, caused a lot of problems.

The guide also stopped and gave us a lot of information about WW2. It is an incredibly difficult time in Serbia because there were civil wars at the same time (between the independent state of Croatia). Belgrade was heavily bombed during WW2.

We then visited St Mark's church which is the second largest orthodox church in Belgrade. It is the same blueprint used around the world where there is a large Serbian community (there is even one in Sydney!) Here, Milan explained that over 80% of Serbians are Christian orthodox and only 1% are atheist which shows how religion is a big part of personal and national identities.

We then visited Serbia's National TV station which was bombed by NATO (for strategic purposes as it was obviously important for communications) in 1999. Milan spoke a lot at this point about the various factors which led to the collapse of Yugoslavia following Tito's death. In particular, he was explaining how nationalism was growing and strong at this stage. In the early 1990s, Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia and said that Serbians have no rights in their country which ignited the Yugoslav war. In 1995, Croatia had an ethnic cleansing of Serbs with around 250,000 being killed. Milan also pointed out the difficulties with this tragic and devastating history and the fact that Croatia celebrates the dates that Serbia retreated as a national holiday still to this day. Milan accepted that Serbian paramilitary committed awful war crimes throughout the war (which we learnt about in Sarajevo) and the war was absolutely devastating for Bosnia (which geographically is stuck between Croatia and Serbia). However, Milan did point out that there were crimes committed by all sides of the conflict. Milan suggested an objective documentary which is on YouTube called "Weight of Chains" which gives more details of this time period. As stated above, this period is all complicated and devastating.

Milan explained how NATO bombed the city of Belgrade for 78 days and 2500 people killed. This was in response to Serbia claiming Kosovo. He shared personal stories of the fear he lived with when he was 7 years old and stories of his family.

We then finished the tour at the Saint Sava temple. Saint sava was the third and youngest son of a former Serbian medieval king who became a monk and was given the name ‘sava’. The church is 83m tall and contains approximately 50million pieces to create the beautiful mosaics. The inside decorations including the mosaics was only completed in 2020.

After an incredible tour and lots of learning, we went inside the Saint Sava temple and were blown away at how incredible it is. The colours, detail and imagery of the mosaics was very impressive and one of the most beautiful buildings we had ever seen in our lives! 50 million individual mosaic pieces !!

As the tour had finished late, we then had to walk very quickly back towards Republic Square for our afternoon tour which started at 3pm. The tour included exploring the underground tunnels of the Kalemegdan fortress.

The first stop was a 60m deep Roman well…that was not built by the Romans. It was built in the Roman style in the early 18th century and initially used to obtain water during war times. However, later it was used to torture people by leaving them in the bottom of the well as well as being the scene for a disgruntled king to push his wife down to her death!

Our next stop was Tito’s secret bunker, which was built in 1948, in anticipation of a potential attack by the Soviet Union through Romania. Between 1948 and 1953, 8 soldiers lived in the bunker. However, Stalin died in 1953 and since then (as well as before) there has never been war between the Soviet Union and Serbia. However, 3 deaths are attributed to the tension between the two countries due to a tightly contested football match in 1954!

We then visited a former gun powder storage bunker which was a night club during the 90s along the water. There were lots of Roman artefacts from around the 2nd and 4th century. We then went to our final stop which was a cold storage room along the Sava river. The limestone surrounding the room was used to keep items cold and a pulley system was used to transport goods up to higher ground.

We finished off the tour with a glass (or two) of locally made white wine which was much needed after a hot day and lots of walking!

We had our last dinner in the Balkans next door - ćevapi, of course - before heading back to the hostel to chill out ahead of a busy day of travel tomorrow. Daniel had a few more local beers at the hostel before bed.Read more