District of Carberry

I arrived in Belgrade around 1:30 pm Saturday. The DC-London and London-Belgrade flight were uneventful and on time. I walked through passport control faster than anywhere else in the world I can remember. No questions, no funny looks, no landing card; just a stamp and a grunt. That struck me as odd given the rumors of Serbian suspicions about Americans entering the country—the suspicions being that we are all spies. Anyhow, I proceeded to baggage claim, and after a pleasantly short wait, my bag came through and I walked through customs. There weren’t even any officers in the “Nothing to Declare” line to keep people honest. I was starting to wonder if they were trying to lull the arriving spooks into a false sense of complacency. I came out into the reception area and saw a number of men with “Taxi” badges. I realized I didn’t investigate taxi rules before arriving, so was immediately skeptical that any of them was legitimate. Several men approached me and I waved them off. One followed at a distance as I wandered around looking for an ATM. I found one and took out a stack of Serbian Dinars. More taxi men approached me. I said no thanks and walked outside to see if I could figure out the deal. In some countries, rogue taxi drivers wander around inside the terminal while real ones wait in lines outside. I recall this in Bangkok, and thought this could be the case here. Anyhow, I saw a bus schedule and tried to make sense of it. A taxi driver started talking to me and made a reasonable pitch. We negotiated a bit over the rate and finally I signed on. We drove into town and chatted. He’s from Belgrade, and tired… says Serbia should just let Kosovo go and get it over with even though he and most others agree in principle that Kosovo should remain Serbian. He deposited me outside the Union Hotel on a narrow one-lane street. I entered the lobby and could immediately tell the place was going to have “charm” but might not have hot water or any furnishings that were purchased after I was born.

I handed the clerk my passport and told him I had a reservation. He and the other woman there looked around, and after a few minutes, found the slip. I offered a credit card, and they said no worry for now. They gave me my room key and tv remote and I got into one of the most primitive elevators I’ve seen. It wasn’t like a cool New York City one with the metal gate and the control lever that looks like something off a ship. It was, shall we say, more socialist looking. You opened the door manually, stepped in, and either closed the inner doors, or not. It didn’t matter as the elevated would go with the inner doors open, and you could watch each floor pass by until it stopped and you pushed open the outer door to exit. I wandered down the hall. The floor felt like my foot might fall through at any moment, and the trim looked like that junk that Sears sold everyone for the basements in the 1970s. I entered my room and it was as bad as I expected: better in some ways, and worse in others. But, it would do—it had a bed, something resembling a shower, and the door lock worked. I dropped my bags and went out walking around pedestrian street in the center of the city. Typical assortment of shops, cafes, vendors, and people doing what they do on Saturday afternoons. I found the stately Moskva hotel—a reputed haunt of journalists, politicos, and people who are at a minimum self-important. I had three Jelen Pivo beers and a calamari risotto. I called Ivan—my Kennedy School classmate and contact on the ground—and made plans for dinner and seeing some of the city after dinner. I made some more calls and sent text messages (relied on more here than even in the US) to set up appointments. I wandered back to my hotel and napped for about an hour, showered and got ready to go out. Ivan was running late so I walked back to the pedestrian street to kill time. There was some sort of carnival or little expo going on. There were stands promoted by one of the main banks in the city surrounding a small area where people were engaging in a variety of contests and activities. On one stand several kids frantically yanked away at rowing machines, while another kid in the center of the plaza shot free-throws. I saw a “bouncy house” thing, and then there was the giant trampoline and bungee-cord contraption where people could bounce a good 25 feet high and do flips. I have no idea what it was all about, but it was interesting nonetheless. I made my way back to the hotel and met up with Ivan. We drove to his place for a quick drink—Rakia, the Serbian brandy. From there we drove to Dacha for a traditional/tourist Serbian dinner. We had pear rakyi, a plate of cheeses and pates with various breads, and then a couple of different salted meat entrees. From there we went to Monument—another reputed hang out of politicos—but the place was pretty dead. Seems it’s more of a lunchtime haunt. After a beer we went to Absinthe—one of the trendier bars, modeled after a bar in NYC I’ve never seen. Ivan and Maria checked out early and I stayed for another hour to people watch and get a feel for life in the city. Around 1 am I left with the intention of taking a cab home, but when I got to the traffic circle with the taxi stand I looked up the street and saw a giant church on top of the hill. I decided to hike up for a closer look. I walked around the Cathedral of St Sava in the dark, and in the not-too distance, I heard The Doors (I was assuming it was a recording, not the actual band). I traced the source to a bar across the street and I wandered in. It was the smallest bar I’ve seen—about the floor space of a Manhattan studio apartment. I saddled up to the bar and ordered a beer and quickly fell into conversation with the locals there—who with one exception were all my age. I talked politics—Serbian, US, Russian, and European—with three people for about four hours. The main points that emerged were the frustration over the US involvement in the status of Kosovo, frustration of US foreign policy in general, a reluctant acceptance of Russian support in the Kosovo negotiations (people liked having an ally but had no trust of Russian motives), and a general sense of fatigue with all of it. Around 5 am the bartender fell asleep behind the bar, and that seemed to be the cue to leave. I was about to walk to the circle at the bottom of the hill to find a taxi, but one couple I had been speaking with invited me out for what we would call in the US, “late-night drunk food.” I obliged, figuring it would give me the opportunity to get some of their comments on tape. We drove through the city and ended up in some little plaza with a big food stand. They ordered me a chicken shawarma-like thing and of course another beer. We talked for a while, but they didn’t want to go on tape. Finally, they took me back to my hotel, and by 6:30 am I was asleep.