Lewis' birthday. Left the hostel in Budapest around 12 and drove to Belgrad, a mostly uneventful drive aside from the 2 hour queue to get to the Serbian border crossing, where we then had our passports barely checked and customs, thankfully due to the excessive amount of alcohol in the car, waved us straight through. As we were driving through the outskirts of Belgrad we drove past a couple of buildings which looked like they had been bombed, massive gaping holes down the middle, rubble everywhere and notably collapsing walls and what remained of the rooves, a somewhat troubling introduction to the city, not only for the appearance but also the fact that the buildings had clearly just been left there.
Parked and checked in to the "Manga Hostel" which was surprisingly lacking in manga theme but was colourful and with a very friendly vibe, met our aussie roommates then went to dinner at the restaurant recommended by the hostel. The place had a slightly dodgy feel about it, small and dingy but served cheap and decent Serbian food, which appears to be largely barbecue meat. Serbian diets appeal to me. After dinner headed back to the hostel, polished off a couple more tasty beverages, changed and, joined by Simon, one of our Aussie roommates, headed out into the highly spoken of Belgrad nightlife to celebrate Lewis surviving to 26.
In Belgrad, according to the very friendly girl working in the hostel reception, clubs on the land are pretty dead and close at midnight, so the real nightlife is based around the Danube river, where boats and barges converted into loud, extravagantly colourful clubs line the shores, making a fantastic sight after dark. However, as we found out when we enquired with our helpful hostess the next day, the majority of these clubs pick out foreigners, noticable due to our up to date clothing, paler complexion and not speaking Serbian, and tell them they need reservations or make up obscene entry fees where there are infact none, as demonstrated by the streams of Serbs walking straight in and out while we were grilled repeatedly by a series of large, tattooed Serb bouncers.
We eventually found a place which was open to the likes of us and had both cheap beer and a live band playing that was the closest I have ever been to seeing Eurovision live, so we hung around to amuse ourselves for a few drinks before moving on. We found a place recommended to us, called "Olympic" and, with its relatively minor foreigner entry fee, headed on it and found it packed with people and being overseen by 2 unimpressed bartenders and a DJ/MC combo playing drum and bass. Satisfied by our choice of venue and not wanting to continue hunting for anywhere better we settled in with a quick round of beer and jager shots, now our shot of choice, and spent the rest of the night drinking and dancing until around 2:30 when our lack of sleep and long day of driving through crazy heat caught up to us and we left. Aside from a brief run in outside with 2 girls and a guy who were either very high or really dumb prostitutes we made it back to the hostel very easily. I feel I should also mention the apparently popular female fashion in Serbian boat night clubs, which was 3/4 length loose pants and tops that may as well have been boob belts, a very interesting combination (and not in the horribly perverted way most of you are imagining, more in the "in what portion of your tiny slutty brain did you possibly think this was a good idea" way).
The next day was a day of doing very little on our behalf, sleeping in until the afternoon, wandering into the Bohemian quarter, which just seemed like the restaurant quarter to be honest, for lunch, cooking ourselves a Cumu special meal of pasta with tinned tuna and tomato sauce. Other than that spent the day playing chess, watching the others recover, enjoying the amusement I get from their ability to get hangovers and watching the awful Norwegian terrorist attacks unfold.
Woke up the next morning at the ungodly early hour of 8:30 feeling refreshed, took serious advantage of the free hostel breakfast, checked out and made our way to the Nikola Tesla museum. We arrived at 10:15 and they did guided tours for the same price as normal entry every hour on the hour so we meandered down the road to kill half an hour at the market, which was overflowing with fruit of questionable quality and clothing and electronic goods for questionable branding and legality but it was an interesting place to see and be minorly harassed at. Got back to the Tesla museum just in time for the 11'o'clock tour which was definitely worth the $2 it cost and was about half an hour of information about Tesla's life, influences on society and, most importantly, his crazy lightning machines (plus the awestrikingly large amount of other inventions) all of which came with interactive "hold this light stick and we promise not to set you on fire while we surround you with lightning" demonstrations.
No comments:
Post a Comment