It was Monday morning 5 am I had recently just said goodbye to my former work-mates, my staff party was over and I was to catch my plane from Luton, flying a Hungarian airline Wizz Air to Belgrade. Waiting for me was my good ol’ friend, like me he had immigrated to New Zealand at a young age, but unlike me he’d returned to his homeland, to be with his family, and friends’, both old and new.
We were staying in the centre of old Belgrade, the real Belgrade according to my friend. The road we were staying was nick-named Silicone Valley, because of all the wealthy women who frequented this road, with their augmented bodies from various surgery operations. This road was one of the wealthiest in the inner-city area, with a line of the priciest bars in the whole country situated here. The apartment we were staying is his father’s, but his father lives in New Zealand for 6 months of summer and then returns for the Northern hemisphere summer in Europe. So my friend has the place to himself. He loves this aspect of his life, and has turned it into his own bachelor pad.
I met all of his family, and even went to a small village town, for an annual traditional dinner, the Saint’s day of his mother’s brother. It is part of the heritage and the official name in Serbian is Slav. My friend told me when we were lost out in the countryside that, that it is these types of abandoned places where corrupt businessmen both kill and then get rid of bodies; I wasn’t too happy to be lost in such circumstances. But we finally found the place he was looking for; My mate is the type of person who just goes ‘freestyle’ (without a map-book or GPS) when driving to unknown places, because he usually has some idea of how to get there, and his philosophy wherever the road will take me – we finally got there in the end (after asking some policeman at some entrance to an industrial plant).
Over the next few days I saw many of the sites of Belgrade, from the football stadiums (of Red Star & Partizan); iconic buildings such as the St Sava cathedral; graffiti art; the pebbled stoned bohemian street Skadarlija where I ate pig brains while gypsies performed music and dance; Kalamegan Fort – one of the most important strongholds in European history, one that had never been successfully penetrated; and of course we visited the Military Museum as it a region that had been subject to war for centuries.
The night of the most action was staying at his father’s house-boat on Lake Sava. It was in the negatives on the lake that night, so we got the fire-place going! All the action started when we went out. Because Bogdan was drinking I was going to drive, something I hadn’t done for nearly two years. However more pressing was the fact that I’d only once driven on the right side of the road. This was going to be a challenge driving at night, in a foreign country. Nonetheless, before I could take the wheel he had to exit the security point at the entrance of the house-boat dock. This entailed my friend having a long discussion with the night-watchman who was trying to deny us leaving after curfew, it was more of an argument. Finally we made it through the checkpoint, just before turning into the main road, my friend pulled up and parked at the intersection and said now it is your turn, ‘take over’. At the precise time we were switching seats, a car the only one we had seen drive past, came by, but it didn’t carry on going straight on its route, rather it did a u-turn. It was a police car and it was coming straight for us. It waited, wanting to turn onto the dirt road where we were coming from. I was still trying to get my seat-belt on when the cop stepped out the car to survey what all the commotion was about. The next thing I know, my friend and the cop are having a huge debate in Serbian, I’m just staying silent (obviously as I understood nothing), hoping for the best. Later my friend told me that he’d said to the policeman I couldn’t speak English, so he couldn’t check if my friend’s story was valid by interrogating me in English. You see, my friend’s car would not past a safety check if it was properly examined by a policeman, for example it didn’t have the spare tyre that was required by state law. I sat patiently. Somehow the conversation got resolved and the policeman walked back to his car but still eyeing us; then my friend then says, “drive (home), go, go”. I had no choice: I reversed my way out so I could turn around and go back from the way we came. I did expertly surprisingly, but the cop followed us all the way till the entrance, where he stopped (to speak to the night-watchman). We got home safely, but the excitement of the night had just began.
The original reason for going out, was we were going to check out the bars along the artificial lake Ada, which was very trendy among the young people. We couldn’t take the car, so the only way was to ride through the forest in the middle of the night, going from one lake to the other. It was the middle of winter, you could barely see, and the terrain was muddy with many broken branches on the path. We both ended up falling over. I stupidly was wearing my nicest dress pants. By any means when we finally reached the lake, it was an idyllic sight, with zero degree temperatures – it was much different to the height of summer when it is usually slammed with people all day and night round. We had the path to ourselves and rode for 8 kilometres, coming closer and closer towards the newly completed impressive Ada bridge – it was our landmark point. Finally reaching the bar we sat ourselves next to two intelligent Serbian girls, I ended up talking about Russian literature with her, she knew much more about Dostoïevski, Kafka, and Tolstoï. My friend the king-player was chatting up the girl about much more carnal things - speculating about his conquests in life, and his amazing pads (such as the inner-city apartment and house-boat) that he had at his disposal - he had other things on his mind.
So that was Belgrade, but for our New Year's celebration as they use the Eastern Orthodox Christian calendar, we had a really big night out in a smaller but much prettier city - Novi Sad. And that capped off my mini Eastern European adventure. I'll be back this summer to visit the Dalmatian coast, with my only two New Zealand Serbian friends living in Belgrade.
