I’m exhausted. I’ve decided to sleep in tomorrow. Which is kind of annoying, because I went for a short walk in Bratislava before it got dark, and it seems like a super cute little city. Sleeping late means less time exploring the city. But I just have to sleep. There is no alternative.

I’m staying at a real, hard core backpacker’s hostel. A bar in the basement that serves both booze and decent food, a common room with odd furniture and a Bob Marley poster on the wall. It’s an old building, with character. And the people: real backpackers, all of them. They always have a certain kind of atmosphere, these places. I like it. I really do.

After checking in at the hostel, the sun was still up, so I decided to take an evening stroll through the city.

 

It’s got a cut little old town, on the north shore of the Danube. Almost endearing. I liked it.

I’ve been sitting on this train since 7. It feels like forever. When we stopped in Budapest to change locomotives, I was seriously tempted to just get off the train and go have some Hungarian food and then go to sleep at the Maverick. I went up at 4:30, because I was nervous about not missing the train. But, obviously, I didn’t get off in Budapest. Instead, I try to keep awake by eating my provisions. Chips and chocolate bars and apricots and nuts.

The landscape has changed from the Serbian and southern Hungarian completely flat plain, fertile and with the occasional sunflower field – the beauty of that sea of yellow flowers running past my window cannot be captured with the camera, it’s almost a shame to try. Now, the Slovakian mountains surround us.

In Novi Sad, the second largest city in Serbia, a whole bunch of tired looking backpackerish type young people of many different nationalities got on. I hadn’t realized, but of course that was bound to happen. The EXIT festival, where our Belgradian host Nevenka was spending her weekend, was in Novi Sad and it ended yesterday. The train got completely packed with ex-EXIT goers on their way to Budapest or Prague. Luckily, no one had reserved my seat, so I didn’t have to move.

My plan was, as always, to be efficient and spend the trip fixing with my photos and blog entries. However, I got interrupted by the very hung over Hungarian guy who got on at Novi Sad and was very keen on telling me about the festival. And once he fell asleep, snoring next to me, it was just so hard to concentrate. Lack of sleep is not good for the coherence of thoughts.

Later, after leaving Budapest behind, I got to talking to an Australian (a 22-year-old apparently traveling around Europe visiting music festivals – he has at least five different bands around his wrist) and a Macedonian guy, and that just seemed so much more agreeable than trying to concentrate on writing. Now one of them has gone to the bistro and the other to the toilet. So I have to write. But soon I’ll be in Bratislava, so, I guess this wasn’t such an efficient trip, after all.

Not as artistic as in Vienna and not as politically refreshing as in Sarajevo, Belgrade still had some street art high lights.

A real zebra crossing.

Putin could be found in many places. Ana had told us that Serbs like the Russians. And sure, OK. They can like Russia all they want – but how can Putin become a street artists icon? I seriously don’t get it.

A more understandable street art portrait – even though Woody Allen doesn’t really feel like a guy with a lot of street cred either.

Amélie Poulain is, at least, artsy enough to not be the least surprising to find on a wall.

What kind of message this Sweeny Todd/Johnny Depp stencil graffiti is meant to convey I don’t really know.

Pretty colors, that’s all.

I thought it might be something similar to the raspberry beer in Belgium, but it was not. This was very sweet. Kind of like a blueberry cider. OK, but not really my cup of tea.

Kirke left early on Sunday morning, while Hanna and I still had one more day to spend in Belgrade. We decided it would be a much more relaxed one, without fighting and parties and tons of have-to’s. It was a hot day, clammy – but we covered our heads with scarves and packed our bags full of water bottles, and then we went out into the sunshine.

One of the main tourist attractions in Belgrade is the mausoleum of Marshal Tito. Josip Broz Tito held many of the highest positions in the Yugoslavian state between the 1940’s until his death in 1980. On the grounds of the Museum of Yugoslav History, the House of Flowers is an old summer residence of Tito’s, where he requested to be buried.

It is a weird thing, a mausoleum. Everyone talks about Tito in the former Yugoslavian countries, he is still very much loved and his time as leader of the country is seen as the glory days of the Balkans. So I guess, with that in mind, it’s not hard to understand that they’ve wanted to honor him with a place like this. But to make it into a museum? For me, that feels kind of morbid.

Next to the mausoleum, this exhibition of relay batons covered the wall and showcases of an entire room. Apparently, it was something that people sent to Tito on his birthday. Weird tradition.

After that, we walked into town.

Greetings from NATO. A memento of the bombings right next to the central train station.

St. Mark’s Church.

Inside, it was cool and dark, the icons painted with gold.

The street Skadarlija is one of the main tourist attractions in Belgrade. Apparently, it’s supposed to be the ‘bohemian quarter’. And it is possible that it once might have been, but now it’s a street lined with restaurants serving food from photo illustrated menus. That is, dense with tourists. It didn’t feel very genuine at all.

But we continued our walk, and ended up seeing some pretty cool streets, where walls were covered in graffiti and the plaster was wearing off. Our goal was the botanic garden, which showed as a green spot on the tourist map – but when we arrived at the main gates, we were met by a large sign written in Serbian, but with a big EU logo at the bottom. I’m pretty sure what it said was that the garden was being renovated, funded partially by the European Union. So, I didn’t get to go to the Belgrade Botanic Garden. Well, maybe it wasn’t such a great loss. I’ve been to a couple botanic gardens before.

After that, Milena called and we decided to meet up with her at Ada Ciganlija.

Ada Ciganlija is the artificial island in the Sava River that creates a lake, which in turn is surrounded by beaches, boardwalks and bars. Tons of people come here, especially on sunny weekend afternoons. A favorite spot for Belgradeans to spend their leisure time. From the northern tip of the lake, the Ada Bridge is in plain view. It is a magnificent bridge. Really beautiful.

The beaches around the lake were packed. We met up Milena and two of her friends for lemonade and then took a walk around the lake, eating ice cream and talking about the Serbian Orthodox church, hidden architectural gems of Belgrade, Novi Beograd and Balkan food. It was a very enlightening walk, which concluded with us getting a ride in Milena’s friend’s Yugo (a tiny car model, from what I hear a very Yugoslav piece of machinery). The perfect ending to a very exciting and intense visit to Belgrade.

Mr. P, dressed in one of the lovely flower bracelets that were given to all the female guests at the wedding. Not that Mr. P is a female. But he looked so cute in it, I just had to!

I was making notes on my phone and Kirke asked what I was doing and if she could help. So, here you are, the notes by Kirke the guest blogger, translated from Swedish by me:

Now Kirke has been allowed to add her own notes – Kirke the guest blogger!

Everything is white and lilac and people are throwing coins on the bride – I got a rosebud which felt good because it means good luck in love – PHEW! Rode in a car with a vegan and a guy who’s become interested with feng shui – I gave him the tip about the mirror rule = never have a mirror facing a door or a window. Now we’re drinking pear rakija and are about to begin a tremendous party without equal – let’s go! SCHHVALA!

The dogs here are well taken care of and happy – the music seems to aim for giving tinnitus to all guests, alternately help people avoid small talk – so that they helplessly can shrug their shoulders and blame the volume for not hearing. The men are flocking. How do you get rid of 5 Serbian men? Say that you are a lesbian – works every time! Now I got real food that was vegetarian – after already having given up and eaten the tables side salad so I’ve eaten double. Now I don’t need to worry about starving at least – nice! Very beautiful in the church – gosh it was beautiful! I didn’t understand a word but picked up 100% of the atmosphere and was touched. Imagine what a commitment to get married. In front of God. Fun with a party! Everyone is happy and it’s contagious! Yey!

I have found the best guy in the world to dance with – so liberating! The world’s funniest dance partner. We dance hard and showy and I love Serbian parties. Everything is free and fun – not stiff and stick-in-the-butt-y. Go Belgrade!

Help! I had the best partner today and holy shit did we party. Dance Kirke got to bloom once again, and the energy was just wonderful! We danced all night and finally he started whining (I don’t know his name!) that his feet were sore – we really partied hard! Hahaha I love love Serbian weddings! Seriously!

After the success of the bachelorette party, Ana asked Kirke and me if we wanted to go to the wedding too. Originally, Kirke and I had planned to spend the day sightseeing, while Hanna was busy with Ana – but you can’t say no to an invitation to a Serbian wedding. That’s just too great an opportunity to pass up. So we dived into our bags and dug out the nicest dresses we could find (in my case, a flowery thing not remotely fit for a wedding, but what can you do? I was backpacking. I would be the shabbiest dressed girl at the party), put up our hair and jumped into a taxi.

The celebrations started at noon in Ana’s parent’s apartment in Novi Beograd. The small rooms were completely filled up with relatives and friends eating cold meats and drinking rakija, dressed in shine and glitter. Ana’s dress was incredible, all lace and pearls, big enough to fill up an entire room.

When Bosco, Ana’s future husband, arrived, all girls gathered in Ana’s old bedroom, while both Ana’s brother and sister blocked the door. According to tradition, Bosco had to pay both of Ana’s siblings, as a kind of reversed dowry, before he could take his bride. Nowadays, the money that is offered is only small change, but back in the day, I guess it used to be done seriously. When Bosco finally got through the door, Ana was hiding behind all us girls. It was very much a game. So when he finally reached her, there were kisses and hugs and photos taken with a number of different constellations of people.

Out on the street, a small brass band had started playing, and we were told to follow the crowd outside.

There, everyone started dancing on the street, to the music of the brass band, while people in the houses around us looked out their windows.

It was a hot day, and bottles of water were passed around.

From the dance party in the street, all of us somehow made it to the church, a cute little thing just a couple of blocks from Ana’s parent’s house.

From the inside, though, it was a beautiful temple, with dark paintings in the ceiling and on the walls. There are no chairs in an orthodox church, at least not in the Serbian ones, so all the guests gathered around the walls, while Ana and Bosco walked up to the priest in front of the altar. Then started a long and, to my very untrained eye, complicated sequence of rituals, to the constant singing dialogue between the priest and the chanter. At one point, Ana and Bosco walked around in the temple holding candles, and then two huge crowns were placed on their heads. At no point did I hear any of them saying ‘I do’, but that might just be because I didn’t understand a word of what was said and sung during the ceremony.

When the ceremony was over, and some additional photographing had been done, everyone gathered outside the church and the couple walked out, while people threw coins at them (as if it was confetti – seriously inconvenient if one of them was hit in the face). The bouquet was thrown and some more photos taken, and then everyone packed themselves up into cars again and started heading to the wedding reception.

At the reception, everything was decorated in white and lilac, with balloons hanging from the ceiling. There was a live band that played all through the night, we were served three courses of savory dishes, lots of meat, and the alcohol just kept on coming.

For desert, there was seven different cakes – and really good ones too, filled with chocolate mousse and berries and vanilla cream. At one point, a civil wedding officiant arrived and preformed the civil wedding ceremony too, and this time I did hear them say ‘I do’ to each other (even though the rest of the words were lost on me).

And there was dancing. Lots of dancing. The volume of the live music in the rooms was extremely high – so high, in fact, that I had to wear my ear-plugs. We got a lot of attention, being foreigners and all, and occasionally on the dance floor men grabbed us, wanted to dance with us, spoke Serbian to us. I couldn’t handle the attention, all these drunk men making such obvious passes at me, it made me really uncomfortable. But Kirke found a really cool dance partner, a guy almost as theatrical and dramatic in his dancing style as she is – and they completely dominated the dance floor.

Another thing that kind of complicated the night was the fact that people were smoking inside. They do that a lot in the Balkans, smoke in trains and restaurants and at wedding receptions. And I’ve never really had trouble with that before, but here for some reason, I got a really bad reaction to that smoke-filled air. My eyes itched and watered, so much that I even started crying, and my nose started running. So every now and then, I had to go outside, to clear my eyes and get a break from the loud music. Usually, Hanna came with me. Kirke was busy dancing with her perfect partner.

There were photographers walking around, taking photos of everyone. At first, I thought they had been hired by Ana and Bosco – but when two girls started walking around the reception rooms, handing out photos to the guests, demanding money for them, I realized that the photographers actually belonged to the establishment where the reception was being held. Kind of a strange way to handle the whole wedding photo thing, if you ask me. And the photos were not cheap, either. We bought a couple, but by no means all that had been printed of us, and I though what a huge waste of photo paper. After that, I was a lot more careful with when to pose in front of the camera.

Better to take the photos ourselves.

Due to Kirke not wanting to stop dancing with her perfect partner, we were three of the last ones to leave the wedding. Bosco arranged for us to get a ride with a family friend of his, a really nice man who on his free time traveled around the world with his son, going to football matches. He had been everywhere, even to Sweden.

When we finally reached the apartment, it was past one. We all crashed into bed, happy and completely exhausted. The wedding had been going on for more than 12 hours. 12 hours of intense dancing, eating, drinking and posing for photos. They really are extreme things, Serbian weddings. But most importantly, incredibly fun!

Though Miles, my awesome Couchsurfing host in Seattle from last year, I had gotten in touch with Milena. Through e-mail, she told me that what I really should do on a Saturday morning, is to go to the Kalenic market in Vracar. Experience the real Serbian style market. Since Hanna really is into all kinds of shopping, we decided to get up early on Saturday morning and go have breakfast at the market.

Mostly, they sold vegetables and fruits – tons and tons of it. We bought water melons and raspberries, apricots, nectarines and plums.

But Hanna also found a booth where they sold baskets. And she does love baskets. She already bought a couple of them when we were in Liberia. But here, she found a couple done in a different style. Finally, Hanna had also found something that she could buy in Belgrade.

After coffee and pastries in a nearby park, we also bought sunflowers for the bride, and then we went back to the apartment to get ready for the wedding.