After 2 days in Transylvania, I still had all the blood I arrived with. Not wanting to push my luck, I decided to head on to my last new country for this trip. Serbia. Belgrade in particular.
I did my travel research and came up with a big fat no on a direct route to Belgrade from Brasov. All the routes had a middle of the night layover in cities I had never heard heard of, let alone able to pronounce. I took the easy alternative and took the overnight train to Budapest where I could catch the all day bus to Belgrade.
Uneventful train trip if a bit sleepless. I like Budapest although walking from the train station to the Bus station is hardly the prettiest stroll. I made it to the Nepliget intercity bus station in time for the next Belgrade bus without much waiting. The scenery between Budapest and Belgrade is pretty boring so I caught up on a bit of sleep on the way.
I stayed awake long enough to find a room on a houseboat hotel floating on the Danube River. It was dark when the Bus rolled into the Belgrade Bus Station and I was happy that I had remembered to download the Maps.Me map. The boat wasn’t far but was on the far side of a really large river front park with no one else walking around it.
I was the only guest again so they were really happy to see me. There was nothing around for about a mile and I was hungry so I dropped my luggage and headed back out. I found a street with some restaurants. spent too long looking and deciding before I ended up just having a burger at a bar. They still smoke inside in Serbia so I didn’t stay long. Was a long day.
The houseboat was pretty nice. It was however a long walk walk to downtown. I was there in off-season so it was a pretty quiet stroll. There were a lot of houseboats and barges moored on the river. A lot of them looked like they were nightclubs when the weather warmed up. Too old for those shenanigans but I am sure it is fun.
I found my way to the city center and got pleasantly lost. Ended up at the Nicola Tesla Museum for a nice little tour. But mostly I just walked around department stores to see what Belgradians could buy. Its a pretty modern city without any evidence or references to taking a good shellacking from NATO back in 1999. I was kind of surprised really, There is still a lot of bombed out ruins in Croatia and I walked all over Belgrade and didn’t see anything. Reminds me of the Get Smart episode where KAOS blew up the Capitol and the govt rebuilt it overnight before any one knew.
Some post trip research reveals that there actually are some bombing ruins but you have to make an effort to find them as the city really has rebuilt itself. Also, from what I can tell, they don’t like to focus on that time if they can avoid it. It looks like an enterprising tour company has started up a bombing tour in case that interests you.
For me though, I was happy just to roam around, drink some coffee, eat some delicious spicy sausages called Ćevapi and hit a pub or two. I was only there for a couple of days so I can’t give Belgrade a definitive 2 thumbs up but I liked what I saw. It will take another longer visit to confirm but London was looming and I hadn’t figured out how I was going to get there other than flying.
Views Around Belgrade
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I don’t know why I did it this way but I flew out of Budapest. Maybe Belgrade didn’t have any cheap flights which can’t be true because Europe has cheap flight to everywhere. For whatever reason, I found myself on a bus back to Budapest that kept breaking down. I had an AirBnB reserved for the night that didn’t have late checkin without paying a pretty exorbitant fee. By the time I got to the front door it was just past the checkin time. I had been in contact with them from the Bus WiFi but they didn’t seem to understand that I didn’t have a phone. I ended up using a restaurant ‘s phone across the street. I got the door pass code and settled in. I went out for dinner and a roam around but it was a very quiet night for some reason. I headed back to the room and readied for the effort to get to the airport in the morning. Turned out to be pretty easy and next thing I know I am in the London suburbs drinking beer and eating a home cooked dinner.
With that, my trip the adventure was over and I just had to sit on a plane for a bunch of hours.
