MIGHTY BELGRADE

Pobednik in Kalemegdan

Around 6 AM when we left Sarajevo for Belgrade, it was still dark and freezing cold. The sky was clear with a few clouds. The bus heating was on and made it comfortably warm inside. We used winding roads to get out of the Miljacka valley and move into another one, then followed a gorge that we couldn't really see clearly in the beginning but which was revealed as the light intensity increased. A tormented cloud dramatically lit up in pink above the curvy outline of the hilltop woods. Then came the fog unveiling, at its own will, pieces of the landscape, ghostly tree outlines, houses by the wild riverside, cattle grazing and, a couple of times, radiating sunbeams that had managed to sneak through the clouds. Towards the border with Serbia, the hills had subsided and given way to flat lands producing the impression of a flat electro-cardiogram after having spent the past few weeks in hilly Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina. There was now space for large scale agriculture. The horizon was full of cabbage, between two towns of concrete. The sky was uninspiring and gloomy. All the way to Belgrade, nothing much changed in the predictable geometry of the land.

But then, Belgrade appeared with her cohort of concrete high-rise housing that kept growing in height as we approached the centre of the city. The setting of Belgrade is, in itself, a statement of power to the rest of the region. Its fortress rises above the immense plain traversed by the Sava and the Danube. The two rivers merge in Belgrade at the feet of the citadel which is built on the hill next to the lively area of Dorcol, at the end of the Kalemegdan park. The city was raided and destroyed many times in history. However this series of ups and downs has never dented the determination of Serb people to play a regional role. This unrelenting taste for domination has been illustrated clearly since the end of World War I which has originated in Sarajevo but under the impulse of Crna Ruka, a secret Serb organization. The statue of Pobednik in the park, erected in 1928 to commemorate the victory of Serbia over the Austrian-Hungarian and Ottoman empire is the best representation of it. At the end of the war, a project of independent republic of Yugoslavia took shape under the sponsorship of Alexander Karađorđević, the regent of the kingdom of Serbia, who succeeded to Peter I, as King of Yugoslavia in 1921. Alexander was no friends of the Communists that had won a large number of seats in the first Yugoslav parliament in 1920. Tito, Josip Broz, was one of them. The Communist party was outlawed a year later after one of its members assassinated the Minister of Home Affairs. Subsequently, Tito persued his Party activities underground up to World War II at which point he was leading the Partisan resistance movement, with the support of the Kremlin, which became a liberation army and allowed Tito to conquer some territory while the Italians retreated in 1943 and to form a parliament. This also helped Tito to be identified by Britain as a credible force in the Balkans and therefore worth supporting. But soon, German forces pushed Tito to retreat to the island of Vis that was under British control up to the end of the presence of German forces in Croatia. With the support of Moscow and London, Tito managed to become the ruler of Yugoslavia at the end World War II up until his death in 1980. What is more, he was the one who liberated Belgrade in 1944. In that city, the political center of command of Yugoslavia would remain under the seasoned hand of Tito who managed to cease full obedience to the Kremlin in 1948.

We had been advised not to jump into any taxi at the bus station for fear of being taken for a ride and asked for a lot of money. We didn't have very far to walk up to the flat we had booked in Dorcol.
The hill was not tidy but it was vibrant and full of colourful giant billboards and graffitis which gave it a wild urban touch. Belgrade with its 1.3m inhabitants was really the capital of former Yugoslavia and still by far the largest capital of its former Republics. The town architecture is a mixture of buildings from Austrian-Hungarian influence, pseudo communist architecture from the 1920s and 1930s as well as utilitarian blocks from the post World War II reconstruction. Roads are large, so are the boulevards to accommodate traffic but surely by design to display might. Belgrade is a machine of power.
Yet out of the roughness, there is an obvious taste for living a good life. Countless cafes are there to escape the concrete outside, trees are reminding people of nature everywhere.
After settling down in the apartment, we walked through the pedestrian area, already decorated with Christmas lights, over to the Kalemegdan park where a lot of Belgrade's historical past is concentrated.
We explored the next day the South East of the city with its grand Orthodox church under renovation courtesy of Gazprom and the Nikola Tesla museum which we actually ended-up not visiting because of the long waiting queue. Instead we went for coffee at the Moskva hotel, famous for its refined atmosphere of another century.
We crossed the Sava to go to the Museum of Contemporary Art, which had an exhibition called
Sequences about the various movement of Yugoslav art scene starting with Slovene constructivism, Surrealism, Zenitism, automatic and conceptual art, some of it very much in tune with the gloomy weather outside. Sator, Arepo, Tenet: the words that put together and in reverse form a magical square because it can be read in any direction was used by one of the artists.

s  a  t  o  r

a  r  e  p  o

t  e  n  e  t

o  p  e  r  a

r  o  t  a  s

We walked back into the gloom past the entertainment boats that are berthed on the Sava's shore. One of them, Zappa Barka, a floating concert place, was guarded by a nonchalant black dog that strechted of bore as we passed by. From the windy bridge one could see the city under construction, including
a new skyscraper that was advertised as the new place to be. "Kula Belgrade, the symbol of the new city" or "the beacon of the entire master-planned community".
We came back for lunch at our place reflecting that Belgrade was definitely the closest to a big city we had seen so far in the territory of former Yugoslavia. It was also known to be the latest international party town with all its clubs and bars. If you can't make it to Berlin, try Belgrade. Shopping centres were all full of lights and giant screens. Clearly the vision for the city's future was ambitious.
We noticed that our flat couldn't be booked for one night. A minimum of two nights was required along the lines that a two-night stay protects you from one-night stands! Or so told us the lady that coordinated the rental.
We left by shared minivan to Zagreb. A long but uneventful trip with Croatian guys coming back from a holiday involving a flight with Air Serbia, which explained why they had transited by bus through Belgrade. We arrived at night in Zagreb, it was cold and the temperature was meant to remains below zero degrees Celsius over the next couple of days. We put on all the clothes layers we could manage.

Images:
1/ Pobednik in Kalemegdan
2/ the fortress at night
3/ Belgrade's old town
4/ Zebra crossing in Dorcol
5/ the upcoming Kula tower
6/ Cabbage horizon

the fortress at night

Belgrade's old town

Zebra crossing in Dorcol

the upcoming Kula tower

cabbage horizon