All About Belgrade

All About Belgrade – Day 125 Tuesday, June 18^th

There was a plan and we tried but it got late and what was supposed to be a much needed early night turned into a late supper.

How it played out– times are actual.

Tired bad tempered get up from you know who.

Late breakfast at flat taken reluctantly by Mr T.

1000 am – walk to Tesla Museum

1045am – Tesla Museum (English speaking tour)

1230 – Private guided walking tour of Belgrade with Alexsander

1530 – late lunch in restaurant

1700 – 2100  (Taran and Kelty)– Bike ride along Sava River to Ade Ciganlije (Lakeside City Riviera and Recreation Area) and swim.

1800 – (Jo) to local art gallery

2200 – Late supper at groovy neighbourhood Brasserie and drinking spot “Voulez Vous”.  My burger was RARE.

What a genius!  

Nikola Tesla (1856 - 1943) – was robbed of the Nobel Physics Prize; Edison and then Marconi got it instead we are credibly told.  Nikola grew up in rural Serbia and then went to New York as a young engineer.  Feted in his time he practically discovered electromagnetic radiation and induction, realised the seminal importance of polyphase Alternating Current, invented and engineered the induction coil and motor and paved the way on power generation and transmission, wireless radio control, logic boards, X – Ray generation, missile technology and more.  On top of all that he saw in 1900 the need for sustainability in industry, society and economics and wrote and agitated so urgently on the subject in his later life that he alienated his previous sponsors (the likes of JP Morgan) and died suspiciously in relative obscurity.  Was he murdered by the capitalists?? Nice small museum full of Nikola's original and working prototypes but crowded.

It would be a mistake to even try to outline the Belgrade/Serbian History as imparted to us by Alexsander.  Apparently Churchill said it best “Too much history…..to consume” for the Balkans to consume he meant but also for us as students it seems.  But I know we all got a feeling for its complexity and tensions through the ages and I hope we all got some factual underscoring.  Alexsander certainly tried his best and we followed as best we could.  He is a Serbian and remains, it is clear, proud of his country but keenly aware of the total horror of the war years and the bad press Serbia in particular got in the West.  “Milosevic was an evil  tyrant” but “There were crimes on both sides” is his stated position.  He like many Serbs, I gather, look back to the golden years of Tito with longing.  I think it is probably important to remember though that the Serbs had much of the power and enjoyed much of the prosperity in that epoch.  Anyway it all went to literal hell for nearly everybody – but some more hell than others. I think the Kosovan Albanians and Muslim Bosnians would like us to remember that.  And I had forgotten that NATO bombed Belgrade in 1999 in desperate outrage at the crimes against humanity being committed by Milosevic’s regime in the then collapsing Yugoslavia.  I had also forgotten that the genocide in Rwanda occurred at the same time.  The UN was very busy.  Other things I did not know were the near total destruction of much of Belgrade by German bombs in WW2 and the loss in that war of 20% of the male Serbian population and the long long term (350 years) occupation by the Ottoman Turks up to 1850 and the proceeding subjection to the Austro Hungarian Empire, and the  Serbian royal dynasties and all the ethnic and linguistic mixing up and tensions that all of that entailed.  And then there was WW1 and then WW2 and then Yugoslavia and Tito and his brinkmanship with West and East.  And I haven’t made the effort to understand much at all about the very important Orthodox Church. Religion! Not my area at all yet others care so much.

Just outside the Serbian Parliament there is a very prominent display of  photographed faces demanding justice for "the victims of Kosovan Terroism" - these are the faces of missing Serbian soldiers from the forces sent to Kosovo in the war.

Also prominent are six very old and rusty empty flagpoles.  They stand untidily in a neat setting at the entrance to the rather grand parliament building. They are the flagpoles that once flew the six separate flags of the kingdoms of Tito's Yugoslavia.  Taran asked Aleksander a good question.
"If the war has been over for 20 years why havent they taken those old poles down?"

Gosh but they love Novak Djokovic here.  

I don’t think we could have an equivalent in our national identity.  Something about sport and Serbian Machismo go together.  And he was a very good news after the war. 

Belgrade is situated at the confluence of two large navigable rivers; The Danube and The Sava.  Alexsander showed us the commanding views from the fort that has been captured, destroyed and rebuilt so many times through the ages.  It is the centrepiece of an attractive park now.  And we walked through nice 19th and 20^th century neighbourhoods 

but much of central Belgrade is under construction or recently built.  The antique trams are mostly down for the moment as they are re-worked and Taran and I cycled along the river, through a truly vast central residential development in progress, past the motorway bridges,

 houseboat night clubs and moored fishing shacks to the newly put together lake beach, restaurant and recreation destination of Ada Ciganlije.  It was quite a long way.  And there were a lot of mosquitos but some Belgradians were gamely out on this humid summer evening.  And so were we as we splashed in the green waters and watched the cable pulled water skiers doing the circuit past the burger bars. 

It rained heavily and got dark as we cycled back.

   “Barely a shower” we agreed.  But we were still drying out from the day before.