I had been getting breakfast and dinner at the hotel in Belgrade, which was a first for me, so I wasn’t getting much food around town, which was fine because I really didn’t see too much interesting food around Serbia. Still, I had to take care of lunch. Fortunately, there was a stand that sold various grilled meat items not too far from the hotel, so I decided to give it a try.
What I had there, I will loosely call a hamburger. It sort of looked like a hamburger, but it wasn’t 100% beef. There was some ground beef in there, but it also had some smoked pork, pepper flakes and various other spices. It was thinner and larger in diameter than a typical hamburger and was served on a bun made of pita bread. The toppings that I had to choose from included hot sauce, more red pepper flakes, cabbage, mayonnaise and some orange, pasty concoction that I couldn’t identify. I opted to eat it plain. Most importantly, however, it was the best damned hamburger (as I still am loosely calling it) that I have ever had in my life. It was meaty and spicy and the smoked pork worked well with the ground beef and the bun was perfect. This became my lunch for each of my three days in Belgrade because I didn’t think it could be improved upon. I forget its Hungarian name, I put it in one of my facebook posts, but if I get ambitious, I’ll look it up again and put it here.
The train station and my hotel are located at one of the lowest points in Belgrade. At some point, I decided to walk up the closest hill to see what I could find. Actually, I wasn’t just roaming blindly; I knew that I was heading towards the university and parliament building.
It turned out to be a very nice walk. There are many beautiful buildings in Belgrade, including religious and government buildings. As has become my pattern here in Eastern Europe, I didn’t know the names of most of the buildings, but I did take some pictures and I walked around the city for hours trying to soak up as much of the atmosphere as I could. I also visited the Red Star store and bought a cap. For the uninitiated, Red Star Belgrade, officially Crvena Zvezda, was perhaps the most renown soccer club from the old Soviet bloc, even winning a European Cup (precursor to the Champions League) in the 1980s, and still probably is the most famous of the Eastern European clubs.
My time in Belgrade was running short, but there still was one thing that I needed to see. There is a Bohemian neighborhood in Belgrade. I know this because all over town, there are signs pointing to the Bohemian neighborhood. I kept following the signs, but I kept missing the Bohemians.
When I was little, there was this little game people would play. They would write notes in books directing you to other pages in the book. For example, on page 27, there’d be a note saying turn to page 198. When you turned to page 198, there would be a note saying turn to page 34. And so on. Often, this became circular and there never was anything to find. I was beginning to get that same feeling about the Bohemian neighborhood.
Then, late in my final day, I found it. I’m pretty sure. No, I’m sure, but I really wouldn’t have called it a Bohemian neighborhood. It was a cobblestone street with a bunch of pubs with Bohemian-style names. There were also signs pointing to other famous Bohemian-style neighborhoods, like Montmartre in Paris. That was about it. But I got to see a lot of the city in my quest, so the journey was fantastic even if the destination was less than that.
So, there are my highlights of my three days in Belgrade. From Belgrade, I headed to Budapest, so the next posts will be about Hungary.
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