BelGREAT

Belgrade, Belgrade, Belgrade. This place has honestly become one of my favorite cities in Europe. It's a hidden gem, and it's an incredible place to visit. These are the basic reasons why:

1. The people here are maybe the nicest people I've come across in a single place on my entire trip.
2. It's cheap. Perhaps the cheapest place I've been to so far.
3. There's A TON of stuff to do here. Full of great sites and museums.
4. The bars and nightlife are awesome. These places are really nice establishments and there's A LOT of them.
5. It's easy to get around anywhere in the city.

These 5 things contribute greatly to the vibe of the city (especially number 1) and Belgrade has it. I had no idea what to expect when I first came here. I mean, I heard some things but didn't really know. Turns out this place just has great all around vibes. I was so impressed by this place. You don't hear about it anywhere back home but this is where I would go for vacation, and I'm sure I'll come back during summertime in the future. I actually got pretty lucky with the weather here too. I was really worried about how cold it was gonna be here during the winter because I've heard it can get pretty low in the negatives, but it turned out to be okay. Just cloudy and a little bit of rain, but overall great for this time of year.

I took a 6 hour car ride from Sarajevo (arranged by my hostel) with a bunch of locals that had a great time...if only I could understand them. I was that awkward silent guy sitting in the back middle seat surrounded by Slavic languages with my headphones on, but I managed. I got into the hostel and didn't really do much that evening, but the hostel was actually a great setup. The first day consisted of yet another free walking tour :) and this one was maybe the best one I've been on during the trip. Before the tour even began I was interviewed by Serbian national television about what I was doing here and what I know about Belgrade and what I'm hoping to learn from this tour, so I've got that going for me. Turns out I learned a ton of great stuff on the tour and the guide was this really cool dude that knew what he was doing and loved doing it. It's great when you have a guide like that, when you can tell that he legitimately loves doing what he does, and even though he's done over 800 of these things over the last 3 years he acts like it's his first time each time. I've got respect for that, and hope to embrace whatever the heck my next job will be with that kind of passion and enjoyment.

St. Sava - The largest Orthodox church in the world

But the tour was great, and of course I made a friend along the way. Danielle was a fellow American living in Russia and we spent most of the day after that tour exploring even more of the city, including a sketchy Serbian cemetery at night, which is always fun. I hadn't walked this much since maybe Rome so I definitely got some exercise while we were at it. We were extremely productive and saw wayyy more than I thought I would see in the first day which was good, and left more time to do other stuff in the city over the next couple days of my stay. It was a really successful first day and I was super happy with this place.

The second day was a rest day. Rest days are crucial to long term traveling. You always need to have at least one or two rest days per week, if not more, especially if you don't have a set itinerary. This allows you to organize where to go next, find couchsurfing hosts for those places, upload photos, update blogs, skype friends/family, work out, etc. This is what I do on rest days and these things tend to take up an entire day, so it's nice to be able to get other stuff done and try to relax at the same time. This is what I did for the entire day on the second day, then I met up with Danielle for dinner and we met this couple at the restaurant that was really nice and hilarious. We ended up going out with them later that night and had a blast.

I got to shake Mr. Tesla's hand!

I did so much the first day that I was almost nearly satisfied with everything I wanted to see in this city. The third day consisted of a visit to the Tesla museum and the largest Orthodox church in the world which I had already seen at night but wasn't able to go inside. When Danielle and I were exploring the city after the tour that first day a lot of it was at night since the sun goes down before you have time to finish breakfast up here, so I tried to pick out some places we saw on that first night to see during the day as well, and this was one of them. The church was absolutely massive and one of the larger churches that I've seen...out of the 10 million churches that I've seen on this trip. The Tesla museum was super cool too. I didn't realize that Tesla was the most underrated inventor of all time and basically invented everything important that we use today and hardly got any credit for it, so remember that. That night was spent trying to figure out where the hell I was gonna go after Belgrade so I began to lean towards Romania and try to plan it out.

Day 3 was mostly just spent hanging out at the hostel again. Actually most of the rest of my time in Belgrade was really just spent updating this stuff and planning Romania. I had originally booked 3 nights here but ended up staying for 5, so that's traveling without a plan for ya. But hey, it had been a little while since I'd stayed at a place for a few days to figure things out and I'd like to say that I left Belgrade fully stocked with updates and plans for the future travels. Aside from little food trips and a nice walk back to the big fortress to get one last good view of the city, this was all I did. But every time I went out to walk around and get a feel for this place it was awesome. Everyone here is nice and good looking and just seems happy, at least from what I saw.

The bombing of some of these massive buildings was intense...

Going back to my previous post, despite the events that have occurred here and all the things that happened during the recent wars less than 20 years ago, the people have managed to continue on with their lives and pursue happiness in a great way. It's really cool to see this and I have a lot of respect for the people here and their city. I remember our tour guide saying that Belgrade has been bombed like over 40 times in its history (that means completely leveled) and they continue to rebound. There's massive communist buildings that are still partially bombed and completely abandoned, and across the street is some nice, new, good-looking massive parliament building...it's crazy. But yea, the people here continue to try and live their lives and it's really impressive, despite the economic craziness that's still going on here.

I just have to say well done, Belgrade. I'm really impressed by your vibes, people, charm, history, (current) recovery, and ability to still show people that life goes on, so get over it and try to be happy, because I was when I was here.