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[elle]

Belgrade Relishes Life at Peace

February 24, 2002

By NEIL STRAUSS




IN 1990, Belgrade was a bustling worldly city, an oasis of
cafes, culture and night life that formed the cultural
center of the Balkans. The next year, however, eight years
of almost continuous war began, in which the old Yugoslavia
broke up along the fault line of religious tensions and
nationalism. The conflict culminated in 1999 when NATO
bombed Serbia to force the Yugoslav leader Slobodan
Milosevic to withdraw his security forces from Kosovo.
Today, on first impression, you'd never know that Belgrade,
the capital of Yugoslavia, had just surfaced from a long,
gruesome war that decimated its economy and destroyed
tourism. On a monthlong visit to Yugoslavia in September,
during which I traveled from the monasteries of the north
to the beautiful Montenegrin coast in the south, I was
surprised to find myself constantly drawn back to Belgrade.


My companion was an old high-school friend, Marko, who had
just decided to return to his home country. In kindergarten
in Chicago, we used to make fun of Marko for being Serbian.
We didn't actually know what Serbian was: it was just
different. Now, so many years later, I was surprised to
find myself not only joining him in Serbia (Yugoslavia
comprises Serbia and Montenegro) but also finding its
social life so appealing.
Belgrade itself has had a long and troubled history.
Strategically situated at the confluence of the Sava and
the Danube Rivers, it has been destroyed on numerous
occasions since Roman times. The Sava bisects the more
picturesque old city (which contains only a few streets
with buildings that have survived since the late 18th
century and the Beaux-Arts boom 100 years ago) from new
Belgrade, a very unappealing sprawl of Socialist-style
apartment-block housing. The city's official population is
around two million, but that doesn't include a substantial
community of war refugees.

Despite its poverty, Belgrade is an astonishingly stylish
place on first impression. Its countless cafes were packed
day and night; the clubs on boats moored along the Danube
and the Sava were filled with boisterous revelers; the
city's main tourist attraction, the Kalemegdan Fortress,
was overrun with embracing couples; and the pedestrian mall
in the old city was teeming with leggy women and muscular
crew-cut men.
On closer inspection, however, something seemed odd. At the
cafes, the most animated topic of conversation, even among
schoolchildren, was politics. At the clubs, most patrons
had enough disposable income for just one drink or perhaps
two; from the Kalemegdan Fortress, the blackened and
bombed-out Socialist Party headquarters was visible; and in
the pedestrian mall, tourist stands sold "Serbia by Night"
postcards depicting a burning wartime skyline.
Add together these two profiles of Belgrade and you have
what Americans sometimes call "the new normal." This is a
city recovering its pride, spirit and resilience after a
war and residents call a revolution, the overthrow of
Slobodan Milosevic. Perhaps the most poignant example I saw
of this post-trauma business-as-usual mentality was a
computer screen saver in the window of a car dealership.
Scrolling across the screen in large red letters was: "What
has happened to the world we once knew??"
Though a State Department consular information sheet issued
in August notes that "no specific threats or incidents of
harassment involving American citizens have been reported
since the Kostunica government took office in October
2000," Serbia nonetheless attracts few American or other
tourists these days. It is, however, a very easy place to
visit. As one Serbian told me, "There are no cheesy tourist
traps in Belgrade, because there are no tourists."

A disadvantage is that few hotels and banks, and almost no
restaurants, accept foreign credit cards, and cash machines
don't recognize American bank and credit cards. Travelers
are advised to take plenty of cash, preferably changed into
euros (which are accepted almost everywhere).
Visiting Belgrade is an especially strange experience for
an American. Before Sept. 11, Serbians liked to point out
the five or so NATO-bombed buildings in the city center and
ask Americans, with more curiosity than hostility, "Why did
you bomb us?" During a brief visit in January, the comments
I heard were more along the lines of, "Now you understand."
But as anyone who has studied the complex politics of the
region or read Rebecca West's complex and wonderful
1,100-page-plus Yugoslav travelogue "Black Lamb and Grey
Falcon" knows, we don't really understand.
For hundreds of years, Serbia has been the whipping boy of
the Mediterranean. A barrier between Muslim Asia and
Christian Europe, it was occupied and over the course of
500 years, it was often ravaged by the Turks. (On a day
trip to the beautiful medieval monasteries around Belgrade,
it was rare to find a church that hadn't suffered
significant destruction by the Turks.)

Then after 63 years of tenuous autonomy, which was
constantly sabotaged by Austro- Hungarian manipulation,
Serbia faced devastation in World War II. It is still
possible to envision the paths the Nazi bombers took when
they bombarded the city if you look for diagonal strips of
newer buildings surrounded by older apartments.
Add the trauma and unrest of the Balkan wars of the 1990's,
which have ended but resolved little, and most visitors
today leave with the impression that Serbia is simply
between wars. But Belgrade's resilient spirit can be seen
every day in its cafes and streets. A visit should not be
mired in the past (the National Museum of Art is so lacking
in funds that its collections of Renaissance, medieval and
foreign art are locked away in the basement). It is for
enjoying the moment.
Belgrade's inhabitants clearly do this well: they remain
among Europe's handsomest people, proud and stylish. A
strict macho code is enforced among the men, who rarely
smile, while the women wear designer impostors of
surprisingly high quality. There is a common joke that the
average Serbian makes $100 a month, but spends $200 a month
on clothes.
The trendy denizens of the city can be seen most warmer
days on Prince Michael Street (a store-lined pedestrian
road in the center of old Belgrade), which is typically
bursting with life, its cafes teeming with students,
politicians, artists and intellectuals. Rewards for the
tourist are in the details: the joke-cracking flutist
panhandler, the peasant musician playing the a bagpipelike
instrument made from a sheep bladder, and especially the
postcard stands.

Nearly half of the postcards show photos of bombed Belgrade
buildings or pay tribute to Belgraders' defiant spirit
during the NATO bombing. A card showing boys scampering
around twisted wreckage comments sarcastically: "The
children playground, designed by NATO." Another pictures
the supposedly undetectable F-117A spy plane that was shot
down. It reads: "Sorry, we didn't know it was invisible.
Greetings from Serbia."
Several blocks away from all this morbid wit is the
University of Philosophy, which houses a bookstore and
cafe, both called Plato, that can serve as a good home
base. A mostly outdoor affair with chic modern décor, Cafe
Plato was a good place to meet and make new friends. More
than half the people I tried to talk to spoke at least
conversational English, and were happy to talk politics,
compare cultures, lambaste Slobodan Milosevic or crack
jokes over a $2 sandwich or a delicious $1 banana frappé
while listening to a student jazz band on the balcony
above.

Adjoining the cafe, the bookstore offered Internet access,
a decent selection of books in English, and a well-read
cashier who recommended "Death and the Dervish" by Mesa
Selimovich. The nearby ? Cafe, the oldest in town, offered
more rustic charm, traditional food, and a taste of
Belgrade's intellectual life of yesteryear. On arriving one
afternoon, Marko and I found a table of old-timers belting
out traditional songs in a baritone sing-along.
Perhaps my favorite site in the city is a work in progress,
the immense St. Sava Temple, off the Bulevar JNA. Modeled
after the Hagia Sofia in Istanbul (and built to scale), St.
Sava has been under construction since before World War II
and shows no signs of being completed any time soon.

But the structure stands, and it's intriguing to wander in
and see the largest cathedral in the Balkans filled with
bulldozers and a crane. The security guard, for a small
tip, took Marko and me up flights of stairs to a walkway
around the exterior of the dome, which offered an even more
beautiful view of the Belgrade skyline than the one from
the Kalemegdan Fortress. Afterward, he showed us every
detail of the cathedral, from the mosaics that had only
just begun to cover the immense interior to the different
types of marble being fitted to the exterior.
The greatest pleasure of Belgrade, however, was its cafes
and clubs. The Serbian capacity for night life is nothing
short of amazing: some diehards go out seven nights a week,
and still manage to make it to work the next morning. When
I refused cigarettes, alcohol or coffee, most Serbians,
whether teenagers or grandparents, looked at me in shock
and asked a variation of, "What is the point of living
without these small pleasures?"
Around dusk, I liked to stroll along the ramparts of the
Kalemegdan Fortress to Cafe Cinema, a sprawl of tables and
balconies arranged at the very top of the stone stronghold.
At that time of day, wolves could be seen baying in the zoo
below. On weekend nights, live bands performed and hundreds
of tables filled with glamorous Belgrade youth while
revelers flocked to Klub Cvijeta elsewhere in the fortress.

Afterward, for a traditional Serb meal, we would wander
Skadarska, a cobbled street two blocks from Prince Michael
Street, once the Montmartre of Belgrade. Besides the
statues, galleries and museums dedicated to the artists who
once lived there, Skadarska is known for its dozen-plus
restaurants, with large outdoor cafes and roving string
bands.

The restaurants - That Hat of Mine, the Three Hats, the Two
Deer, and There Are Days - most dating to the first half of
the 19th century, still serve quality traditional
favorites: njegoseva persutto (a thin ham usually served
with kajmak, a rich spread that's equal parts butter and
cheese), karadjeordjeva snicla (snicla means schnitzel),
and filet mignon in mushroom sauce. The food was especially
good at Ima Dana.
For a young, modern take on Serbian cuisine and dining
rituals, a more hedonistic time was to be had at Reka,
about 15 minutes away on the bank of the Danube. There is
only one seating, around 10 p.m, and people stay very late.
The crowd, mostly from the theater community, and the
bright lights, colorful paintings and an arty ambience gave
it the feel of a hip East Village restaurant.

Most patrons drank the smooth Montenegrin wine before
feasting on seafood. The fresh trout and the risotto with
calamari went down as smoothly as the wine. After dining,
we danced with other patrons to live music, in this case a
talented cover band that played equal parts rock and roll,
torch songs and Serbian pop.
For a late-night dinner, Klub Knjizevnika (Writers Club)
offered another scene, one of artists, writers and
celebrities in constant heated debate. Its food -
particularly the rich, cool ajvar (chopped pepper salad)
and tender lamb - ranks among the city's best.
After dinner, we usually walked to the picturesque,
tree-lined Strahinjica Bana in the old city. Though taxis
are cheap in Belgrade, gas prices are so high that many
drivers refuse short trips. Strahinjica Bana is lined with
cafes that serve as popular resting places between dinner
and clubbing. Among the best were the oddly named Mamma's
Biscuit House (known locally as Stelina), which specializes
in fruit jams and fresh fruit cups topped with homemade
whipped cream, and the more upscale, trendy Studio.
After coffee and dessert, the night finally begins in
earnest. In the last few years, the banks of the Sava and
the Danube have become lined with about 150 boats, most of
them ad hoc nightclubs that are packed every night in
spring and summer. Any visitor can take a taxi to Dunavski
Kej Usce, Bulevar Nikole Tesle or Savski Kej, walk along
the river and choose a floating scene, from black-lighted
ships blasting techno to immense floating restaurants to
grungy rock schooners.

The most interesting were the careening Gypsy music clubs
and the ones with cover bands playing Serbian pop, to which
women gyrated their hips like belly dancers while men
locked arms and sang along drunkenly. The lyrics, in
Serbian, were fantastic odes to intoxicated, passionate
nights that the singers hoped would never end.
And in Belgrade, the night doesn't have to end. There's
still Quorom 33 and the Underground for late-night dancing
on weekends, and after-hours at Nana doesn't get going
until 3 a.m. At dawn, revelers stop by Nislija, a fast-food
stand across the street from Tas, a more upscale club
frequented by local gangsters. There, one can savor
pljeskavica, a spicy hamburger, and watch an event that is
an anathema in most Serbian pop songs: sunrise.   


NEIL STRAUSS is a cultural correspondent for The Times in
Los Angeles.

http://www.nytimes.c...8a301a408cb4c7c



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[zorana*]

...Serbia is simply
between wars.

:sad:


But Belgrade's resilient spirit can be seen
every day in its cafes and streets. A visit should not be
mired in the past (the National Museum of Art is so lacking
in funds that its collections of Renaissance, medieval and
foreign art are locked away in the basement).



:sad:


It is for
enjoying the moment.
Belgrade's inhabitants clearly do this well: they remain
among Europe's handsomest people, proud and stylish.

:smile:

A
strict macho code is enforced among the men, who rarely
smile, while the women wear designer impostors of
surprisingly high quality. There is a common joke that the
average Serbian makes $100 a month, but spends $200 a month
on clothes.

:grin:


Namece mi se ovo pitanje - kako je od silnih restorana kafica i kafana uspeo da ista drugo vidi;

I jos ovo - kako je uspeo da jede na toliko mesta, ili je imao vise od uobicajena tri obroka dnevno ako nije proveo u Beogradu prilicno vremena...

:grin:

[ Izmena poruke: zorana* na dan 2002-02-25 23:04 ]

[Prki]

>I jos ovo - kako je uspeo da jede na toliko mesta, ili je imao vise od uobicajena tri obroka dnevno ako nije proveo u Beogradu prilicno vremena...

pa covek je mozda proveo duzi period otkud znash koliko je u BGD proveo

[HIGHFELDER]

Nemam pojma, zasto americke kreditne kartice ne rade u Beogradu. Ja sam svoju juznoafricku VISA - u koristio bez ikakvih problema !!? Cuo sam da kreditne kartice takodje ne rade, ako su neipravne, ukradene ili na racunu nema para.

A mozda njihove kartice ne rade i stoga jer su nedavno opet ( prvi put 1943. g. ) bombardovali Beograd.