THE NEW YORK TIMES, Sunday, February 24, 2002 TRAVEL
Belgrade Relishes Life at Peace
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 d�cor, 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 frapp� 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.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
