Belgrade – A Conclusion – Part 3

Belgrade – A Conclusion – Part 3

Belgrade is the ugliest city…I arrived in Belgrade with no map and plan, so I left it up to this Serbian friend whom I met accidentally in Andorra. How many people travel to Andorra for just one day and rush back for their flights on the next day? How many of them end up staying with the same host? How many will return to Spain on the same bus? How many will then flight at the same airport? How many will fly on the same morning requiring an overnight sleeping on the same bench? And how many are the exact people you are trying to meet? That was how I met Jelena.

Meeting random people on the road also makes me realize that there is a ‘crazier’ and ‘flakier’ version of me and that I am after all normal. I can not retrace the route Jelena and I took anymore because I aimlessly followed her from one boulevard to another while listening to her narration about the city, its history, her life and of course Serbia. Our fist stop was the buildings and radio station bombed by NATO in 1999. They are burned, destroyed and left ruined as a live museum to remind people not to forget. It was only then I fully understood Marko’s contempt toward Americans.

Five years ago in restaurant in Wroclaw, Poland, we sat next to a group of Polish soldiers. Marco pointed at them and smirked. “See how smug they are in that military uniform? Argg! These Americans.”Another Marko, a Croatian, explained to me that my country bombed his. But why does it have to do with the Poles? Only much later when living in Prague and following the high-profile rocket-and-radar fiasco concocted by America, Poland and Czech that I learned about one of America’s staunchest European ally, Poland.

There isn’t war if there is no casualty. There isn’t casualty if there isn’t any proven dead body. During the month NATO bombed Belgrade, life went on as usual as only military buildings were targeted. People flocked to the street to cheer, to dance and to point the middle finger up to the sky and shout “come here, bring it on!'” Ladimir, my hostel attendance from Novi Sad recalled those days. In April 23rd, 1999 people went to their usual night shift at Radio-Television of Serbia until the building blew up. Families of 16 victims built a granite headstone with the word ‘Zasto’ (meaning ‘why’) above the names of those who were killed. Why did TV station belong in a hit list? But even more so, the ex TV boss Dragoljub Milanovic was alleged to deliberately send his employees to work that day knowing they might die, to ensure the propaganda against NATO and solidify the conviction the world is against Serbia, and we are the victims.

We walked for half a day before taking a break at a chic hair salon for me to get a haircut with a short bang. We moved on to a restaurant where Jelena ordered a big fat plate of 500g juicy cevapcici, a special grilled minced meat, served in many places in the world but only best in Bosnia and Serbia. Like the Bosnians from Sarajevo, she won the argument and the public mini ‘fight’ as why she should pay for the meal. I felt like a big sinner letting a vegetarian pay for my meat. With my new Serbo hairs and a stomach full, I walked through the city center of Belgrade to get to Kalemegdan fortress, looking over the Sava river. I used to drink Turkish coffee almost every evening with the cleaning ladies at the school where I worked in Sarajevo. They did not understand me at all, and I understood them very little but they invited me for coffee and talk every day. When I said that I would like to go to Belgrade, Suja complained how small the dried-up Miljaka, the river flows through Sarajevo, was. “But the Sava is very huge. She made a gesture with her hands to describe its grandeur. I could not detect any sign of malign from her voice and eyes. And Belgrade is beautiful. As I was standing on the top of the Kalemegdan, I remembered Suja’s comments and tried to feel and see what it was that brought up the twinkling in the eyes of a 50-year old.

This city is awful, and the river isn’t so great. But my perception of Sava is from a passing tourist who sees the river is nothing more than a large volume of water flowing from one place to another. But Suja, Fatima and the other ladies saw Sava in a different light; it runs through the capital of their former country, the mighty Yugoslavia. It represents their past glory days. Especially when the present is not worth looking forward to, the past maybe is all they have.  But I got a surprise though. No one told me that here from this exact spot I would see the Sava ended and blended in with the Danube, running its course along the Serbia-Romania border, crossing into Bulgaria before emptying itself into the Black Sea. Only then, I understood what Le Corbusier wanted to say.

“Belgrade is the ugliest city in the most beautiful place in the world.”

Belgrade – A Conclusion: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4