I have been a total slacker when it comes to blogging this past week and I don’t even have a viable excuse, the only potential candidate is that our next paper is due tomorrow morning. Where did I leave off? Looks like Friday night? Maybe? Generally I skipped over it a lot. That was a fun night! We started out with a group boat ride on the Sava/Danube. To get there took a little be of a hop skip and a jump. Everyone decided to get dolled up for the night so we were easily the best dressed people on the 83 which we took again over the river to Zemun. From there we walked across a field and along the river and pressed through a long line onto the boat. Despite the loud Serbian/other music that we couldn’t understand or adequately hear it was blasting so loud, paired with the less-than-great singing of our captain/guide, we still managed to have a good time. They even played New York, New York in our honor, a little bit of an odd song for this Boston girl but Sinatra was still much appreciated, now if only we could’ve convinced them to throw on some Dropkicks. The views of Kalamegdan and Belgrade with a nearly full moon hanging over the city were breathtaking. After the boat we stopped in a little Italian place on the river before finding one of the clubs on the river to dance forever. And…. Now I realize I already wrote about this stuff which makes me less of a degenerate blogger and lets me move on to Saturday!
Saturday we visited ‘Tito-land’ as it was dubbed by Professor Sullivan. There are several exhibits about Tito in addition to his grave at the site. First we saw an exhibit with the fashions of Tito and his First Lady, it reminded me a bit of the First Ladies exhibit at the Smithsonian. Only here, it went into much much more detail, with a wider variety of outfits. The museum did a good job of tying a fashion exhibit back into policy or at least how the different outfits went with different roles Tito and his wife had to play on the world stage. Next we saw Tito’s actual grave which is actually located in a greenhouse. Nearby where torches he used to receive from rallies all over on his birthday. Finally we say a HUGE exhibit full of only gifts people had given Tito throughout his life. We had the afternoon off since the other museum we were looking at going to was closed. A bunch of us wandered down to Kalamegdan where there are lots of great souvenir stands with unique and less touristy things. I’m excited about some of the stuff I found; now I just have to get it through the rest of the trip in once piece! That night a bunch of us went to Tasmaidan where we enjoyed a nice relaxing night sitting on the grass (until we were informed that wasn’t allowed) next to the fountain. At night they play some classical music in the park and the fountain lights up all different colors.
Sunday was a lazy day, lazy with a capital L. Almost no one did anything outside the hotel all day, as people spent the day relaxing and working on papers. Personally I re-watched one of our documentaries. I hadn’t seen it since May when I got my teeth out, so not only had it been a while, I was on drugs the first time I watched it – a refresher was needed. In the evening we went and watched the sunset over new Belgrade at Kalamegdan. It was beautiful and you could see it get redder as it dropped closer to the horizon. Afterwards, a small group of us went to dinner in the Bohemian district. It’s this great little area of Belgrade that’s all cobblestones with little restaurants playing music. With the delicious food and good company it turned into a very relaxing night. We realized that not only are we getting better at guessing what a menu item will actually be, that’s a big part of what makes a mean good for us, some measure of predictability. In what folks back home will likely view as unpredictable, I tried what was described as breaded-fried deer cheese. Although we’re not sure if it actually came from a deer it was essentially a salty mozzarella stick in wedge form, out of the local cheese. After dinner it was already pretty late (dinner’s later here than home, none of this 5pm, 6pm stuff) we headed back for paper writing and chilling with classmates
Today a small group of us braved the heat (we’d had a few days respite, Sunday felt downright cool at 90) to go see some local graveyards. We saw the one for the Jewish community in Belgrade, as well as one dedicated solely to those who died in the Battle for Belgrade, and another more general one. The graves were all striking in their own ways. The rest of the day I’ve spent writing my paper more and more, almost done! Now time for a last dinner at Café Marco. Sorry again about the lack of pictures on this one, I have them but the internet is mean, shoot me an email if you want them or I'll try to add them later.
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