Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Four Days in Serbia

For detail see http://joelserbia.blogspot.qa/


Got 4 days holiday for the Eid, decided to go to Belgrade 6-9 July 2016 due to following reason:
- Found the music festival event, EXIT, on Fest 300 page, during the period
- Found that with US visa, for Indonesian passport I can enter without applying visa
- Relatively close to Qatar, though not that close, about 4-5 hours flight, with direct flight from Qatar Airways

Arrived in Belgrade just before noon time, after getting local cash from the ATM in the airport, the transfer to my hostel using public bus was quite smooth.
Since the check in was only allowed after 2pm, I went for lunch to a restaurant named "?", recommended by the hostel staff, read about this restaurant before and was willing to try.
My first Serbian meal was not that OK, due to my chose I guessed, followed the waiter recommendation to order bean soup and Serbian salad.
While the soup might be acceptable, I couldn't accept the chopped raw onion in the salad.
Should have ordered the mainstream meat meal.

After a quick shower, joined the free walking tour, like many others in European cities.
The tour was quite enjoyable.
The pretty young guide was quite interesting, teaching us dancing and giving us rakija (Serbian most famous liquor) and souvenir of paper money, the money used during Yugoslavia economically worst period.
I became a friend with one Spanish participant lady and we had a dinner at Restaurant Šešir moj on lovely Skadarska Street.

Early morning, the next day, after eating my "birthday cake" as a breakfast, I headed to the train station to Novi Sad. It was quite funny how difficult to find information from which platform the train to Novi Sad would depart since the lady in the Info booth didn't speak English.
The train was cheap and new, but crowded many people headed to Novi Sad for EXIT.

Arriving in Novi Sad still in the morning, I decided to go to Subotica, a pretty town in the Hungarian border, famous for its pretty buildings.
I missed the guided tour for the town hall arriving 15 minutes late, so I just wandered around the town.
Found a nice decorated restaurant called Boss Cafe.
Decided to go back to Novi Sad by train since I had Couchsurfing gathering for the EXIT at 6pm.

Thanks to Couchsurfing (CS), I got friends to go to the music fest together.
We gathered in front of the Cathedral and met new friends.
Before heading to the festival, we had a picnic in the Danube Park, sitting on the grass, chatting with our new friends.
The group, many local Serbian, and many Turkish, also there were girls and boys from neighboring Slovenia, to the further South Africa and furthest Antigua & Barbuda.
After drinking rakija and stuff, finally we decided to go to the festival to see Bastille, a group famous for its song, Pompeei, I knew this song from the cover in Glee.

So many people, mostly young, and mostly white people joined the festival.
There were many stages, we went to the Main Stages, to see Bastille and Ellie Goulding.
Since I only knew one song from Bastille, Pompeii, covered in Glee, I didn't enjoy their performance.
I enjoyed Ellie Goulding performance since I knew many of her songs, though I think her dress taste was awful. She was wearing training trousers and oversized jacket that she took off later, turned out to be just black tight shirt.
Same awful with the dance.
There were no dancers, only 3 back singers, but the band was good.
One of the band member played piano, sometime guitar, while the drummer was good looking.
Ellie sometime played guitar.
The performance ended and peaked with my favorite and her most popular song, Love Me Like Do from the movie Fifty Shades of Grey.
After the Ellie performance, we moved to the Dance Stage, which looked much more bigger than the Main Stage. So crowded that we could not proceed to be able to see the stage clearly.
There was aerial dancer and laser light play in the Dance Stage area.
Feeling cold and tired, I decided to go back earlier, about 3AM.

The next day, even though I slept about 4AM, I woke up about 8AM.
After having breakfast, I went to the famous beach on the Danube river, the Strand.
It was pretty cheap, only RSD 50 to enter, and it was cool, a lot of bars along the white sandy beach.
The water was a bit cold for me after a dip try.
There were many beautiful young people on the beach.

After a quick pizza lunch, I went back to Belgrade by bus.
Arriving Belgrade, I walked from the train station to Moskva Hotel, passing the buildings bombed by NATO.
I was looking forward to seeing and staying at this famous and historical Moskva Hotel.
Since the price was only EUR 77 with breakfast, I was wondering why so cheap.
But when I entered the hotel, I know that you got what you paid.
Though the exterior looked wow, the inside looked so so, and the room was small, like a business hotel in Japan. I went to the spa, which was OK, with jacuzzi pool, steam and dry saunas.

Having difficulty deciding where to get my last dinner in Serbia, finally I went back to Skadarska Street, to try Restaurant Dva Jelena, opposite of the restaurant I came before yesterday.
I joined the pub crawl tour that departed at 10pm, was looking forward to going to the floating clubs on Sava River.
I might have to believe what people said that Belgrade has the best nightlife in Europe.

My last day, before heading to the airport, using bus from my hotel, I went to a quick photo visit to the famous Saint Sava Temple and Saint Mark Church.

Here are my best 5 for this trip Serbia
1. The cost. Cheaper than most European countries and Japan. One glass draught beer (500cc) costed about USD 2, and had fine dining costed less than USD 10. Hostel bed in Belgrade costed EUR 10, and the intercity train and bus costed less than EUR 10. 1.5L water bottle costed about half Euro.
2. The Serbian people. They are friendly and humble, fun and crazy.
3. Dining in restaurants on lovely Skadarska Street. Lively with people and live music.
4. The Strand, the beach of Danube River in Novi Sad, with live DJ music and beautiful people.
5. Splavs, the floating river clubs in Belgrade. Lots of clubs with different music along the riverside.

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