The dirt on living in Costa Rica and backpacking Europe. If you want pretty descriptions of beaches, green tree frogs, and 'pura vida' reflections this is the wrong place.
Additional irreverent travel advice includes hitchhiking disasters, getting drunk with locals, four-hour border crossings and other fun topics.
Wake up. Go to work. Realize that your low-paying job will take you nowhere. Realize it pays enough money for alcohol. Buy alcohol. Drink it. Pass out. Repeat.
It's another day in Belgrade, Serbia. As a tourist my typical day went something like what you see in the video above. The only difference was that at some point I could leave. Every time I go to Serbia I fall more in love with the place and think how nice it'd be like to live there... Hold on, dreamer. As one Serbian asked, "American, if you make the same wages as I, will you love the place??" ...
Still the party goes on. Despite nights at the Belgrade Beer Festival watching great music (including those from the video, S.A.R.S.), the best times came from hours of wasting time on the winding streets of Belgrade. Nothing important ever happens and at the end of the day you ask yourself, "Where did the time go?"
The next thing you ask yourself, "Who gives a damn?"
We sit at a cafe drinking. We're relaxing after spending the day wandering the ruins of Kalamegdan fortress. Some of us have beer or strong coffee while others are content with water. I don't recall the names or nationalities of all of those sitting with us. Some are Serbian and others are from as far away as Australia. We arrived with a group of four, but that changed rapidly. New people keep arriving at our table. As soon as they arrive others leave. But some of them return. Others don't. We order another round of coffee and beer.
Belgrade Cafe Gatherings
Our little cafe table is a revolving door of new faces and conversations. Every conversation starts as an epic plan with someone to travel to some new location in Serbia; Sabac is nice by the river; no, the fortress in Novi Sad; no, no let's go back and party in Nis... As soon as the plans are set in stone, they crumble and fall apart like the old buildings of the White City. Someone leaves and another comes to replace them. New plans begin ever more elaborate than the first; a train to Sarajevo, Bosnia; no let's hitchhike to the Hungarian border; Timosoara, Romania's not so far away; we can go all the way to Latvia if we leave now...
We order another round of coffee and beer. And another.
I have seen this a million times when traveling. Plans, plans and more plans that are thrown about like so many darts at a board. Very few actually make it to the target, but the game was fun regardless of the time spent. We spend all afternoon on plans for traveling to the ends of Europe and back. At the end of day we stay at a Couchsurfer's house in Belgrade for the night, completely exhausted from all the dreaming we've done.
That's what every beer geek back in the USA would say. Out of the 20 or so beers available at the festival, there's nothing that would excite any major beer tourist. Unfortunately, once you go east of Germany and the Czech Republic all the European beers start tasting the same. If you want to be the first to say you've drank Jelen, Laskov, Niksicko, and some Irish-Style Serbian Craft Beer, then go for bragging rights. They're still better than your average Central American beer, but nothing that will make beer geeks have beergasms.
Maps Are Irrelevant When You're This Drunk
You don't go to Belgrade for beer tasting...you go there to party. The Belgrade Beer Festival is certainly a great place to party. There's one massive stage that has live bands playing until the early hours of the morning. Beer, alcohol and Serbian barbeque flow freely. Beautiful Balkan girls will dance with you and crazy Balkans guys will challenge your foreign ass to out-drink them (good luck.)
Unlike Serbia's far more popular Exit Festival, the Belgrade Beer Festival still feels authentically Serbian. Most of the bands are national or former Yugoslavian rock acts that don't play outside of the Balkans. Meanwhile the Exit Festival attracts Europeans from all over to see international bands and DJs such as Guns N' Roses, Snoop Dogg, Eric Prydz, Artic Monkeys and David Guetta.
During 2 days at the Beer Festival, I didn't run into a single 'foreigner.' Note the contrast.
Good Balkan Company
The big headliners for the 2011 Belgrade Beer Festivals were Riblja Čorba, Atomsko Sklonište, Kiki Lesendrić i Piloti and Marky Ramone's Blitzkrieg (yes, from The Ramones.) And if anyone remembers the 1980s, Simple Minds also headlined. One group which has never headlined, but which has played every festival dating back to the first in 2003 is the Orthodox Celts. They are actually a national group, but true to their name they play traditional Irish folk music. They fucking rock.
Are any of these groups ringing a bell??
From a local perspective, Riblja Čorba is probably the most famous of all the groups. These old guys have managed to stay rocking since 1978 with most of the original band still intact. I'm told their lyrics are quite funny and often political....if only I understood Serbian.
In addition to solid rock 'n' roll groups, the festival offers more typical traditional Serbian groups for people who are into the Gypsy Balkan sound made popular by Goran Bregovic, Emir Kusterica and the like. As cool as that music is, some Serbians will tell you that Goran and Imir 'sold out.' Go to this festival if you want to hear some undiscovered sounds...
My personal recommendation: buy a few liters of Jelen Pivo outside the festival where it's a lot cheaper and get drunk before you go in. Most of the Serbians will be doing the same and -as with me- they might ask you, "Why the fuck you here, and not Exit Fest?!" Then they will hand you a beer and say, "Ziveli!" You'll be in good company. I certainly was.
A day exploring Crveni Krst concentration camp and climbing Bubanj Hill to see a mass execution site can depress the average tourist. Serbia has a simple, powerful solution to cure this depression: coffee. Or if that's not strong enough: rakia. The Balkans can easily convert a sworn coffee-hater into a coffee addict (and potential rakia addict.)
He's sad because the Mafia made him into a disco
Coffee and rakia are two likely reason you will visit Nis Fortress in Serbia. Nis Fortress is not so much a historical site as it is an organic extension of the city center. There is no charge to enter and it has been left open to the public to function as a decadent city park. Local Mafia took advantage of the lenient rules and built a large disco-cafe, Klinika, directly on the fortress stones.
Some people would say it's a tacky, tasteless way to deface a historical monument, but it sure is a fun place to party. If you don't care to join the beautiful people dancing in the open-air disco, just buy a few liters of Jelen beer at the nearby kiosk, grab your friends and dance on the fortress walls overlooking the disco until sunrise. You can still hear the pounding music and watch the sun rise from the fortress walls.
I experienced Nis' nightlife for the first time in 2010 and loved it so much that I had to return in 2011 to do it again. If it were possible I would return to Southern Serbia every summer for partying. As I had mentioned in an earlier post, Balkan people's flair for living rivals any typical Latino's "vida loca" attitude. Perhaps due to the Balkans proximity to Asia, there's also a magical Eastern mysticism there that Latin America lacks. While the world changes, The Balkans seems trapped in a time bubble that remains the same every year. This night I experienced could have been in 2010, 2011, 2012 or any year...you decide...
I was Couchsurfing with some friends I had met from the previous summer. I had the good fortune that summer to surf with my friend when he had 2 nice Bosnian girls surfing with him at the same time. When I meet the girls, they told me (teasingly) that they hated Americans. Yeah right... What started as teasing hate over dinner and drinks ended up as love (?) by the time we had arrived at Nis Fortress later that night.
My Serbian friend and I are sensitive modern men, so we cooked a lovely dinner for the Bosnian girls. After much debate of USA-Balkan politics, foreign food, counterculture (and beer) one of the girls and I ended up kissing in the moonlight in Nis Fortress on that hot summer night. She fascinated me for being what I wasn't. She was a wild, dancing, free-spirited hippie who was an expert fire-thrower. I had my guitar and watched her mesmerizing fire-dance as I sang on the top of the Nis Fortress walls. The music from Klinika disco below us provided an odd trance accompaniment.
Unfortunately, there were many people partying in the park, including several other beautiful Balkan girls. I became very distracted. Dare I say Balkan girls are one of my weaknesses, and a Serbian medical student caught me that at that moment. While the Bosnian girl was showing off her fire-throwing skills on the fortress stones, I began chatting with the student. Many Southern Serbian girls get pretty excited when an American guy with a guitar shows up in their town. I'm a complete liar if I said I don't take full advantage of the situation, and I love my Serbian friends for telling me this. They are some of the few people I know who will tell me to my face what a complete 'American asshole/fucker/sonofabitch' I am sometimes.
...America, Fuck Yeah!
An "American Fucker" in Nis, Serbia
Rakia and beer flowed freely in the fortress park, and people drifted in and out of my memory. We danced, drank, sang, reveled and eventually the Serbian and I left for a quieter place. I didn't notice until the sun was rising what had happened. The Bosnian girl wasn't happy to find out I had changed allegiances and was in a rage. When I'm traveling, I can be the naughtiest American asshole.
The Bosnian and I returned to our shared Couchsurfer place in the early hours of the morning. She was angry and refused to even touch me even though we had to share a bed that night. Now what do I do?
There's actually plenty to do in Nis, but the best way to enjoy this slow southern Serbian town is by doing absolutely nothing. Find an outdoor cafe, order a black, Turkish coffee and waste the afternoon away. After you're done with that grab a cold Jelen beer, sit by the river and waste the night away. You'll learn a lot...especially if you're with the right people.
This is how I spent my last trip to Nis in 2011 so there's not much to say. For those ambitious tourists who like to plan ambitious scheduled itineraries (boring), I'll share my big accidental Nis trip from summer 2010. As follows...
Downtown Nis. What's the antonym for 'bustling'?
Nis seems to specialize in morbid, depressing tourism. Here's a list of the uplifting, happy locations you can visit when you aren't discussing the uplifting politics of Serbia over coffee:
1. Nazi Concentration Camp which was ironically a Red Cross building
2. Bubanj Memorial where many of the camp prisoners were executed
3. Nis Fortress where Turks and Serbs killed each other
4. Skull Tower which is composed of the skulls of Serbs who were killed by Turks
Sounds like a lot of fun, right? I only visited the Concentration Camp, Bubanj Memorial and partied at the Fortress. Perhaps the most depressing item is that Nis Fortress has been left in neglect, thereby allowing local Mafia to build - you guessed it - a disco on the fortress. Serbians accept this as Mafia doing what Mafia does, and in fact the 'historical' disco is a great place to go out in town.
I will describe the places I've visited in more detail in the next few blogs...when I get around to it. People in Nis are never in a hurry, so I will honor them by not hurrying this writing. When I'm in Nis I simply go with the flow and do what the locals tell me. They mainly tell me to slow down, relax and drink more. I'm happy to say that I'm doing that as I write.
So before we take a tour of Nis, here's a big Jelen Pivo toast to all of my wild Serbs:
