Repatriate Games

Wherein Anna Grace learns about the urban sport of “Apple Picking.”  Yep, her iPhone was pickpocketed.

Our day began with a grand breakfast in the hotel; Serbian savory pastries, meats, cheeses, yogurts, fruits, and so many other choices to keep us happy.  Breakfast was walked off through the pedestrian area, enjoying the cool morning air and the quiet of a grand capital city waking up on our way to the Belgrade Fortress. The fortress sits atop Belgrade, at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers; a pretty park and the Belgrade Zoo, our intended destination, surround the fortress.

The Fortress and the Serbian Monument to France from WWI.

A Serbian Medieval Festival on the fortress grounds. Could you even imagine this scene in the US? Children throwing hatchets at a target without full body gear and a parental waiver, with even younger children just standing on the sidelines.  We busted out in laughter.

In good order we reached the Zoo. The Belgrade Zoo is one of the oldest zoos in Europe (Vienna’s Schönbrunn Tiergarten is the oldest in Europe.) Yet again, I had read mixed reviews on the zoo; those who are fans of the glitzy, hands-on experience, and prefer to view the animals from behind fourteen layers of security fencing and plexiglass were critical, reporting that the zoo wasn’t worth one’s time.

Our impression?  The zoo is a delightful, old-school place to spend time with your family, and definitely not a place to turn the children loose to play with the latest and greatest gadgets and whatsits about eco-conservation and global warming (There are no gadgets.  The zoo hand paints “Caution” signs, its resources are that sparse. The Happy Times weren’t friendly to the zoo.)  Most of the animal habitats have been thoughtfully renovated, though, although there a few remaining in need of a bit of work.

The best part was that we could see the animals without binoculars!  Sir Kangaroo waves “hello” to us!

The camel and the impressive white tiger were also in close sight.  So awesome!

The only English language sign we saw in the zoo.  Guess what animals we were being warned about?

Nope, not the lions.

These guys and gals. Hahahaha.

Vultures, turtles, and a peacock trying to hook up with some Guinea hens.

The seal couple is named Olive Oyl and Popeye, and their enduring romance is a star attraction. So much for Belgrade eschewing all things American.

Goats, chickens, hens, and peacocks roam freely, adding to our lovely, lovely morning at the Zoo.

We paused at a cafe for refreshments, and then left the zoo to investigate the small vintage amusement park just outside the grounds. Anna Grace and I took a spin on bumper cars for a mere $0.70USD equivalent ticket, enjoying the beautifully maintained park and old-fashioned fun.

A few minutes later we were at the fortress walls overlooking the Sava and Danube.

It was then that Anna Grace realized her iPhone was missing. Lickety-split we ran back first to the zoo cafe and then to the bumper cars. The cafe owner and bumper car operator were terribly kind and helpful, but it was soon apparent that she had not accidentally dropped her phone.  I called her number with no response, and as a last ditch effort, I sent a Google-translated Serbian text to her phone, telling the thief that the phone was being tracked, and to please return the phone to the hotel. Then I remotely locked her phone account, but, ever hopeful, did not erase her phone data.

Anna Grace was of course devastated. We had read that Sarajevo had pickpocket issues, especially with iPhones, and had been traveling mindfully throughout our trip, but to pickpocket an iPhone from a young girl at the zoo is just plain mean.  Spirits down, we returned to the hotel a little early for our Mittagspause, trying to regroup in order to make the most of our short time in Belgrade.

In the mid-afternoon we set out for St. Sava, a beautiful Serbian Orthodox church and Belgrade landmark.  The gray skies matched our mood but helpfully created a dramatic backdrop for our photos.

While pausing to review our map my mobile phone rang. Anna Grace’s phone was calling me! I answered to hear a woman saying, “Hello? I am calling from Belgrade. I have your telephone.” A family out enjoying the park at the Fortress had found her phone a short distance away from where we had been!  (I’d like to think the thief dropped it after reading the text.)  The woman agreed to bring it to the hotel later in the afternoon, and we were ecstatic!

Spirits buoyant, we continued around Belgrade taking in the sights and the culture. (You’ll note the gray skies had passed, literally and figuratively.) We stopped at St. Mark’s, another Serbian Orthodox Church that was striking against the afternoon sky and very different in character than St. Sava.

Outside the church we met a gentleman who took great delight in talking to anyone about the church, why the floor of the church was covered with straw (with which many people were weaving small wreaths–it was an Orthodox holy day), how we are all one big family, and practically everything else that came to his mind.  We felt bad bidding him farewell, but the afternoon was waning and we needed to return to the hotel.

The kind woman and her son who found the phone met us at the hotel, and I practically had to force them to accept even the smallest token of gratitude. I finally won the boy over when I suggested he use some of the reward money for ice cream. The mom was happy that we were happy, apologized (!) for not returning the phone earlier because she had been busy, and shared a few gentle words of admonishment with Anna Grace about keeping her phone safe before she left.

So…we may not have checked off everything on our Belgrade to-do list, but our fond memories of the city and its wonderful people top the list of our shortened holiday.

So much more than 1000 words in this photo of a Eurolines bus that ran out of gas, with its door open to dump passengers (and their luggage) on a boulevard on a busy afternoon.

I asked Valida about transportation to Belgrade on our first day and was offered two bus options, as the rail infrastructure was so badly damaged during the war that there are no international trains. The first, an hourly morning Bosnian bus taking “approximately 8 hours” to reach Belgrade. Having experienced Balkan Time on the previous Bosnian transit, this option was unceremoniously nixed. The second option was more appealing: a Eurolines bus, air-conditioned and with a transit time of “about 6 hours.” The catch was that there was only one daily departure, at 06:00.  This was a no-brainer.

Although very sad to be leaving Sarajevo, we were anticipating comfortable and relatively short (all things considered) travel to the capital of the former Yugoslavia. Our spirits were not dampened when 06:00 came and went and we were still waiting in the bus terminal. Balkan Time is a powerful force.

At 06:25 our bus finally arrived, and we boarded to discover that a woman had taken our reserved seating. No big deal, we thought-the seats across the aisle from ours were empty, so we sat down.  Then we discovered why the seats were empty: the control box for the radio (?) was beneath the seats in front, leaving us with no leg room. Our guess was that the woman did not want “her” seat, either, and simply took ours.

At the first stop I asked if we could exchange our seats, to which she replied, “Typical American.” The passenger sitting behind us said something in Bosnian, and several other passengers laughed.  But at least she moved.

An hour into the travel the bus pulled into a station in a little speck of a town. The bus driver announced something in Bosnian that elicited groans from the other passengers, and everyone alit from the bus. The passengers dispersed for coffee and smokes, and we sad little Americans just sat on the bench, eating the wonderful breakfast that Valida had packed for us and wondering what was going on.  We must have looked pitiful enough, for the owner of the small market at the station came over and asked if we spoke Russian or German, then explained in German that the bus had a defect and we were waiting for another bus.

So much for “about 6 hours.”

A second bus arrived and we boarded. The woman who name-called, and the assclown passenger who joked about us, laughed at us when we boarded and sat in our reserved seats.  The bus rolled up and down hills, through towns tiny and tinier, and across the border into Serbia. Scenic, mostly, but not a trip I would recommend.

Our seats were in the second row on the passenger side, so I (and the guy in the front row) had a spectacular view of the bus driver. He was new to the route, and the auxiliary bus driver with us was helping him out. The bus had a manual transmission, which he stalled on several occasions. The new driver also forgot a passenger at a stop (who had foolishly gotten off to use the WC), and had to back the bus up on a busy road to return for her.