Tuesday, June 30, 2009

great weekend. great people. great times

Man ohh Man.. If you ever in your life have the opportunity to go to Belgrade, Serbia, DO IT! I HAD SUCH A BLAST!

So I began my Friday just waiting for the day to end. The girls and I caught a bus at 4:25 from here and we got to Belgrade at around 8:20ish.. Arriving in Belgrade was pretty interesting. It actually reminded me somewhat of New York. The only difference: it wasn't as pretty and most of the people didn't speak english. So we walked around a bit trying to locate our hostel: Hostel Belgrade. And let me just tell you, great staff, and a cute little place tucked back off the street, and was surrounded by cats. hahaha. We had to ask for directions twice, lol, but we got there safely and it was really neat. It was somewhat tiny, but it was a hostel, so my hopes really weren't all too high. After being there for about a half hour, we met this guy Rob from Lebanon. He invited us to come with him and couple other people from the hostel, Daniel, and a girl(but for the life of me we cannot remember her name), to grab a bite to eat and hit the Belgrade scene. We ventured out for a night on the town. I had my very first Serbian burger, which was absolutely delicious! Then we went to this little outdoor bar had some drinks and continued to get acquainted with them.

It was a lot of fun and we thought me might call it a night, because Christina, Bree, and I knew we were going to be getting up early to do tons and tons of sightseeing the following day. However, we decided to abandon that plan and experience all we could while we were there! So we headed about 20 minutes away on foot to the bar scene. Let me just inform you all that this little strip was awesome! All of these bars are actually boats on the river that are tied up to the dock! It was so awesome! And though we danced at the expense of MJ's death, it made for an extremely entertaining night! Especially because we met up with a group of Irish guys who were also staying at the hostel and once in particular repeatedly did the robot to any song he could! hahaha! It was quite hilarious! As we are dancing and enjoying ourselves, Christina, Bree, and I realized that 'oh hi, the sun is coming up.. i think we should leave now..' and so we trekked back to the hostel at 6:15AM. I'm sure most of you are thinking, 'ha, right, so much for sightseeing in Belgrade!' Well, I will have you all know that we slept until about 9:30 and were out the door by 10:15 to walk all around town and see some of the most beautiful sights I've seen with my own eyes!

It was honestly terrific. We headed in search of this one restaurant that Christina had done some research on called Tri Sesira translated into '3 Hats' was located in Scladaria, which is the Bohemian quarter of Belgrade. It was in this area of little shops and beautiful buildings with cobblestone streets. We didn't think we were going to find it at first, but we did. And seriously, this place was adorable. It was so quaint, with these old pictures on the wall. It had pretty low ceilings and the whole place looked tiny, but it covered a lot of square feet- it was huge! I would totally like to have a party there one day, hahaha! So we moved on from full bellies and started our venture. We headed first to Kalemegdan Fortress, which was absolutely amazing. It is this huge park that has a beautiful view of the city!(I will post pictures on here if I can later tonight). After that we came across a market fair type of deal and I was able to get some souvenirs there! I got one for myself, because I just had to!- it was a handmade ceramic wall decoration of a scene from one of my favorite books of all time, 'The Little Prince.' I have to translate it fully and make sure to write it on the back so I will remember when I'm 50! :)

From there, we saw a beautiful cathedral and the residence of Princess Ljubica, which was pretty cool. I actually don't know who she is because unfortunately tours were done for the day by the time we got there, but I know she is important! :) hahaha then, we decided since it was about 4:30PM we were exhausted and wanted to rest our feet! So we headed back to the hostel to try to sleep, but we were just so wired from the days events and continued on. We were in search of food. And since Bree is a vegetarian, she has been having a pretty difficult time living in a culture that eats mostly meat.. needless to say, she was looking for a place that had vegetarian options. Since Belgrade is such a huge pit stop of travelers from all around the world, there are tons of options. Which was fine by me, because I've been beginning to miss the good stuff, like Mexican & Chinese food. It just so happened that we found a Chinese restaurant and it was soooo good! Not only that, it was adorable! Really authentic, and really, just overall a perfect place for the three of us to have dinner together.

From there we ventured out once more to see the last thing on our list, which was St. Sava's Temple. It was beautiful. Truly breathtaking. They are reconstructing the inside of the church, but this place was HUGE! And even though it was under construction, there were so many people still coming in to pray to the saints, coming in to admire the work done. It was beautiful.

We then headed back towards our hostel and decided to call it a night. We were able, with the help of the hostel staff, to find out what our bus schedule looked like for the return home. We decided to take a 9AM bus ride back to Tuzla, since we knew it was going to take 4hrs to get back... but, I'm definitely glad we did that because we were able to get back and relax and just rest after a very busy weekend. Even though I knew my Monday was going t be easy, it was still nice.

Speaking of, yesterday was pretty interesting. Christina and I, like our usual Monday set out for our 45 minute walk to work. Tuzla, unfortunately has a ton of stray dogs around the city, so as we are on our way to work, we come across this puppy just sitting at a bus stop. She was adorable! She kept jumping up on Christina as we were walking away and biting at her pant leg, wanting to play with her! So we are trying to tell the dog to stop and leave us be, but she decides she has found some friends and tags along the rest of the way. I know, you must be thinking what we were thinking 'ohh this is too cute,' which it totally was, until it became that every dog in the area wanted to travel as a pack right behind us!!! And mind you, it was all the way up until we reached the hospital entrance. Another little dog, who was pretty mean to the little pup actually tried to follow us in to the building! And it's not like we had any food or anything either! It was tooo funny!

So needless to say, these past couple of day have been very interesting as well as entertaining!

2 comments:

  1. haha..all your half memories of the names of places are starting to sound like STD's! lol..we're all going to have to start writing the cities and things down so people don't get the wrong idea about our travels! and, indeed! SO MUCH FUN!! By far, the best weekend yet!! xox

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  2. Glad you had a blast, booboo. you need to take full advantage of every opportunity that presents itself while you're in eastern Europe. We'll get back there at some point when we can just sight see and ski the alps. but keep doing everything you can in between your studies! sounds like a good time.

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