Serbia 2025

Belgrade, Serbia

March 25 & 26, 2025

Belgrade airport is the Nikola Tesla Airport. More on that below.

The Aeronautical Museum of Belgrade is near the airport. We didn't go there, but the building is unique. Love the old Yugoslavian airliner out front!

Our IHG Hotel was is an excellent area that is the walking district in Belgrade.

Our first breakfast before our "Rise and Fall of a Nation" tour with Yugo Tours.

The weather was NOT so good.

We spent the next 3.5 hours tooling around in this 1979 Yugo.

I got the backseat that had no seatbelts. Our guide said, "No worries. This car is safe". That was definitely not their reputation in the US!

He barely fit in the drivers seat.

Staro Sajmište is the site of a concentration camp established during the German occupation from 1941-1944. This was a Nazi guard tower that is being refurbished and turned into a memorial.

Nothing else is left at the camp except a few buildings.

Because people still live in these buildings to this day, we could not go any further than the doorway.

There is only this small memorial dedicated to the 60k that were imprisoned there and the 40k that died.

The Palace of Yugoslavia is now called the Palace of Serbia. The wings are to symbolize friendliness and open arms. There are 9 km of hallways and it is 700,000 square feet. It’s only about 30% occupied now.

The Genex building is AMAZING! It’s a 36-story building that also serves as the Belgrade western gate. It was finished in 1979 and is considered by the architectural world as a brutalist masterpiece.

The left side is residential, and the other was the office of General Exports. The company went bankrupt in the mid 1990s because of sanctions placed on Serbia during the Balkans war. The right side has been abandoned for years but a private investor recently purchased it and started restoration.

Obviously, it has seen better days!

The rotunda at the top was a restaurant that was supposed to rotate. However, it was never installed so it never rotated.

A view from a different angle. It's really hard to capture its size!

We sat at a light for 16 minutes while the students blocked the intersection to protest the government’s handling of the train station canopy collapse last November that killed 16 people. They do this every day and stand in silence at exactly 11:52 am. It is the exact same time that the canopy collapsed, killing the people sitting or walking below.

Out front of the Museum of Yugoslavia. It was previously called the "25 May Museum". It was opened in 1962 as a present to the longtime president - Josip Broz (Tito) for his 70th birthday. This museum was used to display gifts that Tito had received up until 1962.

Tito was in leadership positions from 1943 until his death in 1980. In 1948, Yugoslavia left the Eastern (Soviet) Bloc and tried to remain neutral. Stalin did not like this and there were 20 subsequent attempts on Tito's life. They were typically Russian attempts… poisonous cigars, exploding toilet seats, etc. He eventually formed an alliance with other neutral nations that weren't the east NOR the west.

Letters to Tito when he was ill. The translation is "Comrade Tito, Get Well Soon".

I should have dressed appropriately for my visit but did not find this hat until the next day.

The rain did not let up and we were quite wet from the knees on down.

In keeping with the Socialist theme, we were going to eat here for lunch but...

...we opted to head back to the hotel to blow dry our shoes and change our socks. We ended up doing this several more times over the next few days!

Shoes are dry. Time to venture out again.

Famous Hotel Moskva, built in 1908. It was used as Gestapo headquarters during WWII. We were told to have coffee and dessert in their piano bar cafe, but it was way too packed in this miserable weather.

Spooky trees.

The Church of Saint Sava. In my travels, I’ve been to MANY churches. However…

...this one is probably the most beautiful one I’ve ever seen on the inside! The murals are done in 24k gold.

Every direction was quite beautiful.

March 27, 2025

Headed to Republic Square for our free walking tour.

I love this old retro clock that actually has the correct time.

Can hardly see Robin in the Belgrade sign.

In Skadarlija (Bohemian Quarter) - a vintage street/area of Stari Grad (Old Town). It was a rundown gypsy area until the artists moved in and gentrified it. This sculpture was an early poet that helped transform it.

Throughout our walk, we'd come across these black and white murals of famous Serbs.

Over the centuries, Belgrade has been destroyed and rebuilt 44 different times. That is why there are so many different styles of architecture.

The outer walls of the Belgrade Fortress.

Perched high above the intersection of the Danube and Sava Rivers, the Fortress has been used as various settlements since prehistoric times.

The Victor Monument was erected before WWI. The statue was stored in a house during the war to not be damaged.

Outside the walls are military weapons from various wars.

Strangely, there is also a dinosaur park!

The rounded wall dates back to Roman times.

The 25 May Sportcenter in Belgrade is located at the Danube river with an indoor swimming pool, a restaurant with a bowling hall, a sauna and outdoor sports grounds. It was built in 1973 and is another example of brutalist architecture.

The sculpture reads "Dedicated to the Jewish victims of Nazi Genocide 1941-1944." We never saw the owner of the dog.

Time to hop on an old Czechoslovak-built public tram. The system began operation in 1892.

I believe some of these trams are from the 60's and 70's!

March 28, 2025

The Latin alphabet was introduced in 1914. However, Serbia is still the only country in the former Yugoslavia that wants to preserve the Cyrillic alphabet. That’s why you’ll see many signs in both. When I googled this bakery, it was called “Hleb i Kifle”. But when I got here it had a completely different name!

On March 1st, several hundred thousand people protested across Belgrade against the corruption of the current government and the train station canopy collapse. These protests have been led by the students. This is a photo of the student center with all their protest signs in the windows.

I really wanted to understand the political sentiment of Serbia. However, like the US, it's all over the map. One thing they all seemed united on, however, was that Kosovo belonged to Serbia and should not be an independent country. This graffiti translated (Google) says "When the army arrives in Kosovo".

I wasn't sure if this was because the NATO bombing of Belgrade in 1999 is still fresh in their memory or because they are a pro-Russian country?

This translates to "I'd rather be a pig than a fascist".

There really are political signs, political murals, and political graffiti everywhere. Of course, most we could not read. This one was quite prominent. I'm sure the neighboring countries that were part of the 1990s Balkan Wars would completely disagree with this one.

The day before we arrived to Serbia, thousands protested in front of these two buildings that were damaged in the 1999 NATO bombings. Apparently, the current president wants to gift the buildings and property to Jared Kushner to build a hotel! The protesters think the buildings should be preserved as part of "NATO aggression" and are aghast at the irony that a US-based investment group should get the land that was bombed by US-led NATO.

I'm not sure this little amusement park is still in use.

Crazy ferris wheel.

OMG! The sun is out and there are shadows!

We walked a long ways to see another brutalist building. This was one of many monuments along the way.

An old Jewish cemetery.

An orthodox Christian cemetery.

Finally to our destination - the Toblerone Tower built in 1963. Another brutalist building that is so ugly... yet interesting!

An old abandoned Zastava manufacturing plant that built Yugos back in the 1980s.

It had a terrible stench as we walked by it. It's probably a huge toxic waste site.

Time for a really nice lunch at a Michelin restaurant.

We split a zucchini moussaka and buckwheat rolls filled with feta and drizzled with honey.

Dessert was a lemon tart and warm plums with "gnocchi".

Hopping on the streetcar was easy because it is free as of the first of the year. We were told it was the government's way of appeasing the protests.

The heat registers were so hot along the sides of our legs that I had to check to see if I was burning a hole in my raincoat!

Nikola Tesla was a Serbian inventor and engineer who revolutionized electricity generation, transmission, and use. His work laid the foundation for modern electrical engineering and power generation. Tesla's most notable inventions include the alternating current (AC) induction motor, the AC power system, and the Tesla coil, which is still used in radio technology. Elon Musk "borrowed" his name and has ZERO relation to him.

Our first attempt to wait in line for the museum...

...was to be turned away because they had reached maximum capacity.

We barely got in on our second attempt. However, I almost wished we didn't because it was way too crowded and cheesy. First, they showed a video but there weren't enough chairs and we stood behind many heads trying to view it from the next room. Then this is an experiment where you could be shocked by an electrical volt. The other experiment was to hold a glass rod that lit up when the guide switched the voltage on. Only $8 each, so not a huge loss.

This was a lifesize wax replica of Tesla in front of the Tesla coil. The only reason it was noteworthy was because...

...Robin randomly took this similar photo the day before.

March 29, 2025

Our last day. We are going to walk to New Belgrade to see more architecture and then to Zemun. We are walking over the Sava River.

Some modern architecture on the right.

After WWII, construction started in a marshland on the Danube to build “New Belgrade”. It took 30 years and was supposed to give homes to 500k people. Work brigades and youth groups provided free manual labor in exchange for free apartments and healthcare.

The area consists of self-sustaining blocks numbered from 1 to 72. Each block has their own unique characteristics.

I don't know what to think of this block!

Buildings built in brutalist style were quick and cheap because concrete was easy to use.

Robin's eyes lit up when we saw a farmer's market in the distance. However, we were not interested in underwear.

The Air Force Command building is considered one of the most important works of Modernist architecture in the former Yugoslavia. Built in 1935. Part of it is abandoned now after being bombed by NATO. The cop is in the middle of the street because he stopped traffic to observe the 16 minutes of silence.