Saturday, September 1, 2007

How not to do Serbia in 1 week...Part 2

FIRST SIGHT OF BELGRADE:
Okay...so back to the story. We arrived in Belgrade around 2:30 on Saturday. Our school administrator picked us up from the airport and got us into a cab. The cab then took us to Andrea's apartment. Andrea is another teacher at the Berlitz school and she had offered to let us stay at her house until we could find an apartment so we didn't have to pay money for a hotel. I won't lie...the first sights of Belgrade were not quite as impressive as we would have hoped but we were excited to try to make it our home. Andrea's apartment is in New Belgrade or as the Serbians say Novi Beograd. Let me just tell you right now...New Belgrade doesn't exactly look new. It looks pretty rough but it is the part of town that families and older people live. We unloaded the cab with all of our bags (4 checked pieces of luggage, 2 backpacks, and 2 carry ons) and hauled them up to Andrea's apartment. Luckily she only lived on the 2nd floor. As we walked into Andrea's apartment we saw that it was very small. We are talking like 12X15 living space/bedroom, very small kitchen and bathroom/washing machine room. She had cleared out 2 shelves for us, we unloaded some stuff and went into the city. Now, going back to the apartment, we later found out that she had a very good size bathroom. Most flats (apartments) have the washing machine in the kitchen and you can't hardly close the door to the bathroom when you are sitting on the toilet because it is so small. Anyway...back to the story. We went into the city where we rode the bus, walked around and met some people. We met Andrea's friend Marko, who is from Belgrade Serbia and knows excellent English, Evan, who was also from Belgrade Serbia, Andria, who is Aussi/Serbian and is a teacher at Berlitz, and Tamara, who is also Aussi/Serbian and had just moved to Belgrade to teach at Berlitz but they had informed her when she got there that she didn't have a job. We had drinks with them at a neat little cafe. We walked along the Pedestrian Zone seeing the old buildings and shops. While we were standing around, a man (who was selling things) asked Andrea if Matt was German. She said, "No, he is American." Immediately, the man wanted Matt to give him money because since he was American he would have money. We went to the Fortress where there was a photography exhibit. We looked around and sat over looking the river while talking about places we wanted to go visit while we were in Eastern Europe. We parted ways and went back New Belgrade for the night. Thus concluding day 1 in Serbia.

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