2012-04-05 Belgrade, day 5

Hello!

Still no pekara picture today since there were some people eating outside and I didn't want them to think I was a paparazzi or something... I get very strange looks sometimes because I take pictures of weird things so I don't want to make it worse! By the way, if you guys come to Belgrade, burek with meat (burek sa mesom) is much better than the burek with cheese! That's my personal opinion of course but I am becoming quite addicted to these things and I don't know what I will do when I leave ex-Yugoslavia.

Speaking of addiction, my friend Adrijana got me addicted to something else. It is called Kapri (after the Italian city) and it's sooooo good. What you see in the middle is strawberry filling.

These things are on sale EVERYWHERE! It's really hard to resist!! I've been eating one every day for the past 3 days now, I really really hope they exist in Croatia too!!

Today the plan was to meet Adrijana somewhere and bike on the island of Ada Ciganlija with her, unfortunately she was not feeling well so the plans got cancelled. Yesterday I found out that it was possible to rent a bike close to Kalemegdan and bike to Zemun which is a part of the city that I wanted to see, so that's what I did! Here's my bike!

I was so happy, biking by the Dunav/Danube, it was the perfect day for that activity and I took some nice pictures of splavas (floating restaurants/coffee shops). My father works with a man originally from Sarajevo and he has visited Belgrade several times. He has ordered me to have dinner on one of those splavas before I leave. I have to admit that I didn't have dinner there yet but I did order lemonade twice on a splava already so hopefully this is sufficient!

Zemun is very old looking but a nice-looking old. Actually some parts are not so great but mostly it's been well maintained and it has lots of charm. Small streets, a little market area, cute restaurants and coffee places, etc.

Here is the Zemun tower, I wish I could give you some history lessons about it unfortunately I have no idea why it's there and who put it there

Do you see how blue the sky is? Amazing! I can't believe how lucky I am to get such nice weather for my whole trip so far. Unfortunately they are calling for a storm tomorrow but I hope they are wrong! 

I was able to see everything I wanted to see fairly quickly and I biked back to my usual part of Belgrade. On the way back, I saw a lady selling t-shirts and I couldn't resist, I had to buy one for myself:

It says "God, I am so beautiful" hahaha. I'm not sure how much truth there is in that but I wanted to buy a t-shirt in Serbian, now it's done!

From what I understand, in Serbian restaurants, you are expected to pick a meat and then a salad. Unfortunately, as some of you already know, I can't really eat salad because I'm allergic to most raw vegetables, so this was a fairly big problem for me since I've been ending up never having any vegetables on my plate for quite a few meals in a row. But now I have discovered Pečana Paprika! Here's what it usually looks like:

It's made with red pepper, served cold but at least they are cooked so I can eat them! The garlic taste is quite strong but I like it a lot! Today when I ordered my usual Pečana Paprika for lunch, the waiter asked me a question that I hadn't gotten so far, he said "spicy or not spicy?" so of course I said "spicy!" I was expecting my usual red peppers with maybe some spicy stuff added to it. Mistake!! They brought me a hot pepper! When they say hot, they really mean hot here, I almost died!! Good thing every meal is served with bread (by the way, I absolutely adore Serbian bread, I am also becoming addicted to that). So I was eating one big piece of bread and one tiny little piece of hot pepper together and I managed to go through the whole thing.

The main dish is called "čevapi" and it is a delicious mix of spices and ground beef that I've been eating many times since I'm here and also at the restaurant New Dubrovnik in Ottawa. So far I much prefer the "čevapi" from here!

I returned the bike at the end of the afternoon and my feet and I decided that we needed a well-deserved break :) Right by the Danube of course!!

On my way back to my hostel, I managed to find two unusual things that we don't have in Canada. Benches that are specifically made to sleep:

Not exactly comfortable though...

And here is an outdoor ping pong table:

I think this is really smart :)

I also took a picture of the coffee place that has no name.

Here is what I think is the funnies picture I took so far. That car literally went through the street!! Only in Europe!!

Every day when I come back to my hostel I walk by a grocery store. Honestly, I thought that big grocery stores such as the ones we have in Canada (Loblaws, Metro, etc.) didn't exist in Europe. But they do! And I wanted so badly to go inside and see how similar or different they are from ours, but every day I was too tired. Today was the day I finally stepped inside the grocery store!!
Well first of all they pretty much have the same items, but it's written in a foreign language so it looks much cooler than back at home

Secondly, in the vegetable section, they have a guy that is responsible to weight your plastic bag, close it up and put a price tag on it (it's not done at the cashier). I don't have a picture because that guy was looking in my direction and again I didn't want to look like a paparazzi.

Everything is from different brands, even Ketchup is not made by Heinz here! I really thought Heinz Ketchup was a universal thing!

I also saw a Playboy magazine with big naked breasts on the front, visible to everyone. I didn't take a picture of that ;)

And my last observation, it is allowed here to advertize cigarettes.

I decided to buy višnja juice (sour cherry), first because it sounds good and second because I think it looks a little strange to walk out of a grocery store empty-handed. I was already strange-looking enough, taking a bunch of pictures inside the grocery store haha.

So that's pretty much it for my day, it was very interesting once again, I quite enjoyed exploring Zemun and the bicycle ride to get there. Not too sure what I'm doing tomorrow but somebody gave me a mission haha, I'll tell you more about that tomorrow! For now, here are a few more of today's pictures: