2012-04-06 Belgrade, day 6

I'm not sure how this is possible but every day seems to be better than the previous one!! I had such a wonderful day today and I can't wait to tell you all about it!!

First of all, the weather was not so great, as they said in the forecast, so I decided to use this opportunity to educate myself in three different museums. But first things first...

The first thing I did was to take the tramway #2 because I read in one of the guides that it is the only tramway in Belgrade that goes around in circle, and that it's a nice way to discover the whole downtown. By now I know downtown Belgrade pretty well but I thought maybe there is something I haven't seen yet. So when I first got on the bus, I was mainly looking at the buildings but after a while I realized I really have seen everything, so instead I decided to observe the other drivers. I already knew that Belgrade drivers are crazy, but I had not realized how insane they are haha.

First of all drivers communicate a lot with each other with their horn, all the time. It gets quite annoying but I'm getting used to it now. The funny thing is that sometimes, people get stuck in the middle of an intersection because the traffic in front of them is blocked, so once the light turns green for the other people, they cannot go since someone is stuck in the intersection. This seems to happen all the time, and everyone honks at the person who is stuck. What I think is interesting is that everybody seems to get stuck in intersections all the time, meaning that if the roles were reversed, the person honking would be the one stuck in the intersection, and the other one would be the person honking. I suppose that's how things work here :)

Today while I was on the tramway, someone got stuck in the intersection, so my bus could not turn left. We got as close as possible to turning but it didn't happen and eventually our light turned red again. Now, in Canada, the bus would have waited for the next green light to go because we were not blocking anybody. Not here! What happened at that point is that there were cars coming in front of us going straight, cars coming from the side trying to go straight too but in perpendicular, cars still blocking the intersection, my tramway still trying to turn left, other cars still trying to go through because they also missed their light, and everybody honking at each other. All at the same time! Very interesting cultural experience, but I am extremely happy that I was living it inside the tramways and not inside a car I'm driving.

Ok enough complaining :) After the traumatizing tramway ride, I visited my first museum, the ethnographic museum where I saw a lot of beautiful and colourful folkloric costumes, as you can see below

But my favourite part were the little model houses (it's called maquette in French I'm actually not quite sure what the English term is, sorry!)

After this museum, I decided to go to the Historical Museum of Serbia. On my way there, there was a location that someone ordered me to visit :) Remember yesterday I told you at the end of my message that I had a mission to accomplish? My Serbian colleague's husband sent me an e-mail to give me instructions on how to go to a little shop to buy "minjon". I had been instructed to go to a shop called "Petrović", however, sorry to inform you Jovan but that place is now called "Pekara Tašmajdan"

Fortunately there was a sign in the window that said "we sell minjons". One more thing that I haven't mentionned yet. In Canada, there are laws that force buildings to make the doors open by pushing them from inside the building, because it is safer in case of fire. All doors are the other way around here! So I keep trying to pull doors when I should push and I look stupid because I think shops are closed all the time, and then I leave and someone goes in right after me. I can't believe that something as simple as door pushing-pulling can be a cultural shock haha.

Buying something in small quantity does not exist here. I went inside and asked for "one minjon". The lady at the cash looked at me like I was from Mars. It cannot be sold one at a time, so I had to buy four of them, which is ok because it did taste quite good!

Thank you Jovan for this interesting and tasty mission (and thanks to your wife Angelka who clarified your instructions for me haha!) If anybody has other errands for me please don't hesitate, I enjoyed this one very much!

Next I went to the Historical Museum of Serbia which was soooo boring. The whole exposition was about weapons so all I saw was guns and swords from different eras, which is not what I enjoy the most, but it was definitely my mistake because there was a huge sign outside that specifically said the exposition was about weapons. Oh well, it only costed approximatel 1$ Canadian so it's not like I am ruined.

Since I had more time I headed south to the Nikola Tesla museum. More about Nikola Tesla here in case you don't know him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

The museum is not so big and I was quickly done. I was about to leave when some guide came out of nowhere and told me "the video will start, sit here". I pretty much had no choice haha but the video was interesting so that's ok. After that, the guide showed us demonstrations of inventions of Nikola Tesla and it was really cool because I touched electricity and I saw cool flashes of light in the air!

I was meeting with my new Belgrade friends at 5 PM so again I had a big meal right before meeting them because I never know how it's going to turn out food wise with them haha. I tried Ajvar for the first time which is a relish, made from red peppers, eggplant, garlic and chili pepper. Delicious but served cold too, I really miss eating warm vegetables!! Can somebody tell me what dish I must order in Serbia to get hot vegetables??

Today the meeting with my friends was interesting because both Jelena and Adrijana had asked me if I was free today, so I asked them if they were ok to all see each other... They were fine with it, so everyone was there! Jelena and her friend Saša, Adrijana and her friend Milijan and myself.

We first went on Skadarska street to get a drink and I tried my first Serbian coffee (which really is Turkish coffee).

It tasted ok, I'm sure a coffee lover would have liked it a lot but I'm not really a coffee lover. I'm glad I tried though, something else to cross from my list of things to do in Belgrade :)

And here this is me pretending to drink Rakija which is a very strong alcool.

I had such a great time with my friends tonight, it was so neat that they all got to meet each other :) I think we all got along well! Milijan just informed me by e-mail that they will not forget me if I write on my blog that they are the best people in the world... I cannot quite say that since I don't know all the people in the world, but I'm sure they are in the top 10 :)

So of course since they are all Serbian the conversation was in Serbian a lot, which was great it was a good practice! But I missed a lot of what was going on haha. sometimes the conversation sounded like this to me : "hfjdshlfaf Claudie dfsjlhflsh" which was interesting, they were talking about me but I had no clue what they said, hopefully it was always nice :) Milijan showed me a bunch of bad words n Serbian... I will try to forget them! ;) Unfortunately, Adrijana and Milijan had to leave early so I had to say goodbye, I will only see them again when I come back to Belgrade at the end of my trip and I was so sad to see them go!! I really enjoyed getting to know them, we're not quite done sharing our full bag of salt haha but hopefully we will do that when I come back in May. Saying goodbye to Adrijana and Milijan made me realize that I am leaving Belgrade very soon which made me so sad too!! I really got to love this city very quickly, I'm looking forward to see if the rest of ex-Yugoslavia will be as interesting! So here's a picture of all of us, Milijan, me, Saša, Jelena and Adrijana!!

When Adrijana and Milijan left, Jelena and Saša brought me to a pancake place:

Very good but also huge! I was quite impressed that Jelena was able to finish hers :) Again we had a really good time and I even taught a french-canadian song to Saša:

I'm sorry to all the French-canadian people who are right now wondering why the heck I picked that song. I don't know, it just happened :)

I was also very sad to say goodbye to Jelena and Saša at the end of the evening :( I really hope to see them again soon too!

I'm reading my blog post again and I know I'm forgetting a whole bunch of things that I told them I would mention in my blog, so you guys if you are reading this please feel free to add comments!

Two remarks that I got from two different people:
- The coffee place is called "?", it's not a coffee-place with no name. Sorry!
- The floating boats are called "Splav", not "Splava". Sorry!

I'm looking forward to see what sort of adventures tomorrow will bring, for now, here are some extra pictures and it is time for me to go to bed!!