When I had searched for a hostel in Belgrade none that were available my first night in town really stood out to me so I only booked a single night in a hostel near the bus station and decided that I would evaluate my accommodations the next day. I arrived in the evening and after being pointed in the right direction by the husband of a woman I had chatted with on the bus I arrived at my hostel and checked in. The building had a cool old elevator that the stairs wound their way around, but the hostel itself did not stand out to me as exceptional. My storage locker was missing the key, the bed wasn’t great, the bathrooms were cramped, and I just wasn’t really feeling it. So, after going out and getting a scrumptious dinner at a nearby restaurant consisting of a shopska salad, stuffed pork roll with fries, bread, and a glass of red wine, I returned to my hostel and went to bed, and upon waking the next morning began searching for a new hostel.
I found a new hostel nearer to the center that looked good, checked out of my current hostel and made my way across town. After getting checked in I went out and got some lunch then returned to the hostel to get some work done. When dinnertime rolled around one of the guys staying in my dorm room came over and asked me if I wanted to join him and some of the other guys for dinner. I agreed and five of us headed out to eat at a place a couple blocks from the hostel. At dinner I ordered a glass of rosé, a ten-piece ćevapi (a pita type bread stuffed with sausage, cream cheese, and onions for those who have not read my post on Sarajevo), and a shopska salad. We sat at a table that seats eight and we had one guy at the head of the table, with a guy sitting to each side of him, and then me sitting next to one of those guys, and then for some reason the guy who invited me out (Wylie) was seated at the other end of the table. I talked with him for most of the meal, partially because I was the only one close enough to have a conversation with him at a reasonable volume, and partially because he had found himself incredibly attracted to a girl sitting at a nearby table and he was asking my advice and I was encouraging him to go over and talk to her. I told him that the worst that could happen is that she could reject him and he would feel kind of bummed for a couple hours, but that if he didn’t talk to her he would regret it for a while. After much deliberation he decided he would write her a note and then go over and talk to her, so I gave him a sheet of paper from my notebook and my pen. Originally from Switzerland he had been living in Serbia for a few years and while he knew Serbian, he decided to write the note in English as he felt more comfortable with that. I read the note before I let him bring it over to her to make sure it was appropriate and didn’t sound too crazy. Finally after several attempts to get up and go over there, including a couple of instances in which he actually rose from his chair before sitting back down, and with all of us encouraging him, he went over and spoke to her briefly and gave her the note. He then returned to the table still a bit anxious, but mostly relieved.
A short while later I left the restaurant with him to go and meet some of his friends at a salsa club. Once we were outside he gave me a big hug thanking me for pushing him to go and talk to the girl, happy that he had done it whether he ended up hearing from her or not. We then took a taxi over to the salsa club and spent some time there. I had a drink and learned the most basic steps in salsa dancing. Afterwards we walked back to our hostel stopping to get some street food on the way. I got a gyro. Yum. Our hostel was in a residential apartment building and had quiet time after 10pm, but Wylie said he knew a different spot where we could go to eat. He took us to another hostel nearby and we were buzzed in and he talked to the receptionist and asked her if we could eat in the bar area downstairs, which he had apparently done before. The receptionist told us we could but that we needed to be quiet because if her boss came around she would get in trouble for letting us eat there. It was an interesting situation. We went down and ate and chatted quietly. Once finished we walked the short distance back to our hostel and went to bed.
The next morning I got up and came out into the kitchen where Betty (a Belgian girl I hadn’t met yet) was making blueberry pancakes. She offered me some and thus immediately became my dear friend. Normally part of the cost for the hostel included a free breakfast at a restaurant around the corner, but they were doing some work on the restaurant that morning so there was no other breakfast game in town aside from Betty’s blueberry pancakes. Fortunately they were delicious. After breakfast I wrote for a while as I waited for Wylie to get up, as we had made plans before going to bed the night before to grab lunch together. When he finally got up in the early afternoon we headed out and stopped at a café where I got some tea, before going to lunch. While at the café Wylie saw another girl with whom he was quite taken, but not to the same level as the night before, so he didn’t end up pursuing this one.
That evening Wylie, Betty, Jack (an Australian guy who had been part of the group at dinner the night before), and I all headed out to a nearby restaurant for dinner. The place was super fancy but the prices fortunately were not. Betty, Jack, and I split a bottle of wine and I had a delicious vegetable soup, an appetizer of crostini with cheese and jam, with a main course of trout.
We discussed various things including Australians boxing kangaroos, which Betty was horrified to hear was a real thing, while Jack showed some videos of it to Wylie, who was fascinated. As the meal was winding down Betty complained about asking and answering the same old questions all the time as a traveler, which I felt was a perfect segue for me to start asking my questions. While we were chatting Wylie had to take off to catch a Blablacar back to his village and Betty, Jack, and I decided to take the party to another location. We headed off and found a bar nearby where we went for a drink and continued to chat. Jack decided to head back to the hostel when the bar closed, but the night was still young, so Betty and I decided to look for another bar to have one more drink before we called it a night. We searched around for a bar for a while, but were not having any success finding an open one. I thought this was a bit peculiar. I understood that it was a Sunday night, but it was still only 12:30 and everyone I had talked to about Belgrade in the prior weeks had talked about how great the nightlife was there. As we wandered we ran into Yemen (another guy from the hostel who had been at dinner the night before) returning from a day trip and convinced him to come have a drink with us, despite his objections that he had to get up early to study for his model UN presentation that he was in town for. We finally found a spot and had a drink before they closed down around one, at which point we called it a night.
The next morning I woke up around 8:30 and saw that Yemen was still asleep. He had told us the night before that he wanted to get up at 8:00 to start researching for his presentation. I debated for a couple of minutes whether I should go over and wake him up, but then I saw signs of life as he reached over and looked at his phone…and then went back to sleep. He did this a couple more times and was still in bed when I left the room and went out into the kitchen at a little after 10:00. The breakfast restaurant was closed once again, so once again I was refunded my breakfast money, and once again Betty made me something to eat. As Betty cooked us up some eggs we discussed Yemen and his need for assistance in prepping for his presentation and decided that we would do some research for him to help him out. The country he was representing in the model UN was Yemen (hence his nickname) so I got to work on my laptop. When he finally got out of bed and came out into the kitchen Betty and I began to bombard him with random facts about Yemen. My favorite fact we found was that the traditional sport of Yemen is camel jumping. Look it up. It’s real. And it’s amazing.
After breakfast I led Jack, Betty, and Golli (a girl from New Zealand) to the café where Wylie and I had gone the day before. After we had chatted for a while and finished our drinks, Jack took off to go on a Tinder date with a Serbian supermodel (or something like that), Golli left to go check out the fortress and Betty and I went back to the restaurant I had gone to with the guys my first night at the hostel, where we sat at the table that Wylie’s love interest had sat. I got the same meal I had the other night along with some subpar fries and Betty broke with her vegetarianism for the first time since October to get the ćevapi as well. We then returned to the hostel and discovered that Betty had recently met my good friends Hermione and Cookie Fingers when she had visited Zagreb.
I got a message from a Russian girl on Couchsurfing whom I had contacted a few days prior to see if she would care to meet up as she was looking to hang out for an evening while on a layover on her way back home. We arranged for her to come to my hostel so that she could meet up with my gang and me and go out to dinner and drinks. Once Natasha (the Russian girl) arrived we all left for dinner. Our group for the night consisted of Betty, Jack, Natasha, Yemen, Mona (a German girl who had just arrived), and me. We went to a spot at the end of the block that wasn’t quite as fancy as the spot from the night before. Still pretty fancy though. We all did a shot of something, not sure what it was because I did not choose the shot, but whatever it was, it was not very good. I had a burger (of the meat on a plate not in a bun variety) with cheese, potatoes, and a small side salad. Natasha, Jack, Betty, and I split a bottle of wine. As our meal was wrapping up a group of musicians that had been playing in the restaurant throughout the meal came over and started to play for us, when they first arrived they stood right behind Betty and me, but I quickly slid around to the head of the table next to Jack. Betty wasn’t quick enough however and for the first song she was caught with the musicians all around her and the violinist playing right in her face at times. She was quite uncomfortable. It was hilarious.
After dinner we headed out to a jazz bar where there was live music and drank some more. We were seated upstairs but Natasha, Jack, Betty, and I went downstairs for a bit to dance in between the tables, as there wasn’t really a dance floor of any sort. The highlight of the night was when the old guy sitting at the table next to where we were dancing, after showing obvious enjoyment in our dancing for the first couple songs, got up and joined in our dance party. He tried to get his wife to join him but she was not into that idea. We then rejoined the others upstairs and Golli and another guy from the hostel showed up and joined the group. We hung out for a bit and then Yemen and Mona headed back to the hostel. It was then time for Natasha to catch her bus.
And so the epic misadventure began.
She had told me earlier in the night that she needed to catch her bus to the airport at midnight. So, I had asked, “You need to be at the big bus station at midnight then?” and she said, “Yes.” I had told her that I would walk her there because I knew the way from the jazz club to the bus station. As we approached the bus station she asked me, “Are you sure this is the right way?” and I pointed over into the slightly foggy night where you could just see the outline of a bunch of buses and said, “Yeah, can you see the buses there?” to which she replied, “No, that’s not it. It’s not really a bus station it’s just where the bus stops.”
WHAT?!
It was still fifteen minutes to midnight so we stopped a gentleman on the street to see if he could point us in the right direction. He tried but he just ended up pointing us in the direction of the smaller bus station and as Natasha had said, we apparently weren’t looking for a bus station. At this point Natasha just decided to catch a taxi to the airport, and since her plane didn’t actually leave until sometime after five in the morning this meant she had more time to just hang out. So, we headed off to find our group. The jazz bar had closed, so I figured they would probably head to the bar where we had our last drink the night before, since it was the one bar in town that Betty and I knew would be open. However when we arrived our group was nowhere to be found. We then headed over to the hostel and I went in to check if they had come back there. They hadn’t but Yemen called Jack and we found out that they were at another bar nearby called the 0.5 bar. It turned out to be very appropriately named because when we got there they were just about to close up but there was one shot left on the table which our friends split in two and Natasha and I both had 0.5 shots at the 0.5 bar. We then headed over to the bar we had checked before going to the hostel, but on the way Natasha decided that she was going to try to catch the 1:30 bus to the airport. So, I said goodbye to my group one more time and headed off, with her leading the way this time, as she said she knew where she was going now. We trekked halfway across town to this big roundabout. There was a small bus stop at the roundabout, but that’s not where the bus came to, instead this little shuttle bus stopped at an unmarked curb on the other side of the roundabout. Ridiculous. We got her on the bus though and I headed back towards the bar, hoping I would get there before last call so I could get at least one more drink before the night ended since I was completely sober at this point.
Side note: I later looked up the route for the shuttle bus to the airport and where it picked Natasha up was the 1st stop, but before heading out to the airport it actually made a second stop right in front of the main train station, which is literally right around the corner from the main bus station.
True story.
When I arrived at the bar and joined my friends at the table I found out that last call had just happened. My friends offered me a beer as they had several extra on the table, but since beer isn’t really my forte, I declined. We hung out for about another half an hour until they kicked us out giving us plastic to go cups for the beer that was left. After the bar we went over to the street food shop where Wylie and I had gone the other night and got some gyros. For the second time that day Betty ended up breaking with her vegetarianism. It was her cheat day. Golli told us how she was not really drunk at all, while spilling half of her gyro out onto the floor and being super confused when after I paid for everyone’s food she went up and tried to pay for her gyro and the guy asked her if she wanted to pay again. She kept insisting to us that she hadn’t paid and that she was getting her food for free, while Jack and I told her that she had gone up and paid and left an exorbitant tip, and thanked the man most kindly. Finally Betty got fed up with the conversation and revealed the truth to Golli.
The next morning I woke up a little before 8:30 and debated on how I would wake up Yemen, who had requested a wake up call the night before. I decided the best way to wake him up would be with a fact about Yemen. After finding an appropriate fact I walked over to his bed, kneeled down so that I was right in his face and began to tell him this fascinating fact about Yemen. He was terrified. It was amazing. I then got up and waited around for a bit for the rest of my group to get ready so we could go out to breakfast, which was actually happening finally. Golli had already left and Betty decided to skip breakfast, so Jack, Yemen, Mona, and I all headed out to the restaurant. The breakfast was a delicious mix of eggs, sausages, cheese, tomatoes, breads, and other such tasty items.
Jack and I both wanted to catch the free walking tour, since it would be our last chance before we left and I had been hoping to go every day since I arrived only to have one thing or another interfere with that plan every time. I had thought I was going to end up missing the early tour again and was going to have to shoot for the later tour because of breakfast, but the guy at the hostel told me where I could meet up with them between the restaurant and the hostel 15 minutes into the tour, which gave me plenty of time to eat. Jack had to leave breakfast a couple of minutes early so that he could take care of some stuff back at the hostel before joining the tour, so I went over and joined the tour by myself, and the guide seemed a little weirded out by my showing up randomly. She was even more weirded out when Jack joined us a couple of minutes later.
After the tour Jack and I found ourselves looking for a place to get a bite to eat and some coffee for Jack and I realized we were right next to a spot that had been recommended to me by one of the hostel workers that morning. I ended up getting a lemonade and a chicken skewer with potatoes. We then headed back to the hostel where I said goodbye to Yemen and then Jack as they checked out of the hostel. That evening we watched some Eurovision clips and ate some salad that Mona made and shared with Romain (a Frenchman) and me. Then Mona, Romain, Betty, and I headed out to a nearby bar that was recommended by the guy working in the hostel that evening. Betty was tired and not sold on the idea of going out at first, but I finally was able to convince her to come out for my last night in town, with me catching a bus at either 3:30 or 4:30 in the morning depending on which website you looked at. She did insist on taking a nap first though.
At the bar we had the worst waiter of all time. He had terrible room awareness, he was a bit rude, it took forever to order our drinks, and when I paid for my drink he didn’t give me enough change back. I pointed that out and then he gave me too much change back. So, I left the money that I should have paid for my wine on the table and when we left I’m sure he thought that he had received the first tip of his life. When we did leave the bar we went up a floor to the burger spot above the bar where I got a burger and fries along with some macaroni and cheese that I was debating on. After receiving the mac & cheese I wished that my wallet had won that debate over my stomach because while the burger was delicious the mac & cheese was crap. The theme of the burger joint was food porn and all the names of the burgers were sex related and there were dildo decorations and a really creepy cartoon playing on the wall behind us with a bunch of cartoon animals having an orgy. It was weird and kind of creepy. Mona finally called it a night around one and then a few minutes later after we left the restaurant Betty called it a night as well. Romain came out for one last drink with me, and afterwards we returned to the hostel where I hung out and watched a little Netflix before it was time to head to the bus station. I arrived at the bus station and despite the times I grabbed off of the internet, the bus did not end up leaving at 3:30 or 4:30, but rather at 4:10. It was ridiculous, but all I cared about once I was onboard was trying to get a bit of sleep before I arrived back in Sofia.