Belgrade Travel Forum

Planning on coming to Belgrade for 4 days in December 11-14th had some questions… If you could help! Lol

1) Taking train on the 11th from Budapest – How hard is it to get a round trip ticket in Budapest – Belgrade? Can I do it on the 7th when I arrive in Budapest? How much is it?
2) What hotel would you suggest staying in? I want to be very close to the discos and have my belonging secure in my room – medium price?
3) How much do thing cost – BEER – Dinner – Coffee ? Is pricing comparable to Budapest?
4) Do they have like a Christmas bizarre? How expensive are gifts?
5) Are there any good Trance concerts at this time? Or what about symphony?
6) How do you dress for the clubs here? And are they in full swing in December?
7) How cold should I expect it to be?
8) If I wanted to bring some gifts from the usa, what would be appreciated?
9) What are must do things to do in the winter there?
10) SNOWBOARDING anywhere near?

Thank you so much,

DJ MINK

Answering the questions I can answer:

"How hard is it to get a round trip ticket in Budapest – Belgrade?"

Go to WASTEELS travel office in Budapest Keleti station. You can do it any time. The round-trip ticket is 26 Euro. There are two trains:
- Daytime train (all you need is a ticket)
- Nighttime train (you will need probably a sleeper reservation).

Re-sleeper. There are three:
- Serbian sleeper in Winter (OK, costs 16 Euro extra)
- Austrian sleeper in Summer (very good, costs 39 Euro extra)
- Bulgarian sleeper to Sofia (not too bad, but Serbian is better, costs 11 Euro).

Ask how much is the sleeper. If they tell you, it's over 10000 Forint, tell them to look better cuz there is no Austrian one in Winter. If they tell you a price in 4000 Forint range, take it. If they don't know, tell them, you need the sleeper ticket all the way till Sofia, than it will drop to a price under 3000 Forint.

The best value for the money is the 16 Euro in Serbian car.

All this sounds more complicated than it is. You actually can even e-mail WASTEELS and ask for exact price - but buying is possible only in person. Use info@wasteels.axelero.net

2) We had little luck with hotels in Beograd. There is a great hotel we used for business, but it was in Novi Beograd. Within the downtown I am still looking for good value hotel and free Internet. I know, they do exist. I want (Summer '08) a hotel within walking distance to Andricev Venac, actually. So here I am not answering your question rather listening to others.

3) We (6 people) decided to burn some money outside of Beograd (in the town of Despotovac). So we decided to eat as much as we can. We ate. And ate. And ate. Two of us (19 year old + 13 year old) have a dangerous appetite. The service was fine. So I decided to give a good tipp also. Afterwards we "counted the beans" how much is the "damage" in Dollars. It was 45 Bucks. True: I was driving, so no alcohol!!! But we had enough of coffee-tea-etc.

The pricing of a good place in Budapest is probably a bit higher these days.

4) Christmas "bazare" is rather typical for Germany. But wait, there is a thing called "Julian Calendar", "Revised Julian Calendar" and "Gregorian Calendar".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revised_Julian_calendar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar

Please read carefully: "The Revised Julian calendar was adopted by the Orthodox churches of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Poland, and Bulgaria (the last in 1963), called the New calendarists. It was rejected by the Orthodox churches of Jerusalem, Russia, Serbia, Georgia and the Greek Old Calendarists. Although Milankovic' stated that the Russian Orthodox Church adopted the Revised Julian calendar in 1923, the present church continues to use the Julian calendar for both its fixed festivals and for Easter."

In short: much less Christmas bazar activity in Serbia (or Russia) begin December, it's too early. Besides, Serbs celebrate Christmas different way than even Russians.

Of course, different gifts are available from the street sellers all year around. You can find genuine souvenirs from Vojvodina (made in China), Beograd (made in China), Shumadija (made in China), Albanian sellers will show you stuff from Kosovo (made in China) and so on. Sometimes you are lucky, than it's made locally. :-(

Very cheap the local gift aren't anymore.

5) In general, technical stuff is more expensive in Europe than in USA. So if you look at www.techbargains.com or http://dealnews.com you can find some generic technical stuff (my guess would be USB flash memory) which everyone does appreciate. However, some surprise can be. Like certain memory for certain computers is precisely the cheapest in Serbia - for bizarre reason. But buying a generic USB flash memory is a safe gift.

There are gifts not so "safe". For instance, one of the main characters of otherwise popular strategic copmuter game "Heroes of Might and Magic III" is a demon "Rashka" who commands Archdevils and Efreeti and lives in Hell. That turned to be a rather unfortunate thing for the game... because King Stefan Urosh I (1243-1276) founded the famous Sopoc'ani monastery near the source of the river Rashka in Serbia ("Rashka" became also the name of a Serbian monastery school):

http://www.archaeology.org/9909/etc/jpegs/insight6.jpeg

That coincidence made some Orthodox clergymen "a bit" unhappy about the game and it was excommunicated. So no efreetis, archdevils and "Rashka" please. Just in case, I maybe would also stay away from Halloween tematics (who knows?), but I think, USB memory is OK:

http://dealnews.com/memory/prices/USB-Pen-Drives/37/1GB.html
http://dealnews.com/memory/prices/USB-Pen-Drives/37/2GB.html

For snow action go to Kopaonik, but 3 days are not enough for you to visit both Beograd and Kopaonik.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopaonik

A week or so would be more sufficient but than I would probably rent a car or use some busses extensively south of Beograd. Than you also can visit Rashka (not the Efreeti!)

I cannot answer other questions because I am a geek, so no disco/club, ehhhh, shame, no symphony either.

... but: everyone knows in Central Europe: regarding Disco/Club scene, Beograd is one of the most "decadent" places! Just I am not into that much, really. Each Summer one of the largest rock festivals of Europe is being hold in Novi Sad, Serbia, it's called "Exit". Also each Summer one of the weirdes festivals rock-folklore-dancing-drinking-....(what-not, guess)... is being hold in Dragachevo, called "Gucha Trumpet Event". I was lucky enough to "survive" one this year :-)

http://www.guca.co.yu/ <-- many music MP3-s here, but not updated for 2007

http://www.gucha.com/index_en.php <-- in the process of update

(And it turned out, Goran Bregovic' is one of our customers!)

"pricing is much cheaper than in budapest. "

Probably right, I have to revise myself. We went on a different occasion to a place near Budapest. This time 5 people and somewhat lesser appetite. The "damage" was in 25000 - 30000 Ft range, that is, 150 Bucks instead of 45 for six people. But all had alcohol that time (two bottles of wine). Removing wine, it's still 3x more expensive than what we ate in Despotovac for.

But the food in grocery stores seem to be comparable, maybe 20% less in Serbia. I was only once in a supermarket this year, that wasn't in Beograd. As usual, the prices but also variety in both countries outside of the area of capital city tend to be somewhat lower, here I cannot judge yet. Let's see next Summer.

I did notice, the grocery stores in Hungary are full of imported produce. If you are lucky, you see Hungarian, Polish, less frequently Ukrainian or Croatian stuff. Otherwise problably 80% is coming from western part of E.U. Even cold cuts or milk products are at least to 50% from the west.

In Serbia it's not that bad (yet).

Regarding the prices in simpler restaurants: we visited very briefly Slovakia and I can say, the prices definitly did "develop" themself lately. Serbia (or even Hungary) did not look that bad after a day in Sturovo. Interesting (observation of my mom and my older son, too) - this year rural Slovakia did look somewhat less sophysticated than either rural Hungary or Serbia.

salaries:

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/51/31/36219469.pdf

APW was HUF 1 262 712 for 2004, that's roughly $500/month.

OK, how about programmers, IT, etc?

http://www.payscale.com/research/HU/Country=Hungary/Salary

So if a software engineer is having $2000/month, than he is doing probably OK.

If you looking for cheap acommodation check this link:
http://www.hostelbookers.com/booking/index.cfm
There is lots of hostels in Belgrade, and some of them looks very nice.

Petar, you may help me here out - please read carefully, this is long and not an easy thing.

http://forum.virtualtourist.com/discussion-386072-1-1-Miscellaneous-0-0-World-discussion.html?s=2&p=0&l=0