Belgrade Travel Forum

i planned to fly to belgrade in 2 weeks for a few days to meet my serbian friends and to learn more of the serbian language. i definitely want to do this trip but i'm a little bit afraid of getting in danger because of my nationality (germany already accepted kosovo as a state). what do you think, especially the locals, if i'm not politically involved in anything concerning the status of kosovo, will i have a great time in belgrade as i used to have it last year or could it be dangerous if some people realize that i'm german? i'm only asking because of violent demonstrations that happened some days ago. i really can't believe that i will get in danger cause i remember the serbs as very friendly and open people. well, it would be great to hear what you think about my worries!

hvala lijepa!

okay thanks!...my language teacher was croatian, so this might be the source of my mistake :)
what's about nightlife, drunk people, etc.? are there clubs or partys i should avoid? cause every country and every town has its places where people get wasted and beat each other up.

See Budapest, Oct. 23, 2006. It's an exercise of soccer fans, nothing more or less. Kosovo is an excuse.

Wie in Ungarn (oder Deutschland) bitte Gruppen von besoffenen Fußball-Hooligans meiden. Es gibt friedliche Proteste (OK) und besoffene Fußball-Hooligans die einfach es ausnutzen um etwas "Spaß" zu haben. Genau wie in Budapest, Okt. 23, 2006

Ich habe Serbien mit Ami-Wagen quer und kreutz bereist: war wirklich kein Problem. Aber als Russe würde ich nie einen CZ-Klub in Belgrad besuchen und argumentieren, FC Dynamo Moskau sei besser als PAOK.

Be free and come here, I am sure you will have great time!!!

I am also planning a trip to Serbia in about 4 weeks and I'm a little aprehensive too being English (well technically Welsh but not many people make the distinction). Does the same apply to us? My Serbian friends are like "hey, there will be no problem" but they are they same people who said it would be okay to take wine and a gift of a penknife through airport security(!) Does anyone have any recent experience of travelling in Serbia since the Kosovo disaster?

1) Technically, the "Kosovo Disaster" is since the Great Plague outbreak in 1448 after the SECOND Kosovo Battle and after the province was devastated by Austrian mercenaries several times. The disappearance of Levant trade routes did not benefit Kosovo either. That's disaster but it's an old disaster.

2) This was on Kosovo administrative border on Aug. 17, 2007:

http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/b883d/4bd/9/
Looks boring, no Russian brown bears walking and tearing people apart, no green Space Aliens either.
I translated some of the comments from German you can find on http://drehscheibe-online.de,
http://drehscheibe-online.ist-im-web.de/forum/read.php?30,3687617

Basically as long as you avoid large crowds (does not matter Serbian or Albanian) you should be fine.

3) I would like to remind you that in last week one person died in Pristina and one in Beograd due kalamities, etc. Same time we had the (now almost traditional) college shooting in Illinois, that was today: http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/24/five.dead.ap/index.html and a week ago some other crazyness here and there. The statistics of the city of Detroit would put the entire Serb-Albanian conflict ashame: over 10000 killed over 10 year period, other crime (rape, plunder, arson, etc) does not even count. You won't ask this question if you go to Detroit?

4) Before being scared too much, here are some videos for you. These are from Budapest, 23 October 2006. Compared with that what you did see in Belgrade is nothing, just innocent kiddie play:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3wMd_dLttc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRwS1S39ERg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48K1QCas-lg

Unlike B92, the HTV was successfully stormed, all different "declarations" were
transmitted by 'revolutionaries" and of course several 100 000 Euro equipment
stolen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j27sK9xEAHw

Now... who remembers Budapest of 2006 anymore? Forgotten.

I suppose when you put it that way it puts it in perpective the only difference being that in Detroit EVERYONE is a target not just a few foreign nationals unfortunate enough to have a stupid government.
I will come but you can't blame people for being nervous (I wouldn't say scared).

"and btw,as for the airport security..you have to understand..we serbs have it in our blood to always bend or go around rules:) we think that rules are there to be broken"

That's the "Socialist" not just Serb blood. Everyone who grew up in a Socialist country has the full sympathy and we love to bend the rules to our own. Everything else you may hear is a BS.

Do you know what is the favorite passtime of North Koreans? I heared from the first hand, from a Russian who lived in the middle of them: to illegally watch South Korean soap operas on smuggled TV-s.

Or favorite is the East German slogan: "Legal... Illegal... scheißegal." Welcome to post-Socialism :)

Ha ha, yes I know Serbs love to break the rules. My friend wanted me to drive a Mercedes that he bought from a Serb who worked in Austria. He said it would be no problem for us becasue we are EU citizens and the police would be confused by this. What about the registration documents, road tax and insurance I asked to which he replied nobody bothers with that here. I didn't drive the car btw.
You also have to realise that we Brits are conditioned to following the rules - sad but true.
I thought the Russian TV crew thing was the strangest incident of the night as they are Serbias biggest supporter so maybe you're right and they did target everyone. Anyway I'll find out in 4 weeks.

Last year my wife took my entire computer lab, stuffed it into gazillion of suitcases and... oh, well. She happily arrived to N. Tesla airport. Before it we had a long discussion about what passport to use to make carina most friendly. We were thinking, if she enters the H will be better but if the carina is walking around, US passport is better because they may know, we are like they. At the end she just discovered, there was no carina, they went for lunch.

Of course, of course, she went through the red gate to report every flat monitor and Macintosh to pay duty. :)

We did not know what to do with all that thing because we wanted to look around for few days. Old habits do not disappear. A Russian guy with jeans appeared at the left luggage office at BG station with bunch of dirty old suitcases. The police looked at him like eh.... some poor tourist from poor "Slavic brother", so did the guy at the left luggage office. At least we were free for few days of luggage.

At the end was the most funny moment. As I drove that monster somewhere near Kraljevo an old Albanian guy apeared waiving, he had large collection of watermelons. My wife commanded me to stop, the guy wasn't exceptionally good in Serbian, neither I, but we agreed on watermelon price. It was a huge thing. We weren't quite sure what to do with Albanian melon, it was just proudly sitting for few days. On the last day I drove to BG to pick up all our luggage (everything was fine, man, if they would know, what is inside!). At the end it turned out, the melon will fit, so we went home.

The big problem was the Hungarian border because we know what is inside.... But the Albanian melon was protecting the whole thing, it was proudly sitting atop in the back of the minivan. Here we decided to play like dumb Hungarian tourist (my mom was with us and her only choce was a Russian passport with no Hungarian visa = bad choice or Hungarian passport = no trick would do if we play Americans). The "vámos" guy asks us where we have been. I said innocently "blah-blah-blah" (whatever). I forgot to tell, most of us arrived form San Fran fewdays ago. He asked us, did we buy cigarettes. That caused hysterical laugh: we had EVERYTHING you can imagine from Macs till flat monitors and SATA port multipliers and hard drives and of course a sexy watermelon.... but ABSOLUTELY NO CIGARETTES.

The guy asked me to open the back of the car. And that huge Albanian thing begun slowly roll down!!! He jumped, closed the door , said: "Oh, Jesus, OK, go!!!!"... and we forgot to pay the duty again....

No, we never smuggle!!!

I'm more scared about what my wife will do if someone starts any trouble. She once hit a German idiot so hard across the face it left an imprint on his cheek - he deserved it though, he tried to physically push her out of the way to get past. We don't take kindly to being pushed around :)

Really? I didn't notice when I was there ;D

We have now practice how to scare anyone with an over-size watermelon, we are not scared anymore.