Belgrade, Days 3 & 4 - The Emergency Clinic and a Rough Ride Home

Thursday, Mirko left us on our own and we decided to do more wandering to some of the sites we hadn’t seen.  Our morning consisted of the Saint Sava Cathedral, a beautiful building that is still under construction (it was actually started before World War II, then was put on hold during the war, and then was put on hold as no new church construction was allowed in Yugoslavia... Saint Sava was the founder of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the 1200's), Belgrade’s open market, where you can buy anything from fresh strawberries to bathtub hardware to Hello Kitty beach balls, and Tašmajdan Park and Saint Mark’s Orthodox Church, which are in a beautiful part of the city.

After lunch, we ventured back to Kalemegdon Park to let the kiddos ride the carousel and blow off some steam at the playground.  It was here that Rosetta decided we should test Serbia’s medical system.  One quick fall, a gash in the forehead, and we were left wondering how to figure out where we should go and how to get there.  Luckily for us, we asked someone nearby and he immediately jumped up from the park bench, called a taxi, took us down to the street to wait for the taxi, and told the taxi driver where to take us.  It’s amazing how willing people are to help no matter where you go.  The taxi driver sped through town to a medical clinic (again, no car seats, very unnerving).  We called Mirko to let him know what was happening, and, of course, he dropped everything to come and meet us.  We have to admit that the Belgrade Emergency Clinic wasn't top on our list of things to see, but we were pleasantly surprised with how well everything went there and how quickly they had Rosetta stitched and bandaged.  Afterward, of course, Mirko bought the kiddos more gifts.

We figured we had avoided disaster…until Friday morning, when we were packing up the car and heard a loud bang…which was our rear suspension retiring.  We probably shouldn’t have driven back, but Grandma Rose was due in Ljubljana the next day.  So, we decided to head out, take it slow, and see what happened (which could be our mantra for this whole experience).  Serbian highways are far from smooth, and the kiddos thought it was funny that we were bouncing around like a slinky on wheels while Chantelle and I wondered how long it would be until we bottomed out on the back tires and were stranded somewhere in the forests near the Serbia-Croatia border.  But, as we wrote a week ago, we had just asked our Megane to hold up through one more trip, and it did.  We were a bit worried entering Slovenia when the border patrol scrutinized our car (they must have been wondering if we were starting a Serbian boulder collection), but eventually we made it back, parked the car, and walked home.  And Grandma Rose arrived the next day as promised, so all is good.

 

Belgrade, Day 2 - Tito, Beaches, and the Mall

Wednesday morning, Mirko showed up at our apartment with more gifts:  1 billion, 50 million, and 10 million Yugoslav dinar bills.  They’re not fake…in the mid-1990’s Yugoslavia was experiencing inflation of 70% per day and between October 1993 and January 1995, prices increased one-quadrillion percent.  This would be like taking the money in your savings account and moving the decimal point fifteen places to the left.  As you can imagine, a lot of people lost their life savings in this fourteen-month period.  Mirko actually saved the bank notes he had that became worthless and uses them to line his kitchen drawers because of the high-quality paper on which they were printed.

Wednesday was our tour-the-city-by-car day.  It happened to be the anniversary of Josip Tito’s death, so Mirko started by driving us to the site of his burial (no, we didn’t have room for all of us with car seats and we will forever feel guilty about it).  The scene was incredible.  Busloads of people had arrived to pay their respects, Yugoslav patriotic music blared over the speakers, and schoolchildren danced on a stage.  Interestingly, there was a flower bed that had been made to read “In God We Trust.”  We had no idea how respected Tito was…more world leaders attended his funeral than any other in recent history (although President Carter opted not to attend).  We are also now the proud owners of pins that roughly translate to “Marshal Tito, we pledge our allegiance to you!”  I can’t wait to wear mine at Christmas.

After, we went to the “Belgrade beaches,” a beautiful stretch along the Sava River that has walking and biking paths, pebble beaches, and lots of cafes and restaurants.  When the sky drew dark and the wind picked up, we hustled back to the car and drove to the mall in New Belgrade…which looks a lot like a mall in Minneapolis.  There, we rode out the storm, Mirko bought the kiddos balloons (not surprisingly, Sy was the first and only one to pop his), and we wandered around for two hours.  To give you an idea of how profound our experience over here has been, Chantelle actually said to me, “I really don’t miss this.”  After I fainted, she made me swear I would never repeat that, so if you’re reading it now it’s because she didn’t see it and make me remove it from the blog before posting.

We ended the day with dinner on a floating restaurant at the intersection of the Sava and Danube…wonderful food and a beautiful view of the Kalemegan Fortress and the Victor Monument.  Another outstanding day in Belgrade.

Belgrade, Day 1 - Kalemegdon Fortress and Zoo

Our trip to Belgrade was nothing short of fascinating and we returned so exhausted last night that everyone slept until 8:30 this morning.  As we said, we had a “personal tour guide,” Mirko, who we connected with through a mutual friend.  Mirko spent the better part of three days with us and has to be one of the most gracious, hospitable people we have ever met.

On our first day there, we walked from our apartment near Saint Sava Cathedral about two miles to the Kalemegdan Fortress on the hill where the Sava and Danube meet.  The entire walk, Mirko gave us quite an education on the history of Serbia, Belgrade, and the Serbian Orthodox Church.  It is a tough history to relate to…for instance, Mirko’s grandmother was originally Austrian, then Croatian, then Yugoslav, despite living in the same house her entire life.  Listening to Mirko talk about Yugoslavia and recent Serbian history was amazing, a very different perspective from anything we had ever heard.

Along the way, we saw Pionirski Park, which is dedicated to Serbia’s only Nobel Prize winner, Ivan Andrić (Mirko insisted on buying us two of his favorite books written by Andrić), the Serbian National Assembly, the Serbian Parliament, the walking district along Knez Mihailova, the Orthodox Cathedral where Mirko was baptized, and several sites of bombings in World War II and in the 1990’s.  We spent our afternoon at Kalemedgon Park, walking around the Fortress and finally the Belgrade Zoo as a reward to the kiddos for putting up with all of the sightseeing.  The zoo was as interesting as everything else we saw, given that it was located inside the fortress and some of the exhibits allow you to get unnervingly close to the animals (picture a 10-foot chain-link fence separating you from a lion, along with a sign reading “Stay away from the fence, these animals are dangerous,” and your three-year-old son deciding to put a stick through the fence…needless to say, we didn’t look at the lions very long).

The best part of the day though was how enjoyable it was spending time with Mirko.  He adopted us as though we were longtime friends and was fantastic with the kiddos.  In fact, he got many compliments on his “grandchildren” from people we passed on the street.

Safe and Sound in Belgrade

We are now on our second-to-last big trip of our stay here, making the drive to Belgrade more or less without incident.  After crossing the border into Serbia, we both commented that a year ago we likely couldn't have identified Serbia on a map of the Balkans, and here we were driving a beat-up station wagon across its countyside.  At the same time, we also found that we are not so far removed here that we have escaped the influence of Pixar...Buzz Lightyear has made his presence known (and therefore so has Sy).

This is going to be a very interesting week.  Our apartment is a half a block from the Saint Sava Cathedral, which is one of the largest Orthodox cathedrals in the world, and within a ten-minute walk from many of the historical sites in Belgrade (the fact that the bathroom has already flooded on us is but a minor setback).  More importantly, a friend of a friend, Mirko, has volunteered to be our tour guide for the next couple of days.  Talk about hospitality...he already came over this evening and spent three hours chatting with us like he had known us forever.

We're not sure how much we'll get to blog this week, but we will certainly have a few pictures and stories to share when our trip is through.

Weekend With a Schnabel

A very good friend of ours, Eric Schnabel, came to visit this weekend and we played full-on tourists.  We spent time in Preseren Square watching the entertainment, went to the outdoor market, got some pictures from the castle tower, had a drink at the skyscraper, took a walking tour and boat ride, and a few other things that had the kiddos completely tuckered out.  He tried to influence them into being Cub fans, while we used every opportunity to pull out Sy’s playoff cheer of “Not today, Jay Cutler!”

Eric deserves a gold medal, as he was the focal point of the kiddos' attention from the second he arrived to the second he left…at the same time, we’re certain he was eating up his superstar status.  His wife also deserves a gold medal for agreeing to manage their kids while he was here goofing around with ours.  Thanks, Aimee and Eric…Aimee, we wish you could have made it too!

The Mlekomat

This is where we get our milk.  These Mlekomats are all over the place here and draw a lot of attention.  It is novel enough that people are always taking pictures and videos of the machine in use, and we have been the subject of these many times (you could probably search YouTube and find us in a starring role somewhere).  We have also been the Good Samaritans to several first-timers…like we did on our inaugural run, most watch someone else use it and then stare at the machine waiting for some revelation in instruction.

Mlekomats are becoming increasingly popular here with the trend toward drinking unpasteurized milk.  They are high-tech – the machine cleans itself with ultraviolet light after each use and won’t serve milk if the storage temperature gets outside of a specified range.  And they don't serve milk that is more than twenty-four hours old, so it's like getting it right from the cow.

The Renault Megane

Finally, some pictures of the family wagon…It’s old, has a few battle scars, and tops out at 115 kilometers an hour, but so far it’s gotten us everywhere we’ve asked it to go (we’re crossing our fingers and toes as we write this).  We just need one more big trip out of it, five hours to Belgrade and five hours back.  That’s about as far as we can handle with the cramped quarters.

Kostanjevica Monastery

After visiting the bee farm on Wednesday, we had lunch and then drove a short distance to the Franciscan Monastery Kostanjevica in Nova Gorica.  There, we were given a tour by a monk who, of all things, has gone fishing at the Lake of the Woods on the Minnesota/Canada border several times.

The monastery was built on top of a hill overlooking the city in the 1600’s and has a very interesting history.  One highlight is the crypt underneath the chapel where the tombs of the Bourbons (the French Royal family exiled during the French Revolution of 1830) are kept.  This includes King Charles X, whose actions are said to have brought on the revolution.  Ironically, he came to Gorica in 1836 because Gorica was cholera-free and he feared the cholera outbreaks that were happening across Europe; seventeen days later he became the only citizen of Gorica to die of cholera.  There are seven other members of the Bourbons in the crypt as well.

A second highlight is the library, with books dating as far back as the 15^th century.  The most prominent book is a Slovenian grammar book written in 1584 with the author’s autographed inscription.  This book was “discovered” in the library in the 1950’s and is one of only eight known copies in the world.  Unfortunately, during World War I, the books were moved to the basement (Gorica was very close to the Soča Front) and many were damaged in the process.

There is also a beautiful garden filled with Bourbon Roses.  We decided to head out before the presentation on the history of these roses, as the kiddos were a bit restless by then.

As we said in the previous post, on our way out we took a wrong turn and suddenly realized we had crossed the border into Italy.  This is an added bonus of driving here…not only is it easy to get completely lost on narrow, winding streets and roundabouts, you can also accidently end up in another country!

Šivic Bee Farm

Yesterday, we drove out to Šempas in the very western part of Slovenia to visit the Šivic Bee Farm. Franc Šivic, who is the Vice President of the Slovenia Beekeepers Organization and who has been beekeeping for 53 years, gave a special tour to a women's group to which Chantelle belongs. 

Talk about bee-utiful country (okay, none of that this time around) and an interesting operation... He gave us quite an education on trees, flowers, fruits, how pollination takes place, and how hives work. We now know what acacia trees look like, and realized that castle hill behind our apartment is covered with them (they're in full bloom now, which explains all of the fat bumblebees buzzing around outside our apartment). We now know that many beekeepers place their hives on wheels so they can be moved to where the blooms are. We now know that a long time ago artists started painting the panels of the hives for good luck. We also now know how pollen and propolis are collected, how swarms are controlled, and how the queen bee is replaced from time to time. Franc also took us to his house in Šempas to show us his photo gallery. He is an excellent photographer as well...in fact, several of his photos have won major awards in Europe.

After spending the morning on the bee farm, we had lunch at a tourist farm and then spent the afternoon at a Franciscan Monastery in Nova Gorica (more on that in another post). Then, after a long day in the sun, we started to head back, took a wrong turn, and found ourselves in Italy. Without passports.  Which is really funny because I had just told Dad the day before that we probably wouldn't get to Italy before we have to head back to the States.