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.