Montenegro! I hardly knew thee.... We had a massive, highly democratic discussion about where in Montenegro we would go - how long we'd stay, how we'd get to Belgrade etc etc... and then we got to the train station and the schedule was different than we had expected so we got on the only bus headed to Montenegro - which happened to be Kotor. After spending some hours along the beach there with all of our luggage at a very kind lady's restaurant we were off for an overnight bus to Belgrade through Podgorica (the capital). It was a full size bus.... and the five of us were the only ones on it the whole way there. Parttyyyy busss!! Sort of.
So this is me, Aisha, and Ida in Kotor, Montenegro. PROOF.
Belgrade is fantastic. And fantastically HOT. We pretty much melted into the city with our Burek and ice cream and Turkish coffees. The hostel we stayed at "Green Studio Hostel" http://www.greenstudiohostel.com/ - which I will highly recommend to anyone. SUPER friendly staff and a great atmosphere for meeting people. I have never been at a hostel that makes such a sincere and effective effort to facilitate the guests hanging out. Every night one of the staff would take a group out to some place in Belgrade. That got us to the famous boats along the Danube river that a moored party huts essentially. Pretty funny. We met some great people - particularly an outgoing Australian guy who was traveling alone and had never been to a non English speaking country. He was so extremely open minded and up for anything - great guy!
Here we are next to the Danube in Belgrade! We met up with an HIA friend that we had met in Sarajevo - she did the CPH program in 2009. She's living in Berlin now doing her masters program and her roommate is Serbian so she had a little Balkan tour of her own after the conference. It was super cool to hang out with her friend, ask her a little about Belgrade. It is a hip city! Hahah... I just revealed how NOThip I am. Anyway - it seems to me like a place that reveals itself pretty slowly. Definitley has a rough edge. It's not as majestically beautiful as a lot of European cities - more industrial type buildings riddled throughout - but there definitely is a healthy amount of Austo-Hungarian architecture and old sweeping buildings.
Belgrade has some fantastic graffiti... We spent quite a lot of time slowly walking along the shady bits of street and looking at the walls.
We made it to the fortress and then cowered in the shady area for quite some time... I'm telling you, SO HOT. The veneration for air-con displayed by some members of our party got a little creepy. Our veneration for ice cream, however, was only appropriate. On this day Sofia and I switched clothes.... it was almost like wearing clean clothes!
One of the absolute coolest experiences we had while in Belgrade was going to an abandoned warehouse that has been converted into a Jazz club. There are many artists in musicians living in the facility and the police don't come by - it's self governed. Lots of graffiti all around - and definitely politically bent stuff. On the very top there's a balcony overlooking the city where the jazz takes place. VIEWS!!! I love getting an overview of new places. Awesome atmosphere there.
Belgrade by night! Loads and loads of bridges.
I love my friends. They're fascinating people - highly intelligent, passionate about human rights, engaging conversationalists and all around fun people to be around. But as a group... we really miss some of the finer points of organization from time to time. Throughout this entire trip three of us struggled with some sort of vision impairment due to a high propensity for having our heads in the clouds. Also... NEERRDDD alert - I have sorta bad eyes but Usman, Aisha, and Ida are essentially blind. It all makes too much sense.
First there was Ida... She brought her glasses case... but unfortunately it had no glasses in it. And she only brought enough contacts for the conference.... so she was about to be blind as a bat if we didn't figure something out. Usman's glasses were vaguely good enough to help her see. But then he jumped off a cliff and lost them in the ocean. So we checked out a couple opticians in Bosnia and Croatia and settled on a rough approximation of her prescription that made her pretty dizzy but at least made it safe for her to walk around alone. I can't claim to be any more with it - I FORGOT to order new contacts before I left so I was wearing the same 2-3 week pair for 7 weeks until Ida sternly told me to "get that shit out of your eyes!" Ida was really in the saddest situation because her vision is negative 7. That is WILD. Crossing into Serbia the border control man gave her all of our passports back to hand out and she tried to play it cool for a second but was clearly not going to make it work hahaha. Finally Usman - he just ended up wearing Aisha's glasses until he bought some contacts in Dubrovnik.
Okay... I just didn't want to forget our train wreck.
So this is me, Aisha, and Ida in Kotor, Montenegro. PROOF.
Belgrade is fantastic. And fantastically HOT. We pretty much melted into the city with our Burek and ice cream and Turkish coffees. The hostel we stayed at "Green Studio Hostel" http://www.greenstudiohostel.com/ - which I will highly recommend to anyone. SUPER friendly staff and a great atmosphere for meeting people. I have never been at a hostel that makes such a sincere and effective effort to facilitate the guests hanging out. Every night one of the staff would take a group out to some place in Belgrade. That got us to the famous boats along the Danube river that a moored party huts essentially. Pretty funny. We met some great people - particularly an outgoing Australian guy who was traveling alone and had never been to a non English speaking country. He was so extremely open minded and up for anything - great guy!
Here we are next to the Danube in Belgrade! We met up with an HIA friend that we had met in Sarajevo - she did the CPH program in 2009. She's living in Berlin now doing her masters program and her roommate is Serbian so she had a little Balkan tour of her own after the conference. It was super cool to hang out with her friend, ask her a little about Belgrade. It is a hip city! Hahah... I just revealed how NOThip I am. Anyway - it seems to me like a place that reveals itself pretty slowly. Definitley has a rough edge. It's not as majestically beautiful as a lot of European cities - more industrial type buildings riddled throughout - but there definitely is a healthy amount of Austo-Hungarian architecture and old sweeping buildings.
Belgrade has some fantastic graffiti... We spent quite a lot of time slowly walking along the shady bits of street and looking at the walls.
We made it to the fortress and then cowered in the shady area for quite some time... I'm telling you, SO HOT. The veneration for air-con displayed by some members of our party got a little creepy. Our veneration for ice cream, however, was only appropriate. On this day Sofia and I switched clothes.... it was almost like wearing clean clothes!
One of the absolute coolest experiences we had while in Belgrade was going to an abandoned warehouse that has been converted into a Jazz club. There are many artists in musicians living in the facility and the police don't come by - it's self governed. Lots of graffiti all around - and definitely politically bent stuff. On the very top there's a balcony overlooking the city where the jazz takes place. VIEWS!!! I love getting an overview of new places. Awesome atmosphere there.
Belgrade by night! Loads and loads of bridges.
I love my friends. They're fascinating people - highly intelligent, passionate about human rights, engaging conversationalists and all around fun people to be around. But as a group... we really miss some of the finer points of organization from time to time. Throughout this entire trip three of us struggled with some sort of vision impairment due to a high propensity for having our heads in the clouds. Also... NEERRDDD alert - I have sorta bad eyes but Usman, Aisha, and Ida are essentially blind. It all makes too much sense.
First there was Ida... She brought her glasses case... but unfortunately it had no glasses in it. And she only brought enough contacts for the conference.... so she was about to be blind as a bat if we didn't figure something out. Usman's glasses were vaguely good enough to help her see. But then he jumped off a cliff and lost them in the ocean. So we checked out a couple opticians in Bosnia and Croatia and settled on a rough approximation of her prescription that made her pretty dizzy but at least made it safe for her to walk around alone. I can't claim to be any more with it - I FORGOT to order new contacts before I left so I was wearing the same 2-3 week pair for 7 weeks until Ida sternly told me to "get that shit out of your eyes!" Ida was really in the saddest situation because her vision is negative 7. That is WILD. Crossing into Serbia the border control man gave her all of our passports back to hand out and she tried to play it cool for a second but was clearly not going to make it work hahaha. Finally Usman - he just ended up wearing Aisha's glasses until he bought some contacts in Dubrovnik.
Okay... I just didn't want to forget our train wreck.
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