Belgrade reminds me of Berlin: it's an ugly city that manages to be extremely charming. I don't know why. Perhaps it's the weight of history, but this feels like a cool place even though there aren't a lot of epic views or instagramable moments.
I arrived on Monday from New York, via a Stockholm transfer. Belgrade was going through a heatwave so I prepared with shorts and t-shirts. Of course a European heatwave is a 'mildly uncomfortable day in Miami' so I wasn't stressed out about a little humidity.
I'm staying with Ron, a college friend. He rented an airbnb along the Terazije main stretch. The apartment is under the name 'Stankovich' and there is a bit of a Soviet odor when I entered. Old world, a bit musty and dusty. But the Stankovich abode is huge and filled with odd experimental art. All the bedroom closet doors and drawers are locked so my room is a bit of mess with me living out of my suitcase on the floor. Every few minutes the building shakes from the cable cars passing by and the chords attached to the building that whip around and create minor tremors. For me, this means deep sleep.
Vibrat8.
When I was Nicaragua I discovered vibration-induced sleep. David and I were taking a late-night taxi from the Managua airport to a sleepy resort near Playa Gigante. The roads were extremely rough and unpaved. I passed out and slept the whole way through the trip, through the driver getting lost, through him finding the place in the middle of the forrest, through getting stopped by guards for an hour outside the resort. The next day I was told all these things happened but I only remembered the sensation of falling into a deep dark sleep. I chalked it up to a long flight and the heat. But every time we drove around Nicaragua I couldn’t keep my eyes open. The bumpy roads and rocky rides would knock me out. A few years later I moved into a shared basement apartment in queens and my neighbors liked to blast the wall with the deep bass of their stereo. When they watched a big Oscar De La Hoya fight or invited ppl over for a party, it became my slumberland. I would lie down in my bed and let the vibrations take me away. Frequently my roommate would call the cops to complain about the noise and fights would break out at the neighbors’ parties but it was so peaceful. Tonight I lied down in this very small double bed unsure of how I was going to get to sleep until the buses started passing by the Lord Stanković manor. Then it was lights out. Thank you for the stanky sleep.
First day in Belgrade. Walking around with Ron, hanging out with his friends from the tv show “Serbia’s Got Talent,” enjoying the food, walking through the main square, hopped up on Turkish coffee to overcome the jet lag.
The next day I took a tour of of St. Sava Church and Belgrade Fortress. Belgrade fortress is a 2,000 year old fortification built by the Roman Empire to establish its outer border. It sits on Danube River and has been under the control of Romans, Ottomans, Hungarians, and various empires over the centuries. There are mosque water fountains from the Ottoman Empire that still work.
Church of St. Sava gave me chills. It was awe inspiring in that I don't have the words to describe the feeling when I entered. Was it holy or was I just overwhelmed with the beauty and gold-laced ceilings? Maybe it was both or neither. Maybe I was dehydrated after spending hours at the fortress, but I was struck with the feeling of reverence.
Later that day we went to the last perfume artist in Belgrade. Nenad runs Caba, a fourth generation family perfume boutique. The fragrances don’t have names. Only secret codes for the fragrances they make in the shop. He’s passing the legacy on to his son.
We spent about 45 minutes getting our scents right. Standing in a store with two other adults as we occasionally sniff each other’s forearms and wrists. Two sample scents on each arm, so 3 ppl working together means we can get a range of 12 different scents, from citrus-y to wood to cinnamon to classic floral, etc. I walked away with a very small airport appropriate bottle of my scent. I intend on wearing it throughout this trip.
The night ended at Tri Sesira with rich Balkan food and lots of singing. The restaurant band fluttered around the outdoor space, blasting out folk songs. Ron sang a few songs with them. It was Black soul meets Serbian soul. They went through a few Serbian kafana hits.
As a kid I was so impressed by ppl who went to a bunch of European cities. Then I got over here for the first time and I realized:
1) Europe is small AF. It ain't like America. These ppl have been fighting epic wars with each other for centuries. I read about them and thought they were these huge distinctive kingdoms. Then you get over here and realize these ppl were all cousins who were a carriage ride away. 2) EU made enormous investments in trains, planes, and highways so travel is easy and cheap 3) it takes more effort/planning to go to from Miami to Orlando than to go from London to Paris to Berlin. That's both a feature of European smallness and a flaw in America's lack of easy, quick trains. 4) Granted, America is HUGE. Take a road trip through the middle of America and it really does feel like different nations when you go from Tennessee to Arkansas to Oklahoma to Iowa. 5) yes our trains are awful but it's a lot easier to have this neat superfast trains when the distance is so short and the nations are so compact 6) living most of my life in coastal American cities -like LA, NY, Miami- has given me 'geography dysmorphia.' One of the best things I did was actually venturing across America in buses and cars. Not planes. But actually driving across the country and realizing 'this place is HUGE.' 7) there is racism or let's call it 'bias' in Europe but it's a lot different. In London, I met so many Polish ppl who looked scared or like they had to make themselves small. I didn't know that Polish ppl were treated like crap. The Polish hatred is fueled by a soft white supremacy poked by a recent wave of immigrants. It's shiftable according to who the 'new immigrants are' but it's not hardwired with laws. There's not going to be giant lynching parties to kill a lot of Polish ppl b/c there is no infrastructure to support that strong a hatred 8) in America our racism is HARDT. It's built into our nation's documents in thousands of ways. It's built into the formation of our police forces, armies, enforcement of laws. At every turn, race is a factor. We have the cultural, historical, legal infrastructure to let unarmed black people get shot again and again. We have the infrastructure in our history and legal bias to support gross systemic inequalities. Our police and armed forces are riddled with white supremacists and right-wing sleeper cells b/c the philosophical underpinnings of 'enforcement and punishment' in America is based upon color. 9) in Europe one of the key biases WAS religion. And that still exists, but its undercut by the youth's indifference and atheistic views. Yes, there's still discrimination against Muslims and Hindus and the 'other' but the rise of atheism and agonistic young ppl
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