Godspeed to Olympos, Sun, 03 Sep 2023 | written by Simon
Simon at a City in Europe, Serbia

I set off towards Belgrade making a stop at Sremsky Karlovsky. It’s a cute little village with a lot of wineries and I quaint little centre. I stumbled upon a mass in the orthodox church and the one thing that immediately struck me was the choir singing together with the priest and bringing a little bit more beauty into the mass.

In Belgrade, I managed to find a parking spot right in front of the Nicola Tesla Museum. Coming here on Sunday was a good call, as parking is free. There are hourly tours at the museum and one the one starting next was in Serbian, so I went to the church of San Sawa first. San Saba is the patron saint of the Serbian orthodox church, which he established after Serbia gained independence from the Byzantine Empire. After the Ottomans have conquered these lands, they took the relics of San Sawa, transported them to Belgrade, and burnt them. On the 300th anniversary of that event, towards the end of the 19th century, the Serbs decided to build the massive church modelled on the Hagia Sophia to honour the saint. They started in the 20s, but WW2 and then the Communist occupation made it impossible to complete it. The construction was only resumed in the 80s and finished in the 00’s, so it’s all pretty fresh. The sheer scale and the decorations are impressive, but it’s certainly more of a monument than a church.

I went back to the Tesla Museum for the guided tour and it was an equal measures impressed and disappointed. I was impressed because they had some of Tesla’s inventions and demonstrated their working, including a massive coil sending 500,000 Volt through the air to light up a bunch of light bulbs. But also disappointed, because the museum is actually really small and there isn’t that much in there. The most precious exhibit of course is an urn with Tesla’s ashes. He died in the US and it’s really interesting that his remains were brought to Belgrade, as Tesla has only been in the city once for three days and his entire life and he wasn’t even born in the modern Serbian territory.

I went on to walk around town visiting San Mark’s church, the fortress, the state museum, and a bunch of other places. I’ve seen a couple more weddings and found that a brass orchestra is just a regular occurrence at those. There is a crazy amount of architectural mismatch of really ugly modern and hodgepodge neostyle buildings. The Republic Square in particular is a wonder of architectural mess with classicist State Museum and Opera, functionalist grey blocks, shitty Soviet office buildings and a very modern Marriott Hotel. It is remarkably ugly.

I find Belgrade to be a place that is probably worth living in more than it is worth visiting. There aren’t that many great monuments in here, but the city does seem to be teaming with life and it’s certainly has a very interesting alternative look and a party scene. It is also pretty international and I’ve heard quite a few languages spoken on the streets. It kind of makes me feel like home in Berlin a bit.

But it’s time to leave the cities behind. I’m not off to the deep countryside on a hunt for monasteries.