Beograd (Belgrade), Serbia

Well, that train was exhausting! Two Serbians in my pseudo-sleeper train car wouldn't shut up for the better part of the eight hour ride. I couldn't even tell them to shut up because I don't know a lick of Serbian other than "Thank you". However, after the overnight train I made it to Serbia, still war torn with tanks roaming around and demolished buildings guarded by armed military forces. The soldiers forced another girl from New Zealand to delete her pictures of the still-destroyed buildings. Oh, but he didn't see me take my pictures, but then again I have pictures of the Sistine Chapel cieling and the Mona Lisa, even though they forbidden to take pictures of, haha.

I got off the train in Beograd at 7am and dropped my bags at a hostel planning on leaving them there until check-in time. I hopped on tram #2 which circles the city and proceeded to view the fortress. They proudly displayed parts of a downed U.S. stealth fighter. Now, Beograd has been detroyed and rebuilt over 40 times in its 1000+ year history, so there are ruins everywhere. The most recent from the U.S. airstrikes when Serbians were persecuting Albanians in Kosovo. I found one nice street in the whole city which was a pedestrian boulevard lined with cafes and restaurants. Other than that it was a large city devoid of tourists. Shopping was cheap as dirt however, shoe stores everywhere. They use the cryllic alphabet, so even reading street signs was difficult. After walking around for 5 hours and eating a unique Serbian meat burger with cheese and onions in it I decided I was not going to stay there for the night. So, I hopped on the noon bus to the Montenegran coast.