Belgrade? Beograd? or Београд? Maybe it doesn't matter what you call this city or how you write it. Because it's a pretty great city. The kind of city that you have to dig into to really enjoy. It's not outwardly shiny but I think that it's worth exploring. We spent only a couple of days but we could have done much more. Especially if we'd wanted to jump into the nightlife.  This said we still still had fun even just sticking our toes into test the water.

[caption id="attachment_3171" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Beograd Main Square "]<a href="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/img_4966.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-3171" title="Beograd Main Square " src="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/img_4966.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="333" /></a>[/caption]

I guess if it's not already clear, I should make it so. I traveled with my friend R. for the entire month of July. We met up in Budapest and parted ways in Sofia. It was a pretty great adventure. Now you're going to see her and hear a lot about her as I recount our trip through the Balkans.  I just hope that I can capture all of the funny moments and probably some of the not so funny moments as well.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="403" caption="R. &amp; C. in Beograd"]<img title="R. &amp; C. in Beograd" src="http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs133.ash2/39993_668276231925_1413925_38164666_4235462_n.jpg" alt="" width="403" height="302" />[/caption]

From Budapest R. and I headed to Belgrade by train. It took us about 7 hours.  The first half of the trip was pretty straightforward. <!--more-->Then on the Serbian side of the border I couldn't remember where we were going when the asked by the passport control man. R. stepped into save me. Thanks! I got my passport stamped and we were on our way. Only about this time the train air conditioning went off and at Novi Sad a couple of hours from Belgrade the train filled up with EXIT festival goers making for a hotter smellier ride that I otherwise would have imagined. This meant that Belgrade was crawling with EXIT fest-ers.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="403" caption="Unsmiling in front of the Tito Museum "]<img title="Unsmiling in front of the Tito Museum " src="http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs253.snc4/39993_668276221945_1413925_38164664_2365330_n.jpg" alt="" width="403" height="302" />[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_3172" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Tito&#039;s Museum: The road is always better than the inn..."]<a href="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/img_4963.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-3172 " title="Tito's Museum: The road is always better than the inn..." src="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/img_4963.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="333" /></a>[/caption]

Luckily, I'd decided to reserve our hostel a few weeks earlier on hostelworld. We stayed at an amazing hostel: <a href="http://www.hostelchehostel.com/" target="_blank">Hostelche</a>.  It was small, friendly and ultra-hip. The staff were incredibly kind, funny and helpful. <em>And</em>, the hostel was clean. Yeah, that's a lot of great things happening in one space. Oh and coffee and breakfast as well.

Oh and the best thing was that the hostel is literately right next to one of my favorite restaurants in Belgrade. Restaurant "?" The restaurant is across from a big orthodox church "Saborna crkva." The food is excellent. It's Serbian. (I will say though that Serbian food seems to be pretty closely related to Bulgarian food--gasp, gasp.)

[caption id="attachment_3175" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="A warning on the streets of Belgrade: Watch out! "]<a href="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/img_4969.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-3175" title="Watch out! " src="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/img_4969.jpg?w=200" alt="" width="200" height="300" /></a>[/caption]

I'd been to Belgrade before so I more or less knew my way around but it was the first time for R. So we decided to hit up the Tito museum, the Tesla Museum and castle on the hill. We also drank Serbian beer, ate plenty of meat and topped it off with a couple of scoops of ice cream and some post cards.

Belgrade is actually a city that I like a lot. It feels a little bit like Sofia but has a few more traces of the Hapsburgs.  The streets seem a little wider but the traffic is just as manic as Sofia.  The thing I continually got a kick out of was all of the signs in Cyrillic and in Latin--that I could read given my Bulgarian.

The hardest thing to see/swallow/stomach are the bombed out building from the NATO air strikes in the 1990's. The city still has these buildings standing in and around the downtown area.  You turn a corner and bam there it is. It takes my breath away every time I see it.

I really like the Tito Museum. It's a little bit over the top. It's also appropriately kitsch. I bought a great Tito t-shirt using my "bad Serbian" which was actually Bulgarian. The old man working at the gift shop thought it was great fun that I was speaking to him in Bulgarian. He laughed and then gave me two Tito stickers. R. thought the whole thing was hysterical.  She also got a kitschy Tito tote bag. For the record I am hitting myself right now because I don't know why we didn't pose without gear on in front of the museum. What were we thinking?!

For better or worse, Belgrade was a quick stop on our way to Montenegro. We'd planned to take a night train from Belgrade to Bar but the overnight train was completely booked. We ended up on the afternoon train. I think that we we left at 1pm or so. The downside? We didn't get to Bar until 11:30pm.  It was a long, hot train ride and this is not a train that's known for timeliness. It was later than Lonely Planet suggested, later than the posted train schedule and even later than our hostel guessed. Oh, and the train was hot. Really hot. It was is miserable at the time but a few weeks later it's gotten that much harder to remember.

I guess that's a good thing.