Belgrade is like any other landlocked metropolis in summer. Well, no. Not really. Most Belgraders will tell you the heat coming off the asphalt is unbearable, the traffic almost as much of a mess as it is in winter, people are cranky, too many tourists in recent years, the crowds downtown and at the malls simply annoying… and the list of complaints from most locals goes on. Whatever the season, and Belgrade is fortunate enough to have all four seasons vividly expressed each year, I find myself in one of my weird expat-repat limbos. Summer is a time when I enjoy connecting with some of the foreigners visiting Belgrade, because they see what I see in Belgrade. The details that the locals either take for granted or miss entirely.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again – Belgrade is at least 16 cities in one. Whether you’re a rave-loving, party ’til you drop, club-hopping college student, a middle aged, intellectual history buff or a stay-at-home mom of three – Belgrade has a corner (several in fact) that you can call your own. Unlike most other cities that have all the urban amenities one could desire, Belgrade won’t make you conform to it. It leaves room for you to work out a signature quilt of your own from its many patches.
We’ve recently had the pleasure of having Adam Daniel Mezei in Belgrade, a fascinating character I added a while ago to my on-line third tribe list (a.k.a. members of my personal Non-Aligned Movement), and he is now back for a second visit. Before getting here on Sunday, he conducted a little poll among a few locals he had met before – he asked for a list of 3 favorite things about Belgrade. I haven’t gotten into the results of that poll with him, but he did share answers from a few people. The answers I saw were vague and bland, if anything. It’s high time I made a list of my own here. I’ll begin with my favorite things and then go on to list 3 things I strongly dislike about Belgrade, just to be fair.
[Read more →]
Tags: Ada Ciganlija · Belgrade nightlife · Berlin · golf · Hipodrom Beograd · Kosutnjak · paintball · Paris · summer
It’s a stunning day in Belgrade. One of those most take for granted because it’s almost perfect. The view from my window looks like it was painted by one of the Dutch Masters and set under exquisite gallery lighting. And I am taking as much pleasure in viewing it as I would in an original Rembrandt hanging in my living room. This is happiness. We can describe the moment and attempt to convey the thoughts, but we can’t define the feeling.
The Coca Cola Company chose a team of three young people in late 2009 to travel the globe in pursuit of happiness and dubbed it Expedition 206. Their journey began in Madrid, where I happen to have been born, on January 1st of this year and will last until December 31st. During just this one year, Kelly Ferris, Tony Martin and Antonio Santiago will travel to the 206 countries where Coca Cola is present and, through serendipitous experiences of their own, try to discover what happiness is in each of these very distinct countries.
[Read more →]
Tags: Balkans · Coca Cola · cultural exchange · Expedition 206 · happiness · Serbia · summer · the pursuit of happiness · Travel
The on-line world – what a wonderful place. What a Mecca of speedy communication, improptu gatherings and information feeds. We are able to do most anything on-line these days – talk to a loved one who is far away, connect with long-lost friends, research a paper, employee or company we’re about to do business with, get the latest news and buy stuff, like a birthday gift for a dear friend. Wait. That last one is so effortless that it almost makes the gift meaningless. Unless you’ve Googled and hunted down the one gift that friend really, really wants. But what do you get the guy who doesn’t exactly have everything, but doesn’t want much either. What do you get a big, blue-eyed, overgrown teddy-bear looking guy that will go out of his way to help out not just a friend, but a young talented student or freelancer? What do you get the guy who pioneered on-line PR in Serbia?
Several of us, this guy’s on-line friends, were faced with this dilemma on the morning of June 7th, the day before the friend’s birthday. Zoran Knezevic, now living stateside, and I were chatting that morning and throwing around several ideas, most of them original and spiced up with a tad of humor. But nothing was wowing us. Then Zoran came up with a simple, old-school, killer suggestion – “How much would it cost to print up and hang a billboard in Belgrade?” We figured out it was chump change and a great idea – but probably way to late to get it up in time, like in the next 24 hours. Impossible. Well… I’m not comfortable with that word – “impossible”. Never did much like the sound of it. So I did me some multitasking – phone in one hand, keyboard with Google at my fingertips in the other, while Zoran did a mock up of the billboard.
Operation BB Mock Up
[Read more →]
Tags: Miloje Sekulic
Thanks to my globetrotting parents, I began travelling extensively before I could walk. Although I was born and raised abroad, mostly in Lisbon, we would always spend summers here in Belgrade. It was a home base of sorts throughout my childhood and teen years. Both of my older brothers enrolled at a university on Long Island, so NYC is another city I got to know well from an early age. You may notice that all three cities closest to my heart, the ones mentioned in this paragraph, are on large rivers – Belgrade on the majestic confluence of the Danube and the Sava, Lisbon on the mighty Tejo and NYC on the tender Hudson. You’ll also notice by my wording that I hold these rivers very near and dear. Whether it’s a force of habit or the natural connection I have to water – I could never ever live in a city that doesn’t have a large river running through its very core.
[Read more →]
Tags:
16-year-old Fran Kuseta, a seemingly proactive young man from Veli Losinj in Croatia, announced on his personal Twitter account after the closing of the first round of the fifth presidential election polls in Croatia on the evening of December 27th that he headed the social media campaign for one of the presidential candidates over recent months.*
The teenager, who describes himself as an “ambitious 16-year-old chap from Croatia” on his Twitter profile, sent out a tweet sometime after midnight local time saying, “I was the director of Social Media in the campaign of @NadanVidosevic. Expect a blog post soon.”
Fran Kuseta's Twitter profile picture
[Read more →]
Tags: Balkans · croatia · elections · social media campaign
Another thing I love about this town – the smell of winter in the air. The smell of smoke from firewood coming from the chimneys, typical homecooked local dishes, the crispness of the big snow that is yet to fall and, yes, just a touch of inner city smog. This particular mixture of smells exudes such a feeling of hospitality that I can’t help but feel like I’m at home. Makes no sense either, considering I was born and raised on the Iberian Peninsula. Yet Winter is the time of year when I hear Belgrade shouting out a big heartfelt, “Welcome home. It’s good to see ya!” at me. Go figure. It could be the fact that, regardless of the age group or layer of society you belong to, winter is the party season in Belgrade.
"A Calm Winter in Belgrade" from www.panoramio.com
[Read more →]
Tags:
I generally don’t like to copy/paste content from other blogs or sites but I’m willing to make an exception in this case. National Geographic happens to be one of my all time favorite magazines and I have always had great respect for this particular magazine. Untill this month. Karl Haudbourg, an expat lining in Belgrade and author of Serbia’s Ambassador to the World blog, noticed this letter to National Geographic editors and staff by Mima Stanojlović and posted it on his blog along with his comment. Ms. Stanojlović could not have critisized the author of the photographs and article in question any better. I have nothing to say but that I agree with her entirely and hope to see an adequate reaction from National Geographic as soon as possible. I would also have to agree with Karl’s comment on the matter – I am not shocked, but am thoroughly disappointed. The following is just a portion of the letter (I strongly recommend you read the full letter in Karl’s post):
Belgrade is not, as the photographs indicate, a miserable city inhabited by miserable people. The citizens of Belgrade are not barbarians as we have been presented in the Western media for more than a decade. On the contrary, the city is vibrant, open-minded, and hospitable with a positive attitude and its people are eager to speak English. Not long ago, it was the capital of the most advanced country in the Southeast Europe. A meeting place of the two rivers, the Danube and Sava, have shaped Belgrade into a proud and beautiful city, where the locals have a refreshingly relaxed approach to life. It’s also a place that takes pleasure seriously, offering one of the best clubbing scenes in Europe and a diverse cultural life, which, I am positive, Mr. Anderson has witnessed himself.
Tags:
On Friday afternoon I was in downtown Belgrade for a couple of business meetings. Aside from the unusually lovely weather in late November, it was a day like any other. I finished both meetings, packed my stuff and got on my cell to call a cab, with juste enought time to get home before my son got back from school. I got the same response from all three cab companies that I called: “We’re sorry but, as a gesture of support to the protests today, we won’t be working for the next hour.” Great. Thankfully, one of my business associates was there with his motorcycle and, knowing his faithful Yamaha steed would get us through almost any crowd or traffic jam, offered to give me a ride home.
Notice I didn’t even bother to ask exactly who was protesting or why. Prostests are so common in Belgrade that most of us tend to just try to ignore them unless they have something to do with the issues affecting our individual lives. Nevertheless, the information junkie that I am, I got home and ended up finding out that the students of the University of Belgrade were protesting new terms for fullfillment of requierments for certain financial aid for tuitions and so on. I wish them all the best in their efforts but I was a student a decade ago and my son is still in elementary school so I’m not really all that interested. Sorry. It did however remind me of a blog post I wrote and tucked away on my hard disk for future use. I thought I’d release it on the exact day that will mark 70 years since the first massive student protest in Belgrade but, with the current students planning on continuing their protest come Monday, this weekend seems like more appropriate timing. We’re taking that step back again now. The one I call retrograde. In fact, take a few steps back ’cause this picture isn’t just big. It’s huge. And you’re going to want to see it.
[Read more →]
Tags:
