We left Sarajevo in perfect mood. This city gave us a lot of joy and showed us the true magic of the Balkans. Next hitch-hiking direction: Belgrade.

We arrived very quickly at the border, and the Serbian borderlanders were angels compared to those who troubled us on the border in Bosnia... Unfortunately, we were unable to reach the capital city because we got stuck somewhere on a Serbian rurals...

Serbia

_{Dogs protect themselves from the heat under a truck on the Bosnian-Serb border.}

_{A charming bus stop right after crossing the border.}

It started to darken. A young guy appeared on the scooter and said that we can spend a night at his... tennis club. We agreed without hesitation. We went there with two of his friends. We were offered a beer, listened to some blues and with that we were simply chilling as much as we could. Serbian hospitality was shown from the very best side on the first day in this country! Then the newly met Serbs left us and we could take advantage of club's shower and go to sleep.

_{Monument from Yugoslavia times.}

_{Sweet rest after hard journey :3}

_{Sweet rest and relaxation part two!.}

_{The morning next day was pretty much as sweet as yesterday's rest with it's breakfast! It is hard to thank for such hospitality.}

Belgrade

Eventually, we were taken to Belgrade by... two Chinese guys. We could not, of course, exchange any understanding with them (except for the word "Belgrade"). In Belgrade we anchor ourselves in a hostel, to which I will come back later on this journey. We used the free walking tour, thanks to which we got to know a little about the history of the city (the first settlement was settled 7000 thousand years ago! was levelled to the ground several dozen times during wars with Turkey!) and Serbia, the culture of the country and general attractions and locations in Belgrade. In the evening we bought rakija (the Balkan moonshine) in order to consume it in the Student's Park - a place bustling with nightlife, filled up mainly by students (as the name says it). We spent the evening with two charming Serbian girls (taken unfortunately!), emptying the bottle once again while singing Beatles' songs, half while dabbling those fragments of the lyrics that we couldn't remember.

_{View from our hostel.}

_{Flag of Serbia. Very large flag of Serbia.}

_{Typical picture in Belgrade underground passageway.}

_{? ? ?}

_{The coolest banknotes ever!}

The next day we succeeded in visiting more of the city, the museum of Nikola Tesli and the Church of Saint Sava, which is said to be the world's largest Orthodox Christianity church. The museum had a characteristic urna with its ashes, but as a certain "teslist" said to us (a man who writes a book about Tesla's biography, supposedly writing a book about him - we've met him in the hostel) - in fact, his ashes rest in the basement of the Vatican...

_{The ashes of Tesla (supposedly).}

_{Tesla coil in action.}

_{Church of Saint Sava in detail.}

_{Pseudo-macro of one of the icons found in the Church. A photograph taken by taking out the lens and reversing it and applying it to the body of the camera (just like the first photo in the article).}

Belgrade delighted me above all with the gamut of modernism in architecture. Even the huge blocks far away from the center aroused respect and somehow they did so less offensive than those located in Poland. I fell in love with the Serbs for their directness, playfulness and great kindness. The greyness of the buildings spreading across the horizon, light dirt and chaos, the spectacular Sava Danube mouth and the fact that it is not as touristic as other capital cities of the Balkans have built a very interesting image of the city.

_{NATO bombed building of the Yugoslav Ministry of National Defence.}

_{They gave us a cappuccino along with the straws.}

_{Sava River mouth to the Danube.}

_{Serbia, somewhere there. The flag of Macedo.... echm, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia seems to appear in the sky! ;)}

From Belgrade we planned to go to a completely abstract place on the map of Europe, without knowing exactly what we could meet there. Our goal was Liberland.

To be continued... ;)

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Previous posts from the Wandering Memories series:

#1 Exciting Slovenia - or how I got lost at a height of 2500 meters
#2 The sharpest turn of my life
#3 An Eclectic Guide to the Music of the Balkans
#4 Charming Croatia - a night in a magical forest & hypnotizing turquoise lakes
#5 Hitch-hiking Adventures in Dalmatia
#6 Five Star Hotel for FREE?! The Bay of Abandoned Hotels
#7 Dubrovnik, Mostar, Sarajevo