Balkans Easter

Me and Tito in Belgrade unfinished

Good Friday -- Afte work I stuffed Henry into a carry-on suitcase and brought him scratching and howling to Sally's for the weekend. We had wine, cheese and crackers with Rene and then raced down the hill to the National Theater for The Barber of Seville. For $9 tickets we were in the fourth row. The theater was not full and the performances were not great. But it was cool. Instead of the usual 17th Centry French setting, this Barber was set in 1960s anywhere. Figaro arrived on state in a black leather jacket inside a VW with a guitar over his shoulder.

As I was climbing the stairs for home Boki, the interpreter, and Marlene, my guest from Denmark phoned and said to meet them for coffee. It was so late nothing was opened, but Boki said, "I know a guy." We ended up in Karuzo's, appropriate for after-opera. It's a tiny vegetarian place I must have passed a dozen times and never noticed near my house. It was closed too, but Sasha, the owner, saw Boki at his door and let us in for nearly 2 hours. We sampled his homemade cherry, walnut and honey brandy, his flourless cake and wine. I wanted to also try the special desert -- salty ice cream -- but got hold of myself at last. The place is fashioned like an upside down ship with wooden fittings and stained glass marine scenes and maps stuck on the tables.

Our plan was to set out for Belgrade at first light, but getting home at 2 a.m. ruined that idea. I woke up as usual at 7. I woke Marlena at 8:15 and then called Boki. "I bet you didn't expect to hear from us at this hour," I chirped.
"I was hoping," he answered. It seems that he began paying the price for the great night out at 3 a.m.

By 10:30 he got to my apartment with the rental car and we set out. We didn't get far because we decided we needed cappucinos. We got on the road for the 5-hour trip around 11 after loading up on drinks, rolls, patries, junk food and bananas.

Boki drove first then I took over the wheel at Doboj (pronounced Dough-boy like in Pillsbury) and drove through a strip of Croatia and into Serbia. Croatia wraps around Bosnia like a boa around an antelope so we did a lot of crossing from one border to another.

Serbia presents as a huge flat plain, endless and empty. But with the weather springlike and wet the trees and shrubs were all in bud and brilliant green. We arrived in high good spirts.

And missed the exit for the city centar. We had to backtrack and so got a quick view of this huge (population more than 2 million) somewhat shabby but very active city/

We had reservervations in two hotels and that was our first activity. We doubled parked in the street and check out first the Hotel Prag and then the Majestic. Both were modest and plain but the Majestic is in the heart of Knez Mihailova, the pedestrian downtown mall, minutes from palaces and museums and a park on the Sava and Danube rivers.

After unloading the car we had coffee at a great cafe next to the hotel in a swirl of people. Everyone was out Saturday because of the weather and lots of holy week activities in the churches. The orthodox calendar is a week off the Christian calendar -- Easter is next week here.

Buskers performed up and down the streets but the most popular act judging by the crowd was a group of Native Americans chanting in full war paint and eagle feathers. Marlena speculated that the Indians heard about the plight of Serbs at the hands of Americans and came to the Balkans to show their support.

A Roma band toured the area coming up on and surrounding couples trying to drink coffee outside. You get six guys with drums, french horns and trumpets blaring at you and you pay plenty in tips to get them to move on!

We walked through the beautiful Kalemegdan park overlooking the entire city and riverscape. It is the site of the Belgrade Fortress, a huge structure that formed the basis of the city's mostly ineffective defense against the Turks. Vendors in the park sold ice cream and doilies and artwork and old books. We shopped and walked, then set out for dinner in Skardlija.

This is a cobble-stoned 19th Century Bohemian quarter filled now with shops and restaurants. We ate outside on barbecue chicken and pork and veal soup then went to a little cafe called Masks for cappucinos -- again. Boki and Marlena danced to the African music playing in the cafe. I just laughed at them. The highlight of this little cafe were the signs marking the bathrooms: a big scrotum for men and an upside down monkey for women. Shocking!

Easter Sunday was rainy but we set out to see Tito's grave and the non-alignment center where he is memorialized. We went by tram and there were so few people there the guards gave us special attention. One let us stand right next to the Rolls Royce Queen Elizabeth gave Tito as a gift, though he balked at our taking the wheel. The car bears a big dent in the rear drivers-side fender, the result of NATO bombs falling on the warehouse where it had been stored.

Tito is buried under a huge marble box with his name in gold. Well, there are rumors he's not really buried there at all or that like Elvis he's still alive. The same building that contains his purported tomb also houses this weird exhibits of Tito Youth Batons.

Every year to mark the great man's birthday children throughout the country would organize for a big run, kind of like the Olympic torch run. From one end of the country to the other to Belgrade they would carry a baton, specially designed by an artist, for that year. There's so much about communist customs we never learned.

Actually anything in bad shape here is apt to be described as bomb damage. The old Chinese embassy, on the other hand, remains smashed into ruins. The Serbian Pentagon, on the other hand, is in perfect shape. It's just all the buildings around it pounded to the ground. Ah, I kept saying: my tax dollars at work.

We visited Parliament, a building notable for being stormed by protestors who wanted to oust Slobodan Milosevic, the evil nationalist ruler who started all the wars in the 1990s.

We had planned to stay late, but the bad weather prompted us to get on the road back for Sarajevo while it was still light. This is not a city high on tourist lists, but I would go back again.