Belgrade: gypsies, hustlers and Rakija

Hey babes,

here I am in my serbian hostel making jokes with the owner and locals, and one girl from Italy that's staying here.
They're laughing with the southern dialects of this country, I laugh cause I don't understand a word of what they're saying. It's breakfast time.



I had a great sleep really, walked around Belgrade all morning yesterday. But it was too rainy andc I didn't feel like catching a cold so I bought myself a bottle of local rakija and went back to the hostel. Kind of hoping to meet up with some people and have a good chat. I did, ofcourse they all liked Rakija, they're Serbians :D...

the old castle on the hill.

lots of buildings like this around in the older neighbourhoods..

We spent all night slowly finishing the bottle, as the evening got older more and more people joined in and we had a blast. The old housekeeper/nightguard was a calm and gentle man and he let us have our drinks, they were all telling stories about Serbia and the government and the privatisation of government companies because the government was too broke to pay back it's loans...
The polish young guy next to me told us some stories about Poland in the 80's... and then they talked a while about Tito.

view from the mountain

The old man (Vladimir) told me a joke; 'you know in Serbia we have 5 seasons: spring, summer, fall, winter and WAR'. Straight to the point I guess...

Me and Boban, a local that lived at the hostel and was a self proclaimed salesman of everything and streetmusician, went out to the night supermarket to buy some food... He cooked it for me, this prepackaged serbian dish; a greasy goo of beans and separator meat.... a vegetarians dream.

From hostelbelgrade

Boban the king of Black Market and the hostels 'the big Man' - boss

We gulped it down and didn't make a fuss about it, than had some more beer and went to bed.
Oh and I did use the free internet well to skype call family and old friends, that was really healing too...
Now right now I just had breakfast and green tea and am sitting among the heavy smoking bunch again... oh my god the smoke last night in this little kitchen... crazy!!! sigarettes are very cheap here, and people smoke; old school!





snuck into a military meeting :p

Anyway, today I'm getting my act together and taking the nighttrain to Sofia, I hope to get a better sleep than on the one here from Sarajevo... The cops woke us up 5 times to stamp our passports, I have like 4 Croatian stamps now and 3 Serbians.... why? Don't ask me, I guess they like their stamps, I don't think the Bosnians have any yet though, otherwise I would have had more!
It's my own damn fault for being such a stamp collector :p...

bye all you lovers and loved ones out there
talk to you all soon

steven

and the beautifull lions of dawn ;) :