Drove on a toll road to Niš. Looks decent. Speed limit is 130, but a lot of people drive much faster. Just to be safe, I checked the map — it definitely wasn't a German Autobahn.

There were construction zones more often than I would've liked. Four lanes turn into two, the median disappears, and the speed limit drops to 80 (actually even lower in practice, thanks to the trucks and buses). When you're driving there, you start wondering why they're charging you for this :(

The only consolation is that the toll is relatively cheap. I drove two sections of about 100 km each and paid 700 dinars (~6€) total.

Successfully completed the quest "ride Tito's blue train." Now I'm going to grab a pastry from the shelf.

In a hangar on the outskirts of Belgrade sits a blue train that Yugoslav dictator Josip Broz Tito often traveled on. Since 2005, anyone can come and see the train from the inside and outside. But there are a couple of quirks.

The train is open for visits only on weekdays from 8 AM to 2 PM. You need to book in advance, at least two days before your visit (details about the process here; I emailed them, but they don't respond very quickly).

You need a ticket to enter. But they don't sell them on-site—you have to go to the central train station. And get this: they wouldn't sell it to me a day in advance, saying I had to come the day of the visit. When buying, the cashier called someone—I figured to verify my reservation (though I could be wrong; I don't understand Serbian well enough yet). I'm curious what they do if someone shows up at the ticket window at 6 AM when there's no one to check with? By the way, they took my ticket back after the visit. They could've let me keep it as a souvenir. It's pretty cool.

Finding the train wasn't easy. There are basically no signs or markers anywhere. Following local tips, I found the entrance to the hangar. There were some people sitting around smoking nearby. They helped me find the guy with the keys to the train and brought over the tour guide—an extremely taciturn young guy (partly because he doesn't really speak English, and I haven't learned Serbian yet). But now I know which part of the train Tito himself slept in, where his wife slept (spoiler: in a separate compartment), and where Charles de Gaulle stayed (spoiler: also in a separate compartment, but a different one). I read everything else on Wikipedia.

The train was actively used in the 1960s-1970s. After the dictator died in 1980, it's just been parked there. Even by today's standards, everything inside is built quite solidly. The interiors are pleasant, without gaudy luxury or gold toilets. Though Siemens did equip the cars with air conditioning back then. Maybe that was cooler than toilets at the time. But what surprised me most were the bathtubs on the train (I counted two). I hope they didn't flood the entire car all the time.

Plus, there are all sorts of amusing little details: in the conference room, Tito's chair is the widest one, and in his office sits a complete collection of Lenin's works (:

The place doesn't seem to attract many tourists at all (which isn't surprising given the whole process). After I left, they closed up the train and left, and it wasn't even 10 AM yet. I might have been the only visitor all day.

Belgrade has a metro that doesn't exist. The city is jokingly called a half-metropolis because of this (it rhymes perfectly in Serbian — "pola metropola" or "metropola samo do pola").

Serious conversations about building an underground railway started in the early 20s. No, not the current twenties, but those from a hundred years ago, the 1920s. World War I had just ended and people wanted to rebuild their lives. By the end of the 1930s, there was a plan to build three metro lines, but World War II started and priorities changed dramatically.

People only started thinking about the metro again around the 1970s and spent a long time discussing future plans. In the early 1980s, they finally made a decision and wanted to bring in the USSR to help with construction in exchange for paying off foreign trade debt. But the Croats and Slovenes didn't agree to this: the debt was to all of Yugoslavia, not just Belgrade. So the capital's residents were left without a metro once again.

By the mid-1990s, they did dig some tunnels and build two whole stations. One of them, Vukov spoménik, is the deepest station in Europe outside the former USSR. 43 meters! But they don't operate as a metro: nowadays suburban trains run there. And they run rarely. Once an hour, if there are no strikes. I went down to the station once to look around, and lucky for me, a train arrived a couple of minutes later. If I'd come five minutes later, I would've only seen an empty platform.

The train in the video is from right there. Covered in graffiti. Old, beautiful.

Anyway, we've reached modern times. There's still no subway. But they promise it's coming soon. Around 2015, the Serbian government estimated the project at ~1 billion euros. France decided to help, and so far the French government has allocated over 8 billion euros for construction. But for some reason, the timelines keep getting pushed back ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In November 2021, preparatory work supposedly started. But actual construction is promised to begin only in 2023. And they're threatening to deliver all 43 planned stations by 2030 (opening of the first line in 2028). We'll see when they actually open them. If they do :)

On Russia Day, anti-war protests are happening in many major cities outside the country. Belgrade is no exception. They picked an interesting spot: right in front of the Moscow hotel entrance (:

Not that many people showed up, but there weren't just Russians there—there were Belarusians and Ukrainians too. Even some Serbs. But there was literally no police presence at all. It was really strange to actually see a protest in person where nobody's trying to detain or beat anyone.

https://youtu.be/v3RQ6x9qD8w

Yay, found an apartment for the long term! But I really didn't enjoy searching for housing in this overheated market.

First, I was let down by the local rental websites. You go in and see tons of listings with attractive conditions. But then you suddenly notice that most of the offers were posted last year and haven't been updated in forever. You set up filters to show only fresh options, and your choices suddenly shrink. Plus the conditions aren't that interesting anymore.

You start calling through the filtered listings, and way too often you hear that the apartment is either already rented or the owners don't want to rent to foreigners. Some of them you can't even get through to in the first place (they don't answer). You message them, they read it, but there's no response.

Half (maybe more) of the listings are from agencies, not owners. In that case, you'll have to pay half a month's rent for their services. And you're definitely not paying the apartment owner.

Since February 24th, a ton of people unexpectedly moved to Belgrade. Which of course affected rental prices. If before you could easily find great options for 6-7 euros per square meter, now 9-10 is already a good offer. Plus 80-150€ for utilities on top (depending on heating type and other details). Overall you can find cheaper, but it's either on the edge of the world, or the apartment is completely trashed, or both.

A noticeable portion of apartments are rented with no furniture at all. Where there is furniture, there probably won't be dishes and other essentials. You'll have to spend some money when you move in.

But overall, I'm thankful the process isn't like in Germany, where they basically interview you before renting, and then you move in a month or two or three later.

Before searching, it's helpful to figure out the neighborhood too. That's when I discovered this brilliant hoodmaps. For regular travel, there wasn't much need to study what's going on in different neighborhoods (though I did regret not checking where I'd be staying a couple times when I ended up in a bad area). But here, in a semi-joking way, it's got everything you need (and it's pretty accurate too).

Speaking of moving services, there's another great tool — numbeo. It shows pretty accurately how much your expenses will change in a new place. The calculations use the current exchange rate, so factor in some volatility.

Luck played a big role in my search: I called about another listing that was already rented, but the people had another apartment they hadn't really managed to publish anywhere yet. I came to look, liked it, and we signed the contract right away.

PS. If you're really curious, you can browse options here or here.

Is this how you imagined a Serbian wedding too?
(though it's not quite clear why the musician got hit in the forehead)

Today I discovered that cevapcici actually comes from kebab. The similar name and recipe kind of hinted at it, but I only connected the dots now.

The Turks brought the dish to the Balkans along with Ottoman rule. Over time, it adapted to the local language and cuisine and became cevapcici. Plus a smaller version emerged — cevapcici (in Russian, we'd call them kebabchiki).

Almost every major city has its own recipe. The most popular is the Sarajevo version. And the most unusual one is from Banja Luka: cevapcici linked together. I really need to make it there someday to check it out.

PS. A few more Turkish loanwords: the white stuff on the plate is kajmak — and in Serbian it's kajmak 🙃

Smoking is super common in Serbia. According to official statistics, over 40% of the adult population smokes. And you can smoke anywhere—even in cafes and restaurants. So you'll often walk into a place and think you could hang an axe in there, it's so smoky.

Sometimes you can escape to outdoor seating if they have it. But even that doesn't always work: I walked past a sports bar patio the other day and it was still uncomfortably smoky even outside.

There are places where owners don't allow smoking. Enthusiasts mark these places on Google Maps. For example, here are some spots in Belgrade.

PS. Even though everyone smokes everywhere, I haven't seen cigarette butts scattered all over the streets. Overall, it's clean and tidy here.

#funfact: While I was working on a text about McDonald's, I found out there's an actual real University of Hamburgerology (I'm not joking). Though, they don't actually teach you how to eat hamburgers correctly there—they teach food service management.

I uncovered an amazing story about McDonald's in Serbia and just had to share it. Brew yourself a cup of coffee with a Big Mac and read my short longread. Hope you'll enjoy it.

If Putin in Russia is lifting his country off its knees, then in Serbia he's putting the EU on its knees 🙈

Really hoping this is just some ultra-right wing newsstand, because you don't see this particular mix of headlines everywhere.

It's pretty surprising that in Belgrade they still sell paper newspapers in lots of places. Like the internet was never invented.