White city, blue Danube, black heart.

I had expected Belgrade to be a grim and gray place, full of unresolved post-communist problems and seething with latent outrage over the NATO bombings of 1999. There are certainly those aspects to the city, but it’s also a 1000-year-old riverside fortress town, a center of culture and the arts, and there remain charming remnants of the old Balkans; crooked little houses with low wooden ceilings, narrow cobbled streets, and an energetic street life bordering on the boisterous.

Belgrade shows its grim side first; the area around the train and bus stations is drab and full of the seedy characters you might expect would gravitate to the biggest city in the region. As you draw closer to the old town though, there are more and more trees and small parks, and the various government buildings are a grand reminder of the city’s time within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Republic Square is the edge of the old town proper and, from there, a graceful pedestrian boulevard leads arrow-straight towards the hill that watches over the place where the Sava River joins the mighty Danube on its way to the Black sea.

This is the point upon which lies the mammoth sprawling citadel of the local pale stone from which the city takes its name, Beo or Belo meaning white, and Grad meaning city or fortress. Kalemegdan Citadel is the city’s most imposing structure and with its fortifications, gates, churches, and military museum it will take at least half a day to explore.

Belgrade has also been home to some of the big names of 20th century history with Milošević, Tito, and Tesla likely to be among the most recognizable. Milošević is infamous for his role in the Balkan wars of the 1990s (and some of his behaviour at the war-crimes trials in The Hague), Tito is the partisan leader that fought off the Nazi-backed fascist Ustaše forces in WWII and held the diverse nations of Yugoslavia together until his death in 1980, and electrical genius Nikola Tesla is known as the father of the 20th century for his pioneering work with alternating current and it’s practical applications for the benefit of society.

Quick Tips:

If there’s one thing that every visitor to Belgrade should do before they arrive, it’s to take a few minutes to familiarize themselves with the Cyrillic alphabet. It's not as difficult as it might at first appear because much of the Cyrillic corresponds to the Latin alphabet and the individual letters are always pronounced in only one way. A basic understanding of Cyrillic is a great aid to your ability to ask questions and pronounce street names that you might be searching for.

The tourist information organization in Belgrade has a very helpful website with maps, tips on transport, accommodation and even weather forecasts. Within Belgrade they have an office on Terazije Avenue, just before it becomes Knez Mihailova, about halfway between the hotel Moscow and Republic Square.

The currency of Serbia is the Dinar, but the euro is often also accepted, especially in places accustomed to dealing with tourists. In January 2007, one euro bought about 85 Dinar, and one American dollar about 60, but it's always best to check current exchange rates online.

Belgraders tend to be enthusiastic cigarette smokers and if you’re a non-smoker you’re going to be part of a very small minority. I couldn't find a single non-smoking café or bar in the entire city (and my inquiries included asking at the tourist information office). Many establishments, however, have non-smoking areas set aside. Few of them are actually physically divided from the smoking areas, but they are still worth seeking out for the slightly less smoky air.

Best Way To Get Around:

Nikola Tesla international airport connects Belgrade with cities across Europe and the Middle East. If you’re arriving at the airport, the regular JAT shuttle buses will carry you to the center of the city for 160 Dinar. A taxi for the same route should be around 700 Dinar, but be careful to avoid unofficial taxis offering to negotiate a price without turning on the meter. Reputable companies include Beo-Taxi (tel. 970) and Zuti-Taxi (tel 9802).

Belgrade is reasonably well-connected by train to neighboring countries, and cities such as Budapest, Zagreb, and Sofia are a convenient distance for an overnight train journey. The overnight train to Bar on the Montenegrin coast is also a useful service. When we took it in January 2007, it departed at 11:10pm and cost 1336 Dinar (about €16). To that we also added 820 Din (€10) each for beds in a four-bed couchette car. There was no passport control at the Montenegrin border and we woke to find ourselves descending through jagged snow-topped mountain peaks towards the Adriatic coast. Spectacular!
Belgrade is also connected by bus to cities as far away as Amsterdam and Istanbul. Within Belgrade, the bus station and train station are on the same block within 20 minutes’ walk of the old town.

Within Belgrade, a dense and well-organized net of trams, trolleybuses, and buses will transport you around the city cheaply, if not stylishly. The 27 Dinar tickets are good for a single trip and useful for going, for example, to Dačo restaurant or to St. Sava’s church and the House of Flowers. There’s an automatic ticket dispenser close to all major stops and tickets can also be bought from the driver for a 50% surcharge.

Within Belgrade’s old town, the only transport that really makes sense is walking. Just watch out for some of the less cheerful chaps who would rather push you aside than deviate from their course.

If you find a street name that’s close but not the same as the one you’re looking for, then you’re probably in the right place. For example Kneza Mihaila and Knez Mihailova are the same street. The difference between the two versions is something like the difference between "Prince Michael St." and "Street of Prince Michael".

The intriguingly named ‘?’ (that’s the name: the question mark symbol) is an atmospheric little restaurant in the old town close to the citadel and the orthodox ‘Saborna’ cathedral.

The orthodox cathedral plays an interesting role in the name of the restaurant. Apparently, the establishment was previously named after the cathedral, but the priests took exception and insisted that it be changed. My guess is that the owner thought by giving his restaurant a new, unpronounceable name, people would continue to use the old one. If you don’t know Serbian and are restricted to foreign language sources, you’re stuck calling it ‘question mark’ and translating that to ‘znak pitanje’ if you need to ask directions.

If you’re thinking it all seems too hard to bother with, you’re wrong. It’s a great little restaurant and worth doing whatever is necessary to find it. The crooked walls and low dark ceilings are straight from 19th century Serbia, and the front door is one of those that seem to transport you back in time. The furniture and decorations are not as old as the building itself, but there’s certainly an air of the past clinging to them, as there is to the solidly traditional dishes available from the menu. Because the ready availability of a certain dish had played a pivotal part in convincing Francie to come to the snowy Balkans instead of sunny Tunisia for our holiday, it was always going to be the roast lamb for us.

Vegetarians can skip this paragraph; for that matter, traditional Serbian cuisine in general might be best avoided for all but the most flexible non-carnivores. A big earthenware dish arrived at the table and the tender lamb within was falling off the bone. Along with the potatoes that had baked in the same dish, a Serbian (capsicum/bell pepper) salad and some bread, it was plenty for the two of us. The lamb was 450 Dinar, the salad 110, and a large bottle of mineral water was 120. That equates to about €9 which we felt was excellent value, but perhaps it was partly because we hadn’t tasted lamb for so long and were looking forward to it so much.

All this took place in the dining room, which is off to the side of the main room. The dining room contained about six tables and enough space for about forty people altogether, although the low ceilings and chain-smoking locals would make the place pretty unpleasant if it were full. The main room, containing the bar and the door to the street, was furnished with low wooden tables and traditional old semi-circular stools. The wood-fired stove and crazy flue-piping reminded me a little of childhood roast dinners in my grandparents’ kitchen on the farm, and it was pleasant to find such a homey place in the center of bustling Belgrade.

It’ll be the first place I go to eat if I’m ever back there.

Biblioteka is a stylish but comfortable café restaurant on the main boulevard Terazije, which later becomes the pedestrian artery, Knez Mihailova. It served the best coffee that we found in Belgrade.

We just stumbled across Biblioteka (the library) one morning as we walked into town, and decided to try it out on the principle that if it’s full of locals, it can’t be too bad. Its central location just across from the Hotel Moscow no doubt contributes to its popularity and, even on the morning we stopped in there early for breakfast, most seats were already full.

While there were a full range of meals on offer, from double hamburgers (345DIN) right up to beef steak dishes (880-900DIN), we chose more breakfast-like meals. Three eggs and well-cooked bacon (bekendegs) were 210DIN each, my espresso with milk was 118DIN and Francie’s hot chocolate was 149, so with a little extra for bread, the whole thing was about 750DIN (almost €10) for the two of us. Not bad value considering the quality of the food and central location of the café.

The space was pleasant to spend time in, too; dark wooden tables, chairs, and benches upholstered in leather, and shelves of books, magazines, and newspapers all around gave the café a thoughtful and literary atmosphere. There was a good mixture of people who had come to gossip or debate with friends and others who’d come alone to read the newspapers or spend their time contemplatively smoking and staring off into space. Biblioteka follows the custom of displaying historic prints of the city around the walls, and if it hadn’t been for the waiters in their bright-green gingham-checked shirts and the electro-jazz music on high rotation, the interior could almost have passed for that of an old-school Viennese café.

The service was friendly and prompt, the menu was available in English, and really the only thing I could possibly complain about would be the smoking arrangements. Belgrade being Belgrade, I guess I should be happy that there was a non-smoking section provided at all, but I didn’t really see the point when the smoking section nominally ended at table 16 and the non-smoking began at table 17 with nothing to physically separate them, not even a thin curtain or low screen.

In a city without a single dedicated non-smoking café though, I’d happily return to Biblioteka and would probably even try something from the cake cabinet to go along with a cup of their excellent coffee.

Dačo is a fantastic restaurant.

Being some way out of the center of Belgrade, it’s a little bit difficult to get to and that seems to discourage a few people. Even our hostel reception couldn’t tell us how to get there and suggested a taxi, which would have been about €5; enough for two big desserts. We decided to figure out the inexpensive public transportation for ourselves, and it wasn’t too hard. We knew the address of the restaurant and found it on our map, which also showed that bus lines 35 and 37 went from Republic Square out to Dačo’s area. We found the ticket automat, put in the number of coins suggested by the adult symbol, and we were on our way.

We weren’t sure at exactly which stop we needed to get off, so we planned to just follow the landmarks, make an estimate, walk across to Patrisa Lumumbe street and follow it to number 49. The bus was crowded by the time we’d decided to hop out, and it took us so long to work through the standing passengers that the bus pulled away and we got carried on the next stop. This turned out to be lucky because it was much closer to the restaurant, which we finally found after floundering around in the dark, getting confused by the street-numbers, and eventually asking directions. Even our guidebook suggested that a taxi would be necessary, but the buses are fine and you’ll save at least enough for half a meal.

Perhaps because of all this stumbling around in the cold and dark, we liked Dačo from the moment we set foot in the door. It was our first experience of colorful, cheerful country-style Serbia, a world away from the sombre urban greyness of big-city central Belgrade. The entrance and dining rooms were light, bright, and strewn with all manner of folksy decorations. Brilliant red chillies hung from the ceilings in the thousands, and colorful embroidered rugs hung from the walls, which were painted over with the old roller-stencils once common in Central-European farmhouses. The furniture was picked out in bright primary colours, old wooden beds had been put into service as seats and stainless-steel graters and colanders were transformed into light shades. As if all this wasn’t enough, the fat trumpets of Boban Marković were playing in the background. This was exactly the kind of Serbia we’d been hoping to find.

But what about the food you ask? I decided to chance it with the "chicken surprise", which turned out to have lashings of sesame seeds and was delicious. Francie had the "poacher’s kebab", we shared salads and fresh bread, two drinks each and it totalled 2000 Dinar (about €25).

A little more than we would usually spend, but a bargain for the best meal of our trip and possibly one of my favorite dining experiences ever.

Via del Gusto is a café on Belgrade’s busiest pedestrian street, Knez Mihailova. We liked it for its fantastic location, good coffee, wide range of pastries, and relatively smoke free atmosphere.

Having arrived in Belgrade on the overnight train from Budapest, Via del Gusto was one of the few places that were open as we searched for somewhere to have an early breakfast. It was also our first experience with Serbian waiters and their friendliness, promptness, and willingness to switch to English was a happy surprise. With their chirpy disposition, natty pinstriped aprons, and jaunty red cravats the staff added a bright flash of movement and energy to the otherwise sleepy-eyed café.

Not that the interior was dull. In the front section of the café, opposite the display cases of dozens of delicious-looking pastries, there was a small raised platform that serves as a non-smoking area and this was where we sat. Historic photographs and etchings of Belgrade hung from the walls, the ceiling was painted with a trompe l’oeil summer sky and the wooden furnishings, warm colors, and the aroma of freshly-baked pastries created a wholesome country-kitchen kind of atmosphere.

There was also some lovely stained glass and wrought iron work in the railings and screens that divided the different sections of the café from one another. Towards the rear and down a few steps was the main part of the café with six or eight small round tables and there was a large and more formal diningroom downstairs. On our second visit we sat up in the little birds nest above the entry door. There’s just one table up there and access is via a steep spiral staircase. New waiters must groan every time they see customers heading up there, but I’m sure they get used to it quickly because it was the most popular place to sit, with a view over the whole front room of the café and a glimpse out into the street.

The coffee and pastries were good and reasonably priced. My large coffee with milk was 115 Dinar (€1.50), our ham and cheese pastries were 60 Dinar each and Francie’s hot chocolate was 155 Din. Sweet pastries had similar prices to the savory ones and a range for crepes and pizzas was also available.

While Via del Gusto is probably not the kind of place you’d travel across town to get to, its location towards the citadel end of Knez Mihailova makes it a really convenient place to drop into for a quick caffeine top-up or a snack, and it’s always nice to be served by waiters who at least appear to be enjoying their work.

Josep Broz Tito was one of the great leaders and historic figures of the 20th century and is held by many in high regard to the present day.

Born to Croatian and Slovenian parents in 1892, Tito fought and distinguished himself during the First World War, before being wounded and captured by the Russians. After more than a year in hospital, he was sent to a labor camp in Siberia, until being freed by revolting workers during the February 1917 revolution. After joining the red guards, marrying a local girl and joining the Russian communist party, Tito returned to the kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1920 and immediately joined the Yugoslav communist party.

By the time fascist troops attacked and occupied Yugoslavia in 1941, Tito had become commander of the party’s military arm and his partisans began an extensive guerrilla campaign aimed at liberating their country. Aided by the Red Army and the other allied powers, Tito’s partisans eventually succeeded in their struggle and Tito won the first elections of democratic Federal Yugoslavia in 1945.

In 1948, he became the first communist leader to stand up to Stalin, and later famously wrote "Stop sending people to kill me, If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send one to Moscow, and I won't have to send a second." Perhaps Tito's greatest achievement was maintaining unity within Yugoslavia (the Union of Southern Slavs) for as long as he did, some say purely by the force of his personality and the esteem in which he was held. Tito died on the 4th of May, 1980, days before his 88th birthday.

He was laid to rest in the House of Flowers, a relatively modest building on a hillside behind the largest orthodox church in the world, the church of St Sava. A second building on the hillside below the house of flowers was apparently once a museum dedicated to Tito’s life. In January 2007, there remained just a couple of vehicles (a Rolls Royce and a limousine) and an extensive and interesting collection of documents. Not everybody had Brezhnev, Ceausescu, Castro, and Gandhi on their Christmas-card-list, did they?

The actual House of Flowers (Tues-Sun, 9am-3pm) is a light, airy building with rooms along each side that serve as a small memorial. The most interesting exhibit was a recreation of Tito’s office, featuring a beautiful dark wooden writing desk inlaid with delicate mother-of-pearl scrollwork. A portrait hanging above the desk shows the remarkable man with his hand to his forehead, deep in thought. No doubt he had plenty of problems to deal with, treading a narrow third path between the Soviet Union and the West while holding the feisty nations of Yugoslavia together in a spirit of compromise and cooperation.

The white marble tomb that lies in the middle of this pavilion, with its commanding view past the domes of the orthodox church to Belgrade and beyond, could not be a more fitting place for Federal Yugoslavia’s greatest citizen to rest in peace.

Kalemegdan citadel is a rambling stone, brick, and earth fortress that has guarded the confluence of the Sava and Danube Rivers for almost a thousand years.

It’s easily Belgrade’s most impressive historical site and deserves at least a solid half-day of your time in the city. The fortress and its grounds take up enough space for a small town, and the buildings are a fascinating mix of styles. The triangle and star-shaped brick fortifications are typical of Central European baroque fortresses but, higher up the hill, the irregular stone ramparts and round towers clearly show their Ottoman and Balkan origins. This location in the borderlands of empires has helped earn Kalemegdan and Belgrade the dubious honor of being the most fought over (115 battles) and destroyed (40 times) city-settlement in the world.

Since the fortress hill was first settled by Celts in the 3rd century BC the Romans, Huns, Goths, and the Byzantine Empire have been among the many conquerors, and legend has it that the most famous Hun, Attila, is buried within the grounds of the citadel. After being settled by Serbs in the 7th century, and passing through Byzantine, Hungarian, and Bulgarian control, the fortress city became part of the Ottoman Empire. During the 18th century conflicts between the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, the fortress was rebuilt three times and most of what stands today dates from this time.

Certainly, the approach to the fortress from the land side has a distinctly central European appearance. There’s a wide flat park of formal gardens, statues and a gate tower that wouldn’t look out of place in Vienna itself. Inside this gate is the military museum that displays everything from catapults and cannonballs to weapons seized from the Kosovo Liberation Army and possibly Europe’s best collection of used 1990’s NATO bombs and missiles. Further into the fortress are a clock tower built by the Austrians, an Ottoman building that now serves as Belgrade’s historic monuments office, and a soaring victory monument from the post-WWI Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.

The things I liked most about the fortress were just rambling around the ramparts and visiting the tiny church of St Petka. At some stage during the morning we were adopted by one of Belgrade’s stray dogs, who proceeded to guide us around the fortress, play at fetching and chasing and somewhat embarrassingly start to snap at anybody that he perceived as threatening. St Petka’s is a beautiful little orthodox chapel close to the highest part of the fortress that we visited partly in an attempt to shake off Mr. Dog. Water coming from the “miraculous spring” within the church was being bottled and sold to the faithful, but we weren’t sure if it was appropriate to use it for secular purposes like hydration and left it to those in the know.

Loyal Mr. Dog was waiting patiently for us when we came out, so if he adopts you during your visit, please give him our greetings!

Nikola Tesla is one of Serbia’s most famous sons for the pioneering progress he achieved in the fields of physics, wireless technology, and electrical engineering. His likeness graces the 100Din banknote, and Serbia’s largest power plant and Belgrade’s international airport are both named in his honor.

Worldwide however, Tesla has still never received the recognition that he deserves for such inventions and innovations as the long-distance transfer of electric current and wireless transfer of electric signals. Tesla was also involved with the first primitive radar devices, development of X-Ray technology, and huge efficiencies in power generation. Even the invention of radio, despite being popularly credited to Marconi, is one of Tesla’s many notable achievements.

It’s likely that Tesla suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder and coupled with the public’s inability to comprehend some of his most groundbreaking innovations, he was often dismissed as a mad scientist. This and his long-running feud with Thomas Edison; the so-called war of currents, contributed to his lack of recognition and failure to win any of the Nobel prizes for which he was nominated.

Fortunately the Tesla Museum in Belgrade is a great place to learn more about the misunderstood genius and some of the things he was responsible for that we take for granted today, like safe electricity in our homes, mobile telephones ,and starting our cars without a crankhandle. When we visited in January 2007, parts of the museum were under renovation, but the main displays were still accessible and it was one of my favourite things that we did while in Belgrade.

The museum is usually open 10am to 6pm, but closes at 1pm on weekends and all day on Monday. The price of entry is 200DIN. Due to the nature of the displays, it’s only possible to see the museum with a guide, and the tours begin every hour on the hour. We first sat down to watch a short video about Tesla’s life and then continued around the museum proper to see models and displays demonstrating some of his more influential ideas. There’s a model of a hydro-electric powerplant (the only statue of Tesla outside Europe is at Niagara Falls), and a clear perspex model demonstrating how alternating current (which pulses back and forth) can be harnessed to provide continuous motion in one direction, thus making possible electric motors as we know them from appliances like electric washing machines and ceiling fans. There’s a small scale mock-up of a power station in which power is generated by turning a handle and transmitted to power a light at the other end, and a replica of the Egg of Columbus that he used to demonstrate rotating magnetic fields at the 1893 world's fair in Chicago.

The highlight of the interactive exhibits though is the huge power generator that creates crackling forks of lightning and used the wirelessly-transmitted electricity to power fluorescent tubes in the hands of museum visitors. I recommend the museum for everyone though, not just those who fancy themselves as Jedi material.