Stuck in Serbia

It’s 5pm and 91 degrees here in Belgrade… and here we melt, waiting for the Serbian airport to find our lost luggage.

The trip so far has been a bona-fide adventure. After going to the wrong terminal in Chicago, we caught our flight with just minute to spare. From there, we flew to Brussels (where I was brutally questioned by the custom official as to why I was in Brussels with a visa for France) ran to our next flight to Budapest, (where the only American was a woman with a carton of Marlboro lights as her carry-on) and finally landed in the 100+ heat of Belgrade after about 24 hours of constant traveling. We became best buds with a family of Irish sisters and their Mom on the plane to Belgrade, which ended up being a great friendship to have. Turns out, girls Father is a Serb and they were all bilingual. So once all of us (and most of the rest of the passengers on the plane) discovered that our luggage was lost, the eldest Irish/Serb girl helped us file a lost luggage claim and yelled at the non-English speaking Serb custom/lost luggage shmuck. Through our awesome new Serbian translator friend, we were told us to book a hostel and give the airport the number and address of where we are staying. Once they find our luggage, they are supposed to bring it to us.

And so, we are parked for an unknown amount of time here in Belgrade at the Chillton Hostel, where the staff is super, the rent is cheap and there’s is more moonshine liquor then you could ever want. Todd and I took a quick tour of the city, ate a monster lamb burger, had a delicious ice-cold shower, and passed out for 12 hours.

Good news is that the girl who works the hostel speaks very wonderful English and Serbian so she is also quite good at yelling at the airport lost and found personnel.
Belgrade is way cooler than we could have imagined. All the people are friendly and helpful. The weather is beautiful (if a bit sticky) and The exchange rate is ridiculous, where 1 US dollar gets you 82 Serbian dinars. Today’s breakfast –1 HUGE jug of mineral water, yummy yogurt drink, 1 peach, 2 bananas, 4 fresh apricots and 2 huge fresh rolls— set us back about 300 dinars… or $3.69USD. We spent the afternoon checking out the Nikola Tesla museum (100 dinars each) and wondering around through old Pentecostal churches and a sweet old fortress downtown.

So I guess if you have to be stuck somewhere… Belgrade is the place to be.

PS if you want MORE picts of Belgrade... I have posted some on FB:)