Saturday, September 15
Another country, another currency. Here in Serbia they use the Dinar. The exchange rate is about 0.0096 per dollar which makes it rather easy to convert to Dollars. We just divide by 100. We’ve been typically paying about RSD 1,300 for lunch which is just a little less than $13.00. “It’s close enough for Jazz”.
It’s almost impossible to get rid of every bit of currency as we go from country to country but we’ve been careful and only once have been left with more than one dollar. We’ve developed a little ritual: every time we leave a country we leave a little of the previous country’s currency behind in our apartment. Our hosts are probably puzzled by this but we find it amusing. Anyway, it’s a good way to get rid of small change that we can no longer use.
We had another late start today and our first order of business was lunch. We wanted to try another one of Serbia’s iconic dishes called Karadorda. It’s a pork cutlet stuffed with cheese that’s been rolled up, breaded and fried. We went over to Dva Jelena (The Two Deers) on Skadarska Street and shared an order. It came with french fries and tartar sauce and we ordered a shopska salad to go along with it.
Shopska salad is something we were introduced to in Bulgaria. It’s a chopped salad with tomato, cucumber, red onion and feta cheese; it has no lettuce. Sometimes you’ll see it called Balkan Salad. In that case you’ll get white cheese (we still don’t know what that is – we’ve been eating it for almost a year and all we know is that it’s not “yellow cheese”) instead of feta.
We’ve found that the foods and the language are quite similar in many of the Balkan countries. Our guide told us that Bulgarian is not like Serbian at all but we certainly think otherwise. They share many of the same words, use the Cyrillic Alphabet and have similar pronunciations. We’ve been told that the other former Yugoslavian countries use the Latin alphabet. That will make life easier for us as our Cyrillic is now a little rusty.
Like a Chicken Kiev, once we cut into our Karadorda the cheese ran out all over the plate leaving the meat a little dry. We used the meat to mop up the sauce. The end result was ok but nothing to write home about.
(Karadorda for Lunch)
We also tried a local Serbian beer called Jelen. Jelen Pivo is served everywhere in Belgrade and has no relation to this restaurant. It’s a rather light ale with a watery texture and little flavor. We drank about half of it.
Next we visited the National Gallery of Art in Republic Square. Entry to the museum cost $3.00 per person (we thought our guide had said it was 300 EUROs but it was actually 300 Dinar, which makes a HUGE difference).
The first floor had a nice archeological display running from pre-historic times until the Roman period. The artifacts on display were all from Serbia. They had stone age tools, jewelry, pottery and artwork on display.
Nearby was an unrelated collection of currency and medals throughout the ages starting about 500 BC and running through the present day. It was a really nice collection. Most interesting to us were the different currencies that had been in use in the region in the 19th and 20th centuries. The region had gone from Ottoman to Austro-Hungarian, to Yugoslavian to Serbian and each time the currency changed. There were bills in the billions of Dinars from the time when hyper-inflation was rampant after the fall of communism.
On the second floor we found more archeological artifacts extending to the middle ages and a display of religious icons.
The third floor contained a collection of Yugoslavian / Serbian Art from the 20th century and a European Old Master’s Collection. The Yugoslavian collection had some nice pieces but really wasn’t the kind of thing we typically enjoy. The Old Master’s Collection was surprisingly large and contained a number of notable pieces by well known artists including Renoir, Monet, Degas, Rubens, Tintoretto and more.
(Portrait of the Painter Symington by Jovanovic)
We spent a very pleasant afternoon in the museum. Given its broad range of collections there’s bound to be something for everyone to enjoy.
In the evening we took a tour of the Sava and Danube Rivers on a Turtle Boat (they’re called turtle boats because they have a glass ceiling in the shape of a turtle shell). We met the boat near Kalemegdan Fortress and cruised South on the Sava River passing several bridges. There was a guide on board who described all of the points of interest along the way. Upon reaching the last bridge we turned around and cruised West on the Danube towards Zemun. By the time we got back to the fortress the sun was low in the sky and we were treated to a sunset over New Belgrade. The fortress was bathed in light and was brilliant against the blackened sky.
(Zemun in the Setting Sun)
Along the Danube we passed Great War Island which is now a bird sanctuary. On the North Side of the river there were a sparse collection of homes. The houses were not permitted which means that when their properties are flooded by the river the government will not provide any financial assistance.
The cruise lasted about two hours and, after a quick stop for a slice of pizza, we were back in our apartment by 9:00 pm.
Big news: you may recall that when we were in Rome last year we signed up for a service called Achievement which is supposed to reward you with $10 for accumulating 10,000 points (points are awarded for various kinds of physical activities). Well, as you know, we walk quite a bit and I finally accumulated enough to get a reward (Deborah only has about 8,800 points at present even though we walk the same amount). According to our records we both walked 1,786.2 miles. That comes to 0.0056 cents per mile which is a pretty poor rate of return if you ask us.
Distance walked: 6.3 miles
Sunday, September 16
Deborah needed a day off so I went to play tennis. We found a lovely little tennis club at Kalemegdan Park. There are six red clay courts nestled in what was a medieval moat just outside the walls of the fortress. I hit with a local pro for an hour and had a great time.
The cost for the court and the instructor came to $28.00.
Distance walked: 1.4 miles