I left Belgrade on Sunday, June 1 and took the very quick express train to Novi Sad. Before leaving my friend and I made it to the Museum of Modern Art in Ušće park at the confluence of the Sava and Danube, where I stood fascinated by the first film in a small exhibition of late ‘60s/early ‘70s conceptual performance and film artists that depicted a man (the artist Nedeljko Paripović) traveling in a straight line across 1977 Belgrade regardless of the obstacles or precipices in his path. Belgrade is a city of hills and diagonals. Walking in a straight line is no small feat. It was both hypnotic and funny in its absurdity.
I also made it to Ivo Andrić’s apartment museum and the museum of the Residence of Princess Ljubica.
I became more comfortable assessing the micro-local lingua franca, shifting between Russian and Serbian as the need seemed to arise. The coffee shop near my apartment was Russian-owned, and I had stumbled in there my first morning in town jet-lagged and keyed-up under the pressure to speak Serbian with locals for the first time in years. Instead, I seemed to just confuse everyone. A lot of people here in Serbia, or at least in Belgrade, seem to take me for a Russian until they actually ask where I am from. Here was some guy who, from the Russian-speaking barista’s point of view, was probably a compatriot, but who seemed to be acting under the compulsion of a mental disorder that dictated he only stutter through Serbian rather than just relating in the common language. Once I figured out that it was a Russian place, I just started ordering and talking to the baristas in Russian, and everything went from “here’s this fucking guy again” to smiles. Not really terribly easy to do, which you know if you have ever dealt with people working in the Russian service agency.
The night before I left town a friend and I went out to a Russian bar called Bife that’s tucked away up some stairs on the edge of the old town where interactions were more confused, with everyone mistaking everyone else for a Serb when they were Russian or a Russian when they were a Serb. We decamped from there to the unexpected closing night of a local alternative scene bar called Vukosava that had bittersweetly destructive atmosphere of a rent party.
I also managed to squeeze in a walk in the Kalemegdan’s Lower City park with some Serb friends and their dog. They recommended an actually very good Korean+Japanese restaurant called BOM just a few steps from my apartment where I had an excellent bowl of vegan bibimbop.