Finally we were closing in on our big two week European trip, and we were both looking forward to some cooler weather. As usual, we had been working pretty hard in the run up to the trip. Friday Kuniko was working from home, and I went into the office for a half day of work.
I walked home all sweaty and in the brutal heat of summer, and already Kuniko had cleaned the house and gotten most of the things ready for a long term absence. We did the last bit of organizing and then took our suitcase and hit the road. Just the walk to the station in the blazing summer heat was intense. Lucky I brought two hand towels to mop up the sweat.
Our timing was good getting to the airport – we caught a special rapid from Nishi Akashi, and then just got on the airport bus from Sannomiya. Once we get on the airport bus it starts to feel like we are on vacation.
We had plenty of time to kill before our 10 pm flight to Istanbul on Turkish Airlines, so we had some food at Horai 551 – lots of shumai, pork buns, and some sweet/sour pork. We walked around trying to get in some steps, visited Hotel Nikko hoping that they had a bar open but they said they don’t have a bar anymore. We went to Cafe Le Pan, which is sort of a Japanese/French hybrid place. We had a so-so egg sandwich, served with a glass of Japanese white wine. Once again I was pretty underwhelmed with Japanese wine. For the prices we were paying it was pretty insipid stuff.
Eventually we made our way to the gate, and caught the 13 hour flight to Istanbul. Surprisingly we got a lot of sleep (in economy seats!) – we both slept about 8 hours which is more than we usually get at home. It made the flight go by so much more quickly. Around us on the plane were a lot of flying rookies – being cautioned by the cabin attendants and bouncing around and misunderstanding the purpose of the fasten seatbelt sign. In front of Kuniko a Japanese mafia member was eager to roll up his sleeves once we left Japan and show off his tattoos. He kept shifting around in his seat, causing Kuniko to mess up on her seat back flight entertainment game popping bubbles.
Next to me was a lady who put a significant amount of chemicals on her face before going to sleep – a process that took nearly an hour. But like us she slept well, and soon we were landing in Istanbul.
As we transferred from our flight to the international terminal departures we had to wait in a short line for another security check. Some people were panicking about missing their connections, and there was some pushing and cutting in line – it wasn’t organized very well. Luckily we had plenty of time.
It had been a long time since we had been back, and the airport had undergone a significant upgrade during the pandemic. They were going for a luxury vibe, and we found out the hard way after paying almost 80 euros for two glasses of Bottego Gold Prosecco. There might have been cheaper bubbles in the building but we couldn’t find them.
At our departure gate they had some reclining chairs, mostly full of people sleeping. Kuniko got a little more sleep on one of those, while I stuck with a hard bench to try to stay awake. The sun was rising here at about 6 am.
Our flight to Belgrade was delayed about 20 minutes, and once we boarded the girl sitting at the window next to Kuniko was fidgeting quite a bit. She couldn’t stop taking pictures with her phone, making/posting videos, and moving and shifting her body. She was the opposite of a zen traveler – what was going on?
It was a short hour-long flight to Belgrade, and after deboarding we were met just after the tunnel by a group of immigration officers who requested each person’s passport. It was unusual, they just leafed through looking for something, and then let us pass. Later I theorized that they were looking for Kosovo stamps, but who knows?
After a bit of walking then we lined up at immigration, received stamps and entered the country officially. The immigration staff here seemed really arbitrary on checking some people strictly and not caring about others. Luckily we were in the group that they didn’t really care about so we got through quite soon.
On our way out we tried to change some money, but there was nobody in the money changer office, so we went out and met our driver. Since we had heard the public transport between the airport and the city center was not very reliable, Kuniko had booked a driver through the hotel to wait for us and take us into town. He was a very nice guy who advised me not to change money in the airport but instead do it in the city center. Later I found out this was bad advice – I was trying to change Japanese yen into Serbian dinar, and city money changers didn’t deal in yen.
We got in a luxury sedan and were soon whisked out of the airport and down the highway at nearly 140 kph. We passed an overpass that had “Kosovo is Serbia” written in huge letters, a sign of the tensions that still exist between them. I didn’t really have any expectations of the countryside of Serbia but it was very clean, a lot of green fields and beautiful forests, and clean well-maintained buildings.
The driver chatted with us a bit and eventually dropped us off at a turnout right near our hotel. We took our suitcase into a very narrow (and slightly scary) elevator that jerked upwards unsteadily. The signs outside the elevator were seriously retro – like you’d find in a 1980’s American arcade.
At our hotel the staff took our suitcase and told us we had some time before check-in, so we decided to head back out and do a little exploring of Belgrade.
Near our hotel was the main shopping street, leading away to the north towards the historic fortress of the city. The architecture here was old European style, and it was nice to be back in Europe where these kinds of beautiful buildings are simply standard.
It was here that I learned that money changers didn’t deal in Japanese yen, and so I instead changed some leftover Euros from a previous trip into the local currency.
We walked all the way to the big park surrounded the fortress, and since we were there walked through the fortress itself. There was an odd dinosaur park (closed) for kids in the park, a lot of military hardware on display as part of the military museum on the grounds, and plenty of dogs with their owners but without leashes. Apparently it is OK to go unleashed in parks – we saw this a lot and were a little surprised.
At the top of the fortress walls we had a nice view of the convergence of the Sava and Danube rivers, and the city beyond. From here it looked like quite a small city, and our first impression of Belgrade was that it was a quiet place. After all our busy run up to the trip it seemed like a nice change of pace.
We looped out through the park, passing some public art on display inside, and then went to check out an interesting shopping center with unusual architecture, a sort of stacked style with an open top restaurant area on the roof. After using the facilities and checking out the market and drug store there we walked back near the center of town (next to our hotel) to have some lunch and drinks. We chose a place more on the basis of shady seats than cuisine, and had a light lunch of a pesto sandwich and grilled veggies, along with local beer and wine. We spent a leisurely time there – almost two hours – enjoying the outdoor cafe atmosphere and watching the people of the city walk by. The weather was cool and comfortable – a big difference from Kansai – and except a light sprinkle now and then it was mostly sunny.
We wandered back to the hotel and the staff was nice enough to let us check in a couple hours early. She was super-friendly and really helpful – the staff was probably the highlight of that hotel for me.
We had big plans for the evening – visiting a restaurant that serves traditional Serbian cuisine along the Danube river, but once we settled on the bed it was all over. I set my alarm to wake us up after three hours to get ready for dinner, but when it went off we both made the same decision to say fuck it and go back to sleep. And then we slept like the dead for the next twelve hours. We had no idea we were so sleep deprived!
