Troubles not over yet, none of my couches came through for Belgrade. A young girl on the bus spoke English and had a smart phone. She looked up Hedonists' Hostel for me and I just got the directions as she was getting off the bus. But once in Belgrade, I couldn't find a shop to sell me a bus ticket. Perhaps they couldn't understand me. But Vlad at the tram stop told me the controllers were never on this line in this direction at this time, and even tried to escort me to the hostel on the hill, but it was on a broken street and he was late for his appointment. I found it! Lovely hostel with an outside garden, basement lounge and kitchen, with a big bowl of welcoming popcorn. But my bunk was just feet from the vivacious receptionist's desk, the only other woman in the hostel, so despite the posted quiet jimhours I had to use those earplugs.
In the morning I met Tanya' the 50-year-old cleaning woman, single, with little English but lots of enthusiasm. She wanted to know if I talked to my cats over the phone as she did her bird.
I took advantage of the free walking tour (tips encouraged) and found a lively bunch of students behind the horse statue at Republic Square. Unfortunately the art museum is under permanent renovation, it seems, and the modern art museum closed when the paintings started melting in the summer without air conditioning. Serbia is chronically short of funds.
Our guide led us to the Bohemian street, the party street, past the zoo to the old fortress. As many people died in Belgrade in wars over the ages as live there today - 6 million! I corrected his English and planned to take the next day's tour to a small town on the Danube.
One couch, Sanja, couldn't host me because her father was recovering from chemotherapy, so we met for dinner in a restaurant. She told me how hard it was during the war. Her upper class family had no relatives living in the country who could provide them with food. What an intelligent woman she is! I wish I could remember more of what she said.
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Many of yesterday's students returned too and we all took a tram across the Danube past a huge and empty derelict Hotel Jugoslavia, just a part of it open as a casino. The area must be lovely in the summer but now it was dreary. We visited several churches and waited to hear the beginning of a service. Women stand on one side, men on the other. We climbed medieval streets to a church on the hill with quite a view.
That night the staff made crepes for the guests of the hostel, and I scrounged travel tips. A Canadian who supports tar sands development (because that is where his travel funds come from) raved about Bosnia and wondered if he'd have trouble bringing home bullets fashioned into pens. I left the city in the morning for the bus to Sarajevo. A woman on the tram who'd had businesses in Thailand in the '80s invited me to stay with her next time.
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