So, Wait, Is Belgrade ‘Good Or Bad’ For Americans?
Jim and Mary - Cleves, Ohio, United States - spent 15 days in Belgrade to adopt Milos, a 10 year old lad with Down syndrome. They put up a blog post talking about their feelings about Belgrade, good ones, and bad ones. Of course there are things they dislike in Belgrade but it seems they have had more positive experiences than negative ones:
The Good-
- Clean Running water 24/7 (yes its okay to drink the tap water)
- Lots of reasonably priced apartments (Vlado can help you there vlado@domovina.com)
- pretty modern infrastructure– roads, public transport, electricity all work to western standards.
- lots of good local and international food options for eating out
- small but modern well stocked grocery stores are everywhere.
- there are “real toilets” here in Belgrade– no “squatters”
- If you like nightlife– there is a LOT of it– Belgrade has become to “go to” spot for many western Europeans to come party.
- A fair amount of neat sights– no it ain’t Paris (and for us that is a good thing)
- A very compact and easily walkable center– were it summer we probably would have walked the couple of miles to the orphanage at least once a day
- Very Safe feel to the city. Other than for the soccer game on Saturday night where we were careful to avoid the hooligans we have never felt unsafe — day or night. (we would not feel as safe in downtown Cincinnati)
- Many English speakers. We really did our homework and spoke a fair amount of Russian and Ukrainian prior to those adoptions– I speak German and we can be polite in French, Italian and Spanish–but we came here with NO Serbian skills. We have picked up “polite Serbian” but can easily get by with hand gestures and the English skills of the locals.
- How cool is it that they have Paul McCartney on their 10 Dinar Bank Note?!?!?
The Bad
- Expensive– okay not as bad as Western Europe, but expect to pay about the same for everything here as in a medium sized US city.
- Belgrade lacks some of the “wild, wild west” feel of Ukraine (most people would probably consider this a “good”)
- While we have seen NO animosity toward us, you have to think that since NATO bombed the snot out of this city in the 90s there are still people here who are not wild about Americans. Some of the buildings are still in ruins.
- it sure snows a lot—well okay that’s not fair– it is December and this IS the first snow of the year!
Comments
By stef-z on December 17th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
I like when I read such articles. Especially when Serbia is the subject, and such a humanitarian act. And that’s the way they see Serbia and Belgrade, I can’t say it is wrong, it is their opinion, but I must say it is mostly truth. It’s great it is made by not-Serbian citizen (as we know), because the sentences and facts in this article are not fake or with intention to insult (I recently had chance to read terrible and fake article - National Geographic one) and that is the way we live here in Serbia.
Paul McCartney?! Hahahaha… :DDDD LoL
By Jim Stolz on December 17th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Thanks you for finding our comments– we have really enjoyed our time here. Cold weather but warm people- Thank you Belgrade!
By Felastinos on December 18th, 2009 at 9:17 am
haah that’s Vuk Karadzic, a guy who invented Serbian letter xD
By ChrisDrummer on December 23rd, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Spent a week there in Oct. for our American son’s wedding to his lovely Serbian wife. Great city with even greater people. About the most hospitable place we’ve visited. The only negative I could find is that it’s sad to see so much graffiti on the old buildings. Paris was similar in that respect. We went with no preconcieved notions and came back very inpressed with Belgrade and especially its people.
By Ivan Milosavljevic on January 3rd, 2010 at 11:34 am
Hey guys, that is not Paul McCartney on 10 dinar note
It’s Vuk Karadzic, the inventor of Serbian alphabet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vuk_Stefanovi%C4%87_Karad%C5%BEi%C4%87)