Belgrade has virtually no real homeless people like you might see in any major city in the US or Europe. It does have a handful of vagrants and bums, but they're so rare that these tend to become local celebrities of a sort.
One day I was walking near the train station, a crowded, chaotic noisy area that serves as a hub for numerous bus and tram lines, along with a taxi station, hundreds of pedestrians, etc. If you ever visit Belgrade and arrive by train, this place will be your first impression of the city.
In the midst of all the hussle n' bussle, I walked by a man sitting to my left on a curb, sort of out of the way between two kiosks. I glanced at him fleetingly, noticing he was clearly some sort of vagrant; he looked like he was drinking something, but when I looked back a second time over my shoulder (along with an elderly businessman, who noticed the man at the same time as me), I realized he was holding a dirty old jerry can of something and inhaling deeply from it.
It was a bizarre and unsettling sight, right in the middle of hundreds of people going about their daily business.
The elderly business man and I shared a shocked look, we had the same reaction time and the same surprise. He then said something to me which I didn't understand but was clearly some sort of lament, and asked for my opinion or something. I just shook my head and said "strasno" (scary). He tut-tutted and exclaimed "DA! STRASNO!!" before we parted and went on with our lives.
The bum kept calmly sniffing his can.
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