Norwegian Heat

For the first time ever, we weren't able to get into Plastik. The usual routine of Goxy telling the doormonkeys that he had a foreign friend (me) looking for a good time didn't work, to our great surprise and consternation. The simians flatly told us we weren't going to get in that night, so we got out of the line and had a little pow wow on the side to decide what to do with the rest of our night. Getting turned away turned out to be a great stroke of luck for the entire rest of that week.

"Hey!!! You guys are speaking English!" an inquisitive voice cheerfully exclaimed behind me. I turned and saw a short, cute, exotic little ponytailed girl, and her even more diminutive chubbier friend.

They turned out to be Norwegians, part of a group of about 40 visiting political science students. They came in the wake of all the Kosovo excitement, to have all sorts of seminars and classes in Belgrade for a week.

She was half Norwegian/half Mexican, and filled with manic, bouncy positive energy and a terrific sense of humor. We all hit it off instantly, and me and Gox were more than happy to take them up on their offer to be their "party guides" in Belgrade for the week. We chatted excitedly outside of Plastik for almost two hours, oblivious to the party we were missing inside, and exchanged phone numbers at the end.

The following week lived up to its potential. Let there be no doubt, Norwegians are indefatigable party animals, and they can drink anyone under the table. Apparently, in Serbia they say "you drink like a Russian!" when you can hold your liquor. In Russia, they supposedly say "you can drink like a Swede!". And in Sweden, they say "you drink like a Norwegian!". So I guess that places them at the top of the totem pole. I can now most assuredly vouch for their party endurance.

The entire following week was filled with long nights of crazy drunken adventures all around Belgrade, meeting and making new friends and having healthy cross-cultural exchanges. We showed them the cultural side of the city during the daytime when everyone's schedules coincided, and took them out to different nightlife spots almost every night.

They were all a fantastically clever bunch, apt to discuss the intricacies of anything from Norwegian education policy to Kosovo's future status in the UN while simultaneously explaining the rules to Norwegian drinking games (and soundly beating us at them).

The group was demographics leaned heavily in favor of females, I think there were about 6 guys in the entire mob, and they all came ready to party. The local (mostly other Bg foreigners) crowd we brought along with us each night varied, and numerous romantic liaisons were attempted, with arying degrees of success.

They left us exhausted, broke, shellshocked and hungover at the end of their week, but it was all totally worth it, hands down one of the funnest weeks I've ever had in Belgrade. They stormed through the city like a flock of beautiful, exotic party butterflies, and their inevitable departure was most bittersweet.

In the end, I guess the funniest thing about it all was that it all happened because we were snubbed at the door of the club by the gorillas; had we gotten in, we probably would have simply had a few expensive, stressful and ultimately unsatisfying hours in the club and maybe never have run into them.

So, I suppose the moral of the story is that I should be grateful to the doorbaboons for being assholes to us. Belgrade irony.

A business proposal

One night, in the earlier days after my arrival, I was up late and unable to sleep due to leftover jetlag and overall mental excitement.

I decided to step out to grab a quick little snack from the kiosk at the bottom of our street. It was late, so the street was virtually empty. I saw her spot me from a distance and start moving towards, clearly intending to ask for something.

She was a young gypsy woman, short, poorly dressed and quite dirty and unkempt looking. My Serbian at that time was virtually non-existent, the most useful sentence for me at that time was "izvini, ne govorim srpski" (sorry, I don't speak Serbian). This is virtually always sufficient to deflect any unwanted impromptu conversation in Belgrade, so I dutifully used it when she stopped me and said something. I figured she was asking for money.

When I said that thought, she instead perked up, held her finger up to say "wait a sec" and after a few uuuuum and aaaaahs, found the words she was looking for.

"Umm, SEX?" she said, pointing to me, then her, then rubbing her fingers together in the international money sign, with an eager smile.

I wasn't exactly expecting that, so the surprise of it made me laugh. I politely declined and went on my way.

Mean dogs

One night, I was leaving a packed house party with a trail of friends, to go off to our next nocturnal adventure.

Leaving the house required walking through a narrow, pitch black driveway to get to the street. I was the last out the door, and so the last of our convoy.

As I walked through the driveway, I heard a strange low rumbling nearby. I guess my senses weren't so sharp given my slight drunkeness at that particular moment, so it took juuuust a bit of extra time for me to register that the sound was coming from a large dog growling... At me.

My stopping right in front of him (I still hadn't located him in the dark) to listen, combined with my hesitation about the sound, clearly made the large, nasty mutt lose his patience.

He lunged out of the dark with a loud attack bark and savagely bit me in the back of the knee.

It didn't break the skin, but it still hurt like a mofo, not to mention scared the living bejeezus out of me. I had toothy bruise marks for a week.

That is the definition of a "buzzkill".

Bizzare scene #1

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.

Havana

Havana is the main club in Belgrade for afficionados of salsa & tango dancing, although it's not so exclusively dedicated to that. Located off of Knez Mihailova, the main pedestrian strip, it features an unexceptional interior and, in the summertime, a larger and more interesting outdoor area.

The atmosphere inside the club is always pretty good though. The place attracts a varied demographic, with some funny dynamics resulting.

On any given weekend night, it is of course shock full of women who are there to dance dance dance dance dance dance the night away, hopefully with some slick stud who knows the moves.

However, slick studs with moves seem to be in short supply. From what I've seen, on any given night there might be half a dozen to a dozen guys there who actually know how to dance, and half of that elite group are clearly gay. Not that the place doesn't have lots of guys, mind you; they come in droves as well, because, y'know, there's like, lots of girls in there and they go crazy for dancing! Most of these guys usually tend to gather along the walls, standing around trying to look cool. No one makes many approaches since most of the girls are dancing.

So you end up with a rather high-schoolish scene with a dancefloor packed with women, a handful of guys with moves grabbing all the attention, and a wall to wall peanut gallery of dudes watching the whole thing.

Havana is not really my type of place.

Ada

Ada is to Belgrade sort of what Central Park is to New York, I guess. It is an artificial lake/water reservoir just outside the city center nestled into a bend of the Sava river.

In the spring and summertime, Ada is where Belgraders get their outdoor time fix.

The whole area, which can be seriously crowded, teems with locals going about whatever activity they want to indulge in.

The gravel beaches fill to capacity with sunbathers or cafe-goers. The paths that line the water bustle with bicyclists, rollerbladers and pedestrians. There are tennis courts, volleyball fields, a rock climbing wall, a bungee jump, exercise facilities, football fields, a paintball arena, golf course, rowing/crew clubs, paddleboats, a tiny waterpark, well used BBQ pits, restaurants, and even some clubs that are quite popular in the summer months.

It's pretty much impossible not to have a nice time there, whatever you're doing, and this is testified by the thousands that go there pretty much any day that brings pleasant weather.

Heat

Close calls don't get much more lucky than this.

I was having drinks and hanging out with Gox in a run down but popular bar called Idiot. We bumped into a Belgian friend of mine when we arrived, and after some chit chat, we all decided to discreetly roll a joint from the stash me and Gox had acquired earlier that evening.

We all agreed to meet outside to smoke it.

Me and Gox went first; we had spotted the cop car stopping in front of Idiot on our way in, and the cops staring at us, so we were highly wary of being in possession. In a quick moment of extremely wise paranoia, Gox quickly tucked away the packet of weed into a dark corner next to the entrance door. Seconds later, as we stepped up the stairs (the entrance is down some stairs, after you pass a small outside seating courtyard), we bumped almost head first into a full quad patrol coming in to check out the bar.

I had a few seconds to grab my phone and pretend to be speaking into it loudly in English. Gox vanished, so I was the first person they ran into. I pulled a quick dumb, happy-go-lucky dumbass drunk foreigner routine which distracted them long enough for Gox to run into the bathroom and hide the joint in his pocket. Fast thinking on everyone's part.

Once they figured out I was just some "dumb drunk foreigner" unworthy of any suspicion, one cop gave me a big genuine grin and said "Dasvidanja!" in Russian (don't ask me why, I'm not Russian...) with a thumbs up, so my little act clearly worked.

The cops were looking for someone with a car and the Belgian had spotted few nasty fights earlier elsewhere in the city, so they obviously weren't looking for us and we went under the radar until they left and went back across the street, still waiting outside Idiot.

Realizing that they were looking for someone specific and that we were now above suspicion, we took advantage of the situation to "stealthily" smoke the joint right there in their plain view, just 10 meters from them . That was a bold Belgrade first for me.

Had Gox not hidden the stash at that EXACT moment though, or had the cops walked up just 2 seconds earlier, they would have actually spotted him hiding the stuff and god knows how it would have turned out. Lucky night for us.

Family Values

I was standing in the back of a crowded bus going into the center of the city. We reached a stop and a gypsy family got on.

There was the father, followed by an extremely pregnant wife carrying a young toddler.

The buses in Belgrade have single seats that are reserved for the elderly/handicapped/women with little kids. One man sitting in one these seats, upon seeing the pregnant woman, courteously stood up and offered his place.

Only, instead of the woman and child, the father actually sat down, leaving his pregnant wife standing and still holding their toddler. They rode the entire way into the center like that.

Ugliness on Saturday night

It had turned out to be quite the Saturday night. It started with me and Goxy having some thoroughly pleasant warm up drinks in Tapas bar in the company of several lovely ladies. At some point in that time, Gox bumped into an old acquaintance of his who just happened to have some high quality acid on his hands.

It always happened this way, almost like we couldn't get away from our weekend evening destiny. This was the third or maybe even fourth weekend where this same acquaintance just happened to be frequenting the same place as us, each time carrying his high potency medicine. Naturally, Gox and I could never resist, and this time was no exception.

So we dropped a tab each and went back to mingle with the ladies. Once the stuff started to really quick in, we left Tapas bar to head to Plastik, one of Begrade's most popular clubs.

We spent a couple psychedelic trippy hours in there melting our faces. Plastik on acid is a serious assault on the senses; the thumping music, scantily clad dancers, faces both ugly and attractive, the colorful décor all around (Plastik was remodeled in 2008 with a smarter interior design and brighter decorations everywhere), silhouettes framed against neon backgrounds...

When we'd had about as much of that intensity as we could handle, we headed out with some friends we bumped into, one of Goxy's ladyfriends and our good mutual friend Geppeto (not his real name, but he works with puppets) in tow.

We got split up briefly at the coat check area in the entrance while we all fought the line to get our coats.

I got mine first and stepped out the door; there was a small crowd outside, all people chatting or organizing themselves to leave.

Just then, someone pushed me aside swiftly and cut in front of me; it was a guy holding an empty bottle in his hand. His head was covered in small cuts and his T-shirt (it was wintertime, by the way) was covered with his spilled blood. You notice all those little details really well when you're on acid.

Obviously, his night hadn't gone so well, but it was about to get better.

As I watched ( and I only happened to notice him because he has pushed me aside) he calmly but quickly walked behind one large, nerdy looking guy standing on the curb, tapped his shoulder and said something to him.

Simultaneously two other guys materialized out of nowhere. The trio pounced on the large guy suddenly, cracking him over the head with the bottles they all had. He had time to yelp one shocked "BRATE!!!" ("DUDE!!") before the little bloody one started stabbing him furiously and brutally in the face and throat with the now broken, jagged bottle, and his two other friends pummelled away at him, one stabbing him in the back and kidneys while the third mostly held him in place.

It all seemed to happen in slow motion, in my disconnected drug state. I caught every detail, every little move, and I was aware of every single person watching in shock; girls were screaming, several people shouted at them to knock it off, but no one intervened. It had time to notice a large plate sized dollop of blood splish on the pavement amidst broken glass.

I looked over my shoulder at the beefy club bouncers; they were actually laughing at the scene with their hands in their pockets, although I may have been the only person to notice that.

The brawl had moved smack into the middle of the large busy street that runs next to Plastik; now everything stopped for the fight, including a huge bus filled with people, and several cars; everyone just watched in horror as three guys tore one to pieces. There must have been at least 50 witnesses.

Their victim collapsed in a bloody, sliced up pile in the street; they wasted no time kicking and beating him while he was down, before finally stomping on his head viciously until several loud, sickening cracks and snaps were heard and he stopped moving instantly.

As quickly as they had started, they now stopped and instantly hopped into into a nearby car and sped off .

Their victim's fingers twitched a bit, and he let out one gasping, bloody gurgle before he went still and dark blood stated to copiously ooze out his ears, mouth and nose, mixing into the pool that was forming on the pavement from his grievous wounds.

People rushed to him now and tried to help him; I assume an ambulance was on the way. I couldn't help but notice the club bouncers now made a big theatrical show of being in charge of the situation.

The whole incident had been lightning quick; our collective estimate was that it had taken between thirty and forty five seconds, no more; it had just seemed to last longer because of the drugs we were on (and, well, pure shock) which had both heightened my sensitivity to it, to all the little details, while also making it all seem very disconnected and distant, as if I was watching it all from underwater or something.

I found my friends, who had all seen it from different vantage points, and we decided to get the hell out of there immediately.

Our wonderful friend Geppeto was probably the single best person to have in our company then, as he was sober and is a natural born entertainer with many talents; he understood the need to distract us after seeing something like that, and he did so admirably on our walk home, keeping us occupied with jokes, magic tricks and other antics.

That was pretty much it. Soon thereafter the acid started to wear off, and we all retreated to my apartment to crash there for the night.

I have no doubt at all that we watched a man get killed before our very eyes that night, although I never followed up on it and never heard anything more about it. Still, I cannot imagine how anyone could survive such an assault; his throat had been badly gashed, his face sliced to shreds, ribs smashed and kicked in, and that was all before they crushed his skull.

What I still remember most vividly about it all is the club security laughing with unconcealed evil glee while it was happening. I suspect they were in on it from the beginning. Many girls in Belgrade tell me those are actually nice guys, that they're friends with them and blablabla, but I don't buy any of that horseshit for a second. Do NOT ever trust them to ensure your security if you should ever happen to go to Plastik (that was one of several incidents I witnessed there). Those nasty pigfuckers let anything happen over there, so do not be fooled into thinking it is a safe club or that they do their job. They are great at being assholes and not letting people into the club, though.

I would love to be able to hear what they would have to say to the parents of whoever that guy was who finished his night a bloody, broken pulp in the middle of the street.