I've been a bit uninspired lately, so in response to Belgrade.com’s new list of “things to do in Belgrade” for foreigners/visitors, I decided to go through it for my own interest and see what I had accomplished from that list, with my own opinions about it.
- Look for an music or art event in Students’ cultural center (SKC) – there’s great chance something interesting is on.
Good call, I’ve seen several interesting concerts there, including Darko Rundek and Mike Patton (although highly anticipated for me, that turned out to be somewhat of a disappointment, way too much artsy screaming and howling and not enough *music*). Also been to see some cool comic book/strip art exhibitions there, as well as a handful of smallish parties/ cocktail gatherings and even a pretty good bluegrass band playing. So yes, always something interesting going on at SKC.
- Buvljak – New Belgrade flea market is always a good place to lose a couple of hours.
Took a wrong turn and ended up here the first time I went looking for Blok 70, Belgrade’s Chinatown. This place is a huge, messy, chaotic and interesting mess to wander around for awhile. Cheap cheap goods everywhere. It’s a bit in the middle of nowhere in Novi Beograd but a quaint place to check out at least once, if you’re into ghetto flea market kind of places.
-Try water skiing – just a couple of kms away from the city center – at the end of Ada Ciganlija lake.
Never tried this, but seen it plenty of times. Looks snazzy, you get to ski on a circular “track” in the water, pulled along at high speed by a sort of ski lift handle. For show-offs, mostly.
-The Roman Well (Rimski bunar) at Kalemegdan is an interesting place for fans of mysterious and scary stories.
It’s in Kalamegdan. It’s closed off. There’s a lot of history behind it, just as all in all of Kalamegdan. That’s pretty much all I know about it.
- Slavija Square hides a mystery as well. Sometimes it’s a mystery how come not so many cars crash when driving around it.
Oh-so-true. Slavija looks, sounds and bustles like a roundabout from Pakistan or Nigeria or something. Yet Serbs, being confident and efficiently aggressive drivers, somehow make it work. Sort of. I have seen a few fender benders there, and my friend reports that the intersection on one side of it, where trams, buses and cars simultaneously merge onto Nemanjina, is the #1 pedestrian death zone in Belgrade, so keep your wits about ya when crossing.
- A quest for bakeries, cakes and sweets shops in Belgrade is always rewarding one.
Yeah, I guess, if you’re not used to the food around here, try some burek or pita or something. Ask locals for good bakeries though. Bad burek will make you feel like crap for the rest of the day. Some bakeries leave their goods out all day, so earlier is always better.
- Zeleni Venac pedestrian passage offers a thrill of living on the other side of the law, as well as a cozy little black market shopping area.
This one is easy to check out and pretty fun. The “other side of the law” refers to the dozen or so gypsy sellers that line the passage, conversing/arguing loudly between themselves and hussling passer-bys. During rush hours the passage is filled to absolute capacity with commuters heading to/from the buses at the station next to it, it feels like a small taste of the New York subway or something.
- Find a local souvenir salesman at Kalemegdan or in Skadarlija and browse through weird Belgrade memorabilia – like the five hundred billion dinar note, now being sold for about one hundred dinars.
Yes, this can be cool and fun, lots of interesting and nifty little souvenirs and thingies there, although sometimes the sellers will try to rip you off if you reek to much of tourist money.
- Go see the oldest preserved house in Belgrade in Cara Dusana street 10. House was finished in 1727, which makes it almost 300 years old. Considering Belgrade was bombed five times in previous century alone, this is deemed as a great success.
It’s a nice looking empty house.
- Vukov spomenik underground station reminds us that we do need a subway system in Belgrade. It is also a fun and long ride down.
Yeah this place is worth a look, there’s a neat looking mural/bench down there, some smoky coffee places. Most interesting for me is the underground gaming center you get to through one of the side doors. Inside are some halls that accommodate a dozen or so LAN gaming centers, cafes, computers stores, etc. The place has a seriously gritty, futuristic/underground cyberpunk feel to it, like someplace out of a techno-thriller or something. It never, ever sleeps, and you’ll find all kinds of geeks and hardcore technophiles/gamers milling around (but mostly intensively gaming) at any hour of the day. You could disappear for days down there, completely cut off from daylight, Belgrade, and reality, and I suspect many do. Unlike any place I’ve ever seen, very dark, gritty and atmospheric, highly recommended at least for a look.
- Visit the Red Star football museum – it’s small but managed to inspire Gordon Taylor to organize various football exibitions througout Europe.
I don’t know if this is connected to/part of the Red Star stadium, but that place/area is also worth a look. It’s up on a hill so you can catch a nice view of the downtown area, and you can even check out Ceca’s house (Serbia’s biggest turbofolk star, and the former wife of one of Serbia’s most notorious gangsters from the 90s), a most ridiculous looking yet imposing wedding cake Barbie concrete type of… House, I guess, if you can call it that.
-Try one beer at every stand at the Belgrade Beer Festival, held every august in Belgrade.
Beer Fest was a great time the first year I went there, when it was still held at the bottom of Kalamegdan, providing the most awesome backdrop for a large open air drunk fest I’ve ever seen. This past summer though it was held across the river in the large field of Usce, and I just couldn’t enjoy it as much. Highly overcrowded, overpriced, and Usce is one gigantic dustbowl. People were complaining about blowing their noses and coming up with nasty black soot and dust for days afterwards, and I had to hear about it from every single person during my language classes.
- Kosutnjak is a bit away from the city center, but if you like hiking, this enormous park is the perfect location. You can rest at Ski staza (Ski path) cafe while you’re there. Ski staza got it’s name because the steep hill under the cafe actually is perfect for skiing lovers in the winter time (ok, it’s not perfect, but it’s the only ski path near city center).
I used to live by this park. It’s awesome, albeit yes, a bit out of the way from the city center. One of the few places where you can really get away from the crowds of the center, go for a nice long job or hike, have a nice barbeque, etc. Ski Staza café is also really cool, with perhaps the coolest vista of the city center you can find in Belgrade. Highly recommended.
- The Tram number two (Krug dvojke) unguided tour of the Belgrade city center. I’ve mentioned this one before, but it’s a good tip, so it has to be on the list.
Yeah, it’s an easy way to get a good look-see of the main parts of the city. Kind of like going on the mono-rail to get a whole view of the park when you enter Disneyland or something.
If someone tells you they are from within the Krug dvojke part of the city, they are usually “fancy” a.k.a the snobbish segment of party people in Belgrade.
- Go to a Belgrade football derby, between Red Star and Partizan and observe some of the loudest and wildest football fans in Europe.
For the brave and adventurous, or those who just like to see chaos, destruction and testosterone let loose. The stadium destruction and mayhem following some of these matches is a sight to behold, I can tell you from experience.
- Ada Medjica river island is a non-mainstream version of Ada Ciganlija. It’s your choice really.
Ada Medjica is awesome, lots of lovely little river shacks all along the bank, a most fantastic spot for an afternoon of barbecuing and drinking rakija, if you ever have to chance to go there. You need to take a little ferry to get there.
- Take a stroll in Balkanska street and find a vintage hat from one of the stores that somehow survived the modernization.
I lived on this street during my first 6 months in Serbia, and it was a cool place to have my very first impressions of Belgrade. It’s a steep-ass hill, and is actually a serious hike that will take you right from the train station area directly into the very center of the city on Terazije, next to hotel Moskva. On the occasional icy day that blows through Belgrade, the steepness can actually be a bit dangerous. I once saw a man fall and slide 20 feet down before coming to a stop. It was hilarious in the end because he wasn’t hurt, but you could be less lucky. Good pljeskavica place near the top of the street. Definitely worth a look, it reeks of old Balkan atmosphere and mystique.
- Pass through Bezistan passage connecting Terazije street and Nikole Pasica square and try to imagine that this place was the favorite spot for rockers, punkers and other Belgrade headbangers.
I had no idea about the rockers n’ whatnot. It’s just a passage I go through often… Nikola Pasica square is pretty cool, nice fountain there, nice view of the Parliament(s), a long view down the main Boulevar…
- Cab rides – engage in a conversation with the cabbie about politics, life, universe and everything else, because they know all about it. If the conversation turns out ok, tip the driver. If not, try not to get ripped off. Most cab drivers like to talk with the customers, or to be more specific, they just like to talk. Good thing is that you can find out about various things known only to the taxi drivers of the world – global and local economy, where’s the good food, where’s the best place to drink, which cafes are open 24 hours, which politician is sleeping around, and useful things like that.
Not much to add on this one. Taxis in Belgrade are always something of a small adventure.
- Flirt with a Belgrade girl or guy (see the comment from Anonymous Manslut on some tips for the girls concerning Serbian girls). Or just observe from distance.
Oh yes, this is most certainly highly, highly recommended. Fortune favors the bold! :)
- If lost in the city center, ask one of the police officers for directions. They need to practice their foreign language skills and you need to practice your Serbian.
Yeaaaaah, I think Viktor is being cheeky on this one. As a general rule, I just give police officers a wide, wide berth in Belgrade. The few that I have had encounters with are usually not friendly at all, albeit respectful (somewhat). One was most particularly and unnecessarily rude when I was just sitting in front of a church, he was bored with nothing to do and just went out of his way to hassle me and try to f*** me up for anything. It was only the fortuitously timed arrival of my at-that-time-visiting mother with her elderly friend that kept him in check. Others though, on occasion, I admit, have been surprisingly friendly, usually after I tell them I’m in Serbia (because they always ask why you’re here, if you’re a foreigner) because of a Serbian girl.
- Have a smoke in the smokers’ section – in a local hospital building. With most of the neighbor countries starting to think about banning smoking in public places, Serbia remains as an nicotine-filled island of joy for many smokers.
Yes, if you smoke and like cancer sticks, welcome to your Nirvana.
- Visit Etnological museum in Vasina street across the street from the Belgrade University and try to discover what kept Jean Paul Gottier there for three hours, forgetting the fact he’s obviously insane.
Myeaaaah. Decent museum, if you’re into that. I was highly bored, although that may have had something to do with the overcaffeinated and annoying company I was with at the time I visited.
- Go to a nearby green market and buy some tasty fruit from a local farmer.
Sure, why not. As they said in one South Park episode, “it’s so cultural!”
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
Good times with Serbia’s finest
Most of the time I’ve been in Serbia, I’ve simply been staying on a standard 90 day tourist visa, with a quick border run to renew it when it expires. It’s a bit of a pain in the ass, but it’s also been a good excuse to get out of Belgrade and see other places in the Balkans.
For this border run, I had gone to Sarajevo with a then-girlfriend for a few days. The visit there was lovely, strange and interesting, but that’s another story. The overall main point of the trip was to get that oh-so-precious stamp in my passport.
I came back into Serbia late at night, around 2am, on full bus of about 100 people. Long story made short, they somehow neglected to stamp my passport going back into Serbia. Now my visa was expired, I didn’t have a new one, or even any record that I had left the country, except for a bus ticket.
Ok, so this had happened once before coming back from Montenegro, and somehow I hadn’t had an issue with that (the tricky part comes a day later, whenever you enter Belgrade, foreigners have 3 days to register at the local police station…that is actually why you need that stamp). But that time, I’d had other stamps from Croatia & Montenegro confirming my various border crossings around the same dates, along with the bus tickets, and no one asked anyway. This time, I had no indication of any border crossing at all, in or out of Serbia, and I was not going to make another trip out just to get a damn stamp.
So the next day, back in Belgrade, I consulted with my very close friend Igor, who happens to also work as a lawyer, and has helped me out of many a sticky bureaucratic situation. We discussed this new problem, and decided that the best course of action was simply to go down to the main police station and explain what had happened, and let them figure out a solution, which we figured could only be to grant me a visa outside of the regulations or whatever. After all, I had done nothing wrong, as much as they were going to want to frame it that way at the station (they’re really not so big on being helpful to foreigners there, especially when you come from my country). It was their problem to figure out.
We had been there a few times before, for similar visa-type stuff, and handled all obstacles with grace and aplomb. It was kind of fun, really; we’d barge into offices, cut in front of lines of hapless Chinese and Italians, flirt with the women at the various desks, make a few big theatrical scenes, and always emerge victorious, feeling like dashing swashbuckler pirates of bureaucracy.
I must confess, we were woefully unprepared for the perfect storm of shit that was waiting for us this time.
It couldn’t have come on a better day. I was working as a language teacher in those days, and Igor was working at his law firm; I had a seriously important first class scheduled for later that morning, with a VIP student (who shall remain unnamed, but let’s just say that if you watched Eurovision, you saw/heard the results of my teaching along with millions of other Europeans). Igor had some case or something to handle in the afternoon, so we showed up bright and early at 8am to get the whole mess out of the way quickly.
[8am]- No one was around to even deal with us or direct us (always the first step when you embark on a bureaucracy quest in Serbia) to whatever desk we needed to check out. Eventually we went to one desk, where a sleepy and grouchy guy looked at my stuff, and decided it wasn’t his problem to deal with. Go upstairs.
We go upstairs. Again, wrong office. Go to office number whatever. We go there. Nope, not here, you gotta go downstairs to XYZ. But we were just there?!
Wait here, let me check . We wait. And wait. And wait.
[9am]- Ok, you need to go upstairs to talk with the “Boss”.
The “Boss”? That sounded ominous. Office 616, I believe. It’s actually pretty well known among foreigners, I would later find out; many are those who’ve had the pleasure of “quality time” with “Ze Boss”.
[9:15am]- We go to said office, knock on the door. Someone growls at us to come in. We meet a heavily muscled, completely bald, immaculately dressed gentleman with all the charm of a pit-bull. I kid you not, this man could make paint crumble off walls with his intense, penetrating stare of psychotic death. I’ve seen the same look on drugged child soldiers in Africa right before they decide it’s a good idea to blow your face off, or prison inmates right before they’re about to shank someone (both stories for another time ).
So the introduction was a bit rough. Still, this was the man we’d come to explain my woes to, so Igor did his best authoritative lawyer routine while I did my best I’m-so-booored-with bureaucratic-incompetence-and-I-really-have-better-things-to-do-so-can-you-please-hurry-this-up routine, a combo that is surprisingly intimidating and effective at getting results, when delivered right. Most of the time.
This man was having *none* of that. He cut us off almost immediately, and told us to sit our asses down with the authority of a school principal and made us repeat the story three times over, listening carefully with utter contempt and, somehow, fascinated boredom, if that makes any sense.
He then ordered us out of the office into the hallway for a moment. By a “moment”, he apparently meant an entire HOUR. He even walked out of the office at one point with his briefcase and came back with breakfast, never even acknowledging our presence. It was all psychological mindgames, I would later learn.
[10:30am]- We go back into the office. He grilled us again on everything that had happened (because, you know, it was *such* a shady story…). Then, somehow, the conversation turned to my work and what I was doing in Belgrade. What school was I working at? What did I do there (I teach… go figure)? Who’s the head of the school? Where do I live? Who’s my landlady? Who are my students? How do I get paid? Who pays me?
The man was a maestro of conversational misdirection and evasive tactics. Igor had met his match; anytime we tried to bring the topic back to the visa/border situation, he somehow enlarged the issue to something peripheral, unrelated, and personally invasive.
[11am]- At the conclusion of that conversation, he demanded to see my pay receipts from the school (which, by this time, coincidentally, I had had to call, to cancel my VIP class… “yeaaaah, this is awkward, but umm, I’m not going to be able to make it to the class with [VIP], I’m, ahh, stuck at the police station, you see… It’s a long story”).
Time was short and we’d already wasted 3 hours of the day with this monkey business, but it looked like some sort of resolution might come of this demand, a reward for our cooperation and goodwill and whatnot. So, Igor and I were “released” (I wasn’t aware up until that point that we were being detained, apparently) so that we may grab a taxi, race back to my apartment, grab said pay stubs, and race back to the station.
We had to wait another 45 minutes in the hallway because it was lunchtime when we got back.
[1pm]- He was not happy with the pay stubs when he got them. Why?
-“There’s no stamp on any of these!! What kind of school do you work for?!”
More questions. He was joined this time by two assistants, who were much more sympathetic characters, but painfully dimwitted. They all started grilling me about the school, how I got paid, how much, by whom exactly, names, dates, etc. I realized what was going on, and this was *not* a good situation. I was being full-on interrogated/investigated because:
- I was a foreigner who apparently had not crossed their radar before, and a semi-suspicious one at that, I admit. I came to Serbia with no particularly good/logical reason or excuse, I have a bizarre, highly international background, and I come from a country that has, ahem, “politically tense” relations with Serbia, so they probably were at least mildly suspicious that I was some kind of spy or dubious character on the run from something.
- I was working for a very big, successful language school, that owed some of its success to, let’s say, dubious business practices, what with registrations, paying its teachers (mostly cash under the table), taxes, etc. I knew this going in to the station, which was why I realized from the get-go that probing questions about my work were not really a good direction for things to be going in. Now, here we were, deep into it, and I was looking more and more guilty by the minute of… something?! I hate cops.
So they grilled me for an hour, and it was getting really stressful. I knew we were in trouble when Igor asked if he could smoke a cigarette. There was a “no smoking” sign prominently displayed on the desk, but in Serbia, most of the time those are put there as ironic humor.
They brought us an ashtray and a bottle of water. This meant we were going to be here doing this for awhiiiile.
[2pm]- After that grueling interrogation session, we were banished back into the hallway while they checked up on all the facts and information I had given them. I was starting to freak out at this point that I was going to be deported or something, and that I had sold out my language school up the river to boot. Not that I particularly cared about their well-being, but they were my main source of income at that point. Igor was just confused about what the hell was going on in there and why they were doing all of this.
[Whothehellknowshowmuchlater, pm]- Eventually, we were summoned back in. This time, Mr. Bulldog told us that he was going to go check on something, while his “assistants” would fill out some statement on me.
That was the key moment. Igor and I both caught just the slightest sneer or twitch on the face of one of the dimwitted “assistants”, when that word was used. Something was fishy, and we shared a knowing look.
So, while one of the guys, who spoke decent English, asked me a bunch of the same questions again (name of the school, name of the boss, basic things) to fill out a report, Igor made small talk and bonded with the other guy. They started to hit if off relatively well and we just played it cool. Cigarettes were smoked, coffee was made, Igor chatted, I cooperated with all the questions.
Igor then cleverly made some small remark like “Man, your boss is a real hardass” (he’s a sharp fellow, and this is why he is my lawyer). At that point, assistant #2’s ego couldn’t handle it anymore and he let the cat out of the bag.
-“ Ahhh, that guy… He is not boss, you know. He has same rank as us!” he pointed out, somewhat indignantly. “He just like to make big theatre spectacle, it is boring job here sometimes.”
Ooooh? Reeeally now, you don’t say?
Suddenly it all made sense. Ze Boss was not some higher authority, had no special power, and ultimately couldn’t really do anything about my situation except give me the damn visa. What we had calculated going in that morning had actually been correct. Mr. Bulldog, a nonetheless highly clever foe, had immediately seized upon the fact that we figured him to have more authority than he did, and he had decided to enjoy the power trip as much as possible, laying out a full battery of devious police interrogation tricks and psychological intimidation tactics to keep us disoriented and squeeze me for information in the process. I later learned, through a completely different story, that he had years ago likely worked for Tito’s secret services and had been trained by old-school KGB, which would explained how good he was at what he did and why we bought into it all hook, line, and sinker.
Once we learned this though, we knew we were in the right, and were just being jerked around. Assistant #1 finished his report/statement, and when Mr. Bulldog came back, an emboldened Igor caught him by surprise with bunch of nice lawyer-babble insinuations about intimidation, unjust interrogation, and brought the topic back to the damn visa and basically laid it out for him. We had cooperated with him all day, jumped through all his hoops, and had done nothing wrong, and we both had had quite enough of the bullshit and wasted time and would like to just get the issue resolved so could we just get on with what we all knew was going to happen and get me the damn visa?
Well, not exactly, but it turned out even better in the end. Knowing the game was up, Mr. Bulldog said that he couldn’t give us a 90 day stamp, but that he’d open a special file for me to start the application for a real working visa, which was worth much more and good for a longer period of time. This was most satisfactory.
After it was all over the mood lightened, I got all the necessary paperwork and everyone left on good terms. They’d had their bureaucratic fun with us, and we couldn’t be all that mad about it because Mr. Bulldog had been a most worthy opponent (Igor and I enjoy psychological games) and we’d been bested fair and square for most of the day.
In the end, I walked out with a better visa deal than we’d hoped we could get, so all is well that ends well. I had the interesting experience of being on the receiving end of a Serbian police interrogation (not my first police interrogation, but it was very different than how it happens back home… I digress again, different story), Igor got to practice flexing his argumentative muscles with a valid foe, and a good time was had by all.
Oh yeah, and I learned that *everything* in Serbia depends on STAMPS. Reports, documents, pictures, whatever, none of them mean a damn thing at all if there is no stamp. You must have the holy stamp. Word from the wise.
I just thought I’d write up this long day as a fun little scare story to any other foreigners who may have to venture over to office 616 or whatever it is. When you meet Mr. Bulldog, you’ll know ;) Good luck, suckers! Haha.
So, thanks for the memories Mr. Bulldog, even though they weren’t that great.
For this border run, I had gone to Sarajevo with a then-girlfriend for a few days. The visit there was lovely, strange and interesting, but that’s another story. The overall main point of the trip was to get that oh-so-precious stamp in my passport.
I came back into Serbia late at night, around 2am, on full bus of about 100 people. Long story made short, they somehow neglected to stamp my passport going back into Serbia. Now my visa was expired, I didn’t have a new one, or even any record that I had left the country, except for a bus ticket.
Ok, so this had happened once before coming back from Montenegro, and somehow I hadn’t had an issue with that (the tricky part comes a day later, whenever you enter Belgrade, foreigners have 3 days to register at the local police station…that is actually why you need that stamp). But that time, I’d had other stamps from Croatia & Montenegro confirming my various border crossings around the same dates, along with the bus tickets, and no one asked anyway. This time, I had no indication of any border crossing at all, in or out of Serbia, and I was not going to make another trip out just to get a damn stamp.
So the next day, back in Belgrade, I consulted with my very close friend Igor, who happens to also work as a lawyer, and has helped me out of many a sticky bureaucratic situation. We discussed this new problem, and decided that the best course of action was simply to go down to the main police station and explain what had happened, and let them figure out a solution, which we figured could only be to grant me a visa outside of the regulations or whatever. After all, I had done nothing wrong, as much as they were going to want to frame it that way at the station (they’re really not so big on being helpful to foreigners there, especially when you come from my country). It was their problem to figure out.
We had been there a few times before, for similar visa-type stuff, and handled all obstacles with grace and aplomb. It was kind of fun, really; we’d barge into offices, cut in front of lines of hapless Chinese and Italians, flirt with the women at the various desks, make a few big theatrical scenes, and always emerge victorious, feeling like dashing swashbuckler pirates of bureaucracy.
I must confess, we were woefully unprepared for the perfect storm of shit that was waiting for us this time.
It couldn’t have come on a better day. I was working as a language teacher in those days, and Igor was working at his law firm; I had a seriously important first class scheduled for later that morning, with a VIP student (who shall remain unnamed, but let’s just say that if you watched Eurovision, you saw/heard the results of my teaching along with millions of other Europeans). Igor had some case or something to handle in the afternoon, so we showed up bright and early at 8am to get the whole mess out of the way quickly.
[8am]- No one was around to even deal with us or direct us (always the first step when you embark on a bureaucracy quest in Serbia) to whatever desk we needed to check out. Eventually we went to one desk, where a sleepy and grouchy guy looked at my stuff, and decided it wasn’t his problem to deal with. Go upstairs.
We go upstairs. Again, wrong office. Go to office number whatever. We go there. Nope, not here, you gotta go downstairs to XYZ. But we were just there?!
Wait here, let me check . We wait. And wait. And wait.
[9am]- Ok, you need to go upstairs to talk with the “Boss”.
The “Boss”? That sounded ominous. Office 616, I believe. It’s actually pretty well known among foreigners, I would later find out; many are those who’ve had the pleasure of “quality time” with “Ze Boss”.
[9:15am]- We go to said office, knock on the door. Someone growls at us to come in. We meet a heavily muscled, completely bald, immaculately dressed gentleman with all the charm of a pit-bull. I kid you not, this man could make paint crumble off walls with his intense, penetrating stare of psychotic death. I’ve seen the same look on drugged child soldiers in Africa right before they decide it’s a good idea to blow your face off, or prison inmates right before they’re about to shank someone (both stories for another time ).
So the introduction was a bit rough. Still, this was the man we’d come to explain my woes to, so Igor did his best authoritative lawyer routine while I did my best I’m-so-booored-with bureaucratic-incompetence-and-I-really-have-better-things-to-do-so-can-you-please-hurry-this-up routine, a combo that is surprisingly intimidating and effective at getting results, when delivered right. Most of the time.
This man was having *none* of that. He cut us off almost immediately, and told us to sit our asses down with the authority of a school principal and made us repeat the story three times over, listening carefully with utter contempt and, somehow, fascinated boredom, if that makes any sense.
He then ordered us out of the office into the hallway for a moment. By a “moment”, he apparently meant an entire HOUR. He even walked out of the office at one point with his briefcase and came back with breakfast, never even acknowledging our presence. It was all psychological mindgames, I would later learn.
[10:30am]- We go back into the office. He grilled us again on everything that had happened (because, you know, it was *such* a shady story…). Then, somehow, the conversation turned to my work and what I was doing in Belgrade. What school was I working at? What did I do there (I teach… go figure)? Who’s the head of the school? Where do I live? Who’s my landlady? Who are my students? How do I get paid? Who pays me?
The man was a maestro of conversational misdirection and evasive tactics. Igor had met his match; anytime we tried to bring the topic back to the visa/border situation, he somehow enlarged the issue to something peripheral, unrelated, and personally invasive.
[11am]- At the conclusion of that conversation, he demanded to see my pay receipts from the school (which, by this time, coincidentally, I had had to call, to cancel my VIP class… “yeaaaah, this is awkward, but umm, I’m not going to be able to make it to the class with [VIP], I’m, ahh, stuck at the police station, you see… It’s a long story”).
Time was short and we’d already wasted 3 hours of the day with this monkey business, but it looked like some sort of resolution might come of this demand, a reward for our cooperation and goodwill and whatnot. So, Igor and I were “released” (I wasn’t aware up until that point that we were being detained, apparently) so that we may grab a taxi, race back to my apartment, grab said pay stubs, and race back to the station.
We had to wait another 45 minutes in the hallway because it was lunchtime when we got back.
[1pm]- He was not happy with the pay stubs when he got them. Why?
-“There’s no stamp on any of these!! What kind of school do you work for?!”
More questions. He was joined this time by two assistants, who were much more sympathetic characters, but painfully dimwitted. They all started grilling me about the school, how I got paid, how much, by whom exactly, names, dates, etc. I realized what was going on, and this was *not* a good situation. I was being full-on interrogated/investigated because:
- I was a foreigner who apparently had not crossed their radar before, and a semi-suspicious one at that, I admit. I came to Serbia with no particularly good/logical reason or excuse, I have a bizarre, highly international background, and I come from a country that has, ahem, “politically tense” relations with Serbia, so they probably were at least mildly suspicious that I was some kind of spy or dubious character on the run from something.
- I was working for a very big, successful language school, that owed some of its success to, let’s say, dubious business practices, what with registrations, paying its teachers (mostly cash under the table), taxes, etc. I knew this going in to the station, which was why I realized from the get-go that probing questions about my work were not really a good direction for things to be going in. Now, here we were, deep into it, and I was looking more and more guilty by the minute of… something?! I hate cops.
So they grilled me for an hour, and it was getting really stressful. I knew we were in trouble when Igor asked if he could smoke a cigarette. There was a “no smoking” sign prominently displayed on the desk, but in Serbia, most of the time those are put there as ironic humor.
They brought us an ashtray and a bottle of water. This meant we were going to be here doing this for awhiiiile.
[2pm]- After that grueling interrogation session, we were banished back into the hallway while they checked up on all the facts and information I had given them. I was starting to freak out at this point that I was going to be deported or something, and that I had sold out my language school up the river to boot. Not that I particularly cared about their well-being, but they were my main source of income at that point. Igor was just confused about what the hell was going on in there and why they were doing all of this.
[Whothehellknowshowmuchlater, pm]- Eventually, we were summoned back in. This time, Mr. Bulldog told us that he was going to go check on something, while his “assistants” would fill out some statement on me.
That was the key moment. Igor and I both caught just the slightest sneer or twitch on the face of one of the dimwitted “assistants”, when that word was used. Something was fishy, and we shared a knowing look.
So, while one of the guys, who spoke decent English, asked me a bunch of the same questions again (name of the school, name of the boss, basic things) to fill out a report, Igor made small talk and bonded with the other guy. They started to hit if off relatively well and we just played it cool. Cigarettes were smoked, coffee was made, Igor chatted, I cooperated with all the questions.
Igor then cleverly made some small remark like “Man, your boss is a real hardass” (he’s a sharp fellow, and this is why he is my lawyer). At that point, assistant #2’s ego couldn’t handle it anymore and he let the cat out of the bag.
-“ Ahhh, that guy… He is not boss, you know. He has same rank as us!” he pointed out, somewhat indignantly. “He just like to make big theatre spectacle, it is boring job here sometimes.”
Ooooh? Reeeally now, you don’t say?
Suddenly it all made sense. Ze Boss was not some higher authority, had no special power, and ultimately couldn’t really do anything about my situation except give me the damn visa. What we had calculated going in that morning had actually been correct. Mr. Bulldog, a nonetheless highly clever foe, had immediately seized upon the fact that we figured him to have more authority than he did, and he had decided to enjoy the power trip as much as possible, laying out a full battery of devious police interrogation tricks and psychological intimidation tactics to keep us disoriented and squeeze me for information in the process. I later learned, through a completely different story, that he had years ago likely worked for Tito’s secret services and had been trained by old-school KGB, which would explained how good he was at what he did and why we bought into it all hook, line, and sinker.
Once we learned this though, we knew we were in the right, and were just being jerked around. Assistant #1 finished his report/statement, and when Mr. Bulldog came back, an emboldened Igor caught him by surprise with bunch of nice lawyer-babble insinuations about intimidation, unjust interrogation, and brought the topic back to the damn visa and basically laid it out for him. We had cooperated with him all day, jumped through all his hoops, and had done nothing wrong, and we both had had quite enough of the bullshit and wasted time and would like to just get the issue resolved so could we just get on with what we all knew was going to happen and get me the damn visa?
Well, not exactly, but it turned out even better in the end. Knowing the game was up, Mr. Bulldog said that he couldn’t give us a 90 day stamp, but that he’d open a special file for me to start the application for a real working visa, which was worth much more and good for a longer period of time. This was most satisfactory.
After it was all over the mood lightened, I got all the necessary paperwork and everyone left on good terms. They’d had their bureaucratic fun with us, and we couldn’t be all that mad about it because Mr. Bulldog had been a most worthy opponent (Igor and I enjoy psychological games) and we’d been bested fair and square for most of the day.
In the end, I walked out with a better visa deal than we’d hoped we could get, so all is well that ends well. I had the interesting experience of being on the receiving end of a Serbian police interrogation (not my first police interrogation, but it was very different than how it happens back home… I digress again, different story), Igor got to practice flexing his argumentative muscles with a valid foe, and a good time was had by all.
Oh yeah, and I learned that *everything* in Serbia depends on STAMPS. Reports, documents, pictures, whatever, none of them mean a damn thing at all if there is no stamp. You must have the holy stamp. Word from the wise.
I just thought I’d write up this long day as a fun little scare story to any other foreigners who may have to venture over to office 616 or whatever it is. When you meet Mr. Bulldog, you’ll know ;) Good luck, suckers! Haha.
So, thanks for the memories Mr. Bulldog, even though they weren’t that great.
Friday, January 9, 2009
So much for hospitality...
Mark showed up in our lives immediately after Rachel, the Australian backpacker, left us and Belgrade. Her delightful three-week stay had made a bigger impact than her predecessor (one of my countrymen, a strange little hobbit of a fellow) had made in all his 6 months living with us. We (Goxy and I) were deeply saddened by her leaving, and were hopeful that we’d be able to replace the hole she left in our lives quickly by finding someone else to crash with us for awhile; we were on a Good Samaritan hosting streak.
Probably not coincidentally, within days the voodoo of Belgrade brought us Mark. Goxy’s sister had a friend who’s friend was dating this British guy (did you follow all that?) and word trickled down the cell phone vine that this guy was in some sort of difficult situation (something about his mother attempting suicide back home) and needed a place to crash, and hey since you guys have some space and are good with foreigners and all would ya mind?
So we said sure, no problem, optimistic that we were welcoming another stray yet cool traveler working his way through Belgrade, like so many others we had met out here.
Mark, however, was most definitely *not* cool guy. Every name on this blog has been changed to protect the innocent, but I’m using his real one in case he ever tries to wander back around here. It’s a shame I don’t know his last name, but I digress.
He was, allegedly, an English teacher, had been living in Belgrade for awhile, British, had a local girlfriend, some family troubles back home, and had just fallen out of some housing situation, and that was how he ended up with us. This was the only information we had about him before he showed up on our doorstep.
I met him late in the evening after a long day of work. He had a distinctly malnourished look to him, a sleepy expression of what I can only describe as total blankness, dirty wrinkled clothes, a greasy mop of hair and an almost completely incomprehensible mumbling cockney sort of accent. His whole appearance was vaguely reminiscent of Cletus the Redneck from the Simpsons. The entirety of his belongings fit into one minuscule messenger bag smaller than most girls’ purses. Basically, he had one pair of jeans, two shirts, a small toiletry kit, a book, and that was… all of it. Maybe that should have been the first thing to make us go “hmm”, but anyway…
He was supposed to crash with us for a couple of days, 3 or 4 at the most, after which Goxy’s sister and her visiting boyfriend from Spain were going to come stay over for the rest of the month, a visit she had been planning and looking forward to for a long time. Mark had no problem with that.
So he stayed with us for a few days, keeping quiet and a low profile. He spent the virtual entirety of his waking hours sitting in the living room just reading and chain-smoking, putting away easily 4 to 5 packs of Serbia’s cheapest cigarettes a day. When he wasn’t doing that, he was eating all of our food and not contributing anything whatsoever to the fridge, or our wallets. He clogged the toilet 4 times over the course of his stay. He cut his own hair at one point leaving our bathroom looking like we’d massacred a family of goats in there or something. He left piles upon piles of dirty dishes, glasses, and ashtrays filled up like an entire kafana of smoking Serbs had used them, all untouched and filthy and all over the place.
But ok, we are nice polite guys and he was supposedly traumatized or whatever, and he played that part well, so nothing was said. 4 days passed, then 5, then 6, and Goxy’s sister Nevena + boyfriend showed up. At this point the topic of Mark leaving was politely brought up several times (“hey, have you found a new living situation yet? What’s going on with your apartment search? Have you found anyone else you can crash with?” etc.). Each time he would smile and say yes, sure, absolutely, and agree with whatever it was you told or asked of him, and then…. Just go on as if nothing had happened.
At this point I vacated the premises temporarily myself, as I had found my own new apartment in the center (we were reaching the end of our lease at that apartment in Banovo Brdo) and so it wouldn’t be so crowded in the apartment with 5 people there. Within a day, Mark had comfortably moved himself into my room, where all my stuff was, without asking me, started using my stuff (rampaged through my medicine cabinet, took all my spare toothbrushes for the year, my spare socks and tshirts, going through my books/photos, etc!), and decided that my room (and bed) was a much better place to have his girlfriend sleep over than the room we had provided for him.
Meanwhile he continued his habit of smoking out the living room each and every day, all day, eating all the food, being very quiet and weird, and agreeing whenever someone suggested he should start moving on. Any normal person with basic social skills would take a clue that the hospitality was stretching thin. Goxy’s sister started to freak out b/c of his creepiness and well, ever-constant presence. She was, after all, trying to have a romantic time with her visiting boyfriend, who wouldn’t be back for months thereafter. Goxy spend most of his days working at his office so his contact with the whole situation was minimal, and he didn’t get how out of hand things were getting until too late.
This bizarre dynamic went on for TWO WEEKS. I didn’t even know he was living in my room until a week into it, and I wasn’t exactly thrilled to find him living comfortably with all my stuff, especially considering he hadn’t even asked my permission. Nevena finally lost her patience completely and didn’t want to come back to the apartment.
The situation having gotten completely weird, Gox and I finally sat down and had a serious talk with him. Since whenever we told him he should go he just kept saying yes, sure, and then did nothing, we made up this whole story about how Goxy’s brother now was coming to visit from London and was going to come stay in my new apartment for a month, so I was going to come *back* to Banovo for this time and he needed to be out of my room NO LATER than Saturday, no more extensions, is that clear? You sure? You got somewhere else to go? No kidding though, you gotta be out of here by Saturday, I’m coming back with all my stuff and there’s no other room. I will be here Saturday at 12.
As usual, he nodded, acted like he understood, yesh hokay great fine no problem, aye.
Saturday rolls around. I even packed a damn duffel bag full of clothes to make our lie seem plausible. I couldn’t believe this weirdo had reduced us to this, just to vacate him from our *own* apartment, and yet somehow we had been manipulated in our hospitality.
When I got to the apartment, Goxy was there. Mark was not. He had packed his stuff into his bag and left it by the door, with a note saying “I will be back to pick up my stuff later”. Ooookay… He had no apartment key, no CELL PHONE, and the intercom on our building didn’t work. He had basically vanished into thin air, with no way of reaching him. So now, we had to stick around in our own place waiting for him to come back. Because, best of all, you see, he had wandered off into Belgrade with my winter jacket, the most expensive piece of clothing I own, a highly necessary survival item; this was November and it was raining and freezing every single day. Lovely.
So the bastard had basically vanished into thin air into Belgrade, leaving us with no information on how to find him or get in touch with him, no clue as to when he would return, and having taken stuff from us. When we went through his bag (after 7 hours of waiting) we found several items of ours that he had tried to smuggle out, some books, a sweater, shot glasses, etc. It would be infuriating if it wasn’t all so pathetic.
We wasted the entire Saturday afternoon and night waiting around for him, and of course, he didn’t appear. The next day we called his girlfriend, the friends who had originally sent him our way, the language school he supposedly worked at (they had never heard of him), desperately trying to find where the hell he had run off to. No one had a clue. I was *not* pleased at this point. We found out then that he had previously been living with his girlfriend’s family, and that after a week, the mother had kicked him out and threatened to call the police on him for something. It would have been nice to know that before he came to us.
At this point, to speed things up, thinking we had been royally taken advantage of, we stopped playing nice and ended up finding him quickly through some not-so nice means, and made it very clear that he needed to get back to the apartment to get his stuff and bring back my jacket *now*, not tomorrow, not tonight, as soon as the bus can bring his skinny little ass back. He knew at this point he had run out of options, so he came. I was the only person home at that point, got my jacket back, gave him back his three pathetic things and sent him off into the cold with my very *best* regards.
The story doesn’t even end there. A few months later, a female friend told me about her neighbor and some terrible experience he had had with this weird foreign guy. Apparently this guy contacted him on Couchsurfing.com, had some dramatic story about how he was through through the Balkans and had just come from Albania, where they had stolen his passport and all his money, he was out of options and could he crash for a few days? The Serbian guy being a tremendously hospitable fellow, like so many here, agreed of course. Insert familiar-sounding story about weird behavior, rudeness, eating all the food, going through personal things… Eventually the Serbian guy got suspicious and first found this guy’s passport, looked through it, and of course found no trace of any visit to Albania. Mark had managed to take advantage of his hospitality for 11 days, right after he was done with us.
The vast majority of foreigners I have met here in Belgrade have all been splendid people, and their enthusiasm for this place and all it has to offer is matched by Serb’s wonderful hospitality, which is why it is really infuriating that there are fuckers like Mark out there to take advantage of them.
The only positive element to the story is that he eventually got his due; still many months later, we heard from a reliable source that he somehow ended up spending time in Serbian prison before being deported back to England.
Probably not coincidentally, within days the voodoo of Belgrade brought us Mark. Goxy’s sister had a friend who’s friend was dating this British guy (did you follow all that?) and word trickled down the cell phone vine that this guy was in some sort of difficult situation (something about his mother attempting suicide back home) and needed a place to crash, and hey since you guys have some space and are good with foreigners and all would ya mind?
So we said sure, no problem, optimistic that we were welcoming another stray yet cool traveler working his way through Belgrade, like so many others we had met out here.
Mark, however, was most definitely *not* cool guy. Every name on this blog has been changed to protect the innocent, but I’m using his real one in case he ever tries to wander back around here. It’s a shame I don’t know his last name, but I digress.
He was, allegedly, an English teacher, had been living in Belgrade for awhile, British, had a local girlfriend, some family troubles back home, and had just fallen out of some housing situation, and that was how he ended up with us. This was the only information we had about him before he showed up on our doorstep.
I met him late in the evening after a long day of work. He had a distinctly malnourished look to him, a sleepy expression of what I can only describe as total blankness, dirty wrinkled clothes, a greasy mop of hair and an almost completely incomprehensible mumbling cockney sort of accent. His whole appearance was vaguely reminiscent of Cletus the Redneck from the Simpsons. The entirety of his belongings fit into one minuscule messenger bag smaller than most girls’ purses. Basically, he had one pair of jeans, two shirts, a small toiletry kit, a book, and that was… all of it. Maybe that should have been the first thing to make us go “hmm”, but anyway…
He was supposed to crash with us for a couple of days, 3 or 4 at the most, after which Goxy’s sister and her visiting boyfriend from Spain were going to come stay over for the rest of the month, a visit she had been planning and looking forward to for a long time. Mark had no problem with that.
So he stayed with us for a few days, keeping quiet and a low profile. He spent the virtual entirety of his waking hours sitting in the living room just reading and chain-smoking, putting away easily 4 to 5 packs of Serbia’s cheapest cigarettes a day. When he wasn’t doing that, he was eating all of our food and not contributing anything whatsoever to the fridge, or our wallets. He clogged the toilet 4 times over the course of his stay. He cut his own hair at one point leaving our bathroom looking like we’d massacred a family of goats in there or something. He left piles upon piles of dirty dishes, glasses, and ashtrays filled up like an entire kafana of smoking Serbs had used them, all untouched and filthy and all over the place.
But ok, we are nice polite guys and he was supposedly traumatized or whatever, and he played that part well, so nothing was said. 4 days passed, then 5, then 6, and Goxy’s sister Nevena + boyfriend showed up. At this point the topic of Mark leaving was politely brought up several times (“hey, have you found a new living situation yet? What’s going on with your apartment search? Have you found anyone else you can crash with?” etc.). Each time he would smile and say yes, sure, absolutely, and agree with whatever it was you told or asked of him, and then…. Just go on as if nothing had happened.
At this point I vacated the premises temporarily myself, as I had found my own new apartment in the center (we were reaching the end of our lease at that apartment in Banovo Brdo) and so it wouldn’t be so crowded in the apartment with 5 people there. Within a day, Mark had comfortably moved himself into my room, where all my stuff was, without asking me, started using my stuff (rampaged through my medicine cabinet, took all my spare toothbrushes for the year, my spare socks and tshirts, going through my books/photos, etc!), and decided that my room (and bed) was a much better place to have his girlfriend sleep over than the room we had provided for him.
Meanwhile he continued his habit of smoking out the living room each and every day, all day, eating all the food, being very quiet and weird, and agreeing whenever someone suggested he should start moving on. Any normal person with basic social skills would take a clue that the hospitality was stretching thin. Goxy’s sister started to freak out b/c of his creepiness and well, ever-constant presence. She was, after all, trying to have a romantic time with her visiting boyfriend, who wouldn’t be back for months thereafter. Goxy spend most of his days working at his office so his contact with the whole situation was minimal, and he didn’t get how out of hand things were getting until too late.
This bizarre dynamic went on for TWO WEEKS. I didn’t even know he was living in my room until a week into it, and I wasn’t exactly thrilled to find him living comfortably with all my stuff, especially considering he hadn’t even asked my permission. Nevena finally lost her patience completely and didn’t want to come back to the apartment.
The situation having gotten completely weird, Gox and I finally sat down and had a serious talk with him. Since whenever we told him he should go he just kept saying yes, sure, and then did nothing, we made up this whole story about how Goxy’s brother now was coming to visit from London and was going to come stay in my new apartment for a month, so I was going to come *back* to Banovo for this time and he needed to be out of my room NO LATER than Saturday, no more extensions, is that clear? You sure? You got somewhere else to go? No kidding though, you gotta be out of here by Saturday, I’m coming back with all my stuff and there’s no other room. I will be here Saturday at 12.
As usual, he nodded, acted like he understood, yesh hokay great fine no problem, aye.
Saturday rolls around. I even packed a damn duffel bag full of clothes to make our lie seem plausible. I couldn’t believe this weirdo had reduced us to this, just to vacate him from our *own* apartment, and yet somehow we had been manipulated in our hospitality.
When I got to the apartment, Goxy was there. Mark was not. He had packed his stuff into his bag and left it by the door, with a note saying “I will be back to pick up my stuff later”. Ooookay… He had no apartment key, no CELL PHONE, and the intercom on our building didn’t work. He had basically vanished into thin air, with no way of reaching him. So now, we had to stick around in our own place waiting for him to come back. Because, best of all, you see, he had wandered off into Belgrade with my winter jacket, the most expensive piece of clothing I own, a highly necessary survival item; this was November and it was raining and freezing every single day. Lovely.
So the bastard had basically vanished into thin air into Belgrade, leaving us with no information on how to find him or get in touch with him, no clue as to when he would return, and having taken stuff from us. When we went through his bag (after 7 hours of waiting) we found several items of ours that he had tried to smuggle out, some books, a sweater, shot glasses, etc. It would be infuriating if it wasn’t all so pathetic.
We wasted the entire Saturday afternoon and night waiting around for him, and of course, he didn’t appear. The next day we called his girlfriend, the friends who had originally sent him our way, the language school he supposedly worked at (they had never heard of him), desperately trying to find where the hell he had run off to. No one had a clue. I was *not* pleased at this point. We found out then that he had previously been living with his girlfriend’s family, and that after a week, the mother had kicked him out and threatened to call the police on him for something. It would have been nice to know that before he came to us.
At this point, to speed things up, thinking we had been royally taken advantage of, we stopped playing nice and ended up finding him quickly through some not-so nice means, and made it very clear that he needed to get back to the apartment to get his stuff and bring back my jacket *now*, not tomorrow, not tonight, as soon as the bus can bring his skinny little ass back. He knew at this point he had run out of options, so he came. I was the only person home at that point, got my jacket back, gave him back his three pathetic things and sent him off into the cold with my very *best* regards.
The story doesn’t even end there. A few months later, a female friend told me about her neighbor and some terrible experience he had had with this weird foreign guy. Apparently this guy contacted him on Couchsurfing.com, had some dramatic story about how he was through through the Balkans and had just come from Albania, where they had stolen his passport and all his money, he was out of options and could he crash for a few days? The Serbian guy being a tremendously hospitable fellow, like so many here, agreed of course. Insert familiar-sounding story about weird behavior, rudeness, eating all the food, going through personal things… Eventually the Serbian guy got suspicious and first found this guy’s passport, looked through it, and of course found no trace of any visit to Albania. Mark had managed to take advantage of his hospitality for 11 days, right after he was done with us.
The vast majority of foreigners I have met here in Belgrade have all been splendid people, and their enthusiasm for this place and all it has to offer is matched by Serb’s wonderful hospitality, which is why it is really infuriating that there are fuckers like Mark out there to take advantage of them.
The only positive element to the story is that he eventually got his due; still many months later, we heard from a reliable source that he somehow ended up spending time in Serbian prison before being deported back to England.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Remember how I mentioned Goxy loses *everything*, anytime, anyplace, anyhow, no object too small or large?
This was 5 minutes ago, 2 days after New Year's 2009:
[2:45:34 PM] Goxy Whatever-ovic says:
Did you know that I lost my wallet in that shop where we bought drinks for sujas party///
I rest my case.
This was 5 minutes ago, 2 days after New Year's 2009:
[2:45:34 PM] Goxy Whatever-ovic says:
Did you know that I lost my wallet in that shop where we bought drinks for sujas party///
I rest my case.
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