Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Ramblings of a Polymath (more like a ferret) & His S
Unfortunately Belgrade didn't have a lot going for it. It was Sunday and except for the main street; closed for business. What it did have was a very interesting Palace and the best tour guide of the trip. Well, the best sense of humour with magnificent comedic timing.
I remember saying at the time that I didn't understand how a people who has seemed to be so cohesive under Tito throughout the cold war period could then set about killing each other. One of our guides said that it was never really ablout religion but was all about money and power. I'm still not sure that there wasn't a major element of ethnic clensing involved. In fact, having left it for four or more days to catch up on this blog, I can no longer remember which guide said what. One in Serbia when asked about the two buildings destroyed by American misiles said that what the Serbians had done to Croatians was wrong however the Americans shouldn't have attacked the. Then again, she also said, if they hadn't we probably would have continued. Strange response.
The two rocketed buildings that are still standing, albeit as shattered buildings, are the old military command and secret police, side by side with barriers to prevent them collapsing into the street. No sign of teh Chinese Embassy, also destroyed by the Amaricans "Opps, I had an old street map"
Unfortunately this was probably the highlight as we drove up through town to the Karadjordjevic Dynasty Palace. Either that or our guides comedic monologue and in particular when a Gypsy was seen moving among cars begging with an outstrreched hat, "we are politically correct in Serbia, that isn't a gypsy, he's a mobile ethnic minority. We have more banks than money was another.
Crown Prince Alexander wasn't at home to share a glass of wine with us. That had seriously been suggested as likely. He has refused to take the title of "King" and apparently they are well respected for the charity work they do. He receives no money from the state and raises it through guided tours of the palace and other activities. Anyway, he wasn't home however he arranged for his staff to provide us with nibbles and wine. Quite a surprise at mid morning to take a tipple and discover it is very similar to Port.
Tito and his wife had lived here during their "reign" and on his death,she moved into a house axross the road and was either uder house arrest or suffered from agrophobia or somehting the guide couldn't express. Shedidn't leave the building for over 30 years and only left after her death ... I assume. The only evidinece that Titio and the communists had occpied the palace are a bullet hole through a painting of Jesus's head in the chapel, the faint markes where a red star had been carved into a marble column and Titi's chair on the balconey where he watched American movies in his basement movie theatre.
The ground floor is as is which means it is the office of Crown Prince Alexander and his reception rooms. The basement was the highlight of Belgrade. Stunning billiard, card, ches and movie rooms brightly decorated with ... look, you reallyhave to look at the photographs as they are beyond description.
As we drove back into town there were a number of fires and eventually a fire truck passing us, far too late. In the city centre we stopped to view the cathedral, complete on the outside and still incomplete on the inside after decades of building. Sounded the same as medieval construction schedules; just waiting on the poor to donate more money to complete in slow stages.
Again, the highlight wasn't the cathedral. We had driven into a narrow one way street to vies the cathedral and it must have been lunch time because cars were parked any which way and the two buses in our tour couldnt get through because one car had it tail out in the road. I was telling fellow travelers about how when growing up in Cove St, Watsons Bay, people would park in our driveway to go to the beach. I would get a number of my mates to help and we would bounce the car up onto the footbpath and out of the way. Low and behold, the guide went and spoke to the driver of the bus behind us, and he joined our driver to bounce the car closer to the fence and out of the way.
Final stop was the castle and that turned out to be a massive park surrounded by the old walls and it was packed with families and people just enjoying a stroll. Nothing much to get excited about.
The rest of the afternoon was free to see the sights of Belgrade. You would have to be kidding. It was Sunday, almost everything closed except for clothing shops for the young in the main mall and packed with Belgrad's youth with nothing to do bust stand in groups chatting and/or texting.
I'm running out of things to write about and as I am so far behind in this blog ..................
The House of Karađorđević (Serbian pronunciation: [karad͡ʑǒːrd͡& #657;eʋit͡ɕ]) is a Serbian and European dynastic family, founded byKarađorđe Petrović, the Veliki Vožd ("Grand Leader") of Serbia in the early 1800s during the First Serbian Uprising. The dynasty name Karađorđević is derived from the name of the founder, Đorđe "Karađorđe" Petrović (Karadjorde = "Black George" and Petrovic = "Peter's Son"), and is typically spelled "Karadjordjevic" while pronunciation is roughly anglicized as "Karageorgevitch", and was in previous times rendered also as Kara-Georgevitch.The relatively short-lived dynasty had an ongoing blood feud[citation needed] with the Obrenović dynasty after Karađorđe's assassination in 1817, which was apparently authorized by Miloš Obrenović.[citation needed] The two Houses subsequently traded the throne for several generations.In 1903, the Serbian Parliament chose Karađorđe's grandson, Peter Karađorđević, then living in exile, for the throne of the Kingdom of Serbia. He was duly crowned as King Peter I, and shortly before the end of World War I, representatives of the three peoples proclaimed a Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes with Peter I as sovereign. In 1929, the Kingdom was renamed Yugoslavia, under Alexander I, the son of Peter I. In November 1945, the throne was lost when the League of Communists of Yugoslavia seized power, during the reign of Peter II.
I remember saying at the time that I didn't understand how a people who has seemed to be so cohesive under Tito throughout the cold war period could then set about killing each other. One of our guides said that it was never really ablout religion but was all about money and power. I'm still not sure that there wasn't a major element of ethnic clensing involved. In fact, having left it for four or more days to catch up on this blog, I can no longer remember which guide said what. One in Serbia when asked about the two buildings destroyed by American misiles said that what the Serbians had done to Croatians was wrong however the Americans shouldn't have attacked the. Then again, she also said, if they hadn't we probably would have continued. Strange response.
The two rocketed buildings that are still standing, albeit as shattered buildings, are the old military command and secret police, side by side with barriers to prevent them collapsing into the street. No sign of teh Chinese Embassy, also destroyed by the Amaricans "Opps, I had an old street map"
Unfortunately this was probably the highlight as we drove up through town to the Karadjordjevic Dynasty Palace. Either that or our guides comedic monologue and in particular when a Gypsy was seen moving among cars begging with an outstrreched hat, "we are politically correct in Serbia, that isn't a gypsy, he's a mobile ethnic minority. We have more banks than money was another.
Crown Prince Alexander wasn't at home to share a glass of wine with us. That had seriously been suggested as likely. He has refused to take the title of "King" and apparently they are well respected for the charity work they do. He receives no money from the state and raises it through guided tours of the palace and other activities. Anyway, he wasn't home however he arranged for his staff to provide us with nibbles and wine. Quite a surprise at mid morning to take a tipple and discover it is very similar to Port.
Tito and his wife had lived here during their "reign" and on his death,she moved into a house axross the road and was either uder house arrest or suffered from agrophobia or somehting the guide couldn't express. Shedidn't leave the building for over 30 years and only left after her death ... I assume. The only evidinece that Titio and the communists had occpied the palace are a bullet hole through a painting of Jesus's head in the chapel, the faint markes where a red star had been carved into a marble column and Titi's chair on the balconey where he watched American movies in his basement movie theatre.
The ground floor is as is which means it is the office of Crown Prince Alexander and his reception rooms. The basement was the highlight of Belgrade. Stunning billiard, card, ches and movie rooms brightly decorated with ... look, you reallyhave to look at the photographs as they are beyond description.
As we drove back into town there were a number of fires and eventually a fire truck passing us, far too late. In the city centre we stopped to view the cathedral, complete on the outside and still incomplete on the inside after decades of building. Sounded the same as medieval construction schedules; just waiting on the poor to donate more money to complete in slow stages.
Again, the highlight wasn't the cathedral. We had driven into a narrow one way street to vies the cathedral and it must have been lunch time because cars were parked any which way and the two buses in our tour couldnt get through because one car had it tail out in the road. I was telling fellow travelers about how when growing up in Cove St, Watsons Bay, people would park in our driveway to go to the beach. I would get a number of my mates to help and we would bounce the car up onto the footbpath and out of the way. Low and behold, the guide went and spoke to the driver of the bus behind us, and he joined our driver to bounce the car closer to the fence and out of the way.
Final stop was the castle and that turned out to be a massive park surrounded by the old walls and it was packed with families and people just enjoying a stroll. Nothing much to get excited about.
The rest of the afternoon was free to see the sights of Belgrade. You would have to be kidding. It was Sunday, almost everything closed except for clothing shops for the young in the main mall and packed with Belgrad's youth with nothing to do bust stand in groups chatting and/or texting.
I'm running out of things to write about and as I am so far behind in this blog ..................
The House of Karađorđević (Serbian pronunciation: [karad͡ʑǒːrd͡& #657;eʋit͡ɕ]) is a Serbian and European dynastic family, founded byKarađorđe Petrović, the Veliki Vožd ("Grand Leader") of Serbia in the early 1800s during the First Serbian Uprising. The dynasty name Karađorđević is derived from the name of the founder, Đorđe "Karađorđe" Petrović (Karadjorde = "Black George" and Petrovic = "Peter's Son"), and is typically spelled "Karadjordjevic" while pronunciation is roughly anglicized as "Karageorgevitch", and was in previous times rendered also as Kara-Georgevitch.The relatively short-lived dynasty had an ongoing blood feud[citation needed] with the Obrenović dynasty after Karađorđe's assassination in 1817, which was apparently authorized by Miloš Obrenović.[citation needed] The two Houses subsequently traded the throne for several generations.In 1903, the Serbian Parliament chose Karađorđe's grandson, Peter Karađorđević, then living in exile, for the throne of the Kingdom of Serbia. He was duly crowned as King Peter I, and shortly before the end of World War I, representatives of the three peoples proclaimed a Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes with Peter I as sovereign. In 1929, the Kingdom was renamed Yugoslavia, under Alexander I, the son of Peter I. In November 1945, the throne was lost when the League of Communists of Yugoslavia seized power, during the reign of Peter II.
- comments