Belgrade, Serbia

As we go further down the Danube towards the Black Sea, we venture further into the territories formerly occupied by the Ottoman Empire: the further we go, the longer the areas were retained in the back and forth history of the region. At a strategic geographic choke point in the contest between two great world civilizations Belgrade (“beo” = white; “grad” = city) was besieged in 115 wars and razed 44 times in its long history. Our local guide quipped that even having been born in 1984 she had lived in four countries, without moving once.

Belgrade fortress is in the upper city, well protected by the steep terrain in the direction of the Sava and Danube rivers. Inside are collections of tanks from the world wars and tennis courts for the gifted players produced here like Novak Djokovic.
Despite the Serbs’ great bitterness about Turkish occupation, they also admired and respected enlightened rulers. The Ottoman Grand Vizier Silahdar Damat Ali Pasha’s tomb remains inside Belgrade fortress and was protected by being removed prior to bombardments and then returned by the Serbs. Among other things, he allowed them to reopen their churches. He was killed in battle against the Austrians in 1716.
The “Conqueror’s Road” was the best route to take to besiege the fortress for 2000 years. No one seemed to be alarmed by our presence.
With Serbia’s history of occupation, the Sava Cathedral is a 20th and 21st century project for the Serbs, helped along by generous donations from expatriate Serbs. It is being built over the ground where the sarcophagus and relics of Saint Sava had been burned and the ashes scattered by the Turks in 1595 and is the largest Orthodox Church in the world.

Serbia has something of a violent past when it comes to their monarchy. We walked by the former royal palace (now town hall) where winners of Olympic medals and the like stand on the balcony to be recognized. When we had passed by earlier in a bus with our guide, she also mentioned that a King and Queen had been thrown from the same balcony. Actually, that’s not quite the full story and it reminded us of the defenestrations in Prague (although the happenings in Prague were rather tame in comparison). It seems that young King Alexander I had acceded to the throne when his father King Milan abdicated and fled the country. Alexander proceeded to do many unpopular things, such as marrying a widowed former lady-in-waiting and then considering naming her wildly unpopular brother as heir presumptive when Alexander and Queen Draga turned out to be unable to have children. To make a long and fascinating story shorter, there was an army conspiracy, headed by a key member of the same Black Hand society responsible for later goings-on in Sarajevo, to assasinate the King and Queen to make way for a new dynasty . They invaded the palace, found the couple hiding in a cupboard in her bedroom, shot them, mutilated them, disembowled them, and threw what remained off the balony onto a pile of animal manure. Nicely done, don’t you think?

 

Our visit to the Tesla Museum was a fascinating detour into the life of Nicola Tesla, an extraordinary pioneer in electronics. He invented, among other things, the induction motor, radio (per the US Supreme Court in a ruling against Marconi), and remote control. Here, our guide (a local student in contention for an internship at SpaceX) demonstrates how transmission of electricity remotely can light of a fluorescent sign and Jim helped to demonstrate the same principle with a huge jolt of high frequency current (see the bolt of electricity under the black ball). Some of you may recall that Matsumoto uses low frequency current as a murder weapon in his detective novel Inspector Imanishi Investigates. It turns out that this isn’t fanciful after all. High frequency is safe, or at least that’s what we were told.


Belgrade is a city we were sorry to leave. We could easily have spent another day. One reason, of course, is that people in Belgrade apparently love dogs. It’s our kind of place (and the coffees and cakes are good, too).