by In our last two evenings in Belgrade we ate in the main square. It was full of life. Young people who walked fast, mainly. We saw surprisingly few people on their phones. Eating there simplified things: we were starting to get fed up of eating out, which I’ve always thought is overrated anyway. Mum was still grappling with the badly-designed local currency. They have nine denominations of notes, ranging from 10 dinars (worth roughly 8 pence) to 5000 (almost £40). With that many values, it’s impossible to distinguish them all based on colour alone. As for the virtually worthless coins, they were identical in shape and colour, and very similar in size too. On Saturday night we got ice creams from the bar next door to our apartment. The woman who served us, if you can call it that, was miserable. We saw two ice cream prices: 30 and 70 dinars, but I couldn’t work out what the Serbian alongside each price meant. It turned out that the cone itself was 30 dinars and each scoop of ice cream was 70. That was a new one on me.
Serbia beat Costa Rica 1-0 in their opening World Cup game, thanks to a stunning free kick, and we expected to see wild celebrations in town, but they weren’t forthcoming. Sadly they conceded a late goal to Switzerland last night to lose 2-1, and are probably out of the tournament now unless they can pull off a huge upset win over Brazil.
On the last day we went down to the waterfront, and saw some fishermen with a decent haul. By this stage I was feeling a bit claustrophobic. Mum and Dad were quick to judge and criticise everything they saw; many things that annoyed them didn’t really bother me. The city had been ravaged by war only twenty years ago; of course it won’t be like Paris. It’s also much cheaper than Paris, and for that reason, as well as the interesting language, I’d quite like to go back there by myself. Perhaps I could then take the train to Bar, on the coast of Montenegro. That trip is supposed to be spectacular.
On Monday the bus was again an hour late, but at least I had a working phone. We weren’t held up very long at the border this time, but the journey still took over three hours. I had a lesson that evening. The next three mornings I did a spot of fishing with Dad, and was gradually getting the hang of it, but the fish weren’t having a bar of our rubberised sweetcorn bait. We did see people catch sizeable caras, a.k.a Prussian carp, using maggots, which I’ll need to get my hands on.
I had my 71st two-hour session with Matei on Tuesday. I’m running out of things to do with him. I prepared a piece on Ronaldo, who I thought was his favourite footballer. I thought it would be timely after he’d just scored a hat-trick for Portugal against Spain. But either I’d forgotten or Matei had changed his mind, and apparently he can’t stand Ronaldo and instead Messi is his favourite. Oh well.
My parents’ experiences here, and in Belgrade, were pretty positive on the whole. Things inevitably became strained on occasions – Mum doesn’t cope well with stress and that’s just the way she is – but she and I never had any real arguments. It helps that I’m more relaxed myself these days. They left on Thursday. I ordered a taxi, the woman on the phone said “four minutes” before I had the chance to specify a time, and before I knew it they were gone. That was a shame.
Mum and Dad are making another trip to the UK for Christmas, so I should see them then, not that I’m overly enthusiastic about enduring a horribly commercialised British Christmas.
We’ve had thunderstorms lately, and today has seen a welcome drop in temperature. I’m looking forward to everything being back to normal once more.
