Belgrade, Serbia
It's Saturday night and I'm pressed against a crowd of singing, swaying, Champagne- and cocktail-toting Serbs outside one of the nightclubs on Strahinjica Bana, a street in the hip Dorcol district. A rock concert echoes up the hill, convertibles are thumping past, and the buzz feels more like Berlin, London or Barcelona than a war-torn capital in the Balkans.
But raucous nights like these are normal in the hard-partying resurrected city that is Belgrade.
"So many clubs have opened in the last few years," said Vladimir, a guy standing in the crowd. "Now you can go anywhere and do anything. A lot has changed since Oct. 5."
He meant Oct. 5, 2000, the day masses of nonviolent protesters assembled outside Belgrade's Parliament and ousted Slobodan Milosevic from power, replacing him with a democratic, Western-backed government. The country has been on an upward trajectory ever since.
Strahinjica Bana, along with other hopping nightspots like it, has become a symbol of the resurgent capital. With an international theater festival this month and the renowned Belgrade Jazz Festival in October, Belgrade is reinventing itself as a fresh, dynamic cultural destination in Europe. That's one reason -- after a decade of bloody Balkan wars and NATO's 78-day bombardment of the city in 1999 -- travelers are starting to trickle back in. About 280,000 visited last year, more than triple the number since 2000.
I came here in spring, after dealing with crowds in Croatia, because I wanted to see a city that so far has been spared the tourist-catering atmosphere.
Today's news reports from Serbia (and the Balkans generally) focus almost exclusively on two things: Belgrade's lagging efforts to capture and extradite its war criminals and the country's stubborn, even militant refusal to grant Kosovo independence. With 20% unemployment, an economy battered by sanctions and the nation considered a pariah by the West, these weren't exactly touristic waters.
A MORE OPEN FUTURE
It was a bright morning as I carried my pack up one of the steep, winding streets that led away from the bus depot and followed signs pointing toward the Old Bohemian Quarter. Construction workers of various-looking nationalities were shouting over a racket of jackhammers. Old-fashioned bakeries and shops overflowed with customers. At the top of the hill, elegantly dressed patrons sat at cafe tables on the sidewalk of a gritty boulevard, opposite a McDonald's, which seemed to confirm I had landed someplace between a classical, enlightened Europe and a post-Soviet consumer blitz.
