Serbian marathon

Hello everyone! Today I will be writing about our trip to Serbia. Serbia is a landlocked country in a South-Eastern region of Europe often called the Balkans. Serbia used to be part of Yugoslavia, a country that no longer exists.

We took a plane from Luton to Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. There, we rented a room right on the high street of the old town (Stari Grad), above a restaurant, which unfortunately meant that it was hard to sleep during the night .

This time it was just me and another girl representing the UK. The competition was a hit. I made it to the semi-final, where I lost to my friend from Royal Tunbridge Wells, coming home with bronze. She went on to claim silver.

Afterwards, we went for a dinner to the restaurant below our room. After a while, a band started tuning their instruments, and soon they gathered around our table playing and singing some Serbian folk tunes that were a nice match to the local cuisine we ordered.

After a restful, but loud night, we planned our journey to the airport. As it was Sunday we found a Church (sadly the mass in Serbian was later on and we did not have that much time) and we joined the morning mass there in English.

St Peter’s Church in Belgrade

We had planned it so that after the mass, we would make our way on foot to a bus stop to take a bus straight to the airport. Lo and behold that was not to happen! The bus was cancelled because of a marathon! We found a Starbucks nearby and my dad tried ordering some taxis, but he couldn’t get any reception. Finally, he contacted the owner of the room we rented, and he helped us out by arriving in no time and giving us a lift to the airport.

If you speak Slavic languages, for example Polish, you will have another reason to love Serbia: there are so many similar words that you can largely understand the language without ever having learnt it. Don’t take my word for it, see some pictures from a local grocery store in Belgrade.

While at the Belgrade Airport, waiting for our return flight, we noticed two very curious and friendly sparrows that seemed to be nesting under the suspended ceiling in the departures hall. They were very clever, as every now and again one of the waiting passengers would feed them with something.

All in all, I would love to come back to Serbia next year because the people there are very nice and Belgrade is a beautiful city. In case I forgot to mention, put Belgrade on your Bucket list because the public transport is free and gets you to your destination very quickly. Unless that is, you happen to be there on the same day as marathon and some buses don’t run at all!