El Zorro: Balkans 8 : Belgrade 1 (巴爾幹半島之行8:布爾格萊德之一)

After a long day, a soft and comfortable bed following a nice hot shower seems just the thing one needed most.

This is the reception entrance of the hall of Westin Hotel where we stayed. We had to get up early to go to the next city, Belgrade

As it was a long journey, I needed a beer. The local beer is not bad.

As everywhere in the Balkans, people like to have flowers on their fences.

I needed a coffee too, rich black coffee, an expresso. It seems they have little else.

The mountain was full of mist.

We passed through rows and rows of maize in the countryside.

Some have sprouted flowers which will soon turn into those lovely pearls of gold later.

The fields are planted in straight rows

Storm clouds are gathering

The clouds are threatening to burst into rain soon.

Like farmers in China, they know how to protect the young shoots of more delicate vegetables from the rain and marauding birds.

They use sticks to help them identify which groups of rows need attention.

Not every field is planted: they know that the land needs time to rest and restore its nutrients. So the fields are planted by rotation.

Time for another rest stop

I took a look at what seems to interest the locals

It seems that men everywhere are more or less the same

I took the chance to take some roadside flowers whilst the tour group members were taking their turn at the toilet

More wild flowers

And a snail ! It seems they like honey too or is it just petals?

They grow canolas everywhere

My first glimpse of Belgrade: a twin tower one of whose exterior has been colonized by mass market ladies fashion.Women, what would they do without clothes? And how would the fashion and the associated accessories industries survive without women?

I know now that the 140 square-mile Belgrade is built upon hilly country, nearly 400 feet above sea level. We learn that it;s the capital and largest city in Serbia, situated where the Danube joins its tributary the Sava and where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans.Its name translates to "Beautiful/White City". It's home to 1.2 M people and 1.65 M including its suburbs.

Archeologists tell us that the area has been settled by people between 20,000 to 50,000 years ago but was first settled in around the 6th century BC by the Thraco-Dacian farmers of the Singis, belonging to what's known as "Vinča culture" (5500–4500 BC) and that around 279 BC, they were conquered by the Celtic Scordisci people, who named the city Singidūn(dūn= fortress).

Around 34-33BC, the Romans took it over and in the 2nd century gave it the rights of a "city" under the Roman Empire. The first Christian Emperor of Rome,Constantine I or Constantine the Great, was born on the territory in modern Serbia in Naissus. In addition, Flavius Iovianus (Jovian), another early Roman emperor, the restorer of Christianity was also born in Singidunum (now Belgrade) . However, in 395 AD, the city passed to the hands of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire). In 442 AD the city was ravaged by Attila the Hun. In 471, it was taken by Theodoric the Great of Greece. As the Ostrogoths left for Italy, the Gepids took over the city. Around 520s AD the Slavs moved in and in 539 it was retaken by the Byzantines.

In 577 AD, some 100,000 Slavs poured into Thrace and Illyricum, pillaging cities and settling down. The Avars under Bayan I conquered the whole region by 582. When the Avars were finally destroyed in the 9th century by the Franks, it fell back under Byzantine rule.

In the Middle Ages, Belgrade hosted the armies of the First and the Second Crusades to the East. For about four centuries, the city remained a battleground between the Byzantine Empire, The Frankish Empire, the Kingdom of Hungary, Serbia and the Bulgarian Empires before it became the capital of Serbian King Stephen Dragutin (1282–1316). In 1521, Belgrade was conquered by Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire with his 250,000 soldiers and Belgrade was made the seat of the Sanjak of Smederevo, the second largest within the Ottoman Empire. Numerous mosques were built.

However, political control alternated between the Turks and the Austrian Habsburgs as a result of incessant wars. It was occupied by the Habsburgs three times (1688–1690, 1717–1739, 1789–1791), headed by the Holy Roman Princes Maximilian of Bavaria and Eugene of Savoy and field marshal Baron Ernst Gideon von Laudon respectively but each time, Belgrade was quickly recaptured by the Ottomans and a great many parts of the city were razed to the ground. During this period, the city was affected by the two Great Serbian migrations when hundreds of thousands of Serbs, led by their patriarchs, retreated together with the Austrians into the Habsburg Empire, settling in today's Vojvodina and Slavonia.

In 1594, the Ottomans crushed a major Serb rebellion and later, the Grand vizier Sinan Pasha ordered the relics of Saint Sava to be publicly torched on the Vračar plateau. In the 20th century, Serbians have a Temple of Saint Sava to commemorate this event . During the First Serbian Uprising, the Serbian revoluti onaries held the city from 8 January 1807 until 1813, when it was retaken by the Ottomans.After the Second Serbian Uprising in 1815, Serbia reached semi-independence, which was formally recognized by the Porte in 1830. In 1841, Prince Mihailo Obrenović moved the capital of Serbia from Kragujevac to Belgrade whilst northern Belgrade remained the southernmost Habsburg post. After the Turks were defeated in 1878, the Principality achieved full independence and became the centre of the Kingdom of Serbia in 1882, and developed rapidly. In 1918, the Turkish and the Serbian part of the city was reunited. In the 1900, the city had a population of about 70,000 (when the total Serbian population was about 1.5 M) , growing to 80,000 in 1905 but rose to about 10,000 at the start of the WWI, not counting Zemun, which belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. its popluation grew to 239,000 by 1931 after incorporating the town of Zemun, formerly in Austria-Hungary) to 320,000 by 1940.

World War I began on 28 July 1914 when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Most of the subsequent Balkan offensives occurred near Belgrade. The city was occupied by the Germans at the end of November 1914 but was retaken 2 weeks later by Serbian troops under Marshal Radomir Putnik. After a prolonged battle which destroyed much of the city, between 6 and 9 October 1915, Belgrade fell again to German and Austro-Hungarian troops commanded by Field Marshal August von Mackensen on 9 October 1915 and was not liberated by Serbian and French troops until 1 November 1918, under the command of Marshal Louis Franchet d'Espérey of France and Crown Prince Alexander of Serbia. After the war, Belgrade became the capital of the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, (renamed in 1929 as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia). When the 3-race kingdom was formed in 1918, Belgrade became its capital, a situation which ended in 2006 when Serbia became independent.

On 25 March 1941, the government of regent Crown Prince Paul signed the Tripartite Pact, joining the Axis powers in an effort to stay out of the WWII and keep Yugoslavia neutral during the conflict. This was immediately followed by mass protests in Belgrade and a military coup d'état led by Air Force commander General Dušan Simović, who proclaimed King Peter II to be of age to rule the realm. Consequently, the city was heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe on 6 April 1941, when up to 24,000 people were killed.Yugoslavia was then invaded by German, Italian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian forces, and suburbs as far east as Zemun, in the Belgrade metropolitan area, were incorporated into a Nazi state, the Independent State of Croatia. Belgrade became the seat of the Nedić regime, headed by General Milan Nedić.During the summer and fall of 1941, in reprisal for guerrilla attacks, the Germans carried out several massacres the Serbians of Belgrade citizens and Jews were subjected to mass shootings at the order of General Franz Böhme, the German Military Governor of Serbia. Böhme rigorously enforced the rule that for every German killed, 100 Serbs or Jews would be shot. The resistance movement in Belgrade was led by Major Žarko Todorović from 1941 until his arrest in 1943. On 29 November 1945, Marshal Josip Broz Tito proclaimed the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia in Belgrade (later to be renamed to Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on 7 April 1963). It is estimated about 10,000 died from political persecutions in Belgrade.

On 9 March 1991, massive demonstrations led by Vuk Drašković were held in the city against Slobodan On 9 March 1991, massive demonstrations led by Vuk Drašković were held in the city against Slobodan Milošević and it's estimated that between 100,000 and 150,000 people were on the streets. Two people were killed, 203 injured and 108 arrested during the protests, and later that day tanks were deployed onto the streets to restore order. Further protests were held in Belgrade from November 1996 to February 1997 against the same government after alleged electoral fraud at local elections and as a result of such protests, for the first time since WWII, a politician who did not belong to the Leaque of Communists of Serbia or its later offshoot, the Socialist Party of Serbia became the mayor of Belgrade, Zoran Đinđić .After the 2000 presidential elections, Belgrade was the site of major public protests, with over half a million people on the streets. These demonstrations resulted in the ousting of president Milošević.

Belgrade must be one of the cities most subject to physical devastation in the world. Because of its strategic location, more than 115 wars had been fought in the history of Belgrade: the city was razed to the ground 44 times. Just like Rotterdam, which was devastated twice, by both German and Allied bombing, Belgrade was bombed once more during World War II, a second time by the Allies on 16 April 1944, killing about 1,100 people. This bombing fell on the Orthodox Christian Easter. Most of the city remained under German occupation until 20 October 1944, when it was liberated by the Red Army and the Communist Yugoslav Partisans.In 1999, during the Kosovo War, NATO bombings caused substantial damage to the city amongst the buildings damaged were those housing various ministries, the RTS building (killing 6 technicians), several hospitals, the Hotel Jugoslavija, the Central Committee building, the Avala Tower, and the Chinese embassy. On 29 November 1945, Marshal Josip Broz Tito proclaimed the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia in Belgrade (later to be renamed to Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on 7 April 1963). It is estimated about 10,000 died from political persecutions in Belgrade. I just wonder whether or not the frequency of wars has got anything to do with the great number of churches one finds in Belgrade: there's a church practically within a mile or so of one another: one finds a church as easily as one finds a bakery or fast food shop or a coffee bar.

Now a quarter of all Serbian population lives in Belgrade. Historically, the core of the city is Kalemegdan, on the right banks of both rivers but since the 19th century, it has been expanded towards the south and the east and in 1948, after World War II, Novi Beograd (New Belgrade) was built on the left bank of the Sava river connecting Belgrade with Zemun. The Pančevo Bridge, which crosses the Danube, was opened in 1935 while "King Alexander Bridge" over the Sava was opened in 1934. In 1958, Belgrade's first television station began broadcasting. In 1962, Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport was built.The highest point of the city is Torlak hill, nearly 1000 feet high.

The city is surrounded by hills to its south, the Avala (1,677 ft)) and Kosmaj (2,060 ft) and has an average of some 27 inches of rain a year, mostly in late spring and its temperature varies between −26.2 °C and 43.6 °C but there's just one month per year with temperature above 30°C and 3 months above 25 °C.

The city appeared quite dilapidated: it's full of old buildings.

I like the city though. It is full of street art. The external wall of this old building is painted over to give the illusion of a non-existing archway.