Safely in Belgrade on a sunny Wednesday morning meant just one thing, it was time to be annoyed that it was too hot.
The Gate of the Balkans and Central Europe and this sounds like a reasonable claim as Belgrade sits between the two regions and has spent centuries being approached, occupied, liberated, rebuilt and approached again, so it has certainly accumulated the necessary gatekeeping experience.
The decadent external area at the airport with limited seating and a roof that looked like it might fall down. Oh, and too many people smoking, but I don’t want to sound that I’m complaining again.
But they have some modern art and the panel next to it states “the sun does not distinguish whom it warms” which felt appropriate as I was already annoyed about the heat and the sun had definitely already located me.
Bus 72 is the one that goes to the transportation hub of Zeleni Venac in the city centre and after reading up on these, this means there’s one in 16 minutes that’s three stops away and a second which is 17 minutes away and five stops away.
And here’s the bus sweeping majestically to the stop. The bus was relatively busy, but there’s an advantage about Belgrade public transport which is that it is now entirely free. More about that in future posts, but this surprised and delighted me and it was introduced in January 2025, a few weeks after I was last in Belgrade. There was also limited luggage storage on board which hardly impacted me personally, other than several passengers struggled to fit their ridiculously sized bags anywhere convenient.
The journey took around 45 minutes to get to the city centre and although the bus had wi-fi, it didn’t have much air conditioning so it was a little hotter than I would have ideally liked. Nonetheless, the journey was convenient, straightforward and completely free, leaving very little room for genuine complaint beyond the temperature, although I was willing to make the necessary effort in that regard.