As I had some time before Jonathan arrived in Belgrade, I decided to continue my immersive exploration of Serbian culture by going to KFC. This was nearly entirely because they offer unlimited refills on soft drinks and, having recently discovered that churches can be ranked by volume, I saw no real reason why the same principle should not be applied to Pepsi. Since the drink on its own cost nearly as much as a Smart Meal, I ordered some chicken strips and fries to accompany it. I had therefore successfully saved money by spending more, which is one of the central principles of modern consumer economics rather than just me trying to be decadent. The meal was also substantially easier on the self-service kiosk to order than anything requiring me to pronounce Serbian words, so the international cultural exchange was proceeding well as ever.

The view the other way along the Sava River, which flows into the Danube just to the right of this photo. I sat outside to add a little continental sophistication to proceedings.

I then realised that there were too many insects outside, so I returned to normality and went back inside. The main positive here was that I was now fully hydrated and ready to face the Belgrade sun.

Standing prominently on Belgrade’s Vračar plateau, the Church of Saint Sava rather glistened in the sunshine, much as I did, although the church was managing to look considerably more dignified. It is the largest Orthodox church in Serbia and one of the largest by volume (which is apparently a valid measurement of church size) in the world, with its white marble and granite exterior, great central dome and collection of smaller domes making it one of the city’s most recognisable landmarks. More immediately, it offered the possibility of shade, which was rapidly becoming my principal cultural interest.

The church’s monumental Neo-Byzantine design was heavily influenced by Hagia Sophia in Istanbul and this building is dedicated to Saint Sava, the first archbishop of the independent Serbian Orthodox Church and one of the country’s most important religious figures. Its location is traditionally associated with the burning of his relics by the Ottoman authorities in 1594, although historians continue to debate precisely where this happened. Plans for a memorial church emerged during the nineteenth century, but construction did not begin until 1935. The main entrance is framed by three grand arches, decorated stonework and mosaics depicting Christ and Serbian saints, so there is little danger of mistaking it for the side door. Apologies, once again, for the slightly skewed photos, that’s me and isn’t a structural problem relating to the building.

Nothing about the relatively restrained exterior quite prepares visitors for what is waiting inside. The vast central space is covered with golden mosaics, marble, carved stone and elaborate geometric flooring, while an enormous circular chandelier hangs beneath the dome. Construction stopped following the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941 and the unfinished building was subsequently used for parking military vehicles and for storage. Work remained suspended through much of the communist period before finally resuming in 1985 when much of what had been constructed needed to be reworked.

At the eastern end is the sanctuary, separated from the main body of the church by an iconostasis containing a series of richly coloured mosaic icons. Above it, Christ is shown giving a blessing from the golden half dome, with the Virgin Mary represented beneath him and saints, angels and biblical scenes covering almost every remaining surface.

Looking upwards reveals the extraordinary scale of the central dome and surrounding vaults which is anything but understated. The dome’s principal mosaic depicts the Ascension of Christ, surrounded by angels, the Apostles and the Virgin Mary, and covers more than 1,200 square metres. The structural dome itself weighed around 4,000 tonnes and was assembled on the ground before being raised into position during 1989, an operation which took approximately forty days.

Although the exterior was largely completed in 2004, the work on the mosaics and interior decoration continued for many more years, with a major phase finished in 2020. Whatever one’s religious views, the combination of scale, craftsmanship and shimmering gold is spectacular, with an extraordinary sense of space. The church has 49 bells and I was pleased to be able to hear them ringing when I left, that was rather lovely. Oh, and it was nice and cool, so I liked that as well.

Whilst waiting for Jonathan to arrive in Belgrade, I thought that I’d meander to Belgrade Waterfront and go to one of the highest-rated restaurants there. My choice at the Galerija shopping centre was Curry Souls which was open for lunch and it all felt on-trend and modern, specialising in Sri Lankan cuisine.

It was bright, clean and welcoming inside, with plenty of space between the tables. I sat for a short while without anyone coming over and began to wonder whether I was supposed to order at the counter. I held firm, unwilling to expose my ignorance of the ordering system unless absolutely necessary, and a friendly and upbeat staff member eventually arrived with a menu.

There was an outside area for those who like insects and excessive heat. I stayed inside, but near the window so that I could vaguely look at the river from time to time.

Some of the menu which wasn’t extensive in size, something that I think is generally quite positive. I don’t usually like photos on menus, but it felt appropriate here to showcase the presentation and contents of the dishes.

I ordered the chicken curry with grated coconut, roti and tempered potatoes, which arrived attractively presented. The grated coconut relish, known as pol sambol, brought texture, freshness and a little extra heat to the dish. The potatoes were soft and pleasantly spiced, but the curry was the highlight, which was fortunate. The curry was made with chicken thigh which was tender and served as a generous portion, with the sauce having a depth of flavour. This was really very good, it was towards the higher end of the scale of curries that I’ve had, with everything being at the appropriate hot temperature.

As for the beer, that’s brewed by the very decent Dogma Brewery based in the city and it was the appropriately named Sri Lankan Spiced Lager which was a little floral with a fruit flavour to the arrangement.

I lingered for a while so that I could write some blog posts otherwise this will be another trip where I finish writing about it about six weeks after actually being there. I’m determined to stay vaguely on top of it on this trip….. Anyway, I very much liked this venue, the service was friendly, the prices were reasonable and the food was firmly above average.

I had spotted this Iva Old Town accommodation on booking.com and, although its position in a residential courtyard was not especially decadent, it had excellent reviews and looked clean and well organised. It was also conveniently located, and after the limited sleep permitted by an early flight I had no desire to spend the afternoon transporting myself across the entirety of Belgrade. And it was cheap.

The lady at check-in was friendly and engaging, apologising for her English which was to be honest better than average for English people. When she showed me to my room she said that “I hope you like it cool” which delighted me as I like rooms to be something between freezing cold and very cold. The air conditioning arrangement met my expectations, hiding me away from the extreme heat outside.

Incidentally, I like notes like this, I might usually stay at corporate Accor hotels (well, Ibis Budget) and so when it is a family operation, it’s rather nice for them to play on that.

I like free chocolates as I can frequently be bribed to not notice that the window has fallen out or something similar.

It was all clean and comfortable along with being sensibly organised. The television looked quite large and modern, not that I turned it down.

There was also a compact private kitchenette with a sink, kettle and small fridge. It was considerably better equipped than necessary for someone whose principal catering activity involved opening the complimentary chocolates. The accommodation doesn’t offer evening meals or breakfast, so this is a handy additional offering.

It was all keenly priced, quiet and easily accessible from the centre of the city, making it an ideal accommodation for my first night in Belgrade. I did look at booking the other two nights of my stay in the city at the hotel, but they were fully booked. I also doubted whether I would have got more chocolates, but who knows….

I had to look up this stone monument after seeing it in Little Kalemegdan, a habit I have of continuing to photograph unidentified pieces of masonry and then ask questions afterwards. It commemorates Deacon Avakum, a young Serbian Orthodox monk associated with Trnava Monastery near Čačak. The monastery played a part in the unsuccessful Hadži Prodan uprising against Ottoman rule in 1814, after which Avakum and a number of other Serbian Christians were arrested and taken to Belgrade.

According to Serbian Orthodox tradition, the Ottoman authorities offered to spare Avakum’s life if he converted to Islam. He refused and was executed by impalement on 30 December 1814. He was only about twenty years old and was later canonised by the Serbian Orthodox Church as a martyr. His refusal to renounce his faith, despite knowing the appalling death awaiting him, was an extraordinary act of courage. There’s also a story that not only did his snub the demand to convert to Islam, but he carried the stake intended for his execution whilst singing.

Unveiled in 2009, the understated memorial consists of a roughly cut stone block topped by what appears to be a carved religious garment or shroud and an Orthodox cross. Its inscription describes Avakum’s death as a symbol of the suffering experienced by Serbian Christians under Ottoman rule. It does not stand on the precise site of his execution, which is believed to have been nearer the former Stambol Gate around today’s National Theatre. I was pleased that I stopped to investigate it, although photographing a stone without knowing what it is and then making myself undertake several hours of historical research is essentially my entire travel blog business model and I like hearing about bravery.

Having walked beside the River Sava in the extreme heat, I began the climb from the river towards Belgrade Fortress using the modern pedestrian bridge near Beton Hala. This new bridge was completed in 2020, it crosses the busy road and former railway corridor which had rather effectively separated the historic fortress from its own waterfront. The bridge was conceived relatively recently as something of a cultural entry, but I was mostly using it to avoid being run over. As for the fortress, I wrote about that when I visited here in September 2024 and here’s a post full of photos in the rain from that day. I think I prefer it in the rain as opposed to extreme heat, but there we go.

The modern walkway leads into the trench beneath the fortress’s south-western defences and towards the Big Staircase Descent. Despite its name, this is not the grand ornamental staircase in nearby Kalemegdan Park but an eighteenth-century military route constructed during the Ottoman rebuilding of the fortress. It provided the shortest connection between the port on the Sava and the upper fortifications, allowing soldiers, supplies and presumably numerous other people carrying something heavy to avoid taking the scenic and much longer route.

The descent was restored in 2005 and its surviving brickwork reveals how many different periods of construction have been incorporated into the fortress. For centuries, the fortress and the settlement beside and within its defences effectively formed the heart of Belgrade, so there are multiple stages of construction here over the centuries by whichever empire had recently taken over control of the city.

Today the passages instead accommodate tourists climbing up from the river, providing considerably less military excitement but a useful quantity of shade. Given the heat, this was the feature of Ottoman defensive architecture that I appreciated most immediately to be honest. The Ottoman Empire recovered Belgrade from Habsburg control in 1739 and retained a garrison in the fortress until 1867, when the keys were ceremonially handed to Prince Mihailo and the troops withdrew. The defences had therefore helped to secure another 128 years of Ottoman occupation, which by the exceptionally turbulent standards of Belgrade Fortress represented a relatively peaceful interval.

Walking through Savamala and towards the decadence of the Belgrade Waterfront project, I meandered by the roofless remains of Španska kuća, or the Spanish House, near the Sava and beneath Branko’s Bridge. I’m interested in derelict buildings such as this and this one has been in a state of, well, disrepair, for over thirty years. Built in around 1880 as an impressive academic-style palace, it was once among the grandest buildings in this part of Belgrade and subsequently served as a customs office, a warehouse, base for the Serbian Shipping Society and the Museum of River Shipping.

Someone then had a good idea to turn it into a hotel and started work on stripping away some peripheral parts, namely the interiors and the roof. They got into financial problems and managed to leave the building in a much worse state than they actually found it. The building’s name is traditionally linked to the Spanish flu pandemic, when it is said to have been used as a quarantine station for passengers arriving at the nearby river port. There are no surviving official records confirming this account, although the story was passed down by the son of a man reportedly treated there, so it may or may not be true. They do hold some cultural projects here, but at the moment, there are some legal arguments about its future so it might well stay derelict for some time to come.

Walking beside the River Sava in Belgrade in extreme heat, I noticed what a sign helpfully told me was the river monitor Sava, a heavily armed warship which began life in the Austro-Hungarian Navy as SMS Bodrog. Shortly after 01:00 on 29 July 1914, the day after Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, Bodrog and two other monitors opened fire on Serbian positions around Belgrade. These are generally regarded as the first shots of the First World War, so it is reasonable to say that the conflict rather noisily began from this boat. I’d note that the first shot was really the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, a location I might be visiting later on this trip, although I’ll add that this isn’t entirely a tour of the origins of global conflict.

After the war, the vessel passed to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and was renamed Sava in 1920 which feels nicer to me than Bodrog. Its subsequent career was perhaps a little sub-optimal as the crew scuttled it near Belgrade during the Axis invasion in April 1941, it was raised and placed in Croatian service, then scuttled again in September 1944 when its crew defected to the Yugoslav Partisans. It was raised once more, returned to Yugoslav naval service between 1952 and 1962 and later endured the less glamorous role of a gravel barge. Following two deliberate sinkings, several reconstructions and a substantial modern restoration, it is difficult to know precisely how much of this vessel remains from 1914, making it something of a heavily armed Ship of Theseus.

That complicated survival is precisely what gives Sava such heritage importance. It is one of only two surviving Austro-Hungarian river monitors known to have served during the First World War and the only surviving vessel from the group involved in the opening bombardment of Belgrade. Serbia’s Ministry of Defence and Military Museum acquired it in 2015, restored it and opened it as a floating museum in 2021. Visitors can now go aboard, which I might do on another visit although for the moment, I was content to admire it from the scorching hot riverside near to Belgrade Fortress.

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.

Staying at the Ibis hotel in Luton meant that it was only a ten minute early morning walk to the main terminal, although it was all quite a bit busier than I expected at that time.

All was though calm in the airport terminal.

Mine was the sixteenth departure of the day. I’m not entirely sure why I counted them, but having completed the research it would seem wasteful not to publish the findings.

The security process was fast, indeed so fast that I was seated inside Big Smoke restaurant within twenty minutes of having left the hotel. All very efficient.

I had £18 credit to use at Big Smoke with my Priority Pass card so went for the smashed avocado and latte, which handily came to £18.

Nicely presented and although I know that hot honey is a bit too ubiquitous at the moment, it added to the flavour here and the chilli flakes added to the taste. The eggs were slightly firmer than I would like, but the avocado was vibrant, the pickled pink onions added texture and I thought that this was really rather good.

The latte tasted of coffee which seemed positive and was brought over by a young waiter who was positively flirting with just about every customer. This worked better for some than others, he got an annoyed look from one older woman but another younger woman seems to be falling for his charms.

This remains a busy airport and there’s rarely much seating in the main areas, with many of the restaurants looking like they were reaching capacity as well.

The gate was called and all was efficient as ever, although three lads were spotted by Wizz Air staff with an extra bag and they each found themselves surcharged around £60 each. This seemed to be something of a body blow to them, although in general the staff were letting some slightly larger bags just go through without checking.

There’s something rather nice about morning flights and the airport waking up.

Boarding the flight after the usual ten minute wait standing on the stairs inside the terminal.

The aircraft was G-WUKN which appears to be yet another new one for me. I still diligently record which aircraft I’ve been on, although I’m not always entirely sure why. Future historians may be grateful, assuming they have first exhausted every other available source of information.

The seating Gods had given me an aisle seat and there was inevitably going to be extra entertainment as there’s the empty emergency exit row seat in front. Passengers can pay £20 to upgrade to sit there and crew members are very alert to those self-upgrading without paying, so I was hoping for drama.

The flight was relatively busy, at about 80% occupancy and the crew on this flight seemed particularly alert, although I think that the Wizz Air standard is pretty high in this regard anyway. The flight was relaxing enough so I got a little nap and there were no disturbances or random sales of lottery tickets. The crew announcements were clear, the pilot said sensible things and it was all reassuringly undramatic. Incidentally, the cabin crew chased three passengers out of the emergency exit rows seats so I was pleased for that extra entertainment.

We had arrived into Belgrade 25 minutes earlier than expected, although that’s more due to padded schedules than anything else.

This was another really rather lovely flight from Wizz Air, in my usual fan boy style of finding little to ever criticise them for, with the cost of the ticket being just £8.99. Reliable, consistent and back in Belgrade so this blog post series has finally now hit the Balkans.