Serbia was another very interesting trip and I picked up a few pointers and learned a few lessons about the area and recent history as well. I was about to just drive to Belgrade when a friend of mine said, “You can’t just travel there in your car you know”? Although I wasn’t completely ignorant of the issues, there is a long standing feud between the Albanians and Serbs but I won’t get in to that here. Nevertheless, I thought that was rather odd but I took his advice drove down to Skopje, Macedonia to rent a car with Serbian plates. Thankfully, he spoke some Serbian and the rental process was pain free.

So, I started my trip in Pristina, Kosovo as usual and began the journey to Belgrade, Serbia via Skopje, Macedonia early in the morning. As I indicated, I reserved or rather I had someone call a car rental agency in Macedonia ahead of time and reserve a car so when I arrived it was basically ready for me. My friend went in and worked out all the details and soon we were on our way to Belgrade.

Not to belabor the issue but in case you were unaware, the Serbs (not all of them by the way), aren’t too thrilled with Americans and our reception at the border although a bit cool was thankfully, uneventful. My friends speak the local languages and were able to get us past the guards and after a half hour or so we were on our way.

The challenging economic conditions were apparent as we drove along and there were also remnants of the war that transpired in the 1990s. It was interesting journey though as the landscape is quite beautiful with rolling green terrain, mountains and little villages dotting the landscape during the trip. My friends remembered a hotel along the way and we stopped for breakfast which turned out to be another event I’ll have in my memory bank. It was quite a large place and I don’t recall the name but we were the only ones there. The entire staff basically waited in the wings for us to order, eat and leave. We ordered a meat and cheese dish with some locally available pop or something similar and it was great. The staff were engaged in conversation and being inquisitive I asked my friend if they were taking about us as everyone knew we were American. He said, they were talking about something else and they turned out to be rather friendly, so we left a nice tip and made our way to the capital, Belgrade.

We chose an amazing, upscale hotel in the downtown area, a four star place called Square Nine. It would be considered seriously upscale just about anywhere I imagine but it was definitely at the upper echelon of hotels there. I checked in and went to my room while the others did the same and looked about a bit. Since I had some time I threw on some trunks and went to the pool area which was quite a sight. It was about 1 meter deep with a jacuzzi, an exercise area, sauna, a place for a massage and personal trainers …. I told you it was high class. We were to go out that evening for dinner so after a bit I changed and went in to the lobby. I sat down and was having coffee by myself when one of my friends ran up and started rather excitedly exclaiming, “Do you know who that is?” as a guy had just walked past. Sort of matter of factly I remarked, “Some skinny dude with a bad haircut?” as I had no idea who it was. She looked sort of shocked that I didn’t know and said it was the world tennis champion at the time. He walked to the rear of the restaurant in a dark area and ate dinner alone, probably wanted to be left alone. So, I accidently saw a world class tennis player in real life, chalk one more up to dumb luck. Oh, the guy’s name is Novak Djokovic I think and I looked him up. Quite a tennis player it turns out and a local hero of sorts in Serbia as well as the small village in Kosovo he is actually from.

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