Friday, 20 January 2017 to Thursday, 26 January 2017
This last week we never saw the temperature raise its head above freezing, in fact the highest was -2°C with the lowest around -16°C. The sun was hardly visible; taking a peek only now and then just to make sure we had not forgotten him. This weather obviously kept us pretty much housebound although we endeavoured to at least go for one lengthy walk during the day or early evening.

Late Friday morning we took a stroll down the road and found a lovely little local restaurant called Rostilj Dorcolac where we had breakfast. The only thing we understood on the menu was omleti which we took to mean omelette. There were two to choose from so we both chose the first, not knowing what the second might serve up. The one other thing I recognised was pomfrit (French fries) so we ordered a helping of that as well. They do not have coffee, so we had a choice of a soft drink or beer. It was too early for beer and too late for a soft drink, so we declined the drinks offer.

Once you receive your omeleti, you can add all sorts of Shawarma type fillings to your plate, and of course, like anything else in Serbia, it comes with huge hunks of bread as well. Great!

With expanded tummies we walked around the hood loving the sun on our skin in this -2°C weather. It was the first time the sun had been out to play on our faces in days, it felt great. We finally ended up at a supermarket situated within the premises of our local market and stocked up on water, veggies for soup tonight, and of course a few big beers.

Now as you know, I prefer my beers in a glass bottle; the tin always seems to have a tinny taste, the jury’s still out on whether that assessment is real or perceived. Be as it may, the girl at the checkout counter, in perfect English, asked whether I really wanted my beer in bottles as I would have to pay a deposit for that over and above the purchase price. Adri was the one that confirmed that it was quite alright to charge us extra, as if she was going to drink all those beers! I had to pay an additional 120 Dinars for the bottle deposit on four beers, which the lady noted on our till slip. So, if you are in the mood for the trouble, you can take the bottles back, produce the till slip and receive your 120 Dinars back. With the sorry state of our earth and trying to do my bit for a cleaner environment, I will be sure to do just that.

Most of the afternoon we spent reading and relaxing but by the time Adri started making our supper I was well on my way to a superb snooze.

Later on I blogged for a bit and then remembered that I had beer stock in the fridge, a whole array to choose from.  The first one my eyes encountered when I opened the fridge was the Staropramen, a beer proudly produced in Praque. I was familiar with this particular model as I had previously encountered it in Croatia, it was a welcome reunion.

I was searching for a movie on Netflix and came upon The Big Lebowski with great actors such as Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi, Philip Seymour Hoffman and John Turturro. I remember trying to watch the movie years ago but could not get myself to sit through it. Just the other day I read a glowing review of it and decided to give it one more try. IMDb, which gives it an 8.2 rating describes it as “’The Dude’ Lebowski, mistaken for a millionaire Lebowski, seeks restitution for his ruined rug and enlists his bowling buddies to help get it”.

I was underwhelmed once again as I forced myself to watch the whole thing, Adri only made it through the first 20 minutes. The word “dude” is used 161 times in the movie. The Dude says “man” 147 times in the movie. The F-word or a variation of the F-word is used 292 times, which were so forced, it seemed unnatural… mind numbing stuff… Of course there are mildly amusing parts but all in all it’s just not worth the effort.

Today was Donald Trump’s inauguration and I refused to allow myself to watch that spectacle of spectacles, no one should be allowed to watch it. I really do feel sorry for the majority of Americans who did not vote for him and a little less sorry for the ones that did, who now probably have voter’s remorse. Anyway, they voted for him, they wanted him, they got him; good night, and good luck.

Friday night the temperature went down to -14°C, I got a snap at it at -12°C. Wow man, this was cold. But, of course we were cozily warm in our apartment, thankful to have a balmy home.

I don’t like drinking milk in my coffee, I’m not really a milk kind of a guy, so I use a powder coffee creamer such as Coffee Mate, Cremora, or whatever brand is available. We have now been into a number of supermarkets, albeit smaller ones, but they just do not stock this, I was getting ratty. I searched the internet and found that the larger supermarkets do seem to stock a brand called Coffeeta, so that’s why we were heading to the Univerexport Supermarket on this rather chilly -6°C late Saturday morning.

 

After doing our business at Univerexport we were on our way to the Knez Mihailova pedestrian zone when we realised that we had forgotten to have breakfast. We entered the first little bakery we found and interrogated the racks to check what was on offer. Adri chose the long thin type of burek with meat, I chose a potato pie, both were great and neatly filled that breakfast hole.

While Adri was doing clothes shopping I took a stroll around town and when we met up again at the pre-arranged time she had not found anything of note. The sun had just dipped behind the buildings so the cold was now more pronounced and that’s when Adri voiced her need for a hot chocolate.

Further up the pedestrian zone we found the tiny Wow! Juice Bar and Italian Ice-cream shop with bad coffee and great hot chocolate. I had the cappuccino which was forgettable, Adri had the hot chocolate which was simply divine, thick like flowing lava, nearly too thick to drink. I’m sure their juices and ice-creams are much better than their cappuccinos. They have a mezzanine level where you can chill out with good wifi so we whiled away a wonderful hour here before moving on.

By the time we walked home it was dark and -7°C. We still had plenty of the potato and leek soup from last night but needed some variation on that theme. We stopped off at a little street side takeaway diner 50 metres up the road from us and bought a hodgepodge of delicacies. We picked meat stuffed in a cabbage leaf, some dolmades, a slice of moussaka and a huge slice of a white cream cake with kiwi fruit slices. Man, was that a great supper or what?

The minimum temperature Saturday night was a cool -10°C, so much warmer that the previous night’s -14°C, but this morning was different, it was misty and foggy. The other difference was that we had no water. Now if it was planned water maintenance it would be fine, but was it maybe that the pipes were frozen up? Or maybe it was a burst water pipe? We waited until 09:30 hoping that water would be restored but in its failure to do so I sent a text message to Miha, who advised us on Friday that his family would be out of town for the weekend.

While waiting for a response we had breakfast of scrambled eggs, cheese, salami, olives and bread. It was some time after breakfast that I received a message from Miha notifying us that there was indeed a problem with a “pipe that exploded” and that the JP Vodovod (the water supply department/company) would have it fixed by hopefully 15:00.

It was still foggy and foul outside so we decided to stay inside, reading and relaxing and at some point I tried to work a bit as well. Adri wanted to read up on something on a web site that happened to be in Serbian. On the Ipad using Safari, it is not that straightforward to translate a web page to English. After a quick search on how to accomplish this, I downloaded Microsoft Translator and enabled it in the Safari extension app settings. Now, whenever I want to translate a page, I simply choose Microsoft Translator in the list of available extensions in the Safari’s Share sheet and it will translate the current webpage to my chosen language. Rather neat.

At 15:00 there was still no sign of water but at around 15:30 we heard the pipes gurgle as the water supply was restored, to our delight.

Adri found a place called The Little Bay Restaurant which she was keen to go to for dinner tonight. The restaurant resembles an opera house which even has boxes upstairs overlooking the ground floor where we were seated. We had no booking so had to take what was on offer, the place was almost filled to capacity.

We started with a shared starter of deep fried goat’s cheese with a Waldorf salad. Adri needed veggies in her body so ordered the aubergine bake with a multitude of other veggies in there, topped with a thick melted cheese. I had the beef in mashed potato and mushrooms topped with thick smoky bacon pieces, and finally, over all that, a lovely meaty sauce. This was near to heaven.

Adri had a glass of red wine with her supper, I had a Grimbergen, a Belgian blond beer which was most enjoyable. For dessert we ordered Irish coffees, I could not resist a second one. And just when we thought things could not get any better, it did. A young lady took up position behind the piano, stationed right behind our table, and started a series of jazzy songs that were simply amazing. A truly professional performance, take a listen to a few snippets below.

On the way back home the ice was as slippery as snot so we employed our duckling steps where the road or pavement was frozen over. I remembered the time when I went to visit Tony and his wife Anette early February 2000 – in the depths of winter – when they were still living on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire in the US. It was Saturday morning when we went to a cosy little restaurant in town for breakfast.

When I got out of the car onto the frozen over parking lot I was still fine. But, as I took my first step, my legs involuntary started this thing that looked like I was doing double-time makeer die pas (marking time, as in marching). When the rate increased to triple-time my legs could no longer keep up and my feet disappeared from under me, where to I did not know. I landed on my bum, then my back hit the ice followed by my head, all in blurring quick succession. I remember Tony quietly chuckling to himself but Anette simply burst out laughing, uncontrollably. It was only after breakfast that she had her last burst. I guess it was funny…

We were still satiated from last night’s substantial supper so was not feeling up to breakfast, although one of those chocolate croissant type thingies of the other day would be great with coffee later on, I mused. So while I was working Adri went out to walk the streets in -6°C and somewhere on her way she ran that chocolate thingy errand.

It was late afternoon when we went shopping at Univerexport Supermarket for groceries and the like. It was miserably cold outside with a slight wisp of wind present which seemed to increase the cold multifold. That old saying die ysbere sal vir jou lewendig opeet (the polar bears will eat you alive) came to mind as I squinted my eyes searching for bears.

We had a lovely homebrewed spaghetti bolognaise for supper which was washed down with a local Jelen beer and a pretty good local Vranac red wine. Truth be told, the Vranac is not totally to my taste, hy’s ‘n bietjie lig in die broek (it’s too light).

Last night we started, and tonight we finished, the fourth and thankfully final episode of the British crime true story which IMDb describes as “In June 1985 Carole Packman, a wife and mother mysteriously disappeared and has never been seen since. Her husband Russell Causley is now serving a life sentence for her murder, yet no body has ever been found.” I assume they modelled this series on the excellent Making A Murderer, but they failed dismally. It was bland, there were not many twists, the same information was repeatedly repeated, if you know what I mean, I did not much enjoy this one.

Tuesday it was simply too cold to venture far but we needed the fresh cold air after being cooped up all day, resting and relaxing.

We walked up to the Belgrade National theatre to buy tickets for the La Bohème opera that was scheduled to be performed tomorrow night. We then strolled down, street upon street, towards the lovely Dorćol area, walked past the Bajrakli Mosque and when the temperature reached -5°C we knew we needed to find shelter… for a coffee and a beer.

 

 

I was lured into The Beerwood Pub by the promise of a Hoegaarden that was proudly pronounced on their menu. But of course they were fresh out of Hoegaarden so I settled for another Grimbergen, this time the draught variety rather than the bottled one of Sunday. Hmm… I do prefer the bottled one though.

While whiling away some time there we got hooked up to their wifi and continued to interrogate Airbnb for accommodation in Montenegro. We were still not sure exactly which town we wanted to stay in, let alone which place, there were many options to choose from. We could stay in Kotor which is a medieval old fortified town on Montenegro’s Adriatic coast that lies in a fjord-like bay near the limestone cliffs of Mt. Lovćen. But there are so many other wonderful little towns such as Tivat, Budva, Bečići, Herceg Novi, Sveti Stefan, Bar, Ulcinj and many others, so one is really spoilt for choice.

Just for interest’s sake, Montenegro is a small country with a population of just 622,099 people. To put this into perspective, the greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Area has a population of 7,151,447, more than 10 times that of the whole of Montenegro. And by the way, Serbia has a similar population to the Johannesburg area mentioned above, a mere 7,111,973 throughout the whole country.

When I checked the current temperature in Montenegro I was quite surprised to find that the high was high at +12°C, yes, plus! At just 400km southwest of Serbia one would have expected similar temperatures as here, but it seems like Montenegro has its very own microclimate, can’t wait.

Wednesday saw me blogging away and I finally published the latest post titled From Bangkok to Belgrade and from 30 to 3 degrees below and beyond during the afternoon.

Adri had in the meantime gone for a long walk and came back bearing sweet treats, a delicious nutty pastry and a chocolate covered croissant that went down so very well with tea. While I mention tea, it seems like Serbs are not huge on tea as the selection in the supermarkets are rather scant. We found a selection of flavored teas, but a normal black tea is hard to come by. We did find one though but it is not particularly good.

The main motivation for Adri’s walk today was to buy rubber gloves for doing the dishes, the water here is rather hard on one’s hands. And when I asked her about the gloves she looked bewildered, she had totally forgotten about those!

Adri received a text from Banks, one of her students in Nong Song Hong, who wanted to know what Belgrade looked like. After Adri sent him a picture he replied “It’s very very beautiful city, more than Thailand” with a follow-up message “Cuz have no untidy cables” And he’s quite right; those bundles upon bundles of exposed electricity cables running alongside the roads everywhere are really not an attractive feature of Thailand.

At 19:30 we were seated in the Belgrade National Theatre when it was curtain-up for the performance of La Bohème, an opera by Giacomo Puccini. The show was spectacular and well performed, we truly enjoyed this one.

After the opera we were slightly hungry and very thirsty. We ended up at the Waterloo Pub close to where we live and ordered Jelen beers. Requesting an English menu we were provided with one but told that the kitchen had already closed at 17:00. Drat, but we will be back, the slim menu looked rather delicious.

 

 

It was by now much too late to go to a restaurant so we got takeaways from a little shop 50 metres up the road from the apartment. This friendly little place stays open 24/7 which means we will never go hungry. I ordered an enormous ham and cheese hamburger. The ingredients were inserted into a large pita type bread which was then filled with all the usual shawarma toppings. Adri chose the same outer casing and toppings but with a grilled piece of chicken as the main event. Petsto grama (500 grams) of pomfrit (French fries) completed the order and 850 Dinars (€6.86) later we made our heavy way home.

Supper was delicious, the meat was flame grilled, everything was perfect. The portions were rather substantial and we agreed that next time we would order only one dish to share. We know that we have been eating far too much since we got to Serbia but I guessed we could probably explain that away with blaming it on the cold weather.

After eating far too much again tonight Adri and I contemplated, like so many times before, going on a diet. Personally I don’t believe a diet is ever really required if one has the self-discipline to eat only when one feels hungry. And then, when you do eat, only eat until you are satisfied, and not until you are stuffed to the gills, like we were tonight.

Thursday morning it was still a foggy -3°C and the afternoon was predicted to get chillier to peak at -12°C during the course of the night.

Breakfast was the leftovers of last night’s substantial takeaway meal, it was still great though. I continued with some blogging while Adri continued with her French lessons on Duolingo. Just this morning I received an email from Duolingo with the subject line “We miss you!” I kid you not. And yes, it’s been about three weeks since I last did a lesson so it’s time to tackle that French again.

I noticed this morning when I went to the john that the latest toilet paper we bought have a fresh peach scent to it, much like the baby powder ones we had on Koh Samui. So now we’ve moved from poeping (farting) powder to poeping peaches. And while we’re on the subject of johns, does one refer to a lady’s toilet as “the jane”?

 

 

It was early afternoon when we went for a walk; outside it was -2°C, foggy and damp. Adri wanted to visit the Heritage House but it was not where Google maps said it would be. We walked on to the Belgrade Congregational Church of the Holy Archangel Michael where we spent a while marvelling at the beautiful interior. We continued our walk past the Princess Ljubica’s Residence but it seems to be closed to the public during the winter months…pity.

We ended up at the Belgrade Waterfront, a large new development, which is situated on the Sava River just after it branches south off from the Danube. We thought that we might get a beer there but were mistaken. We needed a place to warm up, Adri’s toes were readying themselves for frostbite. We came upon two pubs on our way that were fully loaded and smoke laden, we passed up on those.

 

Passing through a fresh produce market we headed back towards the pedestrian zone and settled in at the Boutique Cafe/Restaurant. Although this place is situated on two levels with plenty of seating one is lucky to find a table, the place buzzes. I spotted one open table from the outside right at the back where we made ourselves very comfortable. Adri had a cappuccino and I had my Hoegaarden draught, the one I missed out on at The Beerwood Pub the other day. Both were delicious.

We must have spent over an hour there as it was already dark when we entered the Maxi Supermarket for foodstuffs for supper tonight which was a wonderful potato, leek and vegetable soup with copious amounts of meat swimming in there, wonderful. We shared the soup with ‘n onnutsige ou Merlotjie (a mischievous little Merlot) produced by Plantaze Crnogorski, very good and very robust.

After the first bowl of soup and a couple of slices of fresh bread Adri offered me a second. I refused. As per my thinking yesterday regarding diets and such, I was really keen for another bowl but I was not hungry anymore, so a second bowl would mean gluttony. I was so proud of myself! We did however have a piece of our cream meringue cake later on with tea, that was a necessity!

Home