A land without tourists
Serbia is the ideal place for crowd-haters, says Julia Marozzi
The trouble with this country is that nobody gets shot,' said Srdjan, the tubby 39-year-old music promoter, as we piled into his ramshackle Citroen and headed to an air-conditioned bar. 'Not the right people, anyway.' He meant the `Slobbo' men who had been appointed to new positions in the government. How was Serbia ever to leap up the waiting list for entry to the EU, get its hands on some succulent subsidies and be embraced by the West if hangers-on from the past were still in power?
The answer was lost in rounds of iced tea and Belgrade beer, pear brandy and red Montenegrin wine. The bar, polite and packed, sported half-naked girls and fully clothed boys bumping along to a six-piece band called Dirty Theatre. On the wall, a television spewed out fabulous fashion, Jodie Kidd in Pringle, polka-dot frocks and gold shoes. On stage, solid rock from the before-and-during war years — a peace anthem from 1994, Croat folk songs, a lament for a man who killed his wife's lover. The audience knew every word by heart, not one of them recent. Nostalgia for a united Yugoslavia mingled with the cigarette smoke in a haze you could hug.
Young Serbs know how to have a good time. Lots of booze, chat, no A-, Bor Clists, no after-hours knifings. Democracy on the dance floor. They've already done their fighting, many of them. Packed off from home to serve in the army in Zagreb or Kosovo, they'd stared across the frontlines at former friends and seen only enemies. Now they're working for meagre wage packets and hoping the EU can forgive, if not forget, the wars of Yugoslavia long enough to let them in.
'The biggest challenge is to change tourism,' according to the minister for trade, tourism and services. Slobodan Milosavijevic. A portrait of the slain prime minister Zoran Djindjic peered down over the large wooden table in his office as he explained why Westerners should think of Serbia as the fun and relatively cheap crossroads of Europe, 'some kind of bridge' across many possible destinations on their holiday map. Images of cruises up the Danube, cultural and historic events, the opening of the new European highway, Corridor 10, ancient monasteries, spas and watering holes all opened up before us — as well as details of an attractive tax regime for investors with more than 10 million euros, and a plea for the EU to ease its visa requirements for Serbians wishing to travel abroad.
The country lacks not only world-class tour operators but also essential hotel facilities. Tasteful infusions of cash could only have helped the 1950s Soviet-style Slavija Lux hotel I stayed in. A solitary single bed, sliver of soap, packet of shampoo, clunky loo — push the handle up, pull the handle down — were greying to the point of grimness, while the elderly gents on the desk looked as if they had been in place through several world wars, not just their local ones.
Long before the Soviets' cultural impositions, Belgrade clattered to the sound of hooves on cobblestones as the devout made their way to the many churches scattered around the city. Skirting the pockmarked buildings bearing the scars of bombs which landed during the Kosovo conflict, the Orthodox Cathedral — built on the site of the Holy Archangel Michael's church — is a riot of baroque iconography and patriarchal painting. In Kalemegdan Park — from the Turkish words 'kale' (field) and 'megdan' (battle), around Belgrade Fortress — Ruzica church (commemorating the birth of the Holy Virgin and formerly used as a gunpowder warehouse) and Saint Petka's chapel dispense holy water from a hosepipe, and blessings to queuing sinners from a hirsute priest.
'There is no freedom, there is no freedom anywhere,' groaned my guide, Ljubomir Panic, as we sat with a beer in a nearby café. Good-humoured, depressed and gentle, Ljuba was an ardent advocate of Serbia's suitability for EU membership. He believed it was only a matter of time before Europe fully appreciated Serbia's geographic importance in the war on terrorism, when the country would be heartily embraced by its wealthy trading partners. The likelihood that Croatia would join sooner was a sore point, and the imminence of Hungary's accession a matter for rueful dismay.
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