I had no pre-conceptions of Belgrade but had a feeling there would be plenty to do over the three nights I was planning to stay whilst I worked out plans for my next destination. What I found was a very cool capital city, with the boats running up and down the river Danube by night playing up to Belgrade’s reputation as party capital of Europe. Partying with 18 year olds doing drugs isn’t my usual scene even on a Saturday night so I gave it a miss in favour of a night time wander around the fortress and a cocktail at the Basta jazz bar with a few of the yoga girls who were also spending a night in the city.

Apparently some planning in advanced is actually required as I did not know that everything is shut on Mondays, the day I had designated for doing basically everything. I spent the morning walking 20,000 steps back and forth from closed museum to closed restaurant. The one vegetarian restaurant I wanted to visit managed to be closed the entire time I was in the area.

The smaller city of Novi Sad was on my list of places to see in Serbia so I joined a day trip in order to also take in some of the hundreds of churches in the area. I found out on the bus that it also included wine tasting in the picturesque town of Sremski Karlovci, which most of us agreed was actually a case of ‘have a small glass of wine for free’ – very nice Serbian dessert wine but not exactly a wine tasting experience!

We stopped at the Krusedol Monastery which has some really beautiful frescos inside that you are actually allowed to take photos of for once (paintings on the walls). Note that women are not permitted to enter behind the curtain and during services men stand on one side, being below God, and women stand on the other, being below men – something that our female guide said she is fine with. My male tour guide later on in Belgrade said the monks just live off the state and get drunk at funerals, painting a picture of a very corrupt Church in a predominantly Orthodox Christian country.

Novi Sad itself is small and pretty, with the usual views from a fortress I’ve come to expect in this part of the world. Unfortunately none of us actually got to see any of the city (other than Yelena who had the foresight to do her own thing) as the rest of us opted for a group lunch. This meant we sat at a restaurant for the entire two hours free time, first waiting for food (I twice found chicken in my veggie pasta even after sending it back the first time and eating half of the replacement where they had clearly just tried and failed to pick the pieces out) then waiting to pay where the staff had a meltdown over splitting the bill and shouted at us ‘have you ever been to a restaurant before?’!

The uneventful day ended on a high as I met these two lovely girls, Liesel from South Africa and Yelena from the US. After the tour we bought drinks and watched the sunset over the Danube from the Fortress…. along with half of Belgrade from the number of Instagram photoshoots going on.

Here the kiosks on the street corners don’t just sell you a bottle of cider, they even open it for you. This made us so excited we happily got ripped off by taking a photo with the students hanging around the fortress dressed as soldiers and topping up their beer money.

A travel concept that has totally passed me by until now is the ‘air bnb experience’ – thanks Liesel for the recommendation! On her advice I booked my first experience with the lovely Sava who took me and two others on a walk through Belgrade. He showed us some really cool local spots including hidden speakeasies and clubs disguised as run down buildings covered in graffiti, and where to buy a Yugoslavian 1,000,000,000 note.

After the barrage of war history in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Albania, this was much more focused on the Serbia of today. Sava also said there is very low crime in Belgrade as potential muggers know that Serbians will fight back…

I managed to get in the National Museum of Serbia on Tuesday morning. My idea of a museum visit is a quick look around until I’m bored. This is impossible in Belgrade as there is a one way system that the security guards, positioned in every room, will insist that you follow and if you try to skip something, they will somehow know this and make sure you go back and look at that painting. After an hour or so I could not pretend to look at any more European art so made my escape, feeling guilty as one of the guards appeared at the exit to wave goodbye.

If they had been open on Monday I would have visited both the Tesla Museum and Tito Museum, but luckily Belgrade is also the perfect place for sitting at pavement cafes, drinking coffee and people watching. Three days was otherwise enough and unable able to resist the lure of another passport stamp I booked onto a bus going south to North Macedonia…