Today I went apartment hunting. I ended up looking at 6 different places. 3 were in New Belgrade. New Belgrade is on the west side of the Sava river and it is on a flat plain. It was built in the 1940's-current and contains mostly communist style buildings. Belgrade Arena, 2 shopping malls, supermarket, and my office are in New Belgrade. The apartments were really nice, but...

Here are some pictures of New Belgrade so you can understand how incredibly ugly it is.

The first is the view of New Belgrade looking west from Kalemegdan (the fort). The second is just taken from the street. See all of the ugly buildings?

Here are some photos of the apartment in New Belgrade. The bathrooms (yes there were 2 bathrooms!) and kitchen were really nice.

But I decided that I want to live in the old city, even though the New Belgrade apts were sweet. I am torn between two areas - Vracar (vracheck) or Dorcol (dorchal). I found a great apartment in Vracar that was brand new and has a great view of St. Sava Temple from the office/spare room.

The place was really nice! Vracar is a near to the main highway, but traffic might be bad. It is also within walking distance of the biggest green market in Belgrade. It is like a farmer's market filled with organic fruit, veggies, and meats.

I didn't see any great apartments in Dorcol. I will be going back to look again on Monday afternoon. Hopefully I will make a decision and be able to move out of the hotel by next week. Dorcol is closer to Kalemegan and the Pedestrian Zone. Apparently a lot of young, singles live in that area. There were a lot of bars, restaurants, and cafes.

This weekend I'm going to do some reconnaissance to check out these areas to see which one I might like better. It feels good to be setting down roots, even if I'm only here for 6-12 months.