My Belgrade

I have been here for 3 1/2 weeks, and this is my 4th weekend.  I spent this afternoon, in typical fashion, walking around Belgrade.  I'm finally starting to have a good mental picture of the city.  Every time I go on one of my long walks, when I get home I look at my Belgrade city map to see where I've been.  After 4 weekends, I think I'm starting to understand and even though I still get "lost", I generally know which area of the city I'm in.  Now, some of you might be thinking "what's so hard about finding your way in Belgrade?"  Well, the problem is that the map is written in Latin and the street signs (if you can even find them) are written in Cyrillic.

For those of you that know Cyrillic, what does this say?  The best I can translate is this:

ulicha

NIKODIMA

MILASHA

This was translated with the help of a book.  I can't exactly be dragging my book out at every intersection to figure out what street I'm on.  To me, Belgrade is a man wearing dark glasses.  It is an enigma.  There are secret sights, cafe's, and views hidden everywhere.

Here are some more pictures of my explorations.

So many of the buildings are gray here, but this one was painted green. 

Here is some "decoration" on someone's terrace.  I guess they were going for a jungle/tropical theme.

Here was a monument in a park near the New Cemetery.  I think it is a WWII memorial, because there was the year 1944 on it.  But I couldn't read the Cyrillic.  I thought it was a nice fall scene.

Same park, different view.  Fall is my favorite time of year.

Finally, I saw these roses and I like how they are juxtaposed with the rusted fence.  This is very symbolic to me and it epitomizes the Belgrade that I have experienced thus far.

I only walked about 2 1/2 hours today.  I capped it off by trying out a different coffee shop near my apartment.  They have really good sweets.  I love the cafe culture here.  I just wish I knew more people to experience it with here.

I also wanted to thank everyone for reading my blog.  I like all the comments, even if I haven't figured out how to respond to them.  Keep reading and I'll keep posting.