Crash Course in Belgrade

Mar 26

We had our first official day of class today. The professors handed out class syllabi for our three classes, and talked about what the course load would be like. Looks like we have to do a TON of reading, write a few short papers, and one or two bigger final papers. We went over the classes for about an hour and a half (both the professors often get off track and go on long tangents). I hear that Norman is an amazing professor though so I’m really excited for what his class has to offer. After the classes were outlined we had some time to kill so Matt, Levi, Brian, Milo and I threw around a Frisbee, and then the whole group headed down to old town for a tour from Liza and Molly. We split up when we got downtown and got lunch. Matt and Levi introduced me to a Serbian favorite that they had discovered the night before: hamburgers the size of my face (no exaggeration). It was the biggest hamburger I have ever eaten. It was some mix of pork and beef that was flattened into a huge patty and then cooked. Then they put toppings like yogurt, beets, pickles, and chili powder on it. It was pretty good, but really intense. It gave me a stomach ache. It’s funny how fast your body will get rid of enzymes that it doesn’t use: such as the ones used to digest meat. We all met back up and went on city tours, which were pretty useless. She walked us in a huge circle, we all got really disoriented, and then it was over. She did take us to the citadel which was pretty spectacular. The citadel is an old fort that dominates the North West part of the city. It has been turned into a huge city park. It is bordered on two sides by rivers: the Danube and the Sava River. The city is absolutely beautiful. One of the guide books said that Belgrade was an ugly thrown together city, but I disagree entirely. I love the atmosphere of the city, the layout and the buildings. After our tour they let us go off on our own. Matt and Levi showed me their downtown dorm (the one I was supposed to be living in). We found this really weird underground world by their dorms, of store after store full of computers used to play computer games on. Turns out the geeky computer guy translates across all cultures. It was very strange though. The area was down under an intersection, and it was about 10 of these rooms full of computers! We went up to their dorm after our discovery. The only thing that is better about their dorm is the fact that that it is downtown. Other then that it isn’t really that wonderful. Their rooms are smaller, the traffic noise is really bad, and the dorm is a lot older. We sat down to do some of the reading, and ended up all falling asleep for two and a half hours. When we all woke up we went back to one of the weird gaming stores and used the internet (no time to update this though!). We were all still pretty tired so we went and grabbed some food, and then they walked me back to the bus stop and I took the bus back to my dorm. My goal for tomorrow is to go to a produce stand and get some fruits and vegetables, maybe some yogurt. My body is really hurting from all the meat and deep fried foods that have been common fare since Madrid.

Alice