A Typical Belgrade Scene

Sunday, June 01, 2008

In Serbian, Belgrade is Beograd which means "White City" but in reality, it should probably be grey or concrete, as that's the prevailing hue.


I was wandering on my last day in Belgrade (to tell the truth, I was lost), and came upon this scene. It struck me as being very symptomatic of Belgrade.


Typical Belgrade scene


Typical Belgrade scene, explained

1. Lots of industrial architecture

2. This poster showing a man with a very impressive torso and chest was everywhere in Belgrade. As were men with impressive torsos and chests. Their military service has its positives.

3a & 3b. Cars, cars, cars. Belgrade is one big system of roads. The nicest place I found, however, had very few cars - Ada Ciganlija, the island / beach in the Sava River was just lovely.

4. Election posters.

2 comments:

Jonathan Davis said...

Great post!

I like the technique of blurring the background but having focus on your subjects.

You missed one thing though, and that is the magnificent BIGZ (pic1, pic2) building in the background.

It is a modernist masterpiece (there are so many in Belgrade).

Belgrade is a Ballardian landscape - part Blade Runner, part Gotham City, party Futurama.

I adore the place!

Jonathan

Anonymous said...

You can't beat a good old annotated diagram or photograph!

How very true, and alongside the landscape the social/behavioural geography of Belgrade seemed to consist of plenty of:

Socialising
Smoking
Snogging

clogging up the streetscape.

Can't disagree with point 2!

As for point 3, we were almost run over by a manmade car made out of wood and a converted lawnmower.

Interesting place indeed!