Blue Danube to Black Sea Day 2: A City of the South Slavs

Sunday 26 May
In Serbia. We arrive in Belgrade at lunch time. "One of the ugliest cities imaginable" - Beattie quoting another traveller's description. We shall see. There is a lot of bad-tempered shouting between ship crew and ground-staff as the boat docks, maybe because we have moored alongside another ship that resents our presence. I feel haunted by the history of this country and the havoc it has wrought in Europe.

Why don’t I feel the same about Germany? Perhaps I should. Maybe the Germans have demonstrated a capacity for self-reflection in the aftermath of war that enables it to move on. I don’t know enough about Serbia to be able to say, but the fact is that whereas we talk glibly about peace having lasted in Europe since 1945, this corner of the continent saw terrible conflict only a quarter of a century ago. On our way back upstream, we shall stop at Vukovar in Croatia which suffered dreadfully at the frontline of the Balkan war. I hope some of this history is communicated as we visit these lands that still represent active fault-lines in the political and cultural crust of this continent. Serbia is a candidate for EU membership. That has to hold out some hope for south-east Europe.

We are taken for a coach tour of the city. We are shown public buildings, sports stadia and blocks of flats that are displayed with a pride that seems to hark back to the communist era. Our guide takes particular pride in the huge building that hosted the first meeting of the non-aligned countries of the world, i.e. those that were members neither of NATO or the Warsaw Pact. The coach stops reverentially in front of President Tito’s mansion and we are treated to a lecture about the virtues of Yugoslavia’s legendary leader. The nation was not like any other in Eastern Europe, we are reminded. Yugoslavia kept doors open to good relationships across the world, east and west. You can’t help concluding that she believes the idea of Yugoslavia, the land of the South Slavs, was a Good Thing and what followed its collapse was, apart from Serbia of course, a degree of disintegration that was to be regretted.

We visit the Basilica of St Sava. This enormous church, gleaming white in the sunshine, was begun 80 years ago and is still not finished. It is closed at present because of work being done to complete the mosaics on the vault. But the crypt is open so down we go. It’s remarkable. I won’t say beautiful, but it is reminiscent of those amazing underground stations I recall seeing on the Moscow metro system complete with chandeliers blazing with light. The crowds of tourists add to the feeling of a tube station at rush hour. Our guide oozes enthusiasm for what is being achieved here. But it leaves me unmoved. It feels more like a shrine to Serbian pride than a temple of God. Much more memorable is the city’s cathedral which we visit later, a serious and beautiful place where people are doing what these places are meant for: lighting candles, kissing icons and engrossed in their prayers. Compared with the over-lit crypt, this church is dark and mysterious as Orthodox churches should be. “Churches are best to pray in that have least light.”


Then we are taken up to the Kalemegdan Fortress that dominated the prospect of Belgrade as the ship drew in. It guards the confluence of the Rivers Sava and Danube rather like Koblenz or Lyon, both of them also cities built at the meeting of two rivers. The Romans had a fort here called Singidunum, a name that reminds me of Segedunum, Wallsend, in our native North East. They are separated by more than 1500 miles, yet they both belong to the northern frontier of the Roman Empire. Trajan stationed a fleet below the hill on the Danube. It offers food for thought on what the book calls “the grandeur that was Rome”.

The fortress is impressive, and lively on this summer Sunday afternoon. There are festivities going on in the enclosure, there is live music and the park is thronged with young people and families enjoying a day out. At the summit our guide instructs us in the history of Serbia while we look out across the rivers. This is perhaps the one quarter of Belgrade that is genuinely beautiful, where the charm of this ancient settlement has survived the brutalising effects of the ubiquitous architecture of social realism whose character and scale seem without charm, without respect to the human beings who have to inhabit these grim buildings and public spaces.

I have to say that at first impression, Belgrade, in the parlance of the Michelin guides, is “worth seeing” rather than “worth going to see”. Would I change that assessment if I came here to stay for a week? Who knows. On a cruise, I need to be careful about making hasty judgments. We dip in and out of so many different experiences, none of them immersive or sustained for very long except that of being on the river itself. No one is going to list Belgrade among Europe’s top ten capital cities. But it’s good that a cruise like this doesn’t avoid places that are hardly easy on the eye, and indeed have challenging histories. I shall be glad to be able to say that we came here.