Nicole schreibt...

Belgrade 2017

While I've done many trips with the main purpose of seeing a musical, my existance as a football fan had so far been restricted to the odd home game and one trip to Munich (where seeing the city was just as much of a purpose as a game we had been bound to lose). It needs to be said for my team, 1.FC Köln, that once upon a time they were one of Germany's top teams securing championships and playing internationally. My mother, a life-long fan, had known those glory days while I haven't. And some years ago she made the bold claim that if the "Effzeh" would ever qualify for international football again, she would go - no matter where in Europe. Fast forward to May 2017 and a miraculously good season ending with fifth place in the table and thus being qualified for Europe. I started dreaming of dozens of interesting cities all over Europe I might get to see now until the draw put a serious damper on things: Our group consisted of Arsenal London (thanks, but I'm visiting London often enough), BATE Borisov (in the banana republic of Belarus which I'm really not keen on) and Red Star Belgrade. And while Serbia's capital had not been high on my "must-see" list of towns, at least it was a major European city, so it was really the only option here. Getting tickets for the game in Belgrade wasn't even hard and surprisingly cheap and flights not too terribly difficult to organize either. To top things off, the English theatre forum was the very unlikely place where I met a local Serbian lady and Red Star-fan who helped with language issues and other stuff.

So here we were indeed on 6th December, starting our Belgrade adventure from Eindhoven airport in the Netherlands. It's not really much further than our airports here and when I had first looked into organizing this trip Hungarian low cost airline Wizzair had perfect flights on Wednesday and Friday. Sadly, the Friday flight did not exist during the winter season, so we had to find alternate means of coming home. The atmosphere on the airport was quite good with several other Köln fans booked on the same flight. Can't say I was impressed with Wizzair though, who made a big to do about "just one piece of cabin luggage" (forcing me to put my regular small handbag into the tiny suitcase) and having REALLY uncomfortable chairs.

Once in Belgrade, we took a taxi to our hotel, the charming Hotel Moskva which thanks to its beautiful Belle Epoque design is a "historic landmark" in the city center and which has housed several celebrities during the years (in our hallway on third floor Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh were among those getting a mention). It's equally famous for the Café Moskva, a gorgeously old-fashioned coffee house on the ground floor with fabulous cake. One thing you have say for the Austrians: Wherever they pottered about back in the days of the Habsburg empire, they left their lovely coffee house culture in their wake. It was perfect for us too as it was too late to go out and find dinner somewhere, nor were we particularly hungry after a meal at the airport, but it was also too early to just head to bed. So we went down to the café for a coffee and a slice of yummy Eszterhazy cake chased by a slivovitz - Serbia's best-known export and a rather strong plum brandy. Thus fortified, it was time to sleep.

The next morning brought sunshine and a bright blue sky - the perfect weather for a sightseeing walk to Kalemegdan Park with the mighty fortress of Belgrade. The town once sprung up at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers and was always considered the "Gate to the Balkan Mountains" which begin rising south of here. So not surprisingly it was a hotly contested battleground for centuries between Austrians and Ottomans (and "Kale" means fortress and "megdan" battleground in Turkish). Even as far back as 3rd century BC a Celtic tribe perched on this hill to overlook the rivers, driven out by the Romans, who founded Singidunum here. By 9th century the town was re-named Belgrade (White City) and changed hands several times. Interesting fact: Actual Belgrade (with the fortress) became capital of the newly independent Serbia in 1841, while northern Belgrade remained part of the Habsburg empire until it fell apart in 1918. In one of the many rounds of hostilities between Austrians and Turks in 18th century, the Austrians were forced to hand over the fortess to the Turks AND destroy buildings, so not much is left to see now (and that was IS left, is a hodge-podge from several centuries). The chap on the right side is the close up of the "Pobednik" (Victor) monument erected in 1928 to commemorate Serbia's victories over the Austrians AND the Turks in the Balkan Wars and WWI (the visible white marble pillar below left).

Within the walls of the inner fortress is the Military Museum piled high with all kinds of machinery humans use to kill each other and the sight of all the tanks, guns and other heavy artillery outside was enough to decide we really didn't need to go in. Instead we wandered a bit more through the lovely Kalemegdan Park and down Belgrade's main shopping drag, the pedestrianized Knez Mihailova (Prince Michael Street). Like most of Belgrade's inner city it's a mix of beautifully restored beautiful old buildings, old buildings direly in need of such and ugly modern concrete. We popped into the splendidly decorated St. Michael's cathedral (sadly no photos allowed) and took a break in a café on central Republic Square where a christmas market had sprung up in front of the massive National Museum. From here we had one more place to see, Belgrade's famous bohemian quarter Skadarlija. Its heart is the lovely cobblestoned (and pedestrianized) Skadarska Street, lined with bars and restaurants, which must be incredible on warm summer nights. Even now it was amazing and the weather was nice enough to have lunch sitting outside in one of the restaurants (along with some other groups of Köln fans and a bunch of Red Star fans at another table). The paintings on some of the buildings were amazing (look at the trompe d'oeuil one to the right!) and it all had a really wonderful vibe.

By then it was time to return to the hotel which we had consciously chosen because it had a spa in the basement which was the perfect place to chill for 1-2 hours in a sauna and jacuzzi before the long evening ahead. The football club had sent out tons of information for fans about the evening and organized shuttle buses to take them to the stadium - but the buses were leaving from the Sava Center across the river which seemed such a long way to get to that it would make just as much sense to take a cab directly to the stadium. However, at 5pm we met local girl Zoja from the theatre forum for a coffee and chat at the Café Moskva and decided to just take the regular bus to the stadium with her (she was seeing the game with her Dad from the Red Star area). So far so good, except that it ended in chaos when we approached the stadium where tight security was in place. By sheer bad luck two coach loads of German "VIPs" were just arriving in front of the western section (the "best" area of the stadium) and the Gendarmerie (clad completely in riot gear with helmets, shields and arm-/leg protectors) were keeping the Serbian fans away to let the Germans get off the coaches and into the stadium. Zoja told them that we were German too, so we were unceremoniously separated from her and pushed towards the Germans. But naturally we didn't belong with the posh VIP gits and their special package (that probably cost an arm and a leg), so we talked to one of the UEFA stewards and the Gendarmes to explain that we did not belong there and had to be on the southern side at Gate 24 with the normal German fans. Despite their martial riot gear appearance I found the Gendarmes completely friendly and lovely and they told us to wait a bit until the other Germans were inside, the coaches had gone and the normal Serbian fans were allowed to circulate again. Then one of the Gendarmes and the UEFA steward gave us a personal escort to Gate 24 and I really felt like a movie star with a tall brawny bodyguard at my side, keeping the masses at bay.

I wish my hunky bodyguard had taken me all the way through to the seats as crowd control was chaos outside and it took forever to get through the actual gate and inside. Never mind that we had booked seats with actual numbers - since so many Köln fans had booked tickets themselves in Block 5 (next to Block 6 which had been meant for them and where tickets had been sold through the club actually) Security had decided to keep half of Block 5 to create an empty space between Germans and Serbs, meaning people had to crowd into only half a block and stand. Not that sitting down had been an option anyway since it had snowed/ frozen a few days before and all the seats were covered in dirty icy sludge. Compared to the smoothly oiled event machine here in our stadium, everything felt really basic and down to earth at the Rajko Mitic Stadium, nicknamed the Marakana of the Balkans. The Red Star fans opposite sure made up for it with a great choreo before the match started.

It has to be said, unfortunately, that Köln has its share of imbecilic idiots and some of them had found the way to Belgrade too, burning down fireworks at the start of the match that came close to hitting the players on the pitch (our own no less!) or spectactors elsewhere, not to mention that the thick fog meant that we didn't see anything for the first ten minutes of the match. Not that we missed much - Köln has played an exceptionally terrible season and so many players were out with injuries that the (brand-new interim) coach could take all of fourteen healthy players to Belgrade (and made up the numbers by taking kids from the youth team). Belgrade winning 1-0 was less terrible than I had feared and it was nice to see their fans celebrate with fireworks in their block (without harming anyone). We had been warned that we would be kept inside our block until the entire stadium had been cleared of local fans - which meant another 70-80 minutes of standing in the cold after the game until we were let out at last and could catch a cab back to hotel. I was pretty knackered, but nonetheless, it had all been a rather extraordinary crazy experience (and next time I'll rather go to the opera again, thanks).

We still had some time after breakfast next morning, so we set out for another walk. First stop was the National Assembly of Serbia, just a few minutes down the road from the hotel. The neo-classical building was started in 1907 when Serbia was still an independent kingdom and not finished until 1936 when it served as Parliament of Yugoslavia (until that fell apart). Curious tidbit: Ralph Fiennes filmed his "Coriolanus" movie here. Right across the street is the Old Palace (below left) where the Serbian kings lived fom 1884 to 1922. Today it houses the city assembly. A bit further down the road is the beautiful Byzantine (Serbian-Orthodox) St. Mark's Church that wasn't completed until 1940. It looks pretty basic even from inside but nonetheless its crypt is now the last resting place for some of Serbia's royals and bishops.

Next stop was the house-now-museum of Nikola Tesla, possibly the most famous Serb in the world, who's got Belgrade's airport named for him, is on a Serbian banknote and now godfather to a range of pricey American electric cars. Here are people queuing to get in as it was just 10am. Sadly we didn't have enough time for a visit, so we walked on to monumental St. Sava's Temple (above right). Back in 1895 planning had begun for a large church to host the relics of Serbia's Saint Sava (founder of the Serbian Orthodox Church) but building didn't begin until 1985. Lack of funds and the war in the 90s meant that only just now the outside of the church is completed, while the inside is still pretty much a bare construction site. Nonetheless, once it's finished it will be an incredibly pretty building to rival its inspiration, the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. From here we headed back to the Hotel Moskva one last time to pick up our stuff and begin the long way home with a cab ride to the airport. Since the Wizzair flight back to Eindhoven on Fridays did not exist in winter, Polish airline LOT had the best price/times combination to offer, so we threw our lot in with LOT. Who surprised me with a very comfy little Embraer plane for the first leg of the journey from Belgrade to Warsaw's very modern snazzy Chopin airport. Since we entered the Schengen zone here, we had to jump through passport and security hoops and only just made it to the second flight home to Düsseldorf before boarding. Overall it was certainly quite an adventure - seeing a city I had otherwise probably not considered visiting, experiencing football abroad and the warm fuzzy feeling of running into Köln fans everywhere (on the flight home as well!). As there's no chance in hell that Köln will play internationally again in the near future, I don't even need to ask myself if I would do this again. But either way, it was a fabulous experience and one I wouldn't have missed for anything in the world.