Sigidunum

Sigidunum: Open Wounds Amidst Simple Pleasures

Like several cities before it, Belgrade (which used to be called Sigidunum by the Romans) has grown on me because of the people who have been gracious to share the city’s diversity and refreshing simplicity with us. Everywhere the animals I see are hungry and lean, but also at play with each other- happy. Puppies from the Roma (the gypsies mixed in with refugees from Kosovo, according to our guides for the day) encampment just under the freeway across from our hotel (the raw truth of have and have not in Belgrade) are loving the manicured green grass.

Belgrade hosts the point where the Danube and Sava rivers merge


and has some lovely features but also many unrepaired wounds around the city from the U.S. bombing in 1991. Cherries still bloom outside a destroyed Chinese embassy and several buildings across from the prime minister’s residence are still half standing. The dictator Tito led the resistance against the Nazis and in 1945 started a tradition of having the city’s most accomplished young men and women run artisan crafted batons around the country to pay him tribute. He was a womanizer, horse-lover and he imprisoned the nationalists who instigated civil war once they were released when his rule ended.

Saint Sava was a 13^th century prince whose temple stands in the Senac area of Belgrade- it is a gorgeous church worth visiting.

In the afternoon, our guide Ljubisa treated us to a lovely tour around Zemun, an area of Belgrade where the locals go. We walked by the Danube to see dogs playing and families out for a Sunday and then had a fresh fish lunch, including riblija corba, the fish soup the locals enjoy.