Sept 16 - Contrary to what we were told, the jets are back this morning to make more noise over the city. One I see as we walk down the street is in the process of flipping upside-down. Some bouts of heavy rain most of today. Also of note is the preparation of spectator stands in one of the plazas, and a lot of barriers being set up. A quick Google search comes up with the following, explains-it-all article from an online Serbian news source called ‘b92’, entitled “Belgrade under siege tomorrow”:
As many as four major events are scheduled for one and the same day, Saturday, September 17, in the capital of Serbia.
The events include: the promotion of military graduates, the Formula 1 race, "Europride" and the walk of anti-globalists. The first event starts already at 10 a.m., the last two at 5 p.m., so it is clear that the capital will be under "siege" from the early hours of the morning.
This is apparently the end of a long struggle that has been going on this week, ever since the organizers of Europride asked for permission to hold a parade on the 17th. Soon after, an alt-right group known as Serbian Action announced they would hold a ‘counter demonstration’ (though one normally does not think of a counter demonstration as being a response to a parade). Aleksandar Vučić, President of Serbia, cleaned his hands of everything by announcing a ban on both groups.
But both immediately vowed to carry on despite the ban. I saw in another article that most streets in downtown will be closed to vehicular traffic most of tomorrow. As for the President of Serbia, based on what I’ve read about him, he would rather not have anything to do with Europride anyway. His cozy relations with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and sympathy with Russia’s “special military operation” quickly determine what sort of political and religious doctrines he will promote. In fact, in a different article I found, one of the Serbian MP’s said something to the effect of ‘if Europride is allowed to go forward, it will prove that Serbia is a colony of the EU and NATO”. A sad and idiotic statement, but also revealing about the politics seething in this country.
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Spend a few hours in the National Museum of Serbia. There is a lot here. Belgrade is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in Europe, and shows human evidence going back to 7000 BCE. The critical position it has at the confluence of the Sava and Danube Rivers makes it a focal point for water based traffic coming from just about anywhere in Bosnia, Croatia, Hungary, Austria, and beyond upstream and Romania and the Black Sea downstream.
But the real record-setting statistics of Belgrade are of a more depressing theme. From the Roman conquest, through the Celtic and then Slavic invasions, then the eternal Austro-Ottoman conflict and the world wars of the 20th Century, the city can claim to have been part of 115 wars, and razed 44 times. There is so little physical evidence left of anything old in the city. The area called Stari Grad (Old City) is just the old city street layout, with all relatively new buildings occupying the blocks now.
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The Danube has played such a formational role in the boundaries of empires. In many of the historical maps of Serbia in the museum today, it forms the northern boundary. And, as previously noted in Central/Eastern Europe, much of its course formed the boundary between the Roman Empire and ‘the barbarians’ (referred to elsewhere in these pages as the Limes of Rome). There is one famous Roman bridge over it (built under the direction of Trajan in 105 CE), at the border of Serbia and Romania east of here. A few supporting feet are still present at both river banks. Unfortunately it is too far out of the way to visit in this trip.
Serbia