Moving Day – Our New Airbnb in Belgrade (Serbia)
Our final days in Spain are finally behind us, and what a 3 months it has been!
Great food, great culture, great cities, and fantastic people.
We will come back, many times I suspect. And I’m still gathering my thoughts about our time in Madrid. I plan on making one last post about our experiences there, before committing our attention to our latest travels.
But we’ve reached the end of our 90-day Schengen Area tourist visa duration and need to leave the area for 90 days before we can come back.
So it is the perfect time to explore a new city in a country we are interested in – Belgrade, Serbia in the Balkans.
Now that we are settled into our new Airbnb, let us tell you how our travel day went and what our new place is like.
Why Visit Belgrade, Serbia?
To go to a part of the world superficially similar to what one might see in the United States or Western Europe, but is VERY different!
And Belgrade is the perfect gateway city to the Balkan region.
Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia, situated at the junction of the Sava and Danube rivers. One of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world and with a population of 1,200,000 in the city proper, it is a significant cultural, economic, and administrative hub for the region.
Belgrade is a city with a storied past, boasting a unique blend of cultures and architectural styles. One can explore the Byzantine and Ottoman influences in the older neighborhoods, alongside Art Nouveau and brutalist designs in New Belgrade. There is also an impressive mix of museums, castles, restaurants, and parks that feature the history of the city and the region.
And on top of all of this, we are in a completely different culture that uses a different language with TWO different alphabets!
Needless to say, we will be well out of the linguistic comfort zone we established in Latin America and Spain by learning Spanish.
We will be starting our Serbian communication abilities from scratch. English is spoken in Belgrade, but not enough that you can count on that as a crutch. Google Translate is going to be super helpful, I suspect.
So we’ll learn survival-level Serbian to get us through our Balkan travels, whose countries use the same (or similar) words for most things despite using “different” languages.
And if we ever reach a communication impasse, we can always fall back on miming.
How We Got To Belgrade from Madrid
On the morning of July 27, we left our apartment, used public transportation to get to the airport, and flew directly from Madrid to Belgrade.
We paid for our initial one-way tickets using credit card points, so they were effectively free.
But unusually for us, we paid an extra ~$50 USD each to check our main bags.
Normally we wouldn’t do this, but the carry-on luggage weight allowances for Air Serbia were pretty low, at only 8 kg.
Even worse, Air Serbia does not allow online check-in or self-check-in kiosks at the Madrid airport, so we knew we would have to pass scrutiny at the check-in desk. If we got busted by being overweight (normally our bags are over 10 kg), we’d have to pay an even more inflated cost to check the bag.
It was a good thing we paid in advance!
While we were in the check-in line, counter attendants were weighing the carry-on bags of everyone who didn’t pay to check a bag.
Lots of people were affected and were forced to redistribute the contents of their bags or pay an elevated cost to check their luggage.
Bullet dodged.
Our flight left about 30 minutes late, but the 3.5-hour flight to Belgrade went without issue.
Once we landed we went through immigration control, who stamped our passports without a word.
We then picked up our bags at baggage claim and exited the airport without any sort of customs check.
When we exited the airport, we went to the bus transportation area and picked up the A1 shuttle bus that, for 400 RSD ($3.70 USD) each, took us and our luggage to the Belgrade Slavija Square bus stop.
From there we picked up the #7 Tram to our Airbnb in the Ђерам/Đeram neighborhood.
To avoid transportation issues when we landed (as well as avoid crazy taxi costs), we purchased 30 days of unlimited rides (Zone A) on the Belgrade Public Transportation system (for 2,200 RSD [$20.40 USD] each) in Madrid using the Beograd+Plus app.
The app also acts as our perpetual ticket. so when we arrived, we could immediately start using the system!
Things To Know About The Ђерам/Đeram Neighborhood
For those who are wondering, the Ђерам/Đeram neighborhood (pronounced JAY-ram) has two spellings, the first using the Serbian Cyrillic script and the second using the Latin Serbian script. Both alphabets are used interchangeably, with the first being more official and the second being more modern.
Needless to say, this adds a certain spice to doing even the simplest of things here.
As is our preference when slow-traveling, our neighborhood is working-class with lots of markets and other stores to provide for our day-to-day needs.
We chose our location for 2 main reasons: (1) it was cheap, and (2) connectivity to the city.
Even though it is a 20 – 30 minute walk to the historic downtown area, our neighborhood has at least 10 different public transportation stops just a short walk from our apartment. And these rides can take us to all sorts of shopping, hiking, and tourism options.
So we get all of the perks of living in Belgrade for about 1/2 of the cost of most Airbnbs closer to the center of the city.
Win-win.
Sadly it is going to take MUCH more effort to communicate with locals in our neighborhood than we are used to, but we are slowly increasing our survival Serbian language abilities.
We’ll manage.
Welcome To Our Airbnb in Belgrade
As usual, we found our long-stay Airbnb in Belgrade using the detailed methods described in our post: A TTT Guide to Long-Term Airbnb Stays – How to Get a Cheap Apartment that Doesn’t Drive You Crazy.
Our apartment is in the basement so to speak, with only our windows at actual ground level.
This helps keep our apartment cool even with the summer heat, which is good because there is no AC in our apartment!
Honestly, the apartment does surprisingly well with heat management all things considered. It is an order of magnitude better than the situation we were in when we stayed on the coast of Panama!
When you walk through our front door you immediately enter a foyer that connects to our bathroom.
Also connected to our foyer is our combination living room/dining room/kitchen area. We will be spending most of our time here for sure!
Our bedroom is decent size, with a double bed, classic IKEA chair, and a couple of wardrobes.
So for all of this, including utilities and 150 Mbps download speed internet, we are paying $17.82 USD USD/night (including a 30% long-stay discount).
The cheap price should help defer the costs of the various road trips and car rentals we are planning on during the next few months. But despite its cost, the apartment has proven to be quite comfortable.
We are looking forward to exploring the area over the next 4 weeks!
Until next time…
Thanks for reading!
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