Month: April 2013

Family Journal: Spring in Belgrade

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I have not been posting as much as usual this month – it has been a busy time.

Ocean had a couple of milestones recently. She is shown above losing a tooth. It is one of the front ones so she looks so adorable. We are calling her “la campesina” and if you know Latin America, it is a hilarious and apt nickname. With the pigtails and loose tooth, she is so adorable! She also learned to ride a bike last week. We went for a long ride to Ada Ciganlija, just her and I. We crossed the Sava in the bike ferry and she just loved it. See my Youtube Channel for the video. She said her two favorite sports are, “riding a bike and hopscotch.” How much more little girl can you get! I am absolutely head over heals in love with her.

Ollie With His Art Prize

My son Oliver last weekend won a prize for his art at our school’s spring fair. We were very proud of him. He is also so cute. He referred to something as “the puniest” and in mispronouncing his “r” sound, called Owen the “first worst” Ocean the “second worst” and himself the “third worst.” Hilarious!

The third Kralovec child, Owen, is turning into a little dude as he ends fourth grade. I can’t believe he will be fifth grade next year. Where did the time go?

I wish these moments could slow down. They grow up too fast!

Finally, the weather here in Belgrade has been absolutely glorious! Bright blue skies, flowers in bloom, cool breezes, and bright green everywhere. One does not get any better weather than this.

A Serbian Sporting Legend

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A couple of days ago I met Igor Milanović, who many experts consider the greatest water polo player ever. We were looking for a new apartment and our real estate agent showed us an apartment for rent owned by Igor.

Water polo is huge in Serbia a and the region, and Serbia is usually one of the best teams in the world. They won bronze at London 2012. The two greatest water polo nations are Serbia and neighbor Hungary.

Milanović’s career achievements are amazing! He won 2 Olympic Gold Medals (LA 1984 and Seoul 1988) and 2 World Championships (1986, 1991). He would have probably won more, but Yugoslavia was banned from international competition during the war.

Igor played 340 games for Yugoslavia, scoring over 500 goals. The 6 foot 4, 240 pounder, was a powerful player whose coach said could play any position. He was relentless in the pool and inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1996.

He was a really nice guy. He coached Partizan last year and they won the European Club Championship. I asked him how water polo players compare physically to the swimmers, and he said they are two totally different sports. I thought perhaps water polo players would make great swimmers as well.

When I mentioned to my friends that I met him, everyone knew who he was. The Belgrade native is very famous in Serbia. It was an honor to get to speak with him.

I’ve only been to one water polo match in my life and that was for the 2000 Sydney Olympics. I’ll try to take the family to see a match this spring.

The Serbian Royal Palace

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I took a special tour of the Royal Palace this week as part of charity fundraising event. The Princess Katherine’s Foundation is doing a “Children Helping Children” campaign and asked the school to participate. A delegation of our students donated gifts for the impoverished children of Belgrade.

It was an informational and highly interesting tour. I took the photo above of the dome of the church on the palace grounds. Jesus has a bullet hole in his forehead from the Partisans who took over the palace after World War II. The church was used as a storage room at that time and the Royal Family kept some of the artifacts of the history of the place. I especially loved the basement private cinema, which Tito used to watch Westerns back in the day. I sat in his favorite chair.

The tour guide gave us a lot of information about the art works and the history of the rooms in the palace. Currently the Serbian government owns everything, but allows the Royal Family to live in an apartment on the grounds. It is a huge piece of land in Dedinje and the Karadjordjevic Family has refurbished much of the palace. It is quite spectacular and a fascinating place. I highly recommend a visit. The rooms below are done in a Russian style because the family gave refuge to Russian architects and artists fleeing the Bolsheviks. They were allowed to design many rooms. There are also spectacular views and every room has a story.

The Russian Rooms

I also received an invitation to the State Funeral of King Peter, which will take place next month. I’ll definitely blog on the that event. The Royal Family hold no power or political office in Serbia as it is a parliamentary government. We sadly didn’t have time to tour the White Palace on the grounds, but I will definitely come back for that tour.

Royal Palace Views

 

Sad Memorial

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The other day I was walking along the Sava River and I came across the memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. In World War II, The statue was erected in front of the old fairgrounds that served as a concentration camp for Jews, Roma, and Serbians. You can see the tower in the background.

I wonder how many visitors, or even Belgraders understand what took place here. I’ve blogged about the site before.

Parking Belgrade Style

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This folks is the perfect Belgrade parking technique. Parking is an adventure here and it takes awhile to figure out the parking system here. I have perfected the art of finding a parking space downtown. As you can notice, we have a big “family truckster” vehicle and it is a challenge to find parking spaces when we go to the center of the city. Belgraders park on the sidewalks. There is an etiquette to this however, and one must leave space for pedestrians to walk on the sidewalk. You can see by the woman about to go by my car that she has plenty of space. One also has to make sure that the car is not too far out into the street to block traffic, like in the photo below.

Slowing traffic while getting some milk, eggs, and cigarettes from the Maxi!

There is an organized system of paying for parking as well. The city is divided into zones and one can pay for parking by an SMS with one’s mobile phone. It is quite easy.

Here is an example below of people parking and blocking the entire sidewalk. This is also bad because it endangers or inconveniences pedestrians. I guess this is a busy street so they drivers didn’t want to risk their cars being hit while on the road.

The city makes wide sidewalks, and I guess it is for parking. The system does work and I always find a parking spot. I would like to hear some more parking stories from Belgrade readers of my blog.