When Toto flew from Montenegro to Serbia, he landed in the domestic terminal at the Belgrade airport. As you read in Chapter Five, Montenegro voted for independence five days before Toto visited it. So my Serbian friend pointed out that the flight we took will probably move from the domestic to the international airport terminal soon. The domestic terminal is only for flights within a country. As Montenegro voted to be its own country, all flights there from Belgrade will now be international.
Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, is a nice city built where the Sava and Danube rivers meet. In the old days, people built cities on rivers, which were the main mode of transportation, sort of like freeways nowadays.
Rivers often serve as borders between countries, too. For example the Rio Grande river forms a border between the United States and Mexico. Well, Belgrade was once exactly on the border of two very large empires. To the north was the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and to the south was the Ottoman, or Turkish, Empire. In this photo taken in the center of Belgrade, I am standing in what used to be the northern part of the Ottoman empire. Across the Danube River, the border, was the southern part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Both of these empires were very large and powerful. So it must have been interesting for Belgrade to be at the intersection of two very powerful empires.
One of the main sources of the empires' rivalry was that they practiced different religions. (A rivalry is when two countries or people challenge or fight each other for power or control.) The Austro-Hungarian empire was Christian and the Turkish empire was Muslim, and these are still the same two main religions to this day in this area. Even though the Austro-Hungarian and Turkish empires are long gone, the different religions practiced in this region were a unfortunately a source of much of the fighting during the Yugoslav civil war in the 1990s.
Within Serbia, the predominant religion today is Eastern Orthodox, a kind of Christianity. Here is a photo of the large Serbian Orthodox temple within Belgrade. Orthodox churches are very beautiful, as you can see. They are filled with icons, which are religious pictures of saints (not the pictures on your computer desktop!) Going into an Orthodox church can make you feel like you’ve walked into someone’s home, filled with pictures of their friends and relatives except they are pictures of saints instead.
The Serbian alphabet is different than the English alphabet, and is unique because it uses two alphabets: the Latin alphabet (like we use in English) and the Cyrillic alphabet (which they use in the Russian language). It made reading the Cyrillic only street signs and maps a bit more challenging, because some of the letters were familiar, but others looked very strange. Can you see the difference in this photo I found on the web? The people were really friendly, however, so they were always willing to help me find my way, and I managed to get around this nice city just fine.
Serbian Travel Questions
- What is the capital of Serbia?
- Why will flights from Montenegro into Serbia need to arrive in the international terminal soon?
- What two empires bordered on the Sava River, which runs through the Serbian capital today?
- What religion do most Serbians practice today?
- What religion was the predominant religion of the Turkish empire?
Global Nomad Questions on Serbia
- Draw a picture of what Belgrade might have looked like on the Sava River three hundred years ago.
- Why do you think that rivers often form the borders between countries? Do you know of any rivers that are the borders between countries or U.S. states?
- Find the Danube River on a map. List all the countries Danube flows through or borders.
- Research the Eastern Orthodox religion. List three other countries in which it is the predominant religion of the citizens.
- I saw this "Toto's Restaurant" in Belgrade and took this photo. Unfortunately it was closed when I walked by. Research what type of food might be served at a Serbian restaurant and create a menu for the restaurant.
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