SERBIA the Media Doesn’t Show You
Serbia is not among the most popular tourist destinations in Europe. What do you know about this country? Probably you've heard a lot about conflicts in the Balkans, Civil Wars bombing weapons, communist past. As usual I'm on my way to see what's going on beyond the news from the media to meet local and to find out what life in Serbia is actually about now So here I am My first day in Serbia I thought that in Moscow we have a hot summer when I left it was + 25 C and here + 37 And I just arrived from the Arctic It's going to be hard for me but let's explore My first surprise is that inscriptions and newspapers everywhere are into alphabets in Cyrillic and Latin and I can't even understand which of the alphabets do they use in Serbia out of curiosity I came to a local Bookshop to see if I can understand another Slavic language so I can understand the names of some books here is Dostoyevsky "Idiot" now let's make an experiment I will try to read some random sentences from this book and see what happens okay there are some letters that we don't have in Russian but I will read it as English so what I understand from here is shame whispered sounds like a Russian verb but it sounds like maybe she got slim or she screamed or or she said something just trying to guess and then whispered Alexandra something like that so I can understand some random words but not the full text so this is how it goes for me and Serbian language so far and now I found exactly the same book also in Serbian but with a Latin alphabet why do they have two alphabets to find out the answer to this question and to many more that I have about Serbia let's explore Belgrade with my Serbian friend Eve that I met back in Yakutia in Russia Siberia is a region in Russia and Serbia is in Balan sometimes they are confusing with Syria also you know it's similar Syria serban Siberia there is a saying that Russians are never called but maybe it's because Russians are wearing "valenki" felt boots and foreigners wear sneakers when it's minus 30 maybe that's why probably last time we met minus 40 now it's plus 40 yeah welcome to Serbia I brought something for you from Russia thank you right I think it melted why not why not thank you so much what is Serbian breakfast yeah we love a lot of uh pastries and the most famous one is not just Serbian it's Balkan thing you know I think we inherited that from Ottoman Empire different yeah you like it so soft maybe amazing sometimes I see inscriptions written in Latin alphabet and sometimes in Cyrillic alphabet do you use two alphabets I'm so confused yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah we have both alphabets and sometimes we are making mistakes like mixing or Latin and Cyrillic and we don't recognize that you know for us it's like two alphabets are official ones which one do you use more commonly officially for government using Cyrillic but people these days using more Latin than I'm mixing Latin and Cyrillic can I enter Saint Sava Temple in shorts it's too hot so I'm wearing clothes like this it's possible it's possible we are not strict in church like that but for example if you want to go to police station or Library it's forbidden to have short sleeves shorts you know you have to show respect you know in police stations or officially you have to to wear here but it's uh nobody will stop you and said you can't go because Saint Sava Temple is so popular it's like tourist touristic attraction and it's possible so I can wear shorts to church but I can't to go to police yes why yeah it's it's strange but you know I've never heard of yeah yeah I recently I had a problem in police station I had to renew my driving license and I had to do it quickly and they said go man you are in shorts you have to respect police and come back to home wear your jeans and come you know but it is what it is I think something from communist time maybe is uh that showing respect to police we are in Saint Sava Temple temple one of the biggest Orthodox temples in the world it's finished maybe 2 years ago it had a lot of works with the fresco we started building these Orthodox church temple like uh 70 years before the World War we dedicated this Temple to our monk Saint Sava founder of Serbian Orthodox church and on one of the biggest landmarks of Belgrade 100% it's very beautiful doesn't matter you religious or not it's the architecture is stunning the thing is that we celebrate Christmas same day as the Russians 7th of January other East European countries like Bulgaria Romania switch to 25th of December it's a two weeks difference but just Serbians Russians I'm not sure Macedonians maybe some somebody else is celebrating Christmas on 7th of January there's the similarities with the Russians Eve mentioned the Communist past of Serbia and I asked him to take me somewhere where I could learn more about the history of Yugoslavia and about his life here during that period some really brutalist architecture isn't it yeah yeah yeah in Belgrad we have a lot this building we call Genex Tower or West Gate we have East Gate and west gate and many these days many photographers are coming here to catch good shots because of this crazy communist architecture this building half is residential area half is now we are rebuilding for some businesses and on the top it will be restaurant uh yeah yeah yeah with nice view It looks kind of abandoned right now yes but they have big plans for these buildings is it lots of communist architecture like this in Belgrad yep so basically you grew up in Belgrad and you were born in 1980s uh in 1984 yeah I was born and raised in Belgrad almost like all my life I'm here how was your childhood here it was crazy times yeah yeah yeah yeah I was born in Big Yugoslavia Big Yugoslavia was consisting of six seven countries Croatia Serbia Bosnia Macedonia and Yugoslavia fall apart in ' 90s because the war started in 1991 and that was a crazy war and I think we lost everyone nobody gained anything you know okay new countries Yugoslavian passport was one of the best uh okay I will talk about Serbia after that uh it was little Yugoslavia Serbia and Montenegro uh with that passport you couldn't go anywhere sanctions I remember the time when you come when you go to the local store you cannot buy anything anything sometimes I went with my father to local open market and if somebody you know like smuggled like sweets you know to to have a chocolate it was like is for kids like if they give you gold you will take the chocolate it's something special because in in the stores you couldn't find anything I remember like monthly salary was like or five Euro so 5 dollars you couldn't buy anything High hyperinflation you know you see it's I don't know how many billions every week we were adding one more zero for example uh this week you can buy something next week for this money you cannot buy anything start to be useless it's like one of the craziest inflations in the world it was crazy crazy is the worst period of Serbia for sure that war last till 1995 they signed peace agreement and let's say from 95 to 98 it was kind of peace and the new war started in our province in Kosovo and meia with Albanians and after that in 1999 because of our strong reaction NATO country bombed us for 76 days Belgrad as well yeah yeah whole Serbia it was basically dangerous to live here yeah yeah yeah definitely when there was a bombing I was 15 years old our parents didn't want to let us to feel that you know they are always smiling with trying to skip that for example in the bomb shelter I found the love you know I fall fall in love you know that kind of things and for me that kind of time you know I remember for nice I'm trying to remember that nice things but I also at the same time I remember how the sky was like yellow from the bombs the one moment like from night it become the day it was crazy and when they I remember when they bombed the Serbian military headquarter we are in front of the ex Yugoslavian Army headquar and my house is not far away and NATO bombed this area in 1999 and the funniest thing I was like on outskirts of the city and my my father said let's come back to our apartment and that night they bombed uh all these buildings and you were here before it happened yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and first time in my life I saw my father that he was scared and the same night we had also earthquake we see really nice beautiful buildings here why they're not doing anything since 25 years yeah it's very strange because the office of our um Prime Minister is next to these buildings I think they're thinking what to do and I heard I I'm not sure that it is true or not that Americans voted like uh they want to build our Trump many people talking about that if it's like that it's terrible I remember the bombing of Belgrad for all my life every generation of serbs know like two big Wars it's like our destiny unfortunately our parents wanted to save us from the the politics from that kind of things they they are trying to do everything for us not to think about that I cannot say that I was you know so said that I had terrible childhood no my my family trying to do the best but I remember that kind of events unfortunately boming of Serbia when was the like uh Revolution when Democratic forces came into the power a lot of protests I remember and we were part of that at the end I can say I had it sounds ridiculous happy childhood you time for Serbian food yes how do you say food in Serbian yeah we say or you can say it's like dish yellow yeah yeah yeah yes it means eat to eat let's see if you will understand I want to eat because I know the word "kooshat" eat to eat in Russian I learned that word it's very important how do you say it in Serbian or I want so we have on the table shopska salad it's consisting of cheese onion pepper and tomato it's very fresh very delicious also we have Ivar spread it's pepper we are boiling grilling mixing with some spices very delicious you should try in the restaurants they are serving that kind of grilled bread with some paprika does this have a name um just bread yes yes top super many people say this is not food this is a remedy you know it's gods' food you know let's see how similar are words in Russian and Serbian for food is the same is the same uh pomidor is uh Paradise Paradise Paradise it's a tomato Paradise Salad paradise and to try something specific and exclusive from Belgrad we decided to go to a special place so we came to Hotel Moskwa the oldest hotel of all Yugoslavia opened in 1908 yes and it's named so because it was sponsored by Russian insurance company and this hotel is very famous for Moscow cake what is a for Vienna Moscow cake is for Belgrad legendary cake and this year we celebrate 50 half century of this cake it's amazing and the original recipe is from this hotel many pastry shops in Serbia are making Moscow cake and even Granny's are making but this is the real one yeah I thought that this cake like the recipe comes from Moscow or something like this but the cake was created in the hotel Moskva so it looks like lots of cream nuts and berries I think is a cherry so good eating Moskva in Belgrad what's interesting about this cake because many traditional pastory shops were shut down when the Communist came Serbian Yugoslavian history was turbulent you know many changes and to have like a Moscow cake for 50 years it's something very important for us we have long history but because of changing of systems all private let's say cake shops were destroyed and clothed and that's why these days we don't have that long run pastry shop or famous like this cake you know when you have to start again from zero it's it's tough that's why this cake is Iconic yep definitely we're in 'Zasavisa' Nature Reserve yes first time in my life here it's just 80 kilomet from from Belgrade from my house but you know like in Serbia is like that you can go tomorrow and years by years and finally you're here yeah finally because of you when you feel you know like it's not your day and you're full of frustration just do this and everything goes away we are like Donkey Sanctuary in a way we have a big pasture that you can see 300 hectares and here we have more than 300 female donkeys which we milk and we produce donkey milk also we have more than 400 Wild Horses roaming around these lands just freely they are totally wild and no one is riding them also we have some cattle here and lots of other plants and animals and stuff like that but we are the actually second large donkey farm in Europe and can you tell more about the donkey milk donkey milk is like The Wonder of the nature it's first of all it's 99.9% the same as the
human milk as the mother's milk and one female donkey can produce only about 25 to 45 l in 2 years they are not producing milk as cows every day only after they get birthed for example this one is pregnant and she's not producing milk she's carrying its small children for 13 full months and after that only for 4 to 6 months they produce milk so that's 13 months plus 6 months plus time to get pregnant again that's about 2 years cycle donkey milk is the best natural medicine for all sorts of respiratory diseases like bronchitis asthma and stuff like that and also it's a really small fat quantity in it so that's why nobody before us knew how to make donkey cheese so we are the first one in the world to managed to produce donkey cheese out of the donkey milk this place is amazing how is life in this Nature Reserve oh wait I forgot that it's a Serbian donkey also there are horses here and they all gathered for a very important meeting in a circle here can I discuss this issue with you guys well actually all of them are trying to get in this small space of shadow that they have because everywhere is a field and it is melting hot I was told that this kind of weather is not very normal for Serbian summer but this summer it lasts for several weeks so yes it is extremely hot here in Serbia but extremely beautiful oh very clever yeah very clever energy you can do anything you are making problems it for the guys for the guys donkey cheese yeah it is it's our package for our famous and most expensive cheese in the world called pulle donkey cheese it's made out of the donkey milk as you can see it's a little gold nugget inside actually 1 kilo of cheese is €1,000 we are the only ones in the world that knows how to make donkey cheese because it has a really small percent of fat and doesn't have kazen which is protein which is needed for the cheese making I do love it it's so like wild soft taste M interesting texture and The Taste never tried something like this like the texture is super unique for cheese actually kind of similar to Adyck cheese from the North Caucasus okay tastes a bit like smoked cheese something like this yeah like aftertaste is smoked I start loving donkey cheese it's dangerous for my wallet to finish Dunkey therapy we need to also drink Donkey milk of course we need to milk the bottle at first doesn't taste like milk no what I love is that it's cold first of all yeah yeah comparing with cow milk no connection you can't even more related to coconut milk or something like exactly The taste is not strong they said it's very healthy so we finished it all yeah we're going to be healthy now I did not expect that I would meet my Serb friend in Siberia then meet him in Serbia and then drink donkey milk and eat the most expensive cheese in the world did not expect this at all after going to Yakuta with him when I'm eating it's always about some extremes minus 50 plus 40 the most expensive cheese you know it's all about that always the most the best yeah extreme it's very important to travel we are one nation people are in all parts of the world almost the same same habits smiling for the same things we are Balkan people always I'm telling that we fight each other but we are crying and laughing for same things we like love spending time with the family enjoying life we are trying we don't have the highest salaries but I think we are living life to the fullest you know
2024-08-25 23:00
