Continuing my run of productivity I headed over to Aviator Coffee Explorer in the morning to work and get breakfast before heading over to Smart Office to work for the rest of the afternoon. Wine tastings seem to be the theme of this week and I headed over to another one in the evening at Pampour Wine Bar. The tasting itself was excellent, we had been doing Serbian wines at the others but this was all wines from Bordeaux:

1.       Chateau Carbonieux 2013, Pessac Leognan Grand Cru Classe
2.       Chateau Smith Havt Lafite Blanc 2013,Grand Cru Classe de  Graves
3.       Chateau Cantemerle 2011, Haut Medoc Grand Cru Classe
4.       Chateau D’Issan 2012, Margaux Grand Cru Classe
5.       Chateau Duhart Milon Rotschild 2010, Pauillac Grand Cru Classe
6.       Chateau Leoville Poyferre 2009 , Saint Julien Grand Cru Classe

The Lafite was one of, if not the, best white wines that I’ve ever had. The setting itself was also very nice and worth a visit:

I’m getting better and better about getting into the habit of, you know… actually working. So started off the day sitting outside and doing some work at Coffee Dream, which is a Belgrade chain of coffee shops. People really seem to like this place around town but I was rather underwhelmed. Then I headed to Smart Office and worked all afternoon. In the evening we went to Homa which is easily one of the best restaurants in town. Did the eight course tasting menu with wine pairings which was excellent and definitely recommended to anyone passing through Belgrade. Sadly, it was dark so the picture of the last dessert didn’t come out. But, it was a little clay pot with cookie dirt, candied mint, candied rocks etc. Very neat presentation.

Had a pretty uneventful day spent working. In the evening we went to a really cool wine tasting, the genesis of which was one of our group simply meeting a guy at a coffee shop. Belgrade, like many cities that existed within the Roman Empire, has an elaborate network of tunnels that run underneath the city. Our wine tasting was set inside these tunnels and done entirely by candlelight. In addition to wine we had a break for a little Serbian BBQ and then finished with a Rakija tasting. Rakija is a big part of Serbian culture and many (most) families have their own stills and make their own. It can be great or terrible but the round that we had at this tasting was by far the best I’ve had yet.

Since these daily updates are intended mostly for me I don’t usually include photos but I thought this warranted one or two even though they aren’t great because it was so dark.

The walk in

The setting

In hindsight I should have kept better track of where we actually went today. But, today some of us took a little day trip outside of Belgrade up to Novi Sad which is Serbia’s second largest city and is about an hour North of Belgrade. We stopped at a monastery along the way, checked out Novi Sad’s main square and went up to the fortress there. Then we did a wine tasting and headed back to Belgrade. I was unusually tired at the end of the day so I called it another early night.

Hey, 50 days into this little adventure of mine. The late night at Vox was catching up with me and I wanted to make sure my work docket was clear for a Saturday day trip outside of Belgrade so today I just lounged and worked. Grabbed a mediocre pizza from some place in my neighborhood for dinner and called it an early night.

Didn’t do much in the early part of the day. Just spent the time working and got a burger from some take away place in my neighborhood. In the evening went to dinner at To Je To with some people. To Je To is a traditional Serbian place, very low key but I thought the food was excellent for as simple as it was. If you really want to get a feel for what Serbian cuisine is like I think that’s your best best. As these things tend to, that escalated into drinks and we headed back to my favorite place in Belgrade, Vox Blues Club.

Started the day early to head over to the Tesla Museum which is only one black away from my apartment. Pretty cool given my lifelong Tesla enthusiasm. The museum itself is just ok, only four rooms really but Tesla’s ashes are here and it’s still worth seeing. After that some of us stopped for coffee and breakfast and then headed over to the office.  Worked there until the evening when I headed over to Mikser House for our periodic talks by locals and also our other cohorts. We ran into a big protest march that was coming down that way to protest the development of the Belgrade waterfront. …which was also interesting to see.

On my way in to Smart Office I stopped at Coffee Cup to get a coffee and something for lunch and got another reminder that things aren’t always what they seem in different cultures. I may have mentioned already that in Belgrade an Iced Coffee is not a coffee with ice in it but rather an elaborate milkshake thing made with coffee… not that I’m complaining but I certainly can’t suck those down like plain coffee. I also ordered what was very clearly labeled a chicken salad sandwich and was given a mason jar filled with lettuce and chicken. Still not bad… but surprising. Some of the other members of the group have been good enough to put together weekly “Tech Talks” so I headed to the office to attend an introduction to Swift. For dinner I went to Casa Nova which was very good. Belgrade doesn’t seem to have quite figured out fine dining yet. They’ll do things like prepare a filet mignon and then pile a bunch of McDonalds style french fries and onion rings on top… not necessarily bad. The real stand out at Casa Nova was the service, that alone makes it worth visiting. After, I headed over to the joint birthday party for my roommates last month which was excellent.

In the morning we did a walking tour of Belgrade that focused on the history of the town during the 20th century. After a three hour death march through the city (interesting but still quite a trek on a hot day) I returned to Mala Fabrika Ukusa again for lunch. The rest of the day was spent enjoying the air conditioning at home and working rather late.

After the the late night last night this was a pretty low key day during the day. I had lunch at Hotel Moscow and sat on their terrace and read. In the evening we headed up to the walls of the old Belgrade Fortress which overlook the river and watched the sunset. Then we headed to a sports bar on Republic Square to watch France v Portugal. After that we made the poor choice to head back to Cetinjska again to pass the birthday baton. I didn’t have much in me so I left at the early hour of one or two… or something.