We booked this trip only in February, after we’d gotten settled in our new digs.  We’d always been interested in visiting the Balkans, but admittedly didn’t know much about the area or its history.  There was an itinerary on MIR that looked interesting, and we’d had good luck using them on our trip to Iran and the Stans back in 2017, so we decided to just go for it.  We’d been back from our trip to Texas, California, and Oaxaca only a little more than a week when it came time for this trip.  But since the Texas trip was fixed because of the date of the solar eclipse, and this was fixed because it was a group trip, we couldn’t do much about the schedule.

We woke up a little before 06:00, and it was a little odd not having to feed Cerdito.  Our friends Monique and Mika had picked him up yesterday afternoon, so we were solo this morning.  Even though our flight wasn’t until the late morning, because we were flying out of the south airport and we needed to take two buses, we couldn’t sleep in.  Because it was May Day, the buses were on the weekend and holiday schedule, so there were fewer than normal.  Accordingly, we walked to the bus station from our house, maybe 30 minutes or so, and mostly downhill.  But we were definitely happy we hadn’t overpacked our backpacks.

We arrived at the bus station right as one of the 103 buses pulled up, and we took that to Santa Cruz.  The bus was largely empty, and accordingly had less stops than usual.  We didn’t arrive early enough to catch an earlier bus to the airport; instead we just had a longer transfer time in Santa Cruz, 25 minutes.  The bus from Santa Cruz to the airport was busier than the 103 bus, but not remotely full either.  We arrived at the airport around 08:50, and got our boarding passes…for both flights this time.  [On our flight to Houston, for whatever reason, they couldn’t or wouldn’t give us boarding passes or check our luggage through, meaning we had to check in again, and go through security again, in Zurich.]

At security, Justin had to remove all of his electronics, not just his computer, from his backpack.  It was roughly half the bag, and he wondered if he should just put every last piece of his luggage in a separate bin.  As he was contemplating this absurdity, Crystal saw a woman whose bag had to be opened because it had a giant bottle of suntan lotion, plus two different bottles of water.  Eventually we made it through, relatively unscathed, and we got to the gate around 09:20 for our 10:30 flight.  Crystal walked around a bit to check for snacks to take on the plane, and got a sandwich and some chips.  We each had a tiny bottle of wine to celebrate our impending journey.

Everyone on the plane was sick, with colds, the flu, Covid, who knows.  But we wanted none of it.  We tried our best to face away from everyone, and hoped the filtration system would do its job.  We landed around 15:30 in Zurich, and walked over to the D gates, which are for shorter flights to non-EU locales, i.e., where passport control is necessary.  Out of the countries we’d be
visting, only Croatia was a part of the EU, and only Croatia and Kosovo had roaming data included in our cell phone plan.  So we’d downloaded offline maps for basically everywhere we were going to visit.  We spent maybe 5-10 minutes at passport control, and then went into the Swiss Lounge – a much smaller one, and not very crowded.  We looked at a couple restaurant options and decided to try Zavicaj for dinner tonight, as the menu looked good, it was very close to our hotel, and it was open quite late.

Our flight to Belgrade was slightly delayed.  We boarded right after a dozen strollers.  We were seated in the exit row, so at least we weren’t right next to the little ones.  The flight was thankfully short and sweet.  When we landed, we experienced something we’ve seen quite a bit recently – Europeans suck at exiting planes.  It’s one of the (very) few things that Americans seem to do more efficiently.  Americans generally de-board row by row, and people behind wait their turn.  Europeans just bum rush the aisle, and then once in the aisle refuse to let anyone in.  We aren’t fans.  It was easy leaving the airport, as we were about the only ones not waiting for luggage.  A MIR representative picked us up and took us to our hotel, the Hotel Moskva.  It was only a 10-15 minute drive from the airport.  To our surprise, our hotel room was two levels, with the bed upstairs.  It was fine for us, but we wondered whether some of the other guests might not think so. 

We were seated at Zavicaj one hour after touching down at the airport.  We ordered table wine, and Crystal ordered stuffed cabbage whilst Justin ordered a mixed meat platter.  We also shared a Greek Salad.  Everything was good, but also fairly giant.  Crystal’s dish had a hunk of pork belly between the two stuffed cabbages, as an example.  After dinner we walked north to Belgrade Cocktail Club, a speakeasy we’d read about.  We had to wait 5-10 minutes to get in, as it was at capacity.  Whilst we were waiting, the bartender came out and asked us where two women had went – perhaps they had skipped out on their tab? 

We got their seats at the bar.  Crystal ordered a Blacky, with similar ingredients to a French 75, but with blackberry.  Justin got a drink with Mezcal and a giant ice cube (we can’t recall the name).  We heard an interesting story from the bartender – in short, it was that the Ottomans invading the Balkans in the 1400s effectively closed the Silk Road, and thus expedited Western Europe’s search for Asia via the Atlantic.  We hadn’t heard that before, but intuitively it makes sense.  We left shortly before midnight, and arrived back at the hotel just after midnight, shutting down almost immediately thereafter.