OK so there was one odd memory I had from Belgrade, and it was when our train had just entered the city limits from Novi Sad (a 1.5 hour journey that costs less a ride on the Montreal Métro). Will and I were sitting on either side of the train, absently cracking dumb jokes to each other across the aisle as you tend to do when you’re flushed with the excitement of a new city. But the train pushed ahead a little further, reconnecting with the Danube, and as we stared out the window we both went silent at the same time.

Next to the highway on either side were enormous interconnecting huts made of little more than sheet metal, dirt, and rocks. The huts were all the same. There were clotheslines hung with laundry, oil drums tipped over, garbage everywhere. There weren’t any people around, but the destitution seemed recent and alive somehow. People were living in these hovels, definitely, and all the huts were sort of built together in neat rows to form little streets. Hundreds and hundreds of them. All of this was built right behind large industrial lots filled with machinery and bustle, shockingly close to the action. From the train you could see forklifts and trucks at work right next to these villages. The train slowed down a little, and finally I saw a group of people crowded around something near one of the huts. It was a family of Roma as best I could tell, and the father was holding in his arms a little girl, about ten years old. She seemed to have badly twisted or broken her ankle as it was hanging rather askew from her leg. None of them seemed to know what to do. The father seemed to be quite upset and maybe crying but I couldn’t tell for sure.

I looked up ahead, towards Belgrade, to the lights and condominiums and riverside views, couldn’t believe what I was seeing. This is a major modern city, isn’t it? And this, here, is third-world poverty on its outskirts?

Well, I never worked up the courage to head over there, but I later met a Canadian guy who decided to take nothing in his pockets except bus change and take the bus over there and walk through this ‘Gypsy quarter’. He gave me the following account:

I took nothing except the bus change I needed to get there and back. I told the bus driver where I wanted to get off and he looked at me like I was nuts, and asked me if I was sure. The bus let me off about two blocks from the place. As soon as I turned the corner and saw the first set of shacks, they saw me, and a bunch of kids came running over and started grabbing me, grabbing at my pockets, grabbing everything. I sort of pulled them off me and they let me go. I tried to laugh with them a little but they weren’t friendly. For a little while I was left alone, and I kept walking and looking in the huts. People looked at me and yelled things to their family. Then an enormous herd of people—kids, adults, everything—came running out of two or three huts after me, waving their arms and begging, and this time I started running a little bit. It wasn’t so much scary as very uncomfortable. They kept following me, really bearing down on me. I had to start sprinting. The last of the kids followed me for three blocks before giving up. I ran to the next bus station and luckily my bus was right there and I got the hell out of there.

All this and more, just a city bus ride away from your hotel or guest house.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 at 3:04 pm and is filed under Serbia.