Today was my final day in Belgrade, Serbia. I slept in until 7:30 am, went downstairs, purchased a sandwich from a shop below, and was eating it when I ran into the receptionist arriving for work. We chatted for a bit before I went out on my adventures for the day, and I owed her money for the airport transfer because she forgot to charge me when I checked in.

It was raining cats and dogs today, and my shoes were starting to get some fairly large holes in them. I felt like a wet dog the majority of the day. The first stop was the Old Belgrade Railway Station. The railway station was opened in 1884 and remained open until just a few years ago in 2018. It was designed by architect Dragutin Milutinovic in academism style. Trains were relocated to a new railway station, and the current one was repurposed into a museum.

A very short walk away are two unique buildings; The Railway Museum, and the Ministry of Defence. The Railway Museum was founded in 1950. The first exhibition was held in 1953 and feature the History of Yugoslav Railways. The museum features over 40,000 objects, however, I didn’t go inside as it was closed today.

The Ministry of Defence building was constructed between 1957 and 1965 and was designed by Nikola Dobrović. The building was built in two parts; building A and building B. Each building was on either side of Nemanjina Steet. The building was destroyed fairly extensively during the NATO bombings of Yugoslavia. It was actually bombed twice, nine days apart. The building was not repaired for over a decade, however, since building B was much less damaged parts of it are still used by the Ministry of Defence of Serbia. In 2005 it was added to the list of protected buildings. In 2015 the first phase of reconstruction of Building A was started, for the purpose of structure collapse prevention. In 2017 the government decided to demolish most of building A, with the obligation to rebuild it to its original appearance once the country has funds. The reason for this decision was that the reconstruction costs were about 7.7 million Euros, whereas the demolition cost was only 1.5 million euros. Over the years there were talks about converting building A into a luxury hotel, building a monument, or building a museum.

It was starting to rain even harder, so I took the bus instead of walking to the Temple of Saint Sava. The Temple of Saint Sava, also known as the Church of Sant Sava is a Serbian Orthodox Church that was designed by architects Bogdan Nestorović, Aleksandar Deroko, and Branko Pešić. The building is built in a Serbo-Byzantine and Neo-Byzantine architecture style. The church took an extremely long time to be built due to a variety of factors. Construction started in 1935 and the building is still under construction, with work scheduled for completion sometime this year. When Yugoslavia was under occupation by the Germans in 1941 the church was only 10 metres (33 feet) high. The incomplete building was used as a depot by the German army. After the war, the church was unable to receive permission to complete the building until 1984. The church has a symmetrical layout and a 12,000 square metre (130,000 square foot) gold mosaic that should be complete sometime this year.

After visiting the temple I took a bus to see a quirky building called the Toblerone Building, which gets its name from it resembling that of a bunch of pieces of Toblerone chocolate pieces stacked on one another. The Toblerone Building is a Brutalism style building designed by architect Rista Šekerinski and was completed in 1963.

I took the bus back to my hotel, where I purchased a salad from the shop below. I chatted with the receptionist for a bit, ate my salad, and relaxed, before heading out to see the Nikola Tesla Museum. The Nikola Tesla Museum is dedicated to the life and work of Nikola Tesla. It has over 160,000 documents, 2000 books and journals, 1500 photographs, various objects and instruments, and over 1000 plans and drawings. The Nikola Tesla Archive is a UNESCO Memory of the World Programme register since 2003. The museum is housed in a residential villa that was built in 1927. It was used for various purposes until the museum open on December 5^th, 1952.

The final stop for today was an automotive museum that I found close to my hotel. There were a few dozen fairly well-preserved cars in there, which were fun to look at. Sadly, the roof of the building is leaking, and some of the cars are getting water damage.

For dinner, I had a comically large slice of pizza from a pizza place around the corner, and it was only $2.45. It was basically 1/3 of a 14″ pizza!

Tomorrow I fly to Budapest, so be sure to stay tuned for the next part of my series.

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