Belgrade Warnings Or Dangers

We went by 3 taxi's to the first dinner evening may 23th.
We took it at trg Republike as it was raining and paid between 1600 en 2100.
I understood it had to be more something like 400.
The meter of the taxi went wild like in a few seconds went up 100.
So write down taxi number and or licenseplate if you get scammed you can try to contact the company ( if they are at a company)

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Well apparently there are no poo police in Belgrade and owners rarely clean up after their pets so watch your step. Stray dogs though not a bother otherwise add thier contribution.

And if you are walking in the old town beware of pieces falling from the buildings waitng for repair.

Otherwise it is a fairly safe city but do try to avoid the taxi sharks! But it was very difficult when you first arrive as we did on the train and as fast as you are asking "how much" he has your bags loaded. I even had cards with words in Serbian...but the driver was too good for us.

One night a bunch of us jumped in 3 taxis at Trg Republik because it was raining. A 20 minute walk, but even so.

Well, fares ranged fro 3.5k to 1.7k dinar. Should have been about 500 dinar tops.

Best to phone a cab from a reputable company, or better still, get your hotel or restaurant to do it and try to find out in advance how much it ought to be.

To be fair, I got a cab from my hotel to a meeting and the price was fair - but I did get the hotel security guy to hail it.

The city of Belgrade's divided into 3 zones, meaning that parking's allowed for 1 (the 1st zone), 2 (the 2nd zone) or 3hours (the 3rd zone)!
So, to avoid any problems (e.g.your car being taken away), watch out for the signs or, even better, find a car-park!

If you travel by car be careful with police officers. In many cases they stop you and traying to find any reason to punish you. It is trick and after some drama pause they expect some money from you to let you go. Prise vary from time to time but it is about 10, 20, 50 euro. Corruption is big problem here. If you in some lokals and bars you can expexted this situation: http://www.pressonline.rs/sr/vesti/hronika/story/124487/Policija+pretukla+goste+kladionice+%28VIDEO%29.html. Some american sitizens find them self at wrong time in wrong place. So if you looking for trouble you are in right place.

Some of Belgrade people are how to say sons and doughters of politicians or just rich ``Bussismen``. They love to park in front of bars to show off their expensive cars. Because money used to buy those are not made by legal way they are paranoid. This is what happened to me. As Belgrade native I was with american lady. I was showing her around and all. At one point she was cheeking out Lincoln navigator car that was parked. 2 guys dressed like hitman were ``teleported`` in front of her telling her to step away from the car. Allthou she tried to explain that she has the exact same car and that was why she was cheeking it guys said again step away from the car. Something like do you know who is the owner stuff. Those cars are easy to spot. Most of our cars have 6 digits on licence plates. Those car have 4. eg like chief of police bg-07-01.
07 is james bond thing and 01 is who is main guy in police.

If you see the sign of Autosaobracaj Kragujevac, try to avoid that bus. There are chances to travel normally, but you can hear a proposal from bus-driver to stand for 10 hours as there are no place to seat down, and the fact that you have reservation for the seat, payed two days in advance, may not help, as they have sold the same reservations to the others. But they care to protect their customers from kittens, so your kitten will not be allowed to enter Autosaobracaj bus.

So, if you want to be sure to have seat in the bus or if you travel with pet, no matter how small it is – avoid Autosaobracaj Kragujevac.

You can read at the Autosaobracaj web presentation: "In our business philosophy, the word 'friend' dominates – it refers to all employees, to all business partners and to all our passengers… Therefore, our motto is JOURNEY WITH THE FRIEND!" – what a hypocrisy!

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Belgrade is one of the largest and most populated cities in Europe without metro. That, combined with common Serbians' perception of a car as status symbol No. 1, is the cause of enormous number of cars on the streets of the city. It is not exaggerated to say that rush-hours in Belgrade are between 7 am and 9 pm. With its highs and lows, of course.

The only advice to those who are about to use car in Belgrade is to prepare for psycho-torture. But, it gets easier with time.