Jaunted

Belgrade

Serb Reverb

January 24, 2006 at 3:32 PM | 0 Comments

Fantastic article from the Weekend FT, debunking the New York Times fantasy soufflé on Belgrade's nightlife from last year.

Belgrade's tourism board was making a hard sell on Belgrade, designating it as a clubbing capital of Europe. Sounds great, especially the famed party boats down by the river, right?

Not exactly. The Serbs are not free of recent history just yet, for starters. Those boats are not that close to town--they overlook Novi Beograd, an entire city of housing projects on the other side of the river. Service is still old-school Slavic. And the secret clubs, are, naturally, hard to find, all the more so for anyone without a command of Cyrillic. Belgrade is a fun town, but it's not Ibiza on the Danube.

On the flip side, the Hotel Moskva (home of the hardest scrambled eggs I've ever encountered) got a bad rap from the Times--it's a quality destination, without a whiff of boutique hotel to it. Think gold brocade on the comforters and you wouldn't be far off.

[Belgrade image via RSEanes/Flickr]

Related Stories:
· Hotel Moskva Reviews [TripAdvisor]