Cat, Charlotte and I headed to Serbia, Croatia and Montenegro on September 13, 2007. All we knew for sure was that in an ideal scenario, we would attend/crash a wedding in Northern Serbia to which we had a tenuous connection, at best.
We spent an inordinate amount of time in Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla airport, in transit from various destinations in the former Yugoslavia (FY). I think it’s fair to say that we own that particular Eastern hub. We know Tesla’s smoky cafes, its nostalgic flip-card arrival and departures boards signaling ETDs and ETAs for exotic locales such as Casablanca, Ljubljana and Skopje. We know its lightly harassing gap-toothed taxi drivers, one of whom was genuinely concerned when he learned we were renting a car. (“Why?” he pleaded, hand to his heart.)
First major cultural discovery: Tesla’s toilets are cleaner than most public or private toilets west of the Danube. There are many toalets and we sampled them all over the course of five visits in ten days. Our advice: use the restrooms before security unless it’s off peak. And don’t be surprised when you someone mopping the bathroom floor *every* time you use it. It was truly heartening.
The Friday we landed, we sipped cappuccinos in the arrivals area while waiting for Eric, Charlotte’s friend who lives in Jakarta and our connection to the wedding. Chip, Eric’s friend (and buddy of the groom) was scheduled to arrive shortly after Eric. He works for the U.S. Treasury where, he assured us all several times, he prints money for a living.
The five of us headed up to Palić (pronounced Paleech), a small village about three hours north of Belgrade and site of a large lake and popular summer resort. We stopped at a gloriously clean highway rest stop so Chip could purchase a few “road sodas,” a.k.a beer. Again, the restrooms did not disappoint.
We arrived at around 5 pm, checked into our hotel (this event will feature later) and changed. There was a rehearsal dinner scheduled as the evening activity but Cat and I still had alien status and were therefore resigned to the notion of dining in the tiny village of Palić, perhaps at Don Corleone, one of three pizza restaurants in town.
But in the end, we all headed over to the fish restaurant for the pre-nuptial meal, as a few actual guests had dropped out last minute, owing to illness and other vague excuses. We all strolled on the lakeshore to the restaurant, passing a century-old structure that features in every picture of Palić ever taken—a dark wood Swiss-lodge style dock that sits right on the lake and houses a restaurant and cabanas for rent.
The building puts one in mind of very blond smiling ladies and gentleman, sporting lederhosen and drinking copious amounts of beer, an activity some of us were to partake in later in the evening.
From everything we had heard and read, Palić is aswarm with visitors in the high season, but on a mid-September evening, it was quiet with just a few remnants of summer — green plastic chairs at an empty outdoor café, popcorn vendors with no hope of scaring up customers. An autumn chill meant I had to pull on leggings to wear with my adorable new denim dress. Pashminas may even have been drawn.
