The Day of Mladić's Arrest

26-5-11

Hotel Royal, Belgrade

Today is our first truly free day…sort of.  Lucas and I slept in before getting gyros again from Gyropolis.  After we had out lunch, we spent most of the day over at Hotspot, the local internet café, playing catch-up on these very journals.

That evening, we had a grand old adventure attempting to find the boat which was going to give us a river tour – we had gotten free tickets from our tour at the National Theatre.  Not knowing when we were going to eat because of the boat trip, Keegan, Lucas, and I went to TOMA’s pizza for dinner.  As we were eating, there was a group of young men standing near us also having their dinner.  One of them was wearing a shirt with a older man’s face on it that said “National Hero.”  The face looked familiar, but I couldn’t place it…Turns out it was Ratko Mladić.  And he had just been arrested.  Here we are, three dumb Americans laughing and joking in English next to a man who probably says NATO and thinks America…

Anyways, we left from TOMA and headed towards the hotel to meet up with everyone to head to our free boat tour we received for touring the National Theatre.  As we walked past Republic square, we noticed it was littered with military and police in riot gear and that near the statue of Prince Mikhail there was a large crowd chanting and waving a Serbian flag around. When we arrived at the hotel, Dennis informed us about Mladić’s arrest and that there may be some demonstrations by nationalists in reaction to the event…we had avoided the large crowd, just to be safe, and were now happy we had.  Dennis wanted the group to split up on our way to the bus station so that we didn’t attract attention to ourselves.  He instructed for everyone to go, but Lucas, Keegan, and I wanted to see what was going on at the demonstration still…and it was on the way to the bus station either way.

Well, we arrived at the bus station to find no one there.  After about ten minutes, Dennis showed up.  Everyone had apparently met up on the bridge to New Belgrade – despite the fact we weren’t supposed to acknowledge one another on our way there – and decided they would just rather walk the bridge as it would be the same distance as going to the bus station…and we’d be back tracking on the bus route.  Either way, everyone else had met up and we hadn’t shown because we had gone the other route.  Dennis was visibly upset and disappointed – and I think partly scared – for us, and rightly so I believe.  He generally gives us plenty of freedom in which to roam, but this time I think he was unsure on how volatile the population was in response to the Mladić situation.  I feel bad that I put him through that.

We found our bus and headed to New Belgrade, calling the other group on our way.  They had walked past their turn and needed to head back towards the bridge to find a bus that would take them towards Hotel Yugoslavia.  After the bus passed Hotel Yugoslavia, we ask the driver if he could let us of early.  He was nice enough to do so and dropped us near a carnival or city fair type event going on.  We walked through bouncy-castles and carnival game, through food stand and the popcorn mafia for about ten minutes before we came to the edge it.  We continued walking east alongside the Danube looking for the tour boat company.  We walked….  And we walked….And we walked almost the entire way to the northernmost bridge connecting New Belgrade back to Belgrade (yes, the one we had crossed just thirty minutes earlier…).  Anyways, they were nice enough to hold the boat for us (we were a party of fourteen…not an insignificant number) and after we found the spot we all quickly boarded (the other half of the group had found a way towards us and had mostly caught up).

We got on the boat and soon after we started floating away from the dock.  An older man began speaking in Serbian about the sights as we passed them before coming around to allow us to leaf through, and purchase, the books he had authored.  The craft moved slowly and we didn’t go very far, but overall it was fairly nice and relaxing.

After we got off the boat, Lucas, Keegan and I decided that tonight was the last and only real chance to attempt to go clubbing.  In order to satiate Lucas’ desire to see the inside of Freestyler, we went there first figuring if we arrived early we had a better chance at getting in (the last time we had thought about going in, about a hundred or so people had been standing outside being denied admission).   However, Freestyler had another hour or so before it opened, and we killed the time playing with a hacky-sack.

Freestyler opened up around 11:30-11:45 or so, and we got in soon after.  We entered and looked around, noticing many of the table and lounge areas had reserved signs on them…A friendly employee came up and asked if we had a reservation or if we would like to purchase a table.  We told him we didn’t and enquired after the table.  His response:  “A table reservation comes with a bottle of vodka and six redbulls and costs twelve thousand dinar.”  Yes, that’s right – costs about $180 USD.  We decided against that fairly quickly.  Realizing there was no way he could convince us otherwise, he steered us towards the bar for the night.  We ordered two Becks (three-hundred dinar apiece) and began to nurse our beers…slowly.

The entire time, music was pumping and after midnight or so people began to file inside in twos and threes, sometimes larger parties but not often.  As the bar filled up, the music got better and the light show got more and more wicked.  Mind you, Freestyler had a far better lighting rig than Coe and was equipped primarily with Vera-lite fixtures.  Though they looked about a generation or two old they still far surpasses our conventional equipment.  The DJ also loved vamping breakdowns and they tended to last quite a bit longer than Lucas or I ever expected them to, but his style seemed to be working because after each time the beat dropped again the bar went wild – at least those who were dancing did.

Around one or so, some dancers came out on the second-level stage in fairly skimpy clothing and began to dance for everyone…it was a good show.  One girl was wearing a very skimpy, very short strapless dress.  It was hilarious to watch this girl dance because every time she opened her legs at all the dress slid up to her waist and she kept trying to keep it down.  More than once she would pull the back of her dress down just to leave her front fully exposed…it was hilarious!  However, not too much later we had to take off because we had Theatre DAH workshops in the morning.  Lucas didn’t want to leave, but by the time we made it to Hotel Royal we were all ready for bed.