Author: Kiblind Magazine
Picture Credit: Kiblind Magazine
The twentieth century was not exactly gentle with the Serbian capital. A one-stop monument to all the hell that Europe unleashed over the course of those hundred years, Belgrade now openly bears the scars of history: on its walls, around its neighborhoods, in its political repercussions.
From the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which triggered the First World War, to the UN bombs aimed at toppling Slobodan Milosevic, via the protracted regime of Marshal Tito, for many years Belgrade was the nerve centre of a dangerously unstable continent.
The city now serves as a mirror of those turbulent years, the architectural and urban traces leaving the visitor lost in a haze, somewhere between fascination and incomprehension. And with the walls still plastered with posters for current President-Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic - voted in after just one round of elections in April - and with the working-class district of Savamalla disfigured by the mindless Belgrade Water Front development, the future may seem somewhat bleak at first glance. But that would be to ignore a new generation of actors - nay, activists! - who ...