Anti-pub crawling

I arrived Belgrade "early" in the morning at 7:30 and tried to find a hostel to get some sleep. But the hostels were booked out or there was even no personal to ask for accommodation. I knew that Belgrade is one of the party towns in the world but did not expect that the hostels are that specialized on party people. For example one cannot check in before 2 PM because it would be a shame to go to sleep before the sun rises. I finally got a bed in a dorm full of sleeping people exhaling a mixture of cold cigarette smoke and alcohol. I was therefore suddenly fully awake and wanted to go somewhere else but the lady at the reception of the hostel tried to hold me back. I got a Rakija for free and some gift coupons for bars and pubs and an offer to join at 2 PM the hostel's anti-hangover city tour to some restaurants to become fit for the happy hour in the hostel's own bar starting at 5 PM. Later on there was a pub crawl at 7 PM followed by a disco tour at 11 PM before one usually goes to a party boat around midnight. I met some people from the Nederlands who only came here to spend 1 or even 2 weeks to go to the party boats every night. What the hell!
Instead of joining them I joined a free city tour. This "standard tour" lasts about 3 hours and a student showed us almost everything one needs to know about Belgrade:
We started at the central Republic Square in front of the

National Theatre

and were a huge group because the Exit festival ended a few days before and the Guča trumpet festival festival was starting a few days later. So there were lots of tourists in town to see Belgrade in between.

Belgrade was often an important border town and therefore more often damaged than any other place in Europe. Therefore the architecture in the city is often brutal. There are no larger historic places, often there is only a street or a few houses surrounded by concrete monster buildings. The most famous street with a few houses from the 19th century is the

Skadarska street

The guide was amazing but we had to drink honey Rakia with him (the one in the bottle in his hand).

where many pubs and restaurants are located. There you can drink all sorts of Rakia and listen to Balkan music. The Dorćol district of the city there is an interesting mixture of everything. There are streets with the most expensive bars in town where the (mafia) bosses show their poser cars and their girlfriends with plastic tits. It is funny to watch that in the evening!

One of the newer houses in Dorćol.
The flats there are astonishingly one of the most expensive ones in Belgrade.

An older house in Dorćol.

In the inner city (around the National Bank) one can find a few streets like this one:

(This area is one of the few where the city is not that loud as it is everywhere else.)

This is the famous "?" (oldest restaurant):

The ?.

Typical contrast in the old town.
The old building is the Princess Ljubica's Residence.

The large Fortress of Belgrade allows magnificent views. This one it at the confluence of the Sava and the Danube towards Novi Beograd:

This is the city's landmark, the Pobednik: