Party Boats

As I wrote in my last post, Belgrade is often called the party town in Europe. OK, some say it's Budapest, some say it's Amsterdam, but ranking cities is stupid. What makes Belgrade unique are dozens of party boats on the Sava river. This river is a calm one compared to the Danube and it is therefore possible to use rafts. And there are hundreds of rafts along the Sava. Many of them are used as weekend house, some are restaurants, bars, pubs and some are discos. The disco rafts usually have more then one deck and some have even swimming pools inside. Besides the rafts there are also real boats run as discos or restaurants. The amazing thing is that the different party boats play different music and most of them don't have entrance fees so you can walk kilometers along both riversides of the Sava and hear what music they play. If you like some just go on board and leave whenever you like. And the diversity of kinds of music is incredible! We were out on the party boats during the week when not all boats were open but there were boats with

• Latin music like e.g. Ronald Mesquita - Balança Pema
• Funk like Bootsy Collins - Play with Bootsy
• Nu-Metal like e.g. Slipknot - Spit it out
• Reggae like e.g. Max Romeo - Chase the devil
• Dubstep like e.g. Chase & Status - Let You Go
• all kinds of local music
• and of course pop like e.g. Daft punk - Get Lucky (although I liked that song I cannot hear it anymore because it was played one almost every location I was - even in Albania where they don't listen to western pop music)

I did not plan anything in this vacation and just followed advices of local people. And in a supermarket I got the tip to do a tour with a boat along the Sava to have an overview of the city and the boats. This tour was indeed a tour mostly for local people. Fortunately the captain was a very curious man and also spoke English so that I came in contact wit many interesting people like the wife of the Norwegian ambassador. The rain just stopped when the tour began, the sun came back and nice talks surrounded a journey towards the sunset:

The water sport center in Dorcol where the tour began. (There is also a bike rental station and they have saunas, swimming pools etc. - a nice place to relax after a hard exploration day.)

The boat tour (red line).

 

The castle of Belgrade.

View at the old town

View over the Sava with the old town at the left side.

The Ada Bridge

Party boats

Typical (weekend) house boats.

Party boats and riverside restaurants

Endless row of party boats

At this point it was clear that I need a bike to explore more of the city. But before I went to the party boats with a nice lady I met on the boat tour. As this was not planned I was totally underdressed but that's the price of being obsessively spontaneous ;-).

My Club Mate from Germany.

Inside of a party boat. On weekends there are water ballet shows in the pool.

On deck of an old freighter where they played Electro-RnB.

I was very tired that evening but the fantastic view from the boats, the warm wind on the river, the cheap drinks, the different decorations on the boats kept me dancing for hours. I enjoyed it so much!