First real day exploring the city. I left for the National Museum early in the day since it's quite centrally located and I know relatively little about the history here. It was ok, definitely not as great as a lot of the other national museums I've been to. It's an extremely nice building but very little of it is related to Serbian history and most of it's essentially a generic art gallery. They have nice pieces, but again, not really what I'm looking for in a national museum. The people there were fairly rude with me and I'm starting to suspect that they might not like Americans very much here. I forgot to mention, but yesterday after one of the ticket booth workers told us she didn't speak English we ended up hearing her speaking pretty coherent English with another customer who's native language clearly was something else.

I've seen multiple signs of resentment toward the US for our (and NATO's) involvement in the wars. I heard about some graffiti next to the museum and parliament building that reads "THE ONLY GENOCIDE IN THE BALKANS WAS AGAINST THE SERBS", and when I got there it had been terribly covered up - they essentially traced over the original text, but with a narrower stoke than the underlying graffiti such that the outline was incredibly obvious. According to someone who did a walking tour, the the subject of the Bosnian genocide was brought up and a similar sentiment was echoed. Genocide denialism seems not to be merely common, but rather the consensus opinion. In a nearby park, I found a large section of graffitied text reading "FUCK USA, FUCK ALBANIA". There was also a large swastika painted on the wall next to the National Museum, though I'm not quite sure how that fits into things. It's not hard to understand why this anti-NATO perspective has emerged - driving through the city you see multiple bombed out buildings that clearly haven't been touched in decades. Unlike Mostar, though, I know that the government here could pay to have them restored if they wanted. Belgrade isn't wealthy by broader European standards, but compared to the other Balkan cities it is, and they're clearly left these ruins in place as a reminder of the West's perceived aggression. Remembering why they were bombed prevents me from feeling too bad about that.

I checked out a fort in a nearby park. It overlooks where the Danube meets the Sava, so I assume it controlled the whole artery during whatever war it was built for. It was cool and I liked that you could explore more or less wherever, but there was a ton of trash and broken glass that made me reluctant to go too far off the beaten path. I went back to the hostel and met a nice Russian guy - we grabbed dinner at a traditional local spot. I had a pretty good pork stew, but the portion was rather small and I was still fairly hungry after. I should note that prices here are pretty low, though not as low as Bosnia. The dinar is worth about a cent so price conversions are easy, and a nice dinner usually costs around 800 of them. Russian guy has interesting thoughts on the war and Putin's regime. He left the country after the war began and I was glad to hear him say that it's not especially popular back home. Then British guy showed up. He's not bad when he's sober and not trying to flirt, which is the only condition I've previously witnessed, but still not my favorite company. He's going to be on my train tomorrow night and I'm desperately hoping we're not in the same compartment.

Back at the hostel I talked with a few other people in the kitchen. I like the vibe of this place; it's very social and there's a nice common area. There was a friendly American guy who I chatted with for a while. He was telling me about some Bosnian he spoke with who felt that the US shouldn't have intervened and just allowed the conflict to resolve itself in genocide, since at least that would've put a stop to things once and for all. I suppose that speaks to the diversity of opinions within ethnic groups around here. Some people went out to a bar but I wasn't really feeling it.

On the whole I haven't been that impressed by Belgrade. It's nice enough but the people are unfriendly and there isn't that much to see here. It looks a lot like Vienna but with terrible commie blocks outside the immediate center city. There's an interesting quirk with navigation here: Google Maps somehow knows all these little passageways through buildings and it'll actually route you through them, so you'll end up walking from the street into an apartment lobby, into a courtyard, and then out of another apartment lobby onto the adjacent street. It reminds me of the "closes" in Edinburgh but feels even more off limits. I'll probably check out the Yugoslavia Museum tomorrow since I've got a lot of time to kill before the train at 8:30.