Crap Things About Belgrade

This list is based on Belgraded's brilliant starter list: Bad Things In Belgrade. make sure you read the Good Things About Belgrade list for context and balance.

Taxis
In one sense I love Belgrade Taxis. They are cheap, plentiful and if you use good companies like Lux, a very pleasant and professional experience. There are however some things that need to be fixed with Belgrade's taxis.

Taxi Mafia and Jigged Meters
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3095/3243973391_236c32011c.jpg

The Taxi Mafia loiter outside the airport, bus station and train station looking to hook unsuspecting tourists or worse, poor peasants up from the country for medical treatment. You can spot them as they have pplain white "Taxi" signs (as above) and are not linked to any radio taxi firms.

They typically approach people and ask them if they need a taxi, then they negotiate a fare, usually at least twice what is the maximum you would pay on the meter, and sometime many multiples the meter price.

They will often try and promote additional "services" to travelling business men, sometimes offering prostitutes or drugs to those they think might be takers.

Being ripped off by the Taxi Mafia immediately colours people's perceptions of Belgrade as a rip-off city hostile to visitors. They are thieves who do immense damage to their city's reputation at a time when it is vital that Belgrade and Serbia's reputation is careful protected and enhanced.

A variant on the taxi Mafia rip-off is the jigged meter. Normal looking taxis with legitimate licenses will sometime have a button they can push to set the meter to an absurd rate (way higher than even the highest normal rate).

A rule of thumb is that even a trip to the airport on a Sunday will not cost much more than 1500 dinars from the centre of Belgrade. 500 Dinars should take you to the distant suburbs.

If in doubt, ask for a bill (racun), take the taxi number on the roof and the registration number, then call the taxi company and tell them you have paid x amount for your journey from y to b. Taxi rates are 119 dinars as you get in, then either 46, 58 or 92 dinars per kilometre depending in the time of day. Waiting rates are 540 per hour.

Smoking
Cab drivers are forbidden from smoking if they are carrying passengers. Many still do and exhibit great irritation when you ask them to stop. Just ignore the griping and insist.

Bad Driving
If cab drivers go too fast, I asked them to calm down. I am convicned that one of the most effective ways to stop the carnage on Serbia's roads will be to start with public sector drivers - busese, taxis, state companies and even police. Once they start driving properly and perhaps reporting traffic violations, there will be some effect in the general levels of driving quality.

Rivers
See:

http://www.belgradefvc.com/shameful-river-neglect http://www.belgradefvc.com/massive-algae-bloom-blights-sava

Plastic Rubbish
http://www.belgradefvc.com/shameful-river-neglect

Air
http://www.belgradefvc.com/acid-cloud-engulfs-belgrade

Noise
Aggressive over use of the horn (beeping) and old cars with broken exhausts and squeeky fan belts combine to make central Belgrade a nightmare for noise pollution. This cacophany worsened at the weekend by revellers blasting music from their cars, having drunken shout-versations and chanting football chants.

Thankfully buildings in the old toen are solidly build so hearing ones neighbours is not generally a problems.

Civil Servants &amp; Officialdom (Salterism)
Serbian civil servants are amongst the worst I have ever encountered.

Corruption and Connections (Veza Schmeza)
Corruption is the blight of Serbia. It ranges from outright bribes (codenamed "compensation") through to "favours" being traded.

Hotels
The roaches may be dead, but you breath their powdered carcasse. Over-priced state run hotels are an embarrassment to Serbia. Thanksfully superb new hotels and hostels are cropping up to replace them.

Idiotic Traffic Lights
Some traffic lights are green on the far side but red on the near side so unsuspecting pedestrians step out into the road and nearly get killed. There is also the utter stupidity of the light changing on one side, but not the other. This arrangement is compouned by bus drivers who know the lights is green for other side, so they just go through their red light reasoning that the crossing cars are still red anyway. I have personally witnessed at least 3 pedestrains nearly get killed by these buses.

Dog Faeces on the sidewalk
Belgrade's inner city districts are blighted by large amounts of dog faeces on the pavements. It is so bad in Dorcol that people sometimes walk on the road at night to avoid hitting a shite pie. Part of the problem is street dogs, but dogs owners walking their dogs and not cleaning up after them is the main problems. The city government has tried to tackle this with dog pot bins. It came to nothing. Even Knez Mihailova is not safe from dog sh*t landmines.

Obstructed Sidewalks
Extreme shortages of parking space in Belgrade mean that every space is covered by parcked cars, and that includes sidewalks. In addition to that builders and workmen make no provision for pedestrains when they set up works. One can see dozens of places in town where pedestrians are forced into busy streets to circumnavigate holes, scafolding, and other obstructions.