Another little incident…

One evening last week, dh took me and our in situ children downtown after he got home from work.

Now, I must give some background. There is a street downtown called, in Serbian, “Gentleman’s Street”. The foreigners call it the “Chicken Run”. Each evening, EVERYONE, it seems, dresses up in their very best and walks down this promenade. All ages, singles, couples and families are represented. Some shops, particularly coffee shops, bars and Pekaras (bakeries), stay open late to accommodate the traffic. Others show up just for this occurrence.

Well, this is where we found ourselves.

We’d been walking for some time and the girls were getting thirsty, so we were starting to look for a place to have a drink.

“Gentleman’s Street” contains some impressive looking buildings. As we walked, we noticed one of these was open and very lit up. The large sign was written mainly in Cyrillic, and I made out something like “Cultural Centre”. There was some sort of a neon sign inside. Thinking it might be a club or something, dh heads up the stairs and inside.

Now, the girls and I are not made of the same stuff as dh. We were hovering nervously on the stairs wondering whether to follow or not, when a large man (did I ever mention just how TALL Serbian men tend to be? I’d say the average height is at least two inches above the North American average. They also tend to have jet black hair) bolted up to me and asked me something in Serbian.

I suppose the look of terror on my face indicated my lack of comprehension and he, mercifully, switched to English. He asked if he could help me. I called into the door to my husband who came back out. He asked what the building was used for.

The man explained that there are rooms upstairs for orchestra musicians to practice. There is also a place for the musicians to perform. Oh, and over on that side is the private residence of the President of the Republic of Serbia!

How do you say “oops” in Serbian?

One of our daughters noticed that the entrance on the other side of the building was not only closed, but it had a guard in front of it!

Something really strange about this, we noticed in daylight a few days later, is that there is a sign on the outside of the building, which I did not see in the dark, that says “Restaurant”.