Uptown ladies with their uptown coats

When I first started traveling I liked everywhere I went, loooved everywhere I went, and sometimes I would wonder if maybe I just had no taste. So now, whenever I don't love a place, at least I'm reminded that I have opinions. I was planning on loving Belgrade, which was probably my first problem. It's not horrible. I don't hate it. But I don't love it.

To get to the Contemporary Art Museum, you have to walk over a bridge (if you're going on foot, I mean). I love bridges. This particular bridge was long and loud and concrete ugly and windy (it is freezing here) and I haven't read the right kind of books to effectively imagine myself as the heroine of some novel filled with bread lines. But on the other side I walked by the river and had it pretty much to myself and it was nice in a plotless-foreign-film kind of way. My map was a little vague, but a building appeared about where I thought the museum should be. It looked neglected--abandoned, really--but there were some sculptures in the long-umowed grass. Walking around to the front of the building, I thought I saw some modern sculptures through the second floor windows, until I got closer and realized it was crumpled-up construction (rekonstrukcija) signs. It was clearly the museum, and it was clearly not open for business. But I had walked a long way over a long cold bridge, and I wanted confirmation. I couldn't remember how to say open or closed in Serbo-Croat-Bosnian-Montenegrin-whatever, so I summoned my best Serbian accent and asked the dude hanging around the entrance 'Where's the museum?'. He was super nice, although his dog was a little growl-y and scary and the lone dude plus dog guarding abandoned building was all a little post-apocalyptic. Turns out the museum has been closed for reconstruction for four years (fucking tourist office map). It doesn't look like they're reconstructing anything, though, so it's not surprising that there's no expected completion date. The guard, or whatever he was, let me look around a little, but there wasn't much to see. Just a large building in disarray with no apparent reconstruction going on, and no art.

The National Museum is also closed for reconstruction. So is all but one small room of the Serbian History Museum. There is a Russian church here, founded by refugees from the revolution, but it is under construction. There's a Cervantes Institute (we could have spoken Spanish!) but they are in between exhibitions. I tried to go to galleries, but they were either closed or full of the kind of nautical scene paintings that I imagine a certain kind of rich person buys merely as an expression of wealth. I did find one street art gallery which was cool, but there was no employee to be found so no one to ask my Belgrade graffiti questions. It seems like there are good things here. I really do get that feeling. I just can't find them. And I already said that it's freezing, right?