I just counted – this is the 4th country I have been living in and I have never moved from Belgrade. It’s nothing, really: my grandmother has lived in 7. What we have here is just an interesting side effect that living in the Balkans has on your passport.
Out of all those countries, one of them has slowly and steadily become a cult favorite: Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, or just- Yugoslavia. A unique social experiment, the country between two opposing political blocks that offered the best of both worlds: freedoms of the West and the careless safety and comforts of socialism. In the collective mind, it is a sort of Instagram-filtered version of Utopia, so close, yet almost too incredible to ever be real.
For me, a 60s design freak, it is, most of all, the country of inexhaustible aesthetic thrills: from cars, to fashion, to everyday objects. And imagine how much I hyperventilated in Yugodom: an apartment you can rent for your stay in Belgrade where everything is “made in Yugoslavia”- from the furniture, to every little detail, including the authentic movie posters on the walls and mini Yugoslav beauty cabinet exhibited in the bathroom. Basically, the front door is a portal that takes you directly back in time.
This is clearly a case of me envying you for being tourists in my city and having a chance to stay somewhere really interesting. Like, in a country that you’d otherwise never be able to add to your travel list.
