Techie Tesla & Brutalist Belgrade

November 1^st-2^nd, 2026 

Pécs is only 209 kilometres from the place that I wanted to visit next, Novi Sad, the second largest city in Serbia.  For some odd reason, when I searched for a train or bus to get me there, it was going to take 15 hours of transit time!  What?!?  Screw that.  Instead, I looked at returning to Budapest on a train in under 3 hours and then taking a one-hour flight to Belgrade.  Sadly, that seemed to make more sense.  After a few days in Belgrade, I could do a day trip north to Novi Sad on a 36-minute high speed train.  How strange.

 

I took an early train at 7:15 in the morning to make sure there was no stress about catching my 3 pm flight to Serbia.  Arriving four hours early for my flight at the Ferenc Liszt International Airport, I quickly found out that Budapest needs a bigger airport.  I had to wait two hours before I could check my bag in and there was only one café/bar to hang out at, which was continuously full.  I asked a large Hungarian man if I could share his table with him, and thankfully he turned out to be a friendly giant.

 

Once checked in my bag, I proceeded to the one sports bar to have some lunch and a beer.  My ticket said that boarding would start at 2:40 pm even though the plane was leaving half an hour after that.  I paid my bill and started to walk towards my gate but then had to go through passport control since Serbia is not in the Schengen Zone.  While waiting in a relatively short line, I heard my name paged on the intercom…shit!  I mentioned it to a nearby airport security person, and she allowed me to skip ahead to an open booth.  I was quickly let through, and I sprinted through the duty-free shop towards my gate.

 

My boarding pass was scanned, and I was told to head down the stairs to the gate.  At the bottom, there were three other people standing there behind a locked set of glass doors to the outside, where a bus was parked.  We chatted amongst each other and realized that all of the other passengers were sitting on the bus, but we couldn’t get out there.  Eventually an airline staff member came down the stairs, clued in that the door was locked, and let us out to the bus.  Amazingly, we boarded the plane, which was only half full, and still took off in time.  Whew.

 

The next day, greeted by grey and slightly rainy conditions, I decided to hit one of my top sights that I wanted to visit while in Belgrade, and that was the Nikola Tesla Museum.  There was an English guided tour at 11 am so I made sure to arrive a bit early for that as the next one was at 2 pm.

An old tram on the streets of Belgrade.

The Nikola Tesla Museum.

Nikola Tesla was born in a small town called Smiljan, which at the time was part of the Austrian Empire, but today it is in the country of Croatia.  As a pioneering engineer, he obtained over 300 patents and is known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system during a time when the likes of Thomas Edison felt that DC (direct current) was the way to go.  Tesla is responsible for creating the induction motor which turns electricity into mechanical output (a motor that can turn a shaft for a variety of purposes, even something like a washing machine).

 

Tesla was a genius, miles ahead of his time, and he found that the European scientific community was too conservative for his liking. So he took a big gamble and moved to the United States.  This was in 1884, so emigrating to the US is a pretty big deal, not an 8-hour flight on a commercial jet, more like a 7-10 day journey on a steamship.

The tour started with a 25-minute movie about Tesla, which was quite interesting.  Then a young woman who worked at the museum, maybe in her mid-20s, explained some of the items near the front of the room such as Tesla’s first induction motor.  She then led us to a neighbouring room where she did a few other “experiments” like sparking up the Tesla Coil.  

Tesla had a belief that electricity could be transmitted wirelessly.  Watch this, and you can see why he had this idea.  Flourescent bulbs don't have to be plugged in to light up.

A version of the Tesla coil.

And it works on neon lights too.

I thought our guide did a great job and afterwards we were free to roam around and check out the rest of the small museum.  I didn’t find out until later, and perhaps it was on the second floor which was cordoned off, but Tesla’s ashes are somewhere in the museum.

He was a thoughtful man.

There was a big line up, so I walked around part of the museum and then backtracked to a smaller Tesla Coil that the guide had been shocking other visitors...at a very high voltage, and low amperage, so it didn't hurt...but it did shock you (in the "surprising" definition of shocking).

One of Tesla's outfits.  He was a tall dude, 6'2.

At first I thought it was a little flask of alcohol, but no, that's a pocket flashlight.  Revolutionary for the time I would think.

There wasn't much information on this alligator bag, but perhaps it was Tesla's.

Some of his calculations.  I thought it was cool to see his handwriting.

I'm not sure what the next few scientific instruments did...but they looked impressive for the time.

That's a volt meter...I know this one.

Tesla in his upper class social circles in New York.  He's the guy on the right with the black moustache.

This is Tesla's first crack at an induction motor.

Now we're getting serious...

The guide mentioned about a challenge called the "Egg of Columbus", which is to stand an egg upright, on its small end.  I can't rememeber the details, but one solution was to boil it, then slightly crack it and stand it on that flat end.  However, Tesla had another approach.  He used an egg made of copper and subjected it to a magnetic field, as you see in the photo below.  The egg spun around and eventually popped upright, meeting the challenge.  This didn't serve any practical function, apart from impressing potential investors in Tesla's innovations.

When a hydro dam was installed at Niagara Falls in 1899, ten of the thirteen patents to create the system were credited to Tesla.

Tesla created the first remote controlled boat in 1898.  The first time that transmissions were sent wirelessly to an object that controlled it.

Tesla's dream to transmit electricity wirelessly culminated in a failed dream with the Wardenclyffe Tower.  The funding was eventually cut from investors, and although Tesla had made a significant amount of money from his inventions, his lavish lifestyle also caught up to him.

My next item on my itinerary for the day was to take a bus over to “New Belgrade”, a municipality located on the other side of the Sava River which meets up with the Danube in Belgrade. 

By chance, the bus passed by the Canadian Embassy before heading over to New Belgrade.

One of the challenges of travelling is figuring out how the local transit system works.  How do you buy a ticket?  Do you need to validate it?  How do you validate it?  I ran into this challenge in Pécs just a few days ago.  You can buy a paper ticket in a store, but you need to validate it as soon as you get on a bus.  It was the same in Budapest, but you simply put your ticket into a little machine on the bus and it timestamped it.  I tried this in Pécs, but nothing happened.  I walked to the other machine on the bus, and again, nothing happened.  Thankfully, a helpful young woman could see me struggling and showed me that it was manually operated and I had to pull down a black lever.  Well, in Belgrade, there was no issue, just get on a bus or tram and off you go!

Construction in New Belgrade started in 1948 in a previously uninhabited area.  During WWII, Yugoslavia attempted to remain neutral but in 1941, it acceded to the Tripartite Pact (the agreement between Germany, Italy and Japan), joining the Axis Powers, but then it fell under the influence of the Soviet Union. 

 

After the war, in 1948, the leader of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito, broke with Soviet Union.  Yugoslavia pursued economic, internal, and foreign policy objectives that did not align with the interests of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies but it was still a socialist based country.  And this is reflected in New Belgrade.

The area in New Belgrade is comprised of “Bloks”, that are simply numbered, like Block 13, Block 23, etc.  It makes them sound like sections of a penitentiary…and they kind of look like that.  Known as “brutalist architecture”, it emerged during the 1950s among the reconstruction projects of the post-war era.  It is known for minimalist construction showcasing the bare building materials and structural elements over decorative design.  The style commonly makes use of exposed, unpainted concrete or brick, angular geometric shapes and a predominately a monochrome colour palette.  Read: ugly.

My first stop was to check out the “Genex Tower”, which was also known as the Western City Gate.  It is comprised of two 36-storey towers, one residential and one commercial, connected with a two-storey bridge and a round, revolving restaurant at the top.  It was the tallest building in Serbia until 2021, but the commercial tower has been all but abandoned.  The revolving restaurant was never operational and even though people still live in the other tower, it has many issues,.  Nonetheless, it has been designated as a “cultural monument” so it will continue to stand for many years to come (unless the concrete fails!).

The Genex Tower.

Not the nicest of neighborhoods.

Yup...yikes.

Maybe it was nice at one point.

Hmm...not the most inspiring playground.

These are the nice looking apartment buildings...I guess it's only one apartment building.

The next area I wanted to check out was called “Televizorke” in Block 28.  Does that sound like “TV”?  Well, it is supposed to.  Locally, they are known as the “TV Set Buildings” or “TV Buildings”.  Why?  Well, they are these two, crazy long 10-storey apartment buildings that must be between 500-600 meters long.  The reason that they have obtained this name is that the majority of the windows have protruding concrete frames around the windows that look like TVs.

See the first TV building from a distance.

This is why it gets its name.

They are butt ugly looking buildings, and I have to admit that I pitied those who live in them.  However, doing a little research online, I read a few posts that mentioned that they were a great place to raise a family.  The schools, shops, playgrounds, basketball courts, tennis courts etc. were all very nearby, all within easy walking distance.  Sure, the place was not pretty, but very functional.  Still, I wouldn’t want to live there.

I'm guessing that this is a day care for young kids or elementary school.  It also looked it was ready for a nuclear war!

The other TV building, forming the other side of the "fence" with the schools and parks sandwiched between them.

I got bamboozled by this U-shaped building that is one of the other sides of Block 28, where the TV buildings are located.  It is about a hundred meters long on all three sides with a park in the middle.  I had to backtrack to get out of the area.  Check it out here.

I wanted to also check out Block 23, but had to walk around the perimeter of another block which gave me a view of the Belgrade Arena, a multi-purpose indoor facility for a variety of sports like basketball, volleyball and the strangely popular handball.

I had to walk between these rails to get the last photo, but I thought it was weird that it was a dead end about 50 meters ahead so I had to backtrack.

Getting closer to Block 23...the new and the old.

A massive building in Block 23.

An inner courtyard of this huge building.

Talk about a concrete jungle.

The dichotomy of the old and the new.

They have cycle paths all around the perimeters of the blocks...but I don't think I saw a single cyclist.

The ugliness just didn't seem to stop...

...but I found this photo online of what the area looked like shortly after they were built, much better looking, I think.

There’s an even longer building in Block 21 known as the “little snake”, not sure why little…as the building is close to a kilometre long with about 4000 residents!  Unfortunately, I didn’t visit that area and only found out about it the following day.  Check it out on Google Maps.

A photo of the little snake I found online.

Back on the other side of the Sava River, I ended up on Skadarska Street, the “Bohemian Quarter” of Belgrade.  

A statue of some local painter.

Once again, I hadn’t had a proper lunch and it was already past 3 pm, so I found the “Old Gas Town Pub” and enjoyed a beer and some lovely, piping hot French fries.  It turned out that the bartender/server spent 14 years in Vancouver, only recently moving back to Serbia four years ago.  I didn't think about it until after, but there is "Gas Town" in Vancouver.  No idea if the guy was the owner and called it after that area in Vancouver or not.

There were only two other guys in the place, but man, were they loud, and both of them were smoking cigarettes.  Serbia still allows smoking in restaurants and bars…and man, it’s terrible.  I’m so glad that Canada (and most other countries in the world) got rid of that many years ago.

My last stop of the day was to check out the buildings that used to be the Yugoslav Ministry of Defence & General Staff Building which was bombed in 1999 by NATO airstrikes.  

It remains largely in its damaged, unrepaired state as a stark physical reminder of the war and for now, will stay that way, as a reminder to what happened.