Friday in Belgrade

We returned last night from a wonderful, wonderful, whirlwind trip to Serbia. I'll start at the beginning.

Pelagia and I drove, along with our friend Brendan, to Belgrade last Thursday. We arrived around 5 PM Serbian time (which is 1 hour behind Greece) and had a wonderful meal prepared by our host, Lepa.

On Friday morning, we went to the Patriarchate to pick up my vestments. As it turns out, they needed to do some slight alterations, so we hung out in the center for most of the day, waiting for the vestments to be completed.

Most of that time we spent at Kalemegdon, the city’s old fortress which overlooks the confluence of the Danube and Sava Rivers. The top three photos are from walking along the old walls (or ramparts) of the fortress. The fourth photo of Brendan is from inside, near the Church and Spring of St Paraskevi, who is an extremely popular saint in Serbia.

Late in the afternoon, we met up with our bishop, Bishop Maxim, at the Patriarchate, where he was coming out of a meeting. He wanted us to meet him there so he could introduce us to several bishops, including Metropolitan Amphilohije, the acting Patriarch of Serbia; Bishop Atanasije (Yevtich), one of the greatest living theologians; Bishop Gregorije of Herzegovina and Bishop Luka of Western Europe (Paris).

Afterwards, Bishop Maxim took us to have tea and spent about an hour or an hour and a half with us.

For all my photos from the trip, click here. For some photos from the camera of our hosts, Nebojsa and Lepa, click here.