"We're going the wrong direction, but that doesn't matter"

After waking up several times during the night (at 3, 6, 7, 8, and 9am Belgrade time), I decided that 9 was a reasonable time to get up, even for this poor jet-lagged American.  Accordingly, I clambered down from the seven-foot loft and wandered out into the living room-dining room, where Mr. and Mrs. Stojanovic were awake and greeted me warmly. After about an hour of discussion with them about various subjects, mostly politics (Mrs. Stojanovic informed me that this is a favorite topic of conversation in Serbia), they thought it fit to rouse Nikola and have breakfast. 
My first breakfast in Serbia began with sladkoe, (literally "sweet") a sort of jam that is traditionally served to visitors when they come for a meal to a Serbian home.  It was, as the name suggests, so sweet as to be nearly bitter and is for that reason generally eaten in small quantities and followed by generous draughts of water.  Next we had toasted ham sandwiches accompanied by kiselo mleko ("sour milk") which is basically equivalent to plain yogurt, and kaimak which is the cream skimmed from the top of boiling milk which then solidifies into a sort of very plain butter (it tastes very similar to homemade butter but without the salt).  I tried everything and found it mostly to my taste. 
After breakfast, Nikola and I walked to the market to buy some strawberries for Mrs. Stojanovic.  The market is a very interesting place, sort of a combination farmer's market and flea market.  You can find almost anything for sale there, from fresh fruit to clothing to various knick-knacks to live goldfish.  Most of the stalls are run by older people, many of them who live in the surrounding villages and grow the food they sell from their own gardens in order to sell in the city.  The aisles between the stalls are very narrow and the market has a distinct smell, though not unpleasant (I saw no raw meat for sale and that may have been part of the reason for the cleanliness).  We bought 2 kilos of strawberries, then returned to Nikola's apartment and washed and ate some of the fruits.  I am very glad that the tap water in Belgrade is potable, a luxury I will not have in St. Petersburg where all of my water will have to be bottled or boiled and I will need to be much more discerning in what I eat, especially from street vendors and markets like this one. 
Once we returned home, we had a few hors to kill so Nikola showed me his photo albums from when he was young growing up between Cyprus and Belgrade.  In this way we passed the time until 3pm, when we went to a Serbian Orthodox wedding ceremony, the marriage of the children of good friends of the Stojanovic's from Cyprus.  The wedding took place at St. Markos' cathedral only about 2 blocks from Nikola's apartment and was quite a thing to see.  The cathedral itself, I was infomed, was very empty by Serbian standards, lacking the traditional frescos and murals on the walls, although it did have opulent stained-glass windows.  There were no pews or other seats in the sanctuary, a striking contrast from American cathedrals or churches of any sort.  However, to the surprise of Nikola and myself (for he had never noticed before) this particular cathedral is the final resting-place of Tsar Stefan Dushan, possibly the most prominent figure in Serbia's history.  The bride, groom and guests were dressed much as they would be for an American wedding, but the ceremony itself was full of rituals dating back hundreds of years.  The priest, elegantly dressed in embroidered robes, carried a censer of incense which he swung back and forth, reminding me of the Levitical priests in Old Testament times.  He chanted in Old Church Serbian (much more like to modern Serbian than Latin is to English, though performing the same function) and a hidden choir occasionally echoed him.  He brought the happy couple, as well as a man who stood behind the groom, a woman behind the bride, and the young girl who held the bride's train, to an altar that stood in the center of the floor, where he took the two tall candles the bride and the groom were each holding and handed them to their respective attendants, bound their right hands together with a white cloth, placed a jeweled crown on each of their heads, gave them to drink from a silver chalice, and had them each kiss a silver cross, reciting all the while in a monotone that echoed from the marble pillars and 150-foot ceiling and created a somber atmosphere.  He then led them around the altar twice before removing the crowns from their heads and the cloth from their hands and performind the final blessing, after which the bride and groom kissed as they do at the conclusion of Western marriage ceremonies.  Afterwards the guests exited the chuch by a side door from which the happy couple appeared to the accompaniment of golden coins instead of rice (unfortunately I wasn't close enough to catch one).  The traditional tossing of the bouquet followed - the mother of the bride strongly encouraged me to join the hopeful young ladies waiting to catch the charmed flowers but, since the ritual has the same meaning in Serbia as it does in America, I just as forcibly declined, shooting an exasperated glance at Nikola who laughed at my consternation. 
There were several beggars who threaded their way through the wedding party after the ceremony, repeating daite me (give me).  These people were all of short stature and dark skin, in contrast to the more Aryean-looking Serbs of the wedding party.  I conjecture that they are of a particular ethnic minority in this country, perhaps immigrants or refugees from the Middle East, who tend to be poorer.  I should ask Nikola about this some time.  Following the wedding ceremony, Nikola and I got in a taxi with the bride's parents to go to a nearby "club" for the reception.  Both the wedding and the reception were very formal affairs, and I was later informed that the bride and groom organized and paid for the entire proceeding themselves, which is quite unusual because of the cost.  Usually the parents are the masterminds behind the weddings, as is also typical in America.  At the reception, we spent the better part of an hour mingling and waiting for the arrival of all of the guests before the commencement of the meal.  Waiters came around holding trays of drinks, mostly alcoholic, to which I replied Nishta, hvala (Nothing, thank you) until Nikola found me some orange juice to drink.  The drinking age in Serbia is 18, but I feel no great desire to try alcohol at this point in my life (or perhaps ever).  Nikola took one small glass of some hard liquor and offered it to Aca, who tried a small sip and then made such a grimace as to confirm all I had ever heard and read about the bitterness of alcohol.  After slowly taking a few sips himself, Nikola put his glass down - even he couldn't take too much of the stuff.  Finally around 5:00 we sat down and began eating, which was quite an ordeal in itself.  There was a posted guest list at the entrance to the reception that gave everyone's table assignments and it made me smile to see on the list "Markovic... Markovic... Mills... Mixailovic..."  Obviously the Stojanovics, well aware that I would be there that day, had marked me down as with them.  Since the Stojanovics were so close to the parents of both bride and groom, we were sat down at the table for family, an honor I know I didn't deserve.  I sat between Nikola and Aca and was silent for most of the meal, not wishing to draw attention to myself as a foreigner at what was evidently such an important cultural event.  The reception was probably the thing most typical of Serbian culture - the food was very traditionally Serbian (and very good!) and in between each course there was a long space of music and dancing, presumably to let the food settle and the conversations flourish.  Of course this second objective was lost on me, as my pathetic repetoir of Serbian phrases will take me little farther than introductory pleasantries.  Most people that I met speak enough English to tell me their name and say "Nice to meet you," but little more.  I was more interested in the dancing, which was something I better felt that I could do, but Nikola had little interest in it.  However, when I asked Aca "Do you dance?" I met with much more enthusiasm and though we did not follow any particular steps, still that turned out to be one of the best parts of my evening. 
However, the long wait between courses finally got to me at at 8:30 I convinced Nikola to go back to the apartment, though we had only gone through the appetizer, soups, and some mixed meat wrapped in seaweed (which tasted much better than it sounds :]).  Unfortunately, though the entertainers played almost exclusively English songs between the first and second courses, after the third they began playing Serbian music which was much more to Nikola's taste and he ended up being much more reluctant to leave - I felt kind of bad for dragging him out of there but I've never been one for parties and formal events, even in America.  We walked home through more squares and saw more of the city, and had one last adventure.  In the area that we passed through there were several street vendors displaying various trinkets and toys, and a man dressed in traditional Serbian clothing playing a flute.  But the most exciting thing that we saw was a man with a 10-foot yellow python who was collecting money for people to be photographed holding his snake.  Unbeknownst to me until that point, Nikola is terrified of large snakes, but upon my insistance he graciously paid the man for a photograph and stood by (at a safe distance) as the man draped the giant reptile across my shoulders and took a picture.  I am myself not at all afraid of snakes and thoroughly enjoyed watching him squirm as the giant snake slithered across my shoulders and down my arm.  That picture may well become my favorite memento from Belgrade :D  Nikola, emboldened by my fearlessness, even reached out and stroked the snake's smooth yellow skin, though he was shaking as he did it. 
Once we finally arrived back at the apartment, I thought that my day was over, but for Nikola it was just beginning.  He received an invitation from a close friend to go to the opening of a nearby club.  I agreed to go with him for the cultural experience, although I did not expect to enjoy myself very much.  We went around 11:15 but stayed less than an hour - the club wasn't very popular and the only people there were a few of Nikola's friends.  As for myself, I could only speak to Nikola because none of his friends spoke enough English to carry on a conversation, neither did they seem eager to try, and there was no one dancing so all I could do was sit at a table and observe.  However, that was not altogether unpleasant (I enjoy people-watching) but I can't say that I was sorry to leave.  I finally fell into bed around 1am, glad to be done with my first full (in more ways than one) day in Belgrade.