Belgrade, Serbia
It was really nice to all be back together again. After the rainy weather in Warsaw, the weather was perfect, sunny skies and temperatures in the mid-70s, make it that much more special. Our itinerary for the day included two museums — the Tesla museum and the Museum of Illusions — with a nice lunch in between, of course.
Morning run, the Danube in the background
As an engineer, the Tesla museum was really interesting to see. It’s small and there is very little information about the displays, however, if you take the tour, there is an excellent short film about Tesla’s life and some very cool demonstrations afterward. Nicola Tesla is probably the world’s most famous Serbian (perhaps, these days, after Novak Djokovic) though he lived most of his life in the US. Last summer we had read “Tesla’s Attic” as our family book. The story is science fiction fantasy but included a surprisingly large number of facts about Tesla’s life. For example, he and Edison were true rivals, Edison advocating for DC electricity and Tesla for AC. Tesla has hundreds of patents, but his invention of the three-phase AC induction motor is likely his most famous. Even today, this motor is used in a huge array of household appliances and, in fact, is used as the primary motor In Tesla cars.
Nikolai Tesla
The Induction motor
After the movie, there were demonstrations to help explain one of Tesla’s most radical ideas, wireless transmission of power. Back in the 1800s, he had acquired financing from JP Morgan to build a large working prototype of this concept. It consisted of a huge wooden tower on Long Island. The idea was to use a huge transformer to create a 100,000-volt electrical discharge at the top of the tower. This lightning bolt, would in turn create a giant magnetic field around the tower. As a result, the current would flow in any conductive circuit within the field. This was demonstrated in the museum by having volunteers hold fluorescent lightbulbs in the air, which would light up during the discharge. The discharge, however, was accompanied by an incredibly loud crackling/zapping sound.
For lunch, we made our way over to the Little Bay Restaurant. We’d walked by it the other day and Meg had seen signs for it all over town. Although we sat on the sidewalk, the interior was really cool as it used to be a small theater.
Our visit to the Illusion Museum was also great fun for an hour or so.
When we got back to the hotel, it was time to start dismantling the bikes. Meg came down to help, which was really nice. After the frame was split apart on one bike, she started the long, slow process of wrapping all the painted bits in foam rubber, while I continued pulling things apart and starting the jigsaw-puzzle process of stuffing everything into the four suitcases. Kylie came down later and helped Meg wrap the second bike. Incredibly, in only three and a half hours they were both safely packed away.
The best part of the day, however, was still to come. As we were packing up the bikes, three men came up wheeling bikes of their own. Rodger, David, Jerry, along with Rodger’s wife, Cheryl, had just completed a ride of their own from Belgrade we’ll into Bulgaria. They were nice enough to extend their happy hour a while so we could finish up the packing and wash up for dinner. We, of course, had many stories to share of our biking mishaps (or adventures). Roger and Cheryl live in Minnesota while David and Jerry live near each other in Rhode Island. They were an impressive group, David was an ER doctor, Jerry an environmental lawyer, Roger a prison inmate educator, and Cheryl a special education
teacher.
Cheryl and Roger
The next day was dedicated to travel. Kylie and I did run to a park a mile or so away, then did 400 and 200 m sprints. Unfortunately, to do the 400, we ran 200 along a straight path, then made a U-turn to sprint back on a parallel path. I cut the corner at the end, slipped in some mud, and hit the pavement. Kylie yelped, but kept going at my urging. It was merely a flesh wound.
Merely a flesh wound
At 1:30, we were off to the airport. It was pretty iffy if we could actually fit our six giant check-in bags plus us and our carryons into the Audi station wagon. We were about to arrange a second taxi when the driver managed to stuff everything in… as long as there were four in the back seat.
I was a little annoyed when, once we started moving, the driver immediately started talking about an accident on the highway, which meant, he explained, we’d have to take a longer way to the airport. He wasn’t aware, apparently, that I had just taken a taxi to the airport a couple days ago and had already heard this story, which increased the $20 ride to $30. I also knew that the “longer” way was in reality simply the direct route using the fast-moving freeway void of any slowdowns whatsoever. In the end, despite the $37 (3800 dinars) reading on the meter, he had little choice but to accept the $27 in dinars we had saved for the ride.
The final few days in Europe would be spent in Amsterdam. We had flown in and out of the Capital city because of friends, Jos and Christa, who we had the good fortune of meeting in the Galapagos a couple years earlier. We had originally hoped to meet them on the front end of the trip, but a business trip had gotten in the way. Despite a two-hour delay at the airport and not making it to the Sassenheim train station near the small town of Warmond, Jos and Christa were there to meet us.
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