European Railroad Discussion > And a visit to Serbia

After our stay in Portugal (see yesterday's posts), we went to Belgrade, Serbia to attend a friend's wedding. Belgrade (it's actually Beograd to the natives) has an extensive tram system, using lots of Soviet-era articulated cars plus a variety of used cars from other cities and a few newer "slinky" five-unit trams. Having only a short time available, I positioned myself at a large plaza and street roundabout called Slavija where several lines intersect.
1. A "slinky" tram approaches Slavija.
2. These old articulated cars ride on only two trucks; they must have a really strong drawbar between the two units.
3. A car comes around the traffic circle. These photos were taken on Sunday--weekday traffic would have made unobstructed photography very difficult.
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4. This car follows a route that only takes it around a quarter of the traffic circle.
5. As cars on alternate routes come one after another, operators must stop and line turnouts with a "switch iron" carried onboard. Operators wear no semblance of a uniform and the gender ratio seems about 50-50. 
6. A tram pauses by a group of Cyrillic letters that spell out "#beograd."

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Very nice!  Looks like you had good weather and got a good show!  

I like the tandem bobber trams.  

I visited here in November 2019.  I didn't have as good of an experience at the circle -- I went through after dark, with heavy traffic.  And cars kept cutting off the tram to basically block all forward progress.  Eventually we did exit the circle, though.  The experience reminded me of San Francisco's Market St. in the early 2000s, when there was no enforcement of the Muni-only lanes, and cars would block the Muni trains.  

Location: 
https://www.openrailwaymap.org/?style=standard&lat=44.80222511983338&lon=20.466327667236325&zoom=16
https://opentopomap.org/#map=17/44.80229/20.46543
https://www.google.com/maps/@44.8026339,20.4662091,355m/data=!3m1!1e3
https://goo.gl/maps/dc58qEUQmtQepybL9 (what is the white car doing here?  You can see that the cars are all over the place, and wouldn't be below cutting off a tram. 
https://en.mapy.cz/zakladni?x=20.4656252&y=44.8023937&z=18

 

Lovely Tatra type KT4YU some of the last ever built.