Читать книгу The Lands of the Tamed Turk; or, the Balkan States of to-day онлайн

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But this is not all.

Upon arrival at the hotel you are handed an information blank, which must be filled in with your name, address, occupation, religion, where you came from, how long you expect to remain in the city, your ultimate destination and such data as would facilitate the authorities in bringing you to earth in case you attempted to cut short the life of the King or incited the natives to revolt.

One of these blanks, for you must fill in two, is kept at the hotel; the other is sent to police headquarters. No matter how insignificant you may imagine you are when in your mother-country, you are under the eagle eye of the government continuously in Servia. Your every move is watched and made a note of. It matters not even if you change to another hotel; the police are immediately notified to that effect. You are branded as a suspicious character and will remain so until you prove it or leave the country, vindicated.

Your first impressions of the metropolis of Servia are apt to be a bit disappointing, and especially so if you arrive at night, for Belgrade is anything but an imposing city, even in the daytime. You are driven rather recklessly through streets of very uneven cobbles, miserably lighted and apparently abandoned by human beings. The business, and, at the same time, residential part of the city, in which your hotel is located, looks down from the crest of a hill upon the squalid, old Turkish quarter on one side, from which emanates a veritable vapour of highly seasoned cookery, and the poor Servian district and warehouses on the other. To the west, on a cliff overlooking the junction of the Danube and the Save, are the Kalemagden Park and the old fortress, the guns of the latter having been long since silenced by the Treaty of Berlin of 1878, which forbade Servia fortifying her Austrian frontier.