What is personal safety like in Belgrade and Serbia?

This one of the most frequent questions we receive when our guests make inquiry about our tours. We understand importance of this question and from that reason we’ll try to give the answer about the issue in this article.

If you read official information which can be found on official websites of certain countries, informing their citizens about safety issues before they take a travel to Serbia, you can be upset with the information found there. I don’t know what the purpose of such texts is, the only reason I can find is that governments of such countries are trying desperately to showcase that there is no safety outside of their respective borders… Truth is just the opposite.

Here in Serbia we are aware about the general picture people have when someone mentions Serbia and Balkans, the image created about this region during 90s still makes considerable number of Western travellers think twice before they decide to book a trip to the region. It’s understandable since there was civil war going on for several years in the first half of 90s so the media coverage from back then still influences public opinion. Lesser people know that during war in Bosnia and Croatia, there was no military activity on Serbian soil, so actually there was no war going on here, the only period when there was direct conflict on our soil was in 1999 when NATO bombed Serbia, but even then there were no field military activities.

Before the war, in the time of Yugoslavia, personal safety in all Yugoslav republics was at ultimately high level, there was no any kind of organized crime nor criminal groups, there was only petty theft and pickpockets in larger cities, aside of that safety was complete. As far as Serbia is concerned, situation is not much different nowadays. Of course, there is larger crime rate now, then it was back in 70s or 80s, but in terms of personal safety situation is not much different. You can still fall asleep in the public park and nothing unusual will happen. Of course, it’s not advisable to flash with your open wallet or to keep your valuable things unattained, because pickpockets are looking for their opportunity, but other than that, you are completely safe. Another caution should be mentioned, when you are in public transport, especially during rush hours, when people are going to or returning from work, this is period when pickpockets are on duty, and they usually work in couples, while one is distracting your attention, the other is stealing your valuables. General policy applies here as anywhere else, don’t act reckless and you are good.

On one hand such bad image is good for one thing, when people come here with certain amount of reserve, after they figure out that the situation is completely opposite to what they expected, they are then probably the best advocates for our tourism, and we are grateful for that. Most of the guests, especially those who travel alone, often say that most of their friends asked them if they are insane for travelling to Serbia. The truth is completely different, Serbia and ex Yugoslavian countries, are maybe one of the safest countries in the world in terms of personal safety and tourism.