How to blend in with the Serbs: no messy hair, no headgear, no skinny

Some obvious tips on what to wear and how to behave in order to blend in with the Serbian masses and explore your tourist destination in peace

It’s very easy to spot a tourist/foreigner in Belgrade and in Serbia in general. Tourists are few and usually stick out from the crowd with the way they look or dress. In case you yourself personally are one of those tourists, you probably want to fit in, to become one of the locals and to avoid getting looked at like a non-local weirdo you are. Here are some obvious tips on what to wear and how to behave in order to blend in with the Serbian masses and explore your tourist destination in peace.

Rule number one: be caucasian. If you’re not Caucasian, you will fail to blend in miserably, because a typical local Serb is a Caucasian and that’s just how it is. If you’re black, you’re gonna stick out from the crowd “like a black man in the crowd” as we say here in Serbia (not really, I just made that one up). If you look Asian, you can maybe pass as a local Chinese from New Belgrade’s chinatown, depending on how you dress. If you are an Indian you can pass for a local Roma, also depending on how you dress.

If you look like MIA, they might think you're Roma.

Haircut – messy or out-of-bed hair is a sure sign you’re not from around here. Keep it short and tidy. Otherwise you will probably be labeled as a punk, hippy, rasta, gay, and most of all, foreign.

Hats and other things you put on your head such as caps, hairbandanas or anything else really are a sign that you just arrived from the train station or exited a hostel. Throw your headgear in the nearest trash bin and tidy your hair. If you really must wear an item on top of your head, wear sunglasses on your forehead, even if it’s not all that sunny.

You can have that smoke, but no hats, please.

Your boxers sticking out is a dead giveaway that your mother tongue is not Serbian. Balkanize yourself by putting those pants up where they belong and tuck in your shirt, but not in your boxers.

If you happen to like wearing your jeans too tight and too low, that means you are not aware of how ridiculously un-Serbian you look right now. What you are basically saying is this: I am gay, but not a local one.

If you're a guy, skinny jeans will get you nowhere.

If you are a girl, good thing to do is to carry your purse over your bent arm, but keep your arm real high and possibly have a cellphone in the same hand. If you do not own a purse or a bag, you are not Srpkinja and will have difficulties blending in. Also, put on all the makeup you took with you on the road and hide the fact that you are basically backpacking and not giving a damn about your looks.

Good luck trying to blend in and let us know how it went.