Back in Belgrade, I met up again with some of my local exploring buddies. Slobodan, who runs Urban Exploration Belgrade and gave me a tour of an abandoned sugar factory the last time I was in town, took me to a brewery this time.

The place had a lot of history, and had been one of the city’s first major brewery sites. We had a look during the day – discretely entering the site through a door round the back of one of Belgrade’s busiest café streets. The brewery has been out of action ever since the break-up of Yugoslavia, and outer parts of the complex had already been partitioned off: turned into bars and coffee shops, the gradual gentrification of Serbia’s industrial-age relics.

Later that evening, after dinner, a few of us decided to go back for another look. We climbed the brewery’s clock tower after dark, up past empty silos and antiquated timekeeping technology. I spent my last night in Serbia up on that balcony – drinking beer and watching the traffic go by, atop one of the last looming landmarks of pre-Yugoslav Belgrade.