The Real 007 Was Serbian

Born into a wealthy Yugoslavian family in 1912, Popov was in his life prime at the outset of WWII. Arrested by the German Gestapo several times for advocating democracy, he was finally recruited by MI6 to run as a double-agent between 1940 and 1944. Communicating by wireless, invisible ink postcards and a special code of microdots, for the course of the WWII he fed the Nazis such a convincing trail of information that they considered him their “best man in Britain”, while all that time he was truly aligned with the official UK.

Needles to say, Popov became the real-life agent on which Fleming’s brainchild James Bond was based, after the director was embarrassed by the spy at a local casino. Fleming was at the time working for the British Navy and had been arrogantly put $50,000 on the table – around 10 times more than people’s annual earnings in the ’40s – shaming Fleming and forcing him to withdraw from the table in disgrace.

Now, Serbia is a country that doesn’t do mild and driving is no exception. To simply say Serbs are obsessed with cars would probably be an understatement. To us, cars are fun, empowering, fierce and just about enough dangerous, at the time when modern society almost conspires to take all the little thrills away from us in a thousand subtle ways. This is why created a one-of-a-kind 007 experience to discover the city followed by a royal lunch suitable for a true (double) agent.