Novi Sad, Zemun, and a Little of Belgrade

Our trip to Serbia was mostly uneventful, although I did have to shut the plane window as the propeller directly beside my seat window was slightly off putting and the squeaking sound upon take off and landing, a little disconcerting. All in all though we landed with no major instances and only an hour behind schedule. 

Customs and passport control were a breeze (the US could totally learn how to make this process easier from these countries) and soon we walked through the doors to be greeted with a paper sign baring Em’s name. Earlier in the day we had been able to contact our hostel via Skype and arrange for a taxi since we were coming in so late. This turned out to be well worth the expense as Milos dropped us right at the front door and the hostel clerk met us from there.

Our hostel, Skadarliji Sunrise, is located near the top of Skadarliji Street in the heart of the Bohemian quart of Belgrade. This is a 400m long street filled with hostels, hotels, restaurants, bars, clubs, and rich history. The area got its start as the Bohemian Quarter in the 1830s when the Roma moved into the abandoned houses and trenches. A quarter of a century later, the national police kicked them all out to build new brick homes for artists and civil servants. Next came an influx of poor artists looking for good food, spirits, and company. 

The lower part of Skadarliji was owned by a Czech family that opened a brewery underneath their estate. The brewery was eventually confiscated in 1945 by the State and then shut down a few decades later.

at the hostel, we were shown to our room, given a quick tour of the place and then encourage to stuck up our tiredness and head to the garden bar for a free shot of Rakia, the local fruit brandy (taste like moonshine or ethanol with a hint of fruit).

We ended up chatting with some new friends, including a teacher from Indiana with the coolest work schedule ever (six weeks on and six week off), a couple of Germans that didn’t understand how baseball works, and a local girl doing a survey on why travelers visit Serbia. It was fun, but eventually the Sandman’s pull was too strong and we retired for the evening (morning at this point).

NovI Sad Was Not What We Were Expecting

Em and I had been super excited to visit Novi Sad and the Petrovaradin Forest and Fortress when we’d read about Serbia in the months leading up to this trip. Originally, I’d wanted to do this scavenger hunt through the forest, but after researching some, it’d seemed that it was easy to do all of the exploring without a tour and that’s what we attempted. We probably should have stuck to the tour.

We left our hostel and navigated our way down the hill to the main bus terminal. This also used to be the main train station, but some million- or billionaire from the UAE convinced the city officials that building a giant housing and shopping development on the waterfront was the best option, so the train station was moved about 5 miles outside of the city, where it isn’t very assessable to anyone. We had originally planned to take a train to Novi Sad, but due to the new location of the train station, the bus became our new plan. 

The nice thing about the bus as opposed to the train, is that one leaves every 15 minutes or so throughout the day, but the gamble (we learned the hard way) is you have no idea what type of bus you’re gonna get. Our bus to Novi Sad turned out to have a broken AC unit. So 30 people sweltered together in a stuffy bus with no external air for an hour and a half and I attempted to calculate whether the heat or the CO2 would kill us all first (my mind is peachy when it’s suffocating).

Once released from the hot box we realized we had no idea where we were in relation to the Petrovaradin Fortress (the main reason we’d come to see Novi Sad) and ran around asking people until someone could direct us to a local bus that would take us the rest of the way (well almost, we still had to hop off and figure out the correct wooden path up the hill). 

The area were the current Petrovaradin Fortress sits has archaeologically been found to have human habitation on it for the last 200 thousand years. The area was in the hands of various different groups and had various different forts erected there over time. Pretty much one group would bomb the currently Fortress, take over, build a new Fortress, and then that would last until a new group decided it wanted the area; and thus the cycle would continue. 

The current fort was built in 1672 by the Austrians after capturing the previous fort from the Turks. The neat thing about this fort (and why we wanted to visit) are the 20kms of underground tunnels that go down four levels beneath the fort. These tunnels were used as a training ground, living quarters, storage, and defense for the fort. 

We ended up arriving five minutes late for our prearranged tour, but the tour started 15 minutes late, so all in all, we were good. Our tour guide was young Milos; who is a local that knows way more about American pop culture than I do. While being super informative about the fort and the history of the tunnels we were walking through, Milos kept us all entertained with witty puns and pop culture references. It was pretty awesome.

Inside the fortress (on the upper outside level) there is a clock that the locals call the Drunken Clock. It’s called the Drunken Clock for two reasons. The first is the the hour hand is the larger of the two clock hands and the minute hand is the smaller hand. This is said to because it makes it easier to tell the time if you’re a captain of a boat looking up at the clock. The second reason the clock is called the Drunken Clock is because the mechanism that runs the clock is based on temperature. Therefore when it’s cold out, the clock runs slower and when it’s hot out, the clock runs faster. Thus, depending on the time of the year, the clock can be up to 40 minutes off.

After the tour, Em and I sought out the “cute part of town” that Em had read about through her research into this whole vacation. According to the websites she’d found, the walk from the train station (which we later found out was the same place that the bus dropped us off) was supposed to be a cozy 2 mile walk through cute pedestrian lanes filled with stunning examples of local architecture and quaint shops. Looking out from the top of the fortress, we saw lush green forest on the one side of the river and traditional concrete metropolis on the other side. 

We headed into the concrete jungle (later we decided that we should have just stayed and explored the forest) and eventually found the cute pedestrian area. This area turned out to be called Stari Grad, which directly translates to Old Town, and is also known as the City Center.

The main square sits in the middle of the pedestrian only streets and has some lovely cafes off of it (one of which we indulged in for lunch). From the main square one can easily walk to most of the points of interest within the city. Of note are various churches, the Novi Sad Synagogue, the Bishop’s Palace, the Matica Srpska (the oldest cultural-scientific institute in Serbia. First opened in 1826 in Pest (part of modern day Budapest) and moved to Novi Sad in 1864), and the Museum of Vojvodina (an art and history museum with over 400,000 specimens in its collections).

We had a nice lunch on the square and attempted to wander to a few of the main sites (as notated on our tourist map). While the buildings themselves were relatively easy to get to, either it was the wrong day of the week for exploring or none of these places actually let you go inside. We saw the exterior of the giant Synagogue, the Bishop’s Palace, the Matica Srpska, and a few of the churches.

After some aimless walking we eventually arrived back at the bus station and returned to Belgrade (on a bus that thankfully had AC, and lively radio pipped in).

Transitioning from Self Travel to Tour Travel

Our second day in Belgrade, we awoke early enough to walk the mile down the hill from our hostel to the hotel where we’d be staying for the next two nights on the beginning of the tour we’d booked for the next two weeks. Once our bags were safely stored at the hotel, we took off in search of the Nikola Tesla museum. Thinking that this would be easy with a city map and directions from the hotel clerk, we found that our sense of direction was a tad (large) bit off. It didn’t help that the poor hotel clerk mixed up right and left in English so we went about a half mile in the wrong direction before realizing that she’d reversed everything. Our 20 minute walk ended up being 50 and we made it to the museum with 5 minutes to spare.

The Tesla Museum houses memorabilia from Nikola Tesla’s personal and work lives. Nikola Tesla was a Serbian born (although his birth place is located in what is now Croatia) inventor, engineer, and futurist best known for devising Alternating Current (the AC that all your electrical devices use).

Besides making numerous new inventions and creating the first induction coils (which are now ubiquitous in almost all electronic appliances, vehicles, etc), Tesla was a futurist that sought to solve the World’s energy crisis long before it even became a crisis, but unfortunately he lived in another time when people didn’t believe that future would ever come to pass and the funding for the project was taken away. Without Tesla, the world would most definitely not be the same today as it currently is.

At the museum, for an entrance fee, one gets to watch a 15 minute video about Tesla’s life and his inventions. Then a guide shows you various versions of induction coils and even lets you zap yourself on a Tesla coil as it discharges if you’re brave enough to try it. Of course I decided to have purple lightening spark across my hand, but Em decided she was happier just filming me.

From the Tesla museum, we had our first experience navigating the Belgrade public transportation system. Through some random trial and errors and a lot of good fortune, we actually succeeded in finding our destination of downtown Zemun. We actually missed our transfer stop and our exit stop and didn’t know how to buy a ticket at first or use them once we bought them. When we missed the first transfer, the next bus to randomly arrive had the location we wanted so we just hopped on; and when we got to the end of the line and figured out we were in the boonies, someone helped us get back to the main part of town. 

Zemun is currently one of the furthest municipalities in Belgrade city, but this is a relatively recent development in modern times. Like most of the towns and even countries in The Balkans, Zemun changed names and hands often. Because of its strategic location near the merging of the Sava and Danube rivers, it was much fought over by the Ottoman and the Habsburg empires during the 18th and 19th centuries. It was integrated into Serbia in 1918 after WWI, given to Croatia in 1941 when Yugoslavia surrendered to the Axis powers, and then taken back again by Serbia in 1944. With the creation of modern public transportation and the New Belgrade municipality (which fills in the gap between old Belgrade and Zemun), Zemun is now thoroughly connected to Belgrade.

Besides being an adorable little fishing village with a more traditional Western European feel, we went to Zemun because we were told to check out the area of Gardoš. Gardoš is one of three hills in Zemun’s historical core and on the western bank of the Danube River. The area is littered with cobblestone alleyways and adorable residences. As we climbed the rock stairs, somewhat overgrown with weeds, up the hill, we passed by the Nicolas Orthodox Church; which was in the process of being restored. Eventually we made it to the top of the hill, where we were greeted with a spectacular panoramic view and Kula Sibinjanin Janka (the tower of Janos Hunyadi (someone that died on the hill four and a half centuries before the tower was actually built)) or the Millennium tower, also known as the Tower on the hill or simply the Gardoš tower. 

The tower was build in 1896 to celebrate a thousand years of Hungarian occupation on the Pannonian plain. The tower was one of four built, each situated on the furthest points of the Austria-Hungary empire. This tower represented the southern most point.

Em wasn’t feeling up to climbing the 100 or so steps to the top of the tower, so I climbed them and took the obligatory selfie and panoramic photographs to show her the view she only slightly missed (you could see almost all of the same from the lookout at the base of the tower since the tower sits on top of the hill).

We wandered from the base of the tower back down the hill via the large town cemetery (it occupies almost a third of the space on Gardoš hill) and arrived at the waterfront. We explored along the waterfront for a bit, wandered through a farmers market with delicious looking fruits and vegetables, hit up the main park, and then caught a bus back to the main part of Belgrade.

Because we still had a few hours before meeting our fellow tour mates, Em and I decided to visit Kalemegdan Park and Belgrade Fortress. Kalemegdan Park is the largest and and most important park in Belgrade and an important cultural, recreational, and historical landmark. It was built in 1869 (after the Turks left) on top on a 400ft cliff above the junction of the Sava and Danube Rivers, on what was once the main town playing field. Within the park is the Belgrade Fortress.

Belgrade Fortress is the oldest urban center of Belgrade. It was first established in the 3rd century BC by a small Celtic tribe, eventually won by the Romans, fought over by the Goths, Huns, Turks, Austrians, Hungarians, Germans, etc...you get the picture. For most of this time though, the Fortress was the town and thus its history, is the history of Belgrade. Each of these groups built and reformed (usually after destroying some variant of the previous group’s designs) the Fortress how they wanted. There’s even a legend that Attila the Hun is buried somewhere underneath the Fortress.

When we got to Kalemegdan, there was a small car train tourist attraction. Since I love trains and both of us wanted a short break, we gladly forked over our money and took a seat on the wooden benches. The train drove you around all the various sections of the park and through the different levels of the Fortress. It was a nice way to see how big the place was and map out which areas we wanted to go back to on foot to explore further. 

Our train tour ate the majority of our left over free time and so after we disembarked, we only had a few minutes to run back through the Fortress capturing some photographs before heading back to the hotel for a quick shower and to meet up with our tour group for the first time.

After some massive and super thorough research online (Em’s OCD went a little overboard), Em and I decided to book a two week tour through the lesser visited and tourist accommodating countries of The Balkans in an effort to get more out of our time. We settled on Borderlands Travel, with is run by a lovely English woman named Louise that loves the entire region (so much so that she is permanently moving to Serbia next year) and wants to share that love with others.

Our tour group consists of five Aussies (Dale, Cindy, Jackie, Ann, and Mary) and Em and I; it’s six women and one bloke; plus Louise and a driver. We meet everyone in the hotel lobby, had a quick introduction meeting to discuss a few particulars for the trip, and then set off up the hill back to the Bohemian Quarter (right next to the hostel Em and I had been staying in the previous two nights) for dinner.

Louise took us to one of the oldest restaurant in Belgrade (and what once was Yugoslavia), Dva Jelena (Two Deer). The restaurant got its start (per legend), when a baker opened shop in 1832. His shop was such a huge success that his wife decided to start cooking meals for the neighborhood locals. This continued until 1867 when an young restaurant owner bought the place, hired another guy to helped expand it, and then used word of mouth to make it a huge success. The place is such a success that they only give discounts to parties of 30 or more guests. They also give you enough food to last you a week.

After dinner, Louise decided to show all of us a hidden gem in the city, the Globetrotters Club. This is a super quirky bar in the basement of an apartment complex (in which a lot of people still live). The bar came to be in 1999 when the city was under bombardment by US and NATO forces and it wasn’t safe to go outside. Due to being cloistered inside, one guy in the apartment complex said, “Let’s make a bar so that we have somewhere to hang out. I’ll supply all of the alcohol, but you have to each bring one item from your homes to furnish it with.” The end result is an eclectic bar that can only be gotten to if you know it’s there, and which is filled with books, sewing machines, teddy bears, photos, trinkets, and mismatched furniture. It was a great place to end the night.