From Novi Sad we didn't have to drive far to reach Fruska Gora National Park. First stop was the Tourist Info Centre to find out about walks and rides. The girl there was as useless as tits on a bull. She simply told us, "All tracks are blocked by fallen trees from the storm," and wasn't the least bit interested in helping us any more. You could almost see us rolling our eyes. How could all the tracks be blocked? We bought a walking map anyway.
The national parks here aren't exactly like ours. There are towns and villages in them, some small factories and there's plenty of small-scale logging. They still are areas of great natural beauty though.
We found our accommodation - an apartment in a high-rise apartment block in a small town (so weird). We loved the sign on the wall!
I encouraged a slowly-recovering John to do a short walk with me, only I forgot to tell him it was steep until we were well up the track. The poor guy dragged himself up and we checked out a ruined fortress at the top.
Smoking is an ongoing issue for us in Serbia. So many people smoke here! You're not technically allowed to smoke indoors in public places but everyone does. This isn't usually too big a problem because we always eat outside, however we had two meals in a row inside as there were no outside tables left. At one, there weren't many people in the restaurant and surprisingly, nobody at the next table smoked while we were there. The next night, at our favourite restaurant, the only table left was inside but fortunately a large pedestal fan was going full blast and blew most of the smoke away from us.
We met an Aussie Serbian couple from Perth at dinner one night. They come here each summer to visit family. They love Australia, mainly because all their children and grandchildren are there, but it was interesting to hear their perspective on both countries.
Sticking to the national parks, our next destination was Tara NP. The drive here was spectacular. About an hour after we left Fruska Gora NP, the landscape around us became really stunning. The areas we drove through were quite rural so we still had crop after crop of sunflowers and corn, but in between were apples, cherries, plums and some crops we didn't recognise. The rolling green hills were dotted with villages and small farms were so beautiful.
Unlike rural Australia, most farmers here live in villages and drive out to their farms each day. It's very common to drive through a village and see tractors and agricultural equipment parked outside the houses. Tractors often hold up traffic as they amble along the roads between their homes and the farms. In one area though, people seemed to live on their farms. Neat, whitewashed farmhouses had gorgeous timber slatted barns and numerous outbuildings. Some of the slatted barns had painted decorations on them.
We had a big drive this day but our main destination was half way. We have a Serbian friend in Australia and we arranged to catch up with his brother in the village our friend was born in! We arrived at the arranged time and his brother, Djele was waiting for us. Djele doesn't speak English but luckily he brought his friend Nick along - who lives in Melbourne and whose father used to have a farm near Ballarat!
Nick enjoys a beer....
They took us to a restaurant for lunch and we had an enormous meal! There was a large plate of mixed grilled meats and another one of local lamb. We had a salad each plus bread and very hot peppers. Even though we couldn't eat half of the meat we still got pancakes with local plum jam inside for desert.
Djele wanted to give us some of his home-made rakija (a strong drink a lot like grappa) so we went to his small factory to get it. Even though we were really full from lunch we tried his home-made cherry juice and fresh apricots and plums. They were all wonderful! Much to our amazement, Djele gave John two litres of home-made rakija!
We had a really lovely time with Djele and Nick. They were lovely people and it was all a fantastic experience.
We finally dragged ourselves away and for the next couple of hours we drove through more of that stunning scenery. We even saw cows! It has been a big mystery to us where all the cows and other livestock are in both Serbia and Macedonia. The people are such big meat-eaters here yet the meat seems to miraculously appear from nowhere. For weeks we saw no livestock at all. Around here we saw a few very small herds. We certainly didn't see any commercial-sized herds. This remains an unsolved mystery for us!
The road then turned and ran alongside the Drina River which forms the border between Serbia and Bosnia Herzegovina. There were many holiday homes here - double story cottages usually made out of timber. They were perched on the banks of the river with views of the Bosnian hills sometimes only 40 metres away. In places the water was shallow and it would be easy to wade across to Bosnia.
We then turned away from the river and began to climb. As we switch-backed up the mountain into Tara National Park, the temperature dropped 10 degrees in 20 minutes or so. Those switchbacks kept both the driver and the navigator on their toes!
We found our cute accommodation - another timber cottage much like the others and it had a wonderful view. Our only disappointment was that it suffered from all three of the bedding problems that we sometimes encounter:
1. Small Sheet Syndrome - where the sheets are too small for the mattress and they don't tuck in. They ride up as soon as we lie on them.
2. No mattress protector. This is a problem when Small Sheet Syndrome leaves us lying on the mattress!
3. Tablecloth sheets - where the sheets are coarse and synthetic, like old fashioned tablecloths.
There were no spare sheets that we could be creative with so we didn't look forward to a great night's sleep. Maybe some of Djele's rakija would help! Actually it didn't help me at all and I had a terrible sleep but the next day we got extra sheets and, although they were no bigger, we were able to overlap them and get them to hold reasonably well.
Our accommodation looked lovely. Typically for this region, both floors are rented out separately which can be a nuisance if you get a rowdy family on the other floor. Usually our biggest problem was that we would be sitting on the balcony and smoke from the other guests would waft around us, sending us inside.
Note the bare, unrendered building on the other side of us. So many places are like this. They buy the cheaper bricks that are supposed to be rendered over then they don't have the money to render them.
Next door were a farming family living in a small wooden hut. They had a few bullocks and cows that lived in a wooden shed.
Each day the farmer would lead his cattle down to drink from the public water trough behind our house. Another lady took a small mob of sheep along the lane behind our house each day. One farmer spent an entire day raking and baling his hay while his wife and teenage daughter raked all the loose bits towards the baler! They did this from dawn until well after dusk. A house down the hill from us had sheep, so the rural feel was certainly still here, but most of the rest of the houses were holiday places. I estimated that about 80% of the houses in our village were less than five years old. Just how many of these houses do people need?
It became a real issue for us. What was obviously a rural village a short time ago was now turning into a small resort town. New roads were being built and construction was going on everywhere. Trucks roared up and down the one main road carrying endless loads of gravel and dirt in and out of the subdivision areas. Neither google maps nor maps.me could keep up with the road construction. There were so many roads that didn't show on our maps. We treasured those few farmers still holding out around us.
Despite our shock at the development, we had a good stay here. The views from our cabin were wonderful. Again, there didn't seem to be many walks that weren't on the roads so I just explored the village area.
We loved our one local restaurant. We watched the Matildas lose the semi-finals here. There was a great mural on a wall. I met a guy on one of my walks who looked exactly like this guy, only a bit younger.
We did a number of drives and walks in the park as John still wasn't up to going up and down these mountains on his bike. There were some stunning viewpoints but the skies were quite hazy unfortunately.
We went past a modern house on one of our walks but the shed was wonderfully old and ramshackle.
To climb to the viewpoint we had to negotiate some tricky patches.
The whole area was beautiful and the mountains were stunning.
We met some Aussie/Serbs at one stage and they told us how their entire family of over 30 people, including kids and grandkids, all moved back to Serbia after 30 years in Australia. We could see the appeal. Serbia is so beautiful. They would have had extended family here plus their Aussie income would set them up very well here as Serbia is quite cheap to live and travel in. They were having a great time exploring just like we were.
On the way out of the mountains we visited a village called Drvengrad that had been built as a set for a movie called "Life is a Miracle". We got there early and there was barely anyone there. I'm not sure what we expected but there was very little info and nothing much happening so we just wandered around and looked at the cute buildings. It might mean more to us if we watch the movie!
We left our cooler climate haven and headed down from the mountains towards Novi Pazar, our last stop in Serbia. As we headed down, we began to notice lots of rubbish on the sides of the road. It barely stopped for kilometre after kilometre. Bags of rubbish accumulated around public skip bins. It was such a shock after the rest of Serbia which had been quite clean.
As we descended, the landscape changed and the lush greenery of the mountains was replaced with unattractive scrub and flatter land, although the agricultural lands were still beautifully abundant
We made it into Novi Pazar but the town was messy and unattractive. Unlike the rest of Serbia, this is largely a Muslim area and women were generally covered but most were just wearing long pants or dresses. There weren't as many of the whole black cover-ups that we were expecting. We did notice though that people tend to go out at night for cups of tea, not alcohol. The town had quite a relaxed feel to it.
There's a strong influence here remaining from the time of the Ottomans and we were looking forward to some Turkish food instead of the usual Serbian fare. We were recommended a place to eat and it took us a while to find it in the heat. We finally got there and found it was a burek shop. Burek are the delicious, but very common, pies that we've eaten way too many of right through the Balkan region. Oh well!
On the way back from a walk in the evening we saw this. I took the photo for you, dad. It's Boutique Mal! (Dad's name is Mal.)
Our little apartment on the main pedestrian street was a bargain and was a great place to spend the night, although the noise from the kids' amusement machines outside our room kept us awake for a bit. We deliberately planned to be here on a weekend so we could experience the nightlife but all we did was have dinner and go to sleep!
We would leave Serbia the next day. Apart from the messiness and general unattractiveness of the last 24 hours, we absolutely loved this country. It was beautiful, had lots of things to see and do and English was widely spoken. People were friendly and getting around wasn't difficult. The food was fairly standard across the country. The locals sure love their meat but good salads were available everywhere too.
Poor John spent most of Serbia recovering from his lurgy and only rode his bike once in the two weeks that we were here. He did lots of walking and driving though and still got to see a lot, just not in the way he was expecting.
Our hot tip - Serbia will become the next big tourist destination. It's got everything going for it plus it's cheap. Croatia will be 'so yesterday'! (It's still amazing there though!) Having said that, Albania seems to be the rising star at the moment. That's on our radar for next year!
Cheers,
Heather and John
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