An overdue update and quick rundown

So I apologize for the lag between updates...too many cities, too much to see, too little time to write, but after almost a dozen not very subtle messages from people at RJ I finally prioritized an email update to them and wanted to also post here and kill another poor bird with this stone. Now you can see just how many cities I am behind with typing up my entries...I count 8 or 9! Stupid iPad is horrible for typing!!! But here you go!


Istanbul. Just an amazing city. I almost didn't leave. I couldn't believe it happened again as it did in Melbourne, but my first city was such a delightful surprise with all that it offered. Everyday was a highlight! I loved the people, the nightlife, the district with all the famous mosques and Hagia Sophia, biking along the coast, and stepping foot in Asia for the first time! And one crazy thing happened to make the world feel super small. I met a Turk who did his MBA at UT and lived truly next door to me in Hyde Park in 2008 before I moved in!

Mykonos. This island was just heaven. Just like Istanbul, I know I will be back in this lifetime. The weather was divine, but it wasn't peak season just yet so walking up to the different resorts on some of the beaches you can just take your pick at what day bed you'd like to relax on free of charge! I've never stayed at a super fancy beach resort before and getting waited on hand and foot was amazing. I learned once I got to Athens that the bed I lounged on all day at one resort, Nammos, goes for €1000 a day in August. Yikes! The old town/Mykonos City is gorgeous too and I understand now why people say it's paradise.

Athens. The highlight of Athens was probably either my host or his red Vespa, which might be my new favorite gas-powered vehicle. For four days straight we went everywhere by Vespa whipping around corners and riding on highways, coastlines, and both flat and hilly city streets. It was an amazing way to see the city starting with the tour he gave me my very first night pointing out the different neighborhoods, chocolate and olive oil factories, galleries, museums, favorite bars, Parliament, city squares, etc. It was pretty neat seeing the Acropolis lit up on the hill from nearly every bar we went to and then getting to see it up close the next day. Highlights also included playing trivia in a Scottish pub one night and being the team ringer knowing all the answers to the many American pop culture questions and of course swimming in the Aegean Sea about an hour east of the city in just the clearest turquoise water.

Novi Sad and Belgrade, Serbia. I certainly found one of my favorite foods in Serbia - pancakes! They are not American pancakes, but instead giant, folded, thicker crepes stuffed with nutella, fresh fruit, and sprinkled with graham cracker crumbs and they are super cheap!! Being a vegetarian here was a bit tough, but after discovering the pancakes and the delicious grilled vegetable and fried cheese sandwiches for $1.50 I was happy as a clam. I got to stay with one of Mila's (you might have met her at the holiday party) close friends in Novi Sad and we had a great time together and got to spend part of one beautiful day exploring the giant fortress grounds where one of the world's largest music festivals is held every year (unfortunately that weekend in July will be the same as Florence, Radiohead, and Mumford and Sons in Lisbon so I had to favor that one and will be on the other side of the continent at that time.)

Croatia. I spent a full week here divided between Dubrovnik, Split, Zagreb, and a national park called Plitvička Lakes (google it!). Highlights were walking on the walls of the walled city, Dubrovnik, setting foot in Adriatic Sea for the first time and swimming around, seeing the giant headline grabbing Pride event in Split, watching the very first Euro cup games with almost a dozen Croatian fans and watching Croatia win their first game 3 to 1 (which meant three victory "fire bombs" were set off next to us on the patio at the outdoor cafe/bar at which we were watching!). One last big highlight for me in addition to getting to finally see Plitvička Lakes NP after a CouchSurfer told me about it more than two years ago, was deciding to not wait 3 hours for the next bus, but to hitchhike back to Zagreb instead. I never even put my thumb up, so perhaps it doesn't count as hitchhiking, but a black BMW pulled over and a Bosnian heading to have dinner with a friend in Zagreb offered me a ride. I got home more than 4 hours earlier than I expected to so I couldn't say no to a couple of drinks while he waited for his friend to finish work! (side note - he owns a quarry in Bosnia and it's his stone that is in a lot of churches and cathedrals around Europe and a new highlight is now going around to the different ones he told me about and emailing him my photos there...first stop was St. Stephen's cathedral in Vienna!)

Budapest. This city definitely also makes the "must go back to and spend quadruple the time in" list. My host from Athens and I discovered we would both be in Budapest at nearly the same time so I just tweaked my plans, moved around some things, and voilá! we reunited just two weeks later! There was too much to do here and I feel I saw barely 10% of it, but I did finally fit in time for a much overdue haircut! Highlights were the many ruin bars, some good music venues (we just happened to meet a great Berlin DJ our first day), and the food (again!)... mushroom goulash, pizza, and just amazing food choices everywhere and very, very cheap!

Vienna and Graz, Austria. Vienna instantly became another favorite city with a great host. Highlights were the beach bars along the Danube Canal, the Schonbrun gardens, going to see the opera, Elektra, watching the Lippazzaner horses at their morning exercises at the Spanish Riding School, the delicious home cooking of my host, and eating the world's biggest ice cream sundae with about a pound of fruit on top! Oh, and finally finding the time and space in my host's beautiful and modern light-filled apartment on a 10' x 10' shiatsu mat to fit in twice a day yoga practices. Needless to say, I was in heaven. I also was able to make a day trip to Graz to check out the historic sites there (and also visit an amazing Vegan place for lunch!)

Prague. I actually wasn't liking Prague at first. It was even more touristy than Dubrovnik and I was finding a lot of it inauthentic. But I had specifically included it on my trip for those specific days because of the United Islands music festival, so once the music started and I got to meet up with another music/dance-inclined CSer my opinion of the city did a 180. Two nights in a row I was out way past my bedtime (foreshadowing for Berlin, I suppose) and rode the tram home at 5am while the sun came up and locals rode into work!

Germany. So far I've just been to just Potsdam and Berlin. Giving myself my own bike tour of Potsdam on a sunny day was the highlight there with visits to several UNESCO parks (one in particular, Sans Souci, will make you think you're at Versailles) and the Bridge of Spies where prisoner exchanges were conducted during the Cold War. And then came Berlin. You need about three months there I think! The electro club dancing scene blew Prague out of the water (I didn't get home until 8am on Sunday morning) and on a bike tour the next day I could still here gentle electro music coming out of many clubs along the canal. I felt like I was staying with an old friend at my host's apartment complete with housewarming parties, BBQ's, grocery shopping trips, and delicious dinners out (I discovered my new favorite Vietnamese dish... It is 1000 times better than pho.) I still found time for a bit of site seeing from Berlin's very well done Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (it opened in 2005 and only just finished going through the names and short biographies of the 6.1 victims of the Holocaust) to the Pergamon museum with amazing reconstructed full size temples unearthed from the Hellenic kingdom to the Eastside Gallery and Checkpoint Charlie. I definitely got some history lessons of the city and it was fascinating to see and learn about just how much has changed in the last two decades as so many things only began to happen after the end of the GDR. And one last highlight was an afternoon at the old Templehofer Airport where you can bike, skate, run, or kite-skate down the old runways!

Next up is Dresden, Munich, Heidelberg, and Cologne (where I get to reunite with Erik from New Zealand!). And then comes the start of the music festivals in Copenhagen and Lisbon!

And I guess one more miscellaneous highlight, in addition to all the people and food (I'm making notes for my own new recipes to try like mushroom goulash and walnut tofu ravioli), has been the amazing, amazing weather!! I delight in it almost every single day!! I thought it was risky going from east to west and visiting places like Croatia and Serbia when it might not be warm yet, but I have been so blessed! I've heard from others who I have crossed paths with that France and a lot of Western Europe was gray and rainy in May and June so it has been awesome that I've had brilliant sunshine almost every single day! Out of so far just about 30 days in Europe, I can count the days of rain on one hand and not have to use all the fingers! There's never been a day of constant rain, most were just light drizzles off and on for a morning or afternoon and actually I forgot to mention I took a day train to Ljubljana, Slovenia from Croatia and my CS tour guide and I easily dodged the rain by well timed meals and tea breaks!

And lastly for the low lights and disappointments, because, well, life and travel are not perfect...

1. The Eurocup. It's been going on for the last two weeks in every single city I have visited and the Hyundai Fan Zone mammoth stages and screens have been marring the otherwise picturesque public squares of every city and tarnishing my photos. I enjoyed maybe the first two games, but I'm definitely over the novelty now and am looking forward to Spain beating Germany and being done with the mob watch parties.

2. I have to mention the toilets in Bosnia. There are no train lines to Dubrovnik which is at the far extreme south of Croatia, so I had to take an overnight bus to get there which happened to pass through Bosnia and Herzegovina. Well at the first rest stop I thought I had walked into the men's room and abstained, but at the second one I had to face facts that the toilets there are just ceramic bowls sunken into the earth. I imagine they aren't too many steps up from the toilets in India and I am told it will be like this in Thailand too. Eeeek!

3. The trains. I am irked with everyone and every guide book that has ever told me that the trains in Europe are the best way to travel. No. They are not. They are just the lesser of two evils. They are not fast, they are not cheap, and with the mandatory advanced reservations on many of them, they are not much more flexible than flying. I'm just saying this because someone needs to burst the ill-perpetuated myth. But still, while sometimes I lose a half day to the train, it is an opportunity to catch up on sleep, so there's that. Though for the possible 48 hour journey from Copenhagen to Lisbon in July I am still looking at flights!

4. I am still waiting for my picture perfect sunset. I have either been without camera or memory card, disappointed by the invasion of clouds 20 minutes before setting, or just a few degrees too much on the wrong side of the mountain to catch a spectacular sunset. I'm hopeful that at some point in the next 60+ days there will be some jaw dropping beauties.

5. This next one is probably the biggest challenge and ongoing heartbreak of the trip. Turning down invitations to what are probably once-in-lifetime-opportunities. First it was declining a (free) sailing trip around the Croatian Islands. Then it was extending my time in Prague for a weekend outside the city at a cottage on the lake with new friends. And then most recently turning down a week of free kite surfing lessons back in Greece with some owners of a gear shop who left two days ago to drive to Greece for an almost month-long vacation there on the Sea. I'm sadly also going to have to decline their invitation to meet them in Germany later in August as I won't have time to circle back through. But sometimes the surprises work out on the fly (just a bit of advanced notice helps a lot!). Erik has come home just in time from Thailand for me to see him in Cologne, a friend of a friend in Lisbon is unexpectedly offering to show me around the Portuguese coast after the music festival so I will extend my time there by a week, a dear friend from Spain might be able to come to St Tropez with me at the end of July to crash for a weekend at the place of one of my very first surfers in Tampa, and perhaps most excitedly is being able to re-route my trip some and be able to accommodate a weekend out in the French countryside with two former surfers from Tampa at the end of August. Life is good :)

6. And lastly, as I will stop my whining now, is that it has just turned a bit cold in Berlin. After temps in the 70s, 80s, and 90s all month long, I just had my first days in the 50s and 60s and the temps look similarly cold for Munich. This is a bummer because Germany has many great lakes for swimming in and I've been too landlocked the past couple of weeks. I want to swim again!

Dubrovnik

Though it was now almost two weeks ago, I absolutely have to start with an incredible act of thoughtfulness, kindness, and generosity that a CouchSurfer in Serbia did for me. I had been messaging with Igor for a few days before and while I was in Serbia and though he was going to be out of town for the majority of my time in Serbia he was offering invaluable help with looking into bus schedules to Croatia for me (again, hard to get info without the language and my train pass doesn't work in Serbia though other non-global passes do).

Anyways, although I was profusely thanking him all day long as he made reservations over the phone for me and gave me all the details I needed to know about the bus ride (I had never even met him yet!) I still sent him one last text to thank him and let him know I had made it back to the Belgrade bus station safely and was just waiting for the bus to Dubrovnik. Well maybe only 20-25 minutes later as I started to re-gather my bags and walk back to the bus bay identified on my ticket, a young guy walked towards me and said "Annie?" I was totally thrown! Igor's photo on Facebook is very small and so I certainly didn't recognize him, but there aren't many people who know my name in Belgrade so I quickly realized it had to be Igor! He had come to say hello as he caught his own train to Novi Sad! But not only that, he had a bag of goodies (water and Serbian cookies) for me to take on the bus ride with me. I was just floored again! It started off the 14 hour overnight bus ride on such a positive note!


Unfortunately though, one of the next things I want to share is not quite so uplifting. There are no trains to Dubrovnik, only buses, so my two options were to take a train to Montenegro and then transfer to a bus or to get on a bus right in Belgrade that is routed through Bosnia and Herzegovina. I chose the latter. And unfortunately although I understand the trip is only about 400 miles, due to borders, planned stops, and mountainous, hilly terrain, the journey took even more than the scheduled 14 hours.



I was quite shocked when I first woke up after the sun had risen and saw this unique rocky landscape in Bosnia. I have never seen anything quite like it! Are they rocks growing in the grass or grass growing around the rocks?


It was a rough night and I did not get the amount of sleep I was expecting. I think we must have stopped for some sort of border control more than four times between midnight and 3am, but I was in and out of bad sleep. I tried to stay awake each time my passport was taken from me to be sure that I received it back, but one of the times when a border agent had all of our passports, our bus started driving away before we ever got them back! I am sure we only went about 1 km at a slow pace, but it certainly felt like 2 or 3 km! (And this little rush of adrenaline-filled mini worry/panic also made my sleep more restless.) We somehow got our passports back at the next stop and I think Croatian border agents must have hand delivered them to the Bosnian side for us, but we still had a couple more border/police stops throughout the night.

Anyways, morning finally came and we had another planned rest stop for food and restrooms and after a long night I certainly needed to go. Now I don't have any photos to show you (I thought that would be crude) so you will need to use your imagination, but I can start by saying that when I walked into this Bosnian bathroom I immediately waled back out thinking I had just stepped into the men's room. I double checked then and in actuality I was in the women's room. The toilet was no more than a sunken hole in the ground. It was the opposite of elevated. It was a sort of ceramic dish in the ground. And it did not look or smell pretty. So I again walked right back out and onto the bus not knowing how to make use of a toilet like that!



Photos from some of the small towns we drove through in Bosnia and Herzegovina.


So perhaps that was 7am and I thought I could hold out for a better toilet. I discovered around 9am at the next rest stop I actually had to change buses. I thought I had a clear understanding in Belgrade that the bus ride would be direct for me, but even with the lack of common language it was made clear to me that I had to get off and wait one hour for another bus and another connecting ticket was thrust into my hand. So there I was at another rest stop with a full bladder still. I decided to venture again inside to see if toilets in this town were any better. Sadly, they weren't. Still just a ceramic basin sunken into a half dirt-half concrete floor. It took squatting to an epic level. Hovering over a seat wasn't going to cut it - you have to get quite low when your seat is about 2 feet lower than you're used to. It was by far the most shocking surprise of my trip so far and I hope my experience can only inform your future travel. Do not hydrate at all if you are crossing through Bosnia by bus. I assume (naively?) that households have more traditional toilets if you are planning an extended stay!

But the neat thing about my one hour layover in Mostar that I only learned as my first bus was pulling away was that the next stop on my original bus was Medjugorje. Again, my bus ride was to be 14 hours and after studying a map I now see why! We certainly were not following the straightest line to Dubrovnik and when on my second bus I sensed we had totally turned around and were doubling back on our route I finally asked a young guy sitting next to me and he informed me the bus had gone that way pretty much to stop at Medugorje. I had no idea!

But I was off to Dubrovnik and after 3 more border crossings (leaving Bosnia/entering Croatia, leaving Croatia/re-entering Bosnia, leaving Bosnia/re-entering Croatia) and about 4 more hours I was finally there!







These photos were all taken from the bus window of the Dalmatian Coast...it was a very scenic drive along the water!















(Seeing this person relaxing on a raft really made me wish I had thought to pack my own yellow inflatable raft!!)

Croatia gets a fair amount of tourists, at least along the Dalmatian Coast. Apparently this is a fairly recent upswing too given all of the the not-so-long-ago wars and conflicts related to the break up of Yugoslavia. But yea, Dubrovnik felt pretty darn touristy. Tour group after tour group in the walled city (a preview, I think, of what Rome might look like) and I don't think I'm exaggerating when I estimate 1 in 5 or 6 vehicles on the road were coach tour buses.



Dubrovnik, called the Pearl of the Adriatic, is in the extreme south of Croatia (why it is so hard to reach by land) and has under 50,000 residents. The old city (a UNESCO World Heritage site) is actually a fully walled city, but of course the city has grown over the centuries and residents now also live outside the fortress walls.











It is a beautiful city with its own charm and I loved being back on the water. I learned that with its position on the water it was one of the only cities in zeurope that could rival Venice for trade in the Middle Ages and this made it a target and under constant threat from Ottoman Empire, hence the 2 kilometers of fortress walls surrounding the city.


























So in Dubrovnik I spent my two short days at two beaches (very rocky and a bit disappointing), wandering the city trying to avoid the gaggles of AARP members, walking the full length of the city walls (about an $11 equivalent ticket), waiting for the perfect sunsets, and exploring the small but cute towns of Lapad and Cavtat outside the city.














Walking the two kilometers on the fortress walls... Don't do it in the middle of the day like I did!























Dubrovnik's idea of the first digital clock tower. It only updates every 5 minutes! This says it is 3:05 (pm).

It was very interesting to see signs of daily life of the Dubrovnik residents that live within the walls and o-exist somehow with non stop tourists during the summers. I would be curious to learn the percentage of residents that live within the walls.








I also pieced together my own history lesson from a wide smattering of sources. Croatia used to be an independent republic (its own country) during the Middle Ages, but it was conquered and became a part of the Austrian-Hungary empire which lasted until World War I. And then after the war it became part of Yugoslavia until it fought its own War of Independence from 1991-1995, during which there was heavy bombing of Dubrovnik but it has been fully repaired.

It was a new experience for me in Dubrovnik as I stayed with a host who wasn't a local, but instead a French guy who was working for a travel company in one of the resort hotels for the summer. So I must say I am disappointed by how little I feel I learned about the town, but I did learn a lot from just visiting one photography gallery/museum called War Photo Limited.

I also was reminded by just how much the French love France and the French language at dinner my first night when my host and I went out with two other young French people, Charles and Charlotte, who were also working for the same travel company for the summer. I think I was included for all of about 15% of the dinner conversation before they switched back to French! (I am now thinking twice about joining two of my previous surfers from Paris, Alex and Max, for a weekend in the French countryside in August with all of their friends at Max's parents' house. I know Alex and Max will make me feel included as possible, but I don't think they can guarantee that their friends will talk predominately in English the whole time and it's just not fun not being able to join in the conversation ever!). However, I was floored at one part of the conversation when we were talking about life in America and both Charles and Charlotte voiced that they would prefer to live in the US! They thought France was fine, but were just quite insistent that they thought they would enjoy life in the US more. I really didn't know what to say, but am eager to talk to more people in France next month now.


And one little, big regret was not doing the water skiing at Banje Beach outside the fortress walls when I was right there one morning. I was thinking I didn't want to have wet and salty hair the rest of the day and that either I could find the time to come back before 6pm when they closed or find water skiing at another beach in Lapad. But no luck. It cost only about $30 USD and I thought that was a good deal. It would have been awesome to ski in the turquoise water! I settled for swimming in the late afternoon at the beaches in Lapad, a resort-y peninsula just a bit outside of Dubrovnik.





Miscellaneous notes:

1. I have never been on such a busy and crowded public bus, especially on a Saturday morning. I was riding to the port to grab my bus to Split and was more than amused as we pulled up to every bus stop and had another 8-10 people board all appearing to be locals. Capacity limits are not followed, that's for sure. By the end of the route there were about 7 people squashed into the stairs below the bus driver! I might not ordinarily care, but the road we were on was as close to the edge of the very steep cliffs into the Adriatic Sea as you could get. Plus, I caught several people who were stuck standing in the aisle making the sign of the cross on their chests!



Posted capacity was either 51 or 78 and I did my best to count and I think we had close to 120 on board!


2. So in Europe you may have heard that they include tax and tip in the prices at restaurants so it's easy to know what you owe. Well in über-touristy Dubrovnik they have a way around this to squeeze a bit more money out of the tourists! Something called "couvert" is added to your bill as a per person charge! It's only about $2.50, but it was my first time encountering it. We will see if I find it elsewhere in Europe!


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Belgrade and Novi Sad

My flight to Belgrade was another not so full flight...maybe half full at best and the total capacity I would guess was only 70 to begin with. It was a low to the ground, pudgy prop jet, climb up just 6 or 7 steps, board from the back of the plane, sit in the first row seat directly behind the cockpit, kind of noisy flight. But it was uneventful and gave me time to snooze and go through pictures. And at just over two hours, it sure beat the train.

So if I was thinking it was hard not knowing any Greek it was 10x harder not knowing any Serbian. The younger generations seemed to be near fluent, but asking for help with bus tickets and SIM cards proved yet again to be my first challenge! The language isn't hard to pronounce or read when written in our alphabet, but reading the Cyrillic names on menus or on train schedules in train stations is impossible. I couldn't have picked out Novi Sad if my life depended on it.


This sign says Novi Sad... Could you tell?

The first thing I learned from my host in Belgrade was that "anything goes in Serbia." It was a lesson I got in the parking lot leaving the airport when I quickly learned that normal driving conventions like waiting your turn and yielding for safety are not followed. My host warned me I would see things here I wouldn't see in the rest of the world, but honestly it wasn't that bad and it seems it just fits in with the culture of perhaps being a bit on the wild side, but it's hard to quite put my finger on it.

The other thing I quickly learned was that Serbians like to eat and perhaps as a result of this grocery stores, cafes, and some restaurants are 24/7 in Belgrade, the capital city. Yay!! Even in Greece with all of their holidays I felt I was back in NZ where you find half the places closed half the time!


I spent two days in Belgrade and one day in Novi Sad, which everyone who is from there affectionately refers to as "my Novi Sad" and I now know why. Of the two, I found Novi Sad more to my liking with its greater number of green spaces, younger and seemingly friendlier faces, and shorter and more spread out buildings allowing substantially more solar access throughout the city. Its pedestrian areas also felt cleaner, but that could easily just be because they were paved with lighter colored stones.


A main square in Belgrade. The horse statue is a very common meeting point for people.


Belgrade's pedestrian only main street


Belgrade


Popcorn for eating on the street!





Belgrade outside cafe


Novi Sad cafes on their pedestrian only main street





Fountains abound in Novi Sad!





The view of flower-filled Novi Sad from Nemanja's balcony


Religion penetrated both cities where the large attractions tended to be churches and cathedrals. Novi Sad is considered the cultural capital of the country and has the national opera house among other things.


Sveti Sava in Belgrade - the largest orthodox church in the world





Saborna Crvka - orthodox church in Novi Sad


The cathedral in Novi Sad by day....


...and by night

A history lesson is also unavoidable in these cities where citadels and fortresses also are at the top of the list of things to see serving both cities during the Middle Ages. Belgrade hosts the Kalemegdan Citadel and Novi Sad has the Petrovaradinska Tvrdjava Fortress, which is the venue of one of the world's largest music festivals every summer, EXIT Fest. This year it happens to fall on the same weekend as another music festival in Lisbon where Florence, Radiohead, and Mumford & Sons are playing, so well, yea, it wasn't a hard choice for me, otherwise my route would have certainly included EXIT Fest.



Citadel wall in Belgrade


Citadel






Bouldering practice inside the citadel!


My "obsession" with flowers continued...


A photography display inside the Citadel of photos from around the world by Serbian photographers


View from the Fortress where the Sava River meets the Danube River


Another sunset that went behind the clouds :)


These are the tennis courts (inside the citadel) where Novak Djokovic (best tennis player in the world) practices in Belgrade.



Novi Sad's fortress on the hill








Spelling out 3 of the 4 letters for EXIT festival :)





The festival grounds within the fortress









Belgrade and Novi Sad both showed evidence of the wars and conflicts they were involved in not very long ago. Nemanja pointed out to me all three of the bridges that were bombed in 1999 when NATO became involved with the Bosnian War. He lived very close to one of them and remembers hearing the noises and walking outside one morning with neighbors to see what had happened.


One of the bridges rebuilt today





Belgrade is a city of about 2 million people and Novi Sad has only about 300,000 (with about another 300,000 in its outskirts that are mostly Bosnian refugees), but it was amazing to me just how many people were out and walking around. I'm seeing it everywhere in Europe, that I guess the population is usually double or triple what it actually is and I think it's the number of people you see walking around. All of these cities are truly "lived in." I don't think that Europe has many "bedroom communities" or cities where people go straight from their garage to their house and never go downtown. Everyone is out and about!

Both cities were really, really cheap and as a "baller on a budget" (I heard that from another traveler!) that was great news! I've never seen alcohol so cheap either :) so that didn't hurt! Buying a round of drinks is cheaper than a single cocktail in the US. If you're curious here is a sampling of what some things cost in equivalent US dollars:
$7 for two glasses of wine, an espresso, and an iced coffee
$1.25 for glass of wine at a nice outdoor (great for people watching) fancy cafe
$1 for giant slice of meat slathered pizza (there is no vegetarian so go with a friend who will eat your yours!)
80 cents for gelato/ice cream cone
$3.50 for 90 minute train ride
$2 for giant pancake/crêpê with nutella, banana, cherries, cake crumbs
$2.50 for taxi (In Novi Sad, I heard taxis were more expensive in Belgrade)
60 cents for bus ride in Belgrade
40 cents for bus ride in Novi Sad



Just had to include this...almost bought one :) kind of regretting not!

I really enjoyed the Serbian people - very friendly people who want to help you even with a total language barrier. Fortunately, CouchSurfing hooked me up with great people in Belgrade and Mila hooked me up with a close friend in Novi Sad - I had the the best company!


Vojkan showed me around in Belgrade


Alex, my Belgrade host



Nemanja, my host in Novi Sad and Mila's close friend

I missed out on some of the nightlife in Belgrade, which Lonely Planet rated #1 in 2010 for best nightlife, but that was a bit by choice and Alex's work schedule, but after learning what the "scene" was like along the River ("Silicon Valley" was part of the description) I thought staying in the city center was more to my liking. Novi Sad was more to my liking and definitely had a college vibe to it with the large university there. There was a karaoke bar, a two level bar with live cover bands playing 90s hits right off the Pulse dance CDs, and the cheapest cocktails you have ever seen throughout. I wanted to drink four of these ones called Strawberry Cheesecake because they were so good, but I doubted they were low in calories.


The good nightlife in Novi Sad is tucked down small side streets off this main road, yet it felt so incredibly safe.

I have really started to notice a lot of similarities in cuisine (among architecture, lifestyle, and other facets of culture) between the Eastern European/Balkan countries. Baklava and dolma in Turkey and Greece, Burek (a yummy bread/pastry dish filled with meat or cheese) in Turkey, Serbia, and Slovenia and the pancakes in both Serbia and Turkey (though I didn't see any in Istanbul!). And of course each country has their own Raki, but each with their own spin on it. And all of thrse similarities really make sense because they all were at some point part of the Ottoman Empire. You learn in school that one of the benefits of empires was the spread of culture, but now it really hits home and getting to see it first hand is really neat! I'm not sure I would have picked up on all of the similarities if I were to visit each country on a separate trip with years of separation, but visiting them all so closely together is really a treat I think.

And of course my list of favorite observations and educational lessons... These are more for me to help myself remember, but maybe you all find them interesting too!

1. It was even harder to be a vegetarian here. On my first night with Vojkan We walked around for almost three hours while we searched for an option for me. Finally I just decided to take the meat off a meat and mushroom pizza. But the next day, I think I found one of my favorite foods in Serbia! They are called pancakes and they look like just slightly thicker crepes. You can either get the "salty" type which is filled with meat and cheese or you can get them "sweet" and pick from a number of fillings. My favorite was nutella with bananas and cherries and a graham cracker crumb filling. The crepe is then folded in quarters and you are presented with a giant wedge of warm, ooey, goodness. They are soooo good and very filling, but this is a dessert that acts as a meal because you couldn't possibly have room for it after a normal meal.


A look at them through the window....giant!!


Pinnochio Pancakes in Belgrade


And I found them again in Novi Sad!

2. I had previously known that the EU has sort of been leading Serbia on a wild goose chase and a path of obstacles and hoops to jump through in order to join the EU and it is not looking likely that the EU will ever relent as they keep finding new (perhaps even trivial) reasons to delay their joining. However, in Serbia I heard from a couple of sources that the real reason for the EU's reluctancy is because of Serbia's relationship with Kosovo. And I'm very fuzzy on all the details, but Kosovo is its own country I believe, yet Serbia acts as though it is a part of it and this is an obvious problem. I wish I could watch the news in all these countries, but there are no English subtitles!

3. The American embassy was pointed out to me as no longer having any windows due to too many bombings in the last two decades.





Another nearby building never reconstructed after a bomb explosion in Belgrade

4. I was told that still nearly everyone plays the lottery every year for a green card for America. The US takes 55,000 people a year from all countries combined, but only 400 spots are held for Serbians.

5. Everyone smokes...well of course not everyone, but it was noticeable as it was again allowed in bars and cafes and restaurants.

6. I am not sure that there is such a thing as a Fire Building Code in Serbia. Exit and entrance doors in the US I know have to always open outward, so that you pull to enter a building and push to exit a building. This way in case of a fire, the path of egress is least impeded (think stampede behind you, can you really pull that door open and squeeze out still in the panic?). However, I must have walked away from three or four stores or restaurants my first day because I went to pull the doors open to enter and found the doors to be locked on me, or so I thought. I could see people on the inside and even made eye contact with them and while they just stared at me, I assumed that they were closing and didn't want any new patrons. Finally I really needed to grab some fruit and I could see the hours actually posted on this be corner store so I put up a little stronger of a fight and discovered what was probably the case all along - you push to enter the buildings in Serbia :)

7. I also think they have their locks backward. Righty tighty was not the way in Greece and Serbia at least in the locks of my Mykonos hotel room and my host in Belgrade. It was lefty tighty and righty loosey and that just doesn't make sense :)

8. Serbia uses paper money for the equivalent of both 20 cents and 10 cents! And then for their 10 cents they actually have both paper money and a coin. I thought that was super crazy at first and then remembered we do it too with the Sacajawea dollar coin.


9. I thought Mihail, my host in Athens, knew a lot of people running into friends everywhere we went on the streets, in the bars, on the curb at red lights, at the national gardens, bartenders, etc. but Nemanja my host in NS ran into more people in less than 24 hrs... At the bar, the bouncer, guys in cafe, girls in cafe, girl in post office, girl on university campus, a guy who pulls over to the curb because he recognizes Nemanja walking on the sidewalk! I had to wonder why this doesn't seem to happen to me in Tampa and I came up with two reasons - 1. Everyone I know drives so even if I'm out walking, all I hear the next day from my yoga instructor is "I saw you walking in Hyde Park yesterday," 2. Our US cities are too sprawling so our city at 5 million people is much bigger than Athens at 5 million.

10. The emphasis on vacations and holidays is present in Eastern Europe I suppose just as strongly as it is in Western Europe. I couldn't even try to count the number of billboards for travel destinations I saw in both cities. My summation is that Tunisia, Croatia, and Turkey are the big draws for Serbians to holiday in.

11. Coach Buses are twice as expensive as trains in Serbia, but for good reason. The Serbian trains don't run on time on the long line from Istanbul to Budapest and are actually significantly slower. I took the train from Belgrade to Novi Sad and despite it leaving on time it arrived 15 minutes late making the journey 105 minutes and then I took the bus back the next day and it took barely 70 minutes (bus and train stations are right next to each other in both cities).

12. People love J. Lo, Shakira, Beyonce, and Lady Gaga quite possibly more than Americans do.

13. What were pointed out to me as Gypsies, darker skinned people, are fairly common in Serbia. It was heartbreaking to hear little children approaching people on the street and presumably asking for money. (I couldn't understand what they would whisper.) Serbians would treat them with serious disdain though and I think I understood that the gypsies are another problem Serbia has with gaining entrance to the EU.

14. The graduating class photos of every school in Novi Sad were in display in the storefront windows of every shop in Novi Sad! I thought it very community-building-esque and another subtle reason why Novi Sad felt very livable!






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