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!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
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!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Your Pinocchio pancake looks delish! The nutella/banana combo is big in Europe; keep trying it with crepes AND waffles. Pinocchio is actually an Italian story...
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