eurotrip 4 - novi sad
This weekend I took a trip to Novi Sad, about a 1.5 hour train ride
from Belgrade. Unlike Belgrade which strongly resembles the Apocalypse (some say the NATO bombing actually improved the scenery), Novi Sad was a very beautiful, pleasant, and tranquil city. On Saturday I took a guided tour of several Serbian Orthodox monasteries, a winery/bee museum which included a taste of their famous local herb-infused Bermot wine, and finished the day off with a stroll through the quaint little town of Sremski Karlovci. Later that evening I went to the central square in Novi Sad, which is famous for a Catholic church with a huge steeple (it's all relative to the size of your steeple), and full of fancy shops, restaurants, pubs, and lots of tourists. I finally found a Turkish kabab place where I got an excellent chicken burrito thing with delicious spicy yogurt sauce for only 200 dinars (~US$3.50). Near the square is a nice little park where you can go to relax on a bench, drink a beer, and pee in the bushes. Then today I got up earlier than expected because I didn't realize that Summer Time had ended, which also gave me an extra hour to tour the historic Petrovaradin Fortress on the banks of the Danube river. I actually walked all the way from my hotel across the bridge and to the top of the fortress - much of it on cobblestone roads. After checking out I rushed to the train station for the 13:00 train back to Belgrade, but it was 45 minutes late. The train was packed and I had to stand the whole way back, next to a young man who insisted on smoking the entire time. At one point some police boarded the train and began demanding identification from all the younger men, asked where they were going, and wrote down their names in the name of 'national security.' They didn't seem to care about me, though, since I was a foreigner. As in all national security states, the government is more worried about its own people than foreigners. Now I'm back in Belgrade and it feels like the Apocalypse again. As I disembarked at the train station with the smokestacks in the distance and homeless shelter/flea market underneath, I kept expecting my taxi cab to look like something out of the 'Road Warrior,' but it was just a crappy little Yugo. Until we hear the safe word, we will not stop! Гвожђе |
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