Day 14 – A visit to Zemun (Friday 26th April 2024)

We’ve got the whole day to explore Belgrade at our leisure today. Ivana proposed a visit to the village of Zemun on the banks of the Danube, just across the Sava river from downtown Belgrade. Our first experience on the Belgrade public transport system was about to begin. With our all-day transport passes in hand, kindly provided by Ivana, we set off on a bus for Zemun. Belgrade is the only large European city to not have a Metro. The locals rely upon trams and electric buses, drawing their power from overhead wires just like the tram does, to get them around their city. The ticket was cheap – 190 Dinar ($AUD2.50). There are plenty of trams and buses trundling up and down the streets on a regular schedule. Some of the trams are very new while an equal number are very old having been donated by the Swiss people when they refreshed their own network many years ago. Electric buses are the go in Budapest too, by the way.

Zemun is not actually a separate little town, more-so an enclave within Belgrade. The charm of this place is its quiet, little cobble-stoned streets, its central market square, its hilltop fortress dominated by a 50m high tower and its open air cafes down on the banks of the Danube.

 

 

After the climb up the tower for a wonderfully panoramic view of Belgrade across the Danube the group wandered down to a water-front cafe for a much needed coffee. The poor chap waiting on the tables was inundated and overwhelmed a when our group of fifteen descended upon his lovely little shaded terrace. He did a great job getting everyone’s coffees organised in a timely fashion and expressed his appreciation for our custom. By now it was a fabulous, blue-sky day, the cold weather clothes were gone and the short-sleeves and hats were getting an airing for the first time. Bewdiful!! Our gallant waiter was still recovering from our coffee onslaught when it was time for us to move on. It quickly became apparent to Ivana that the poor chap would nit be able to cope with preparing, dispatching and receiving payment for multiple separate bills so she stepped in to save his day and paid all the bills on our behalf. What a angel!

One hundred metres down the promenade we made our next stop at a restaurant for lunch. We were the only patrons but soon filled the place with lots of chat and laughter. The food was good, the wine was good and the company was excellent. Today was a special day – it was Dennis’ birthday. After we’d all finished our meals the waiter appeared with a little cake and candle next to Dennis who, unbeknown to him, had been placed at the head of the table when all sat down for lunch. We sang arousing rendition of “Happy Birthday” before tucking into a selection of little cakes and slices that had been placed on the table. Organised by Polly, I think! Very yummy cakes, indeed. Everyone got into the spirit of the occasion and set aside any crazy ideas about diet and “healthy eating”. Sometimes “healthy eating” means eating for the health of the soul!

A magnificent lunch done, we assembled back on the promenade. Some were keen to walk it off so headed off along the river back to town – a walk of about 90 minutes. The rest of us had some places we wished to visit back in the city so elected to catch the bus. I must make an observation on the skyline of Belgrade at this juncture. The city has a bit of a mish-mash of architectural styles – some well preserved 19^th century buildings, some not so well preserved, some 1960-70 abominations, and a small handful of skyscraper scattered here and there. Also dotted throughout the streets are literally half-destroyed multi-storey buildings, apparently the victims of terror attacks and the like in previous decades allowed to stand there half falling down with no intention of letting a wrecking ball finish the job. But the buildings that take the prize are the horrible, grey, twenty-five storey communist-era housing blocks that letter the skyline. Belgrade is not a city of tall buildings so these monstrosities are made even more apparent.

 

Our bus came, we boarded made our way a few kilometres along the road back to the city…. and stopped. Into a huge traffic jam we had landed. Being in public transport didn’t help as we had to share the road with the cars. No bus lanes here! Ivana took an Executive Decision and we all jumped off and began the long walk back to the hotel, along with hundreds of other frustrated passengers who had to be somewhere else already. It’s actually always fun to walk through cities in this manner, far away from the well-worn tourist paths. I reckon you get something of a sense of “real life” in the city. After we’d crossed the green steel arch bridge (like a mini Sydney Harbour Bridge) the traffic congestion eased so we took a bus again for the next couple of stops – minus the Birthday Boy. In his eagerness to get home Dennis had prematurely boarded the wrong bus! But he was misplaced for only a short while as he had quickly realised his predicament and got off at the next stop.

Kerry, Mel and I were keen to visit the little museum honoring the life of the great Serbian inventor, Nikola Tesla, the man who discovered alternating current, just a couple of blocks from the hotel. It’s a very small museum with original artefacts from his life and some items which were created by others as a direct results of his inventiveness. Quite a remarkable man and quite fitting that his name be at the forefront of the world’s shift to full electrification. If you can believe the story related to us during the presentation, Tesla foresaw mankind’s insatiable hunger for more power and spent the latter years of his life advocating for the sensible and judicial use of it.

As the day was drawing to a close and the city was beginning to light up (thanks Nikola!!) we walked over to the splendid St, Sava Orthodox Church. A massive and magnificent building standing on a high-point overlooking the old town. The interior is just too beautiful to describe. Hopefully the pictures will do some sort of justice to the masterpiece created by the countless artisans who built her.

We strolled home past the wonderfully lit fountain in the centre of Belgrade’s Slavija Square, a huge roundabout that would rival the roundabout upon which the Arc de Triomphe sits for size. Night had now fallen so we grabbed Rob and sat out in the street in a nearby bar for a well earned beer.

Day 13 – On To Belgrade (Thursday 25th April 2024)

This morning the “foreigners” amongst us received a history lesson about Australia’s involvement in conflicts on European soil. Although caught up in the sights and sounds of life touring new lands, every Australian and Kiwi amongst us had not forgotten that today is ANZAC Day. In these foreign lands we still took time out to remember the sacrifice made by our forebears to protect the lives of the people who live in this part of the world.

This morning started with a short taxi ride to the Novi Sad train station for a journey to Belgrade, the capital city of Serbia. The double-decker train was very new and quite flash. It left on time at exactly 11:00am for the rapid and smooth 100km journey. Just thirty-five minutes later we arrived in Belgrade, a big and bustling city. Early in the afternoon the group walked into the “old” part of the city to the area down near the fortress. Belgrade has been on this spot at the confluence of the Danube and Sava rivers for millenia. It was first settled by the Romans and then over the ensuing centuries has been conquered by many other different invading forces. The Ottoman Turks had a very long tenure here, close to 400 years. Despite that there doesn’t seem to be a strong Turkish influence in the 21^st century. I do believe, however, that there is an unseen influence in the Serbian language which contains about 2000 words of Turkish origin. The text used in Serbia is Cyrillic, not Latin, so the written word is impossible for we westerners to understand or even interpret. Thankfully, as is the case in most parts of the world, English descriptions accompany most things. But not on the public transport system. Numbers are written in the way to which we are accustomed so to catch a bus, for example, you just need to know the of the bus you need to catch and recognise where to get off!

After lunch a guide (Zjelko) met us and we took a two hour tour of the fortress precinct. Zjelko was very informative and entertaining although there was a strong element of what I would call the “tour group formula” to his presentation. I suppose there’s only so many ways you can crack a nut. In a part of the park which the fortress now encircles was a set of banners with accompanying photographs describing the successes of Serbian sports men, women and teams in recent years. I think it was a precursor to the Olympic Games in a couple of months time. Anyway, what I found quite strange about this display was that there was only one banner proclaiming the feats of arguably Serbia’s greatest ever sportsman, Novak Djokovic. What was really strange was that the photograph showed the back of Novak as he was leaving the court after being eliminated from a Major. I reckon they could have tried a little harder to find something that more accurately reflected his contribution to the Serbian sporting landscape.

 

The view of the confluence of the Danube and the Sava from the hill-top upon which the fortress sits is quite spectacular. Both massive bodies of water, the Sava comes in from the south-west and the Danube from the north-west. The sky was bright and sunny and the day was pleasantly warm-ish. The tour of the fortress finished with Zjelko sharing some of his father’s Rakia – a traditionally home-made, fruit-based spirit (this one made of plum) which is 25% abv. It certainly warms you up from the inside out when it goes down the hatch! Zjelko the led us through the Student’s Square in the university section of Belgrade and finally to Republic Square.

 

By now it was about 6:00pm, People went their separate ways to explore more of the city in the last couple of hours before sunset. Others hung around Republic Square to join the crowds building there. Preparations were well underway for some evening musical entertainment of some sort. Kerry, Rob and I headed for the Hotel Moscow which we had passed earlier in the day. This hotel is Belgrade’s swankiest hotel. We headed there for a very late afternoon tea choosing to sit at a table out on the street to watch Belgrade go about its business. Polly strolled by so we invited her to join us for tea. Our waiter was Nikola, a charming young chap who provided us with great service. Kerry and I had tea, the Hotel Moscow cake and crepes. Rob had a glass of ice-cream, cream and fruits. All very delicious. A girl on a grand piano inside the hotel provided the musical accompaniment to our little afternoon indulgence. Inside the hotel we found a lovely setting of tables, chairs and busy waiters tending to the many guests. The décor and ambience was very “European”and not as over-stated as the New York Cafe in Budapest. We found a group of girls from our tour group enjoying an afternoon-tea indulgence too!

An early night was the order of the day so Kerry, Rob and I headed back to the Hotel Argo and retired for the day.

Day 12 – A glimpse of the Balkan Wars (Wednesday 24th April 2024)

By the end of today we’ll be in Novi Sad in Serbia, the country’s second largest city with a population of about 300,000. But before we get there we’ll get a chance to learn a little about the Croatian War of Independence.

Very briefly, the country known as Yugoslavia was the amalgamation of lands on the Balkan peninsula upon which mixed ethnic and religious groups of people had lived for centuries. The one thing they had in common was that they were all “southern Slavs” – which is what Yugo-slavia literally means. The countries today that once comprised Yugoslavia are Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzogovenia, North Macedonia and Montenegro. By 1963 the country had changed its name to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Its President (for life) was Marshal Josip Tito. Tito had the ability to somehow keep this group of different (but somewhat the same) people in line and functioning as a single entity. But in 1980 he died and the wheels began to wobble. By 1991 the Croatian people had decided they wanted “out “ of Yugoslavia but the Serbian people and the Yugoslav army had other ideas. Thus began the Croatian War of Independence.

After four long and bloody years Croatia finally won it’s independence from Yugoslavia. Following Croatia’s 1991 declaration of independence, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Slovenia were emboldened to do the same so the theatre of war broadened on the Balkan peninsula with substantial loss of blood and the displacement of millions of people. There are lots of gaps in my very brief description above so I’d recommend further reading on this complex and terrible time in human history to get the full picture.

Although Osijek was under siege during the Croatian War of Independence it never fell. However, its neighbour Vukovar just 35 minutes down the road did not fair so well. The Siege of Vukovar lasted 87 days and the city eventually fell to the invading forces. We heard the story through our visit to the Vukovar hospital which was a target the Serbian and Yugoslav forces during the siege, despite the international illegality of attacking a hospital during wartime. We toured the basement of the hospital which became the last place of refuge for the medical teams who were trying valiantly to save lives in the worst imaginable conditions. The siege ended with victory to the invading forces in November 1991. Having worked so hard to save lives the medical teams were captured, taken to a nearby farm and murdered in cold blood.

 

 

It’s hard to image that all this transpired on the same streets we walked today. We did pass one building which still stands, riddled with bullet holes. The water tower in Vukovar was the constant target of the enemy but it was never toppled so stands today as an important symbol for the people of this town.

 

Since leaving Osijek we’ve been, more or less, following the Danube so were as far east in Croatia as we can go. Serbia is on the other bank. After a further 40-odd kilometres we came ti the town of Ilok. This town is at the heart of Croatia’s wine growing region with a history (and a cellar) dating back to the 15^th century. Here we visited the Stari Podrum cellars for a wine degustation. Following a brief tour of the cellars we took our places at a long table and sampled a few of their fine wines. The region is most famous for making Traminac, a dry-ish white wine. It also makes red wine, some of which I’m sampling while writing tonight. This cellar’s Traminac is the white wine of choice of the House of Windsor. They’ve been providing it to the British Royal Family since Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1952, not just for special occasions like that but for daily consumption as well.

On we drove, through the Croatia/Serbia border control. We even got a stamp in our passports as Serbia is not in the EU so border control is done the way it was in the olden days pre-Scheng

en. By mid-afternoon our little bus arrived in Novi Sad. Once again the hotel is in a really good location right in the heart of town, literally a two minute walk from the large pedestrian mall that runs through there. After a visit to a bar with Rob and Guido Kerry and I wandered around the central precinct visiting an eastern orthodox church at one end of the street and a Roman Catholic church at the other. We were in the latter a 6:00pm when the bell in the tower tolled, the lights in the church came on and a team of clergy appeared on the altar. Evening Mass had begun! We stayed until the sermon was delivered then quietly snuck out through the front door to make our rendezvous with the others for dinner.

Day 11 - The Tour de Osijek (Tuesday 23rd April 2024)

Nearby Qsijek is an environmentally significant wetland in the Kopački Rit Nature Park just near the village of Kopačevo, about 11kms away. A good proportion of the crew decided to take up the option of cycling to the wetlands and them taking a boat ride thereupon. Ivana organised the bicycles from a local bike shop and he arrived with them at about 10:00am. A short familiarisation ride up and down the street saw a couple the member of the peleton abandon before the we got started. Kerry and Rob from Cornwall were amongst them. Kerry has never been very comfortable on a bike so she decided not to risk an untimely incident out in the wilds of Slovania – the district in which Osijek is the “capital”. Rob had not been on a bike for more than 35 years so with sentiments similar to Kerry’s abandoned also. Nevertheless, that still left a good sized peleton of Ivana, Michelle, Samantha, Guido, Janice and moi. Polly and Dennis were also intending to join the peleton but Dennis suffered a mechanical before today’s Stage even started. The team mechanic couldn’t fix the problem on the spot so back to the garage they went, intending to quickly catch up lost ground and time and rejoin the peleton before we reached the wetlands.

The starter dropped his flag and off we went. It was hard going at first, riding on the pancake-flat roads of Osijek until we got to the bike path. Here I reckon the path had a slight rise in it (probably 100mm/1000m) and we were definitely riding into a head wind. For the first few kilometres my knees were fiercely reminding me that bicycle riding was not their thing. I stopped halfway along the bike path to deal with my own mechanical - my chain had come off after stuffing around with my gears too much. I fixed that without the need of a mechanic and soon joined the rest of the peleton as they reached the outskirts of the village of Bilje.

Off the bike path and onto the streets of Bilje we went. The crowds weren’t there to cheers us on so just unobtrusively made our way through to the other side of town. Here we turned right down a long straight country lane, our rapid progress only being slowed by an elderly gentleman and his wife out for a drive in the two white horse-power cart. They headed on through the village of Kopačevo and we swung left arriving shortly afterwards at the Nature Park. Stage 1 distance – 11.8kms.

 

After a quick coffee in a very smoky little cafe (smoking indoors in public places is not permitted in Croatia) we bought a ticker for the boat ride on the wetlands (EUR12.00) and proceeded to the dock via a series of elevated wooden walkways and stone paths through the wetlands in the immediate vicinity. With their mechanical problems resolved and in spite of a geographic communication breakdown, Polly and Dennis joined as just as the boat was about to launch. During the 60 minute boat ride we were entertained and educated by a very knowledgeable young chap who clearly knows his stuff about his backyard. The highlights of the trip were the observation of the quite common white-tailed eagle, a swan on her nest, a few tortoises here and there and a pat from a very excitable young something-oodle onboard the boat. After the boat docked we walked back to the kiosk where we’d left our bikes. Stage 2 of the Tour de Osijek took a slightly different route through the village of Kopačevo and then on through Bilje and back to the bike path. Being just a domestique in Team Intrepid, I slowed down and let the peleton get away, to help Polly ride back to the group. She’d stopped for a few photos so had fallen quite some way behind, placing herself at great risk of not finishing in the allotted time and consequently being eliminated from the peleton by the Commissars.

 

The first and only feeding station was at a little local restaurant next to the Drava river on the edge of Osijek. I had roast pork neck which was as tough as old riding shoes. But the wine was good. From here we all went our separate ways. Some hadn’t ridden enough after 25kms and wanted more. Guido and I headed straight back to the team bus (hotel) to rest our weary legs. Upon arrival Kerry was no where to be seen so I waited outside our room. Eventually she appeared tired and bedraggled. On the boat Polly had let me know that Kerry had “gone walking”. Great, I thought, no doubt exploring the town a little more with those who didn’t join the Tour de Osijek. Wrong! Kerry and Rob had tagged along with Charlotte and Elaine to find out too late that it was their intention to walk to the wetlands! A 25km ride was enough of an effort for me bit a 25kms walk is nothing short of Herculean. Needless to say both Kerry and Rob were exhausted and quite sore when they returned to the hotel. The four of us found a nearby pub, had a couple of drinks and a light meal and then headed home to bed.

Janine, I did not know that Osijek is the birthplace of that great Aussie tennis player Jelena Dokic! Thanks for the tip.