Around the Balkans in 20 Days – Part 9

The streets below were quiet as we woke up on our last morning in Belgrade. I was up like a dart, knowing I had planned a tight regime for us to be up and out within 30 minutes. It was 7am, so John was less inclined to be rushed. We showered, gathered last minute bits for the small backpacks that will travel alongside us, and packed our remaining items into our large traveller backpacks.

We were ready 5 minutes before the scheduled arrival time of our minibus. Yesterday, I confirmed the details with the travel company via email. I was still a little disappointed that we wouldn’t be repeating my journey by train 5 years ago, but at least I would get to see a different route through the rough terrain to Bosnia-Herzegovina’s federal capital.  After 10 minutes of peering down from the window, I noticed a white minibus pull in underneath up. Surely this was ours. So, as we gathered our things and began to lock up, the driver called me. I said that we would be down momentarily. We posted the keys into the mailbox in the lobby as instructed, then pulled the door to. The driver clambered out of the van and said hello, whilst motioning us to the back of the minibus. We bundled our luggage into the back, and got in, joining a woman in her 30’s who must have been the first to be picked up. The van had two seats up with the driver, three in the middle, and three in the back. We opted for the back seats, with the person we joined occupying the middle row. We drove off uphill towards Trg Republika and stopped moments later outside a hotel where we picked up another person. We then drove from there, across the eerily quiet town, to Trg Slavija, picking up another fellow traveller from a side street; and an older woman in her 70s.

We then dashed downhill along the tramlines, from Trg Slavija towards the railway station, turning left and then merging right on to the east/west motorway. I was still a bit drowsy and unaware of my surroundings, but within 15 to 20 minutes, we were out of the city and into flat agricultural land. We coasted along the motorway in near silence, the chatter between the older woman and the driver having died down – perhaps saving themselves for the long haul.

We turned off at an unassuming junction and pulled in on a dusty slip road. My curiosity was piqued, but I was not concerned. It appeared that we were picking up two further people, who seemed to have had a relative bring them here to be taken onward on their journey in our minibus. A rather odd location to be picked up from, I thought. The drama in my head saw the scenario play out as a body-in-the-bag, criminal gang exchange farce. Happily, that was not the case. The man sat up front with the driver, and the woman was in front of John. With the last of our passengers on board, we travelled away from the motorway in a south-westerly direction towards Sabac.

The high speed and relative calm of the initial journey took a sharp turn (only to be superseded later on) as we moved away from motorway/bypass type roads to rural ones. These ones had ditches on either side most of the time that aided the irrigation of the fields that lay all around us. The driver had obviously done this route hundreds of times, and wasted no time nor any opportunity to overtake cars, trucks, even tractors. Blind corners, for John and I seen as death traps to overtake at, were taken on with either arrogance or faith. Neither reassured us. And to add to my discomfort, the day was getting hotter and the seats were made of leather! I had no chance of getting to the end of this journey dry as a bone.

As long and slender villages passed by, broken with the odd larger town here and there, we took a petrol and rest break. We arrived at a small, modern petrol station that had a shop-cum-café attached to it. To confirm the driver’s frequent use of this route, as he entered he was greeted by the staff as a familiar friend. In-between trips to the loo, we scoffed at warm cheese and ham croissants and milky coffees, and then purchased a couple of extras for the rest of the trip. As we had access to Wi-Fi, I looked up the route we had just taken, and possible routes we were about to take. It seemed that the border with Bosnia was not that far away, a mere 1,000 meters.

After 25 minutes the group was back together in the minibus and off we sped. Minor personnel adjustments were made, with the motorway couple swapping places. The roads were a bit quieter now as we travelled towards Loznica and the nearby border post. Out of view, but nearby, was the Drina River, which we would have to cross to get into Bosnia. A small wood to our right cleared and revealed a wall of hills seeming to indicate geographically a different realm. Indeed, as we approached a junction to turn right, the border posts on either side of the bridge confirmed that these hills were indeed those of Bosnia.

And what a quiet crossing it was. On the Serbian side, pseudo-Heraldic flags, long and slim, hung down from tall flag posts. We gave the driver our passports, with the other passengers providing less formal National Identity cards. We stuck out like a sore thumb. Once on the bridge, which had similarities to ones an army would erect, we waited in a queue of 4 cars before getting our documents checked. The flag poles on this side mirrored those we just passed but had two different flags on them, the familiar blue and red flag of the Republika Srpska entity and the yellow and blue of the Bosnia-Herzegovina federation. We drove off into Bosnia within a matter of minutes.

The geography was certainly different. We followed the river south for a short while, before turning west towards the centre of the country. We meandered between the hills and mountains, through the steep and beautiful gorges where the roads we were travelling on could only be built. Many turquoise lakes with short-lived vistas lay along the route, providing relief from suffocating cliffs we ran alongside. In between appreciating the views, I had a novel on the go since we started in Skopje and was 80-100 pages from the end, so I decided to try and finish it before we reached Sarajevo in order to start my next book.

The early start, rising heat, and constant swaying of the minibus along the windy roads must have conspired to send me to sleep. I awoke as we were climbing our way up the last mountain, beyond which Sarajevo hid. Evidently we had passed over into the Muslim-Croat entity some way back, and were now passing through an overtly Bosniak town. Vogošca had a number of mosques with the green flags of Islam hanging from their minarets. All public signs were in the Latin script, and government buildings were easy to spot with their sole flag flying, that of the federation. There seemed to be a chain of towns along this road, the scene changing from shops and transport hubs, to housing and schools, and back again; all the while continually rising in altitude. The peak seemed to be reached at the same point where a brand new mosque, the largest seen up to that point, dominated a hillside spot looking over the descending hill from which we had just climbed. We curved around its grounds and then began our descent into Sarajevo proper.

Given the drivers’ erratic abilities at the wheel, we seemed to ‘land’ in Sarajevo, hurtling down a main road that soon flattened into the main valley floor in no time. The train station appeared on our right, the same direction in which we then turned, as we sped off west in the opposite direction to our BnB.

We ran parallel to the main east-west road that ran through the city, and turned into a high-rise estate in anticipation of our first fellow traveler leaving us. The young woman, who was first in the van, and the older woman began talking. The gist I got, from the fragmented bits of conversation I could transliterate into English, was that the older woman was quizzing the younger one on why she lived here and not in Grbavica – a stone’s throw away across the river. The response I couldn’t decipher. But the brushing off nature of it by the younger woman wasn’t what surprised me, but the reason for asking the question in the first place did. To some, it seems the question of where you lived is still linked to your ethnic/national identity, as Grbavica was the extent of Serb inroads into the city during the siege. We then departed to drop off the rest of the passengers before arriving at the Baščaršija to be dropped off ourselves.

In the narrow streets, lined with track for the characteristic tramline, the minibus pulled up and hogged half of the road. A small commotion was made of our arrival, but we grabbed our belongings, thanked the driver for getting us here (alive), and then I led the way to our BnB. A mere 100 steps away, John observed for the first time the open space of the Baščaršija where the Sebilj is located, ringed by a platoon of pigeons. The Sebilj was the historic centre of the old town where those who travelled through the city would congregate and quench their thirst at the water fountain. We were now at a T-junction, the centre of which had a small water pipe (lots of these are dotted all over the city), where we now turned right and up a steep incline turning left into a makeshift car park almost immediately.

This was our place of rest for the next few days, and had not changed one bit from my previous visit. The décor was still kitsch, containing a collection of paraphernalia gathered over the years with what looked like ethnographic examples of rug making. Our room was a twin and in keeping with the theme at reception; carpet from the early 1990’s (in the UK at least) that had an almost regal theme to it. I believe it was the exact same room I stayed in when I was there 5 years previous. What a coincidence.

We decided that after our long journey we needed showers, bearing in mind it was still in the early 30s temperature wise. As I showered with the window open for the breeze, the old town below was buzzing with the noise of people and cars. This reminded me that when I was last here, alone, I didn’t travel outside of my comfort zone. With John as my comrade in arms, I felt eager to explore a lot more of Sarajevo and Bosnia during this visit. I was really looking forward to hiring a car in a few days time to travel east to Potocari and Visegrad – different reasons for both.

We left once ready and went straight to the old town to have a wonder. The place is all ground floor level shops with glass fronts and terracotta-tiled roofs. The only buildings taller here were the mosques and newer additions such as hotels that stood mostly at the perimeter of the old town. The streets were slab-paved, with water gulley’s to disperse the rainwater into the Miljacka River nearby. We sought refuge in a canopied courtyard surround by the backs of the shops where I ordered Bosnian coffee and water. The shade was a welcome escape from the searing heat.

After this we walked the ‘History Route’ as I call it. This pedestrianized segment runs the middle of a loop of road making up the main east-west road through the city. At first it encompasses the old town with its Ottoman Turkish and Islamic heritage. It then immediately stops, and turns to Austro-Hungarian architecture with pastel plastered buildings soaring to 3 or 4 storey’s high. Along this stretch are a myriad of 19^th century religious buildings of two of the four major faiths - Catholicism and Orthodoxy. We pondered these, then I pointed out to John the Sarajevo Roses and the symbolism of these to the siege. Even here, the streets were narrow and sort of suffocating, with the tops of the hills to our left, on the south bank of the river, lurking over us.

Once we merged with the westbound car traffic, noting the eternal flame monument to mark the freedom of Sarajevo during World Ward Two, the buildings changed to have an earlier 20^th century, modernist feel before breaking into brutalism as we approached the Presidency building. It was at this point we looped back and followed the eastbound main road back to the old town alongside the river.

At newly renovated City Hall, I was keen to push on but I think John had enough at this point in the day. Yet, I persuaded him into climbing up the side streets to the Yellow Bastion to take in a view of the city. As we climbed up the steep hill alongside one of the cemeteries that serve as reminders of the war, the heat and sun really began to beat us down. I had to stop a number of times to either catch breath or wipe my brow of sweat, guzzling water when I could. However, the prize at the top of the hill was the splendid view across the valley westward as the sun hung low in the sky. A smattering of tourists were with us, on this unkempt rampart from Ottoman times. After a short while, we made the return journey with ease, and decided to rest for a few hours.

Not wanting to stay out late, we dressed and went off for dinner. I recalled the restaurant I visited last time that served chocolate steak (or chicken) as a specialty. We sat out in front of the narrow and intimate restaurant, with the now famous poster of a Cellist in the ruins of the City Hall looming behind John. We ate a meal washed down with wine and returned to our BnB after our exhausting day.

Around the Balkans in 20 Days - Part 8

We left the apartment early in order to catch a mid-morning train to Novi Sad. I had wanted to visit the city because it was one of the centres of resistance to Milosevic’s hegemony in the 1999 and 2000. We walked up to Trg Republika, then back down the hill towards the train station, stopping at a kiosk for water and snacks on our way. The final part of our descent to the station led us along a steep, cobbled path where street sellers were in operation. They were either local people selling market type goods, or refugees selling their personal belongings. A very sad sight indeed.

As the train station came into view, we noticed a gathering of people in the park opposite us. As we crossed and walked through, we observed that officials wearing lanyards holding EU cards in them were speaking to the refugees. I assumed that they were migration officials overseeing the implementation of EU policy on the ground. My impression was that they were merely fact-finding to see how many were gathered, what their intentions were, and what their situation was.

We walked onwards to the main train station entrance. The ticket hall was quite dark as there were few windows, or perhaps because it was so sunny outside, but we located the ticket booths instantly. These resembled old-fashioned bank cashier hatches that were framed in dark brown wood, 10 or so in total but only 5 in operation.  The short queue soon disappeared and we asked for two return tickets to Novi Sad. After being handed our tickets I asked for the time of the next train. Again, I had already looked this up and knew what time the train was, but I wanted it corroborated and with the added information of what platform it would depart from. I began to think I had a problem.

We left the ticket hall and returned to the sunshine, which poured down on to the L-shaped plaza area that shadowed the shape of the station building. We had a bit of a wonder around and took a picture or two, as we noticed that the train was already in our platform. Cafes lined the outside of the station building and were alive with custom. Our train was of an older rolling stock, presumably one that played a role in the wars of the 1990s. I was a bit envious of the newer, air-conditioned train that was resting in the platform next to ours. We boarded the dilapidated train, and parked ourselves on seating that reminded me of those plastic and metal school chairs from my childhood. Not the most comfortable, but we bagged a window seat so we could enjoy the views Srijem had to offer. A loud, grinding noise of the engine firing up indicated our immanent departure. However the force of this noise was not matched with an equal emphasis on our acceleration out of the station. At a walkers pace, we slid out of the platform, navigating through the various points on the line. Once clear, the expected speeding up did not occur. This was because we had to incline and bear a sharp right to cross over possibly one of the oldest and creakiest bridges to span the Sava.

Once over, we immediately pulled into Novi Beograd station. The suburb is a Brutalist enthusiasts dream. Tower upon tower and block upon block of browny-grey concrete behemoths stood around us. We trundled on out of the suburbs of the city and entered the flat, agrarian plains. Most of the seats were filled on the train, with commuters sitting in contemplative silence and appreciating the breeze afforded by all the windows being open. Our initial interest soon passed into indifference due to the monotony of wheatfields, with the odd farmhouse every now and again. We anticipated one of the stops, Nova Pazova, as this was where our newfound friend Danilo was staying. The station there was typical of the rural, Balkan kind. A station building level with the tracks, over which you would have to climb to reach your train (no raised platforms or bridges). The station itself was painted sunshine yellow and came topped with a terracotta-tiled roof. No barriers or fencing surrounded the station or its grounds, so people and animals could wonder freely. One or two rail company officials were visible by their uniforms, and a handful of passengers boarded replacing those who left just before them.

The scenery remained unchanged until we started to approach the Danube. We couldn’t actually see the river, but the change in surroundings from flat, agricultural land to hilly forests certainly indicated that we ascended slightly on to land that would have historically housed inhabitants up and away from the floodplains from which we came.  In fact there was a train station nestled amongst the dense forestry, which we stopped at. A number of people got off here, armed with beach towels and picnics, pointing  perhaps to a secluded yet popular riverside spot for those in the know. We carried on to Novi Sad.

The train curved east around the hill town of Petrovaradin and opened up to the length of the Danube, which we were about to cross, and the city of Novi Sad behind it. To our immediate right was a gargantuan structure of two white arches with reinforcing metal ropes, one on each side of the river. A new bridge was under construction. We crept across our makeshift bridge, finally settling into the main railway station a kilometer away.

Again, faded beauty is how I would best describe this brutalist construct. The raised platforms were on the first floor, so we descended to the ground floor, passing under the platforms above and into a massive 1970s style arrivals and departures hall, then out to the plaza area outside. Unsure of what bus to take to the old town, we decided to get a taxi from the taxi rank to our left. A brief conversation led to our jumping in and hurtling off down the main boulevard that began opposite the station plaza. Again, this part of town must have been some part of a model new city, as the boulevard was three lanes wide on each side of a grassy central reservation, accompanied by parades of shops on either side occupying the ground floor level of rows of 12 storey tower blocks. We then bared left as we arched around the old town centre. We got dropped off and paid the near £12 fare, a bit of a rip off to be honest. But with only 4 hours in the city, I didn’t want to waste any time. We walked away from the now dual carriageway towards what I assumed to be the direction of the main square.

The buildings here reflected the architecture of the Austro-Hungarian period. The city would have been one of the last places in the empire before reaching the Ottoman border, whose furthest reaches would have been  the rivers shores opposite Belgrade. Over different periods it would have been Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, then Yugoslavian. It now occupies the role as the capital of the Vojvodina region in Serbia. The Hungarian minority presence was felt not just by legacies invested in the buildings we were walking past, but by the street signs and other official signage being bilingual and in two scripts. You had Serbian in Latin and Cyrillic scripts, and Hungarian in Latin too.

The square was quite vast, with the expected grand 19^th century municipal buildings and a church occupying its perimeter. We had a close look at a few to try and see what they were. This proved difficult when all the marble signs did not contain English. The odd word sprung out, like ‘banka’, so we did our best at deciphering them.  We walked down some side streets in a loop and ended up at the top end of a pedestrianized street that began at the square. It had café seating along it, so we decided that we should eat and grab drinks, as it was a scorching day. We settled at a table under a parasol and the waiter kindly brought over two English menus.

After lunch, I wanted to visit the Petrovaradin Fortress. This hosted Exit Festival each year, the initial gathering of which was the student protest in support of democracy at the turn of the millennium.  We walked towards the river, away from the old town, and merged again with the dual carriageway ring road. Just off it was a modernist looking building that housed the Socialist Party of Serbia, therefore it must have been the former headquarters for the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. After we walked across a junction and turned a corner we noticed a long modernist building that resembled a ship – complete with a Captains Bridge perched on top. It had nautical themes engraved on it, so it must have had something to do with the ship trade on the Danube. After 5 minutes, we reached the bridge that led over to Petrovaradin. The castle seemed to loom over the river, an imposing feature on the skyline. We crossed over and entered a rather rundown but quaint village. The houses seemed almost French, and were obviously the residences of those who had some connection to the fortress above. We walked up the main street, diverting right onto a cobbled side street to locate the path up the hill.

After a steep and sweat inducing climb, we reached the top and now saw the view of Novi Sad from up on high.  The river flowed directly below us, to our right we could see the two new bridge archways in the distance. Northwestern Vojvodina stretched out behind Novi Sad and was as flat as that which lay outside of Belgrade. We must have been on top of one of the few hills in the region, and one which was an obvious choice of location to build a fortress. There was a restaurant and a café located within the walls, so we decided that a couple of beers would be a nice reward for our efforts and with which to enjoy the view.

We were conscious of time, so departed after 45 minutes and made our way back down the slope, through the small village and over the bridge. We returned to where our taxi dropped us off and noticed a taxi rank. We set off back up the brutalist boulevard, and were placed outside the station for a cheaper fee than our outbound journey. I noticed an old locomotive outside the station, so decided to go over and inspect it. We then went inside and asked at one of the desks which train we could get. The staff member said that we could get the next one, which was deemed the ‘fast’ service (it shaved off 15 minutes off the 2 hour 10 minute journey to get here). It was due in 4 minutes, so we darted through the underpass and emerged at the platform at the same time as the train.

The train was your stereotypical trans-continental type, probably glamorous in the 1970s and 1980s but had grew tired over the years. We approached the 2^nd class carriage and climbed on. The train had come from Budapest and was heading to Belgrade as its last stop. The décor was similar to that on the bus we took from Skopje – carpet-esque, moquette textile lined the walls (including the ceiling) - and the seats were a lot comfier than on the train ride here. I put on my headphones as the train pulled away, awake long enough to gaze back over the city as we crept back across the bridge to Petrovaradin, before succumbing to tiredness.

When we arrived in Belgrade, I thought we should walk a different route back, so that we could see a bit more of the side streets of the city. So we turned left out of the train station, and walked northwest along the main road that loops clockwise around the base of the Kalamegdan. We passed the Bristol Hotel and onwards to an art gallery and some ‘pop-up’ café bars that were housed in what seemed to be ex-dock buildings. We then approached a viaduct, and walked up some steps that saw us come level with the road it carried. We weaved along side roads, always uphill, so that we could reach the main shopping street. We came across a quiet square surrounded by restaurants and those high-end businesses housed in glass-fronted offices with sparse furniture and two or three employees.  We noted the restaurants for the evening.

Back at the apartment, we decided to do some basic packing ahead of our departure tomorrow and then agreed that we should head back to the fortress for the final evening. On our way over we bought some crisps and two 2-litre bottles of chilled Jelen beer. The park within the fortress walls was beginning to darken, the shadows beginning to creep further away from their source. We approached the outer wall and placed ourselves on top, as many others were doing and had done so around us.

And what a way to spend the last night in Belgrade! The blue sky above had already begun to turn pink-purple as it neared the orange-red sun on its approach to the horizon. Only a WWI plane flying overhead, an added touch of history at this poignant location, broke the quiet on this warm evening. A relaxed feeling came over me, quite possibly from the beer, but a note of surprise was that I was not planning in my head tomorrow’s journey. Being in the moment was all I felt. And the romance of sitting on this wall, with John by my side as the sun finally set over Zemun and the WWI plane playing a supporting role, was truly a memory to treasure.

We sauntered back through the park and to a restaurant near the square from earlier. The meal was so-so, but we decided to go to another café on the shopping street for dessert. John outdid himself with a large ice cream sundae. We then went back and finished our packing ahead of our early start tomorrow.