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.