I woke up to my alarm with a very foggy head. Lack of sleep and
the red wine hangover were not a nice combination. I quietly changed, so as not
to disturb John, and then went downstairs for breakfast. It was just after
9:30am, and I had planned to call the car company before the original pick up
time. I hovered over the food choices at the buffet, opting for bread and
spread with coffee and juice. I connected to the Wi-Fi, looked for the phone
number and made the call. They were happy enough for us to arrive later, so I
ended the call and proceeded to eat and read the news on my phone. The
breakfast room had only the tail end of the breakfast crowd, some mulling over their
day ahead sipping their second or third coffee. The staff were a little less
diligent in their cleaning as they may have been an hour earlier.
I returned to our room, and slowly woke John up. It was now
around 11am, and we needed to travel part way across the city to get to the car
hire place. We both showered and changed, still snoozy from the past 16 hours
of mayhem, and checked out of the hotel. I was keen on getting that hotel
receipt for Wizz Air to refund. The receptionist was chirpy, happily inviting
us back again soon.
We then clunked our large suitcase over and around the roadworks
outside, and onward to the main boulevard. We approached a tram stop that
followed the curved road south, then west, towards the Danube. We scrambled for
tickets to get on the approaching tram, but a lack of confidence in what we
were buying saw us consult over the options again, and wait for the next tram.
We boarded the modern tram that came next - others we had seen being somewhat
older – and stood the 5 stops it took us to the foot of the bridge that spanned
the Danube to the south of the centre. Grand buildings of Imperial style and
faded grandeur lined the route. Many had shops or bars on their ground level,
with accommodation or offices rising above them to 6 or 7 storeys. The
tramlines ran down the middle, with two or three lanes of traffic either side, complete
with pedestrian walkways sliced between them all.
Once off, we took a side street that was less broad but still
very much a thoroughfare to the neighbourhood. Trees lined the pavements,
adding to the shaded nature of the street; a nice rest from the already rising
morning heat. We dropped into a bakery so John could get some breaded items for
his breakfast, and then continued for 5 minutes before turning right onto yet
another smaller side street. On the ground floor of a newly built apartment
block was our car rental place. After waiting for 15 minutes for the client
ahead of us to be sorted, we were served. We had a small but sporty Suzuki that
we name Sandra for the entirety of the journey. After ‘papping’ John in the
driver seat, we entered our directions into the in-built sat nav and departed.
Now, one thing to probably check before you depart in a car with
in-built sat nav in a foreign country, is that the language is set to English.
We learned that quickly, having to interpret the visual guidance without audio,
as we navigated wide boulevards with tramlines intersecting, on our rush out of
the city. Despite that, John did a Class A job of getting us out and on to the
ease of open motorway. We dared not tamper with the sat nav, lest we lose our
way or focus. And so, the rest of the journey to Novi Sad was conducted in
Hungarian.
There was no drawn out
departure from the city. It was an abrupt transition from urban concentration
to rural expanse. The journey was uneventful in itself, no topographical or
architectural points to note. The Danube and Tisza rivers helped produce the
flat Great Hungarian Plain. Agriculture thrived in this environment, and its
richness is one of the reasons why it has been hotly contested in the past. Miles
upon miles of fields and farms were what lay either side of us.
Conversations rang of
expectations for the days ahead, and more concrete plans for the afternoon and
evening before us. John firmly placed beer as one of those priorities. My
Spotify playlist
made for motivational listening in the background, a mix of indie and pop hits
of the 90s and Noughties. We stopped just before the border to top up the car
with petrol, stretch our legs, and grab a coffee. Minutes after pulling back
out on to the motorway, we were at the border. I had anticipated that it would
be rather busy, as it was a major artery between two countries, and the border
of the EU. However, only three cars were in front of us on the Hungarian side,
which was repeated as we crossed no man’s land to the Serbian checkpoint.
Again, the monotony of
the vista resumed. The odd village was passed, but never a city. Szeged and
Subotica, on either side of the border, were 20 or so kilometres away from the
motorway. In Serbia, though, we had to pay at tolls to use the motorways. To be
fair, there were only two occasions that we had to pass through a tollgate, and
we could pay the £2.50 fees with card, so the passage was cheap and easy.
As we approached Novi
Sad from the north, hills began to emerge out of the horizon. You could imagine
this being a part of the Hungarian state, as it once was, if you married
geography to state boundaries. Yet, since the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs,
Croats and Slovenes following World War I, this territory lies firmly in
Serbia; albeit in an autonomous province called Vojvodina. A majority Serb
population lives alongside a sizeable Hungarian population. This is noted in
the bilingual road signs we passed. Smatterings of other groups live here too –
Vlachs, Romanians, Croats and so on. Back further, Germans of Saxon descent
lived in the area that had periods within both the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian
Empires – and formed the Military Frontier of the latter. Furthermore,
Vojvodina is also comprised of three partial geographic areas in the region.
The Backa,
which has a corresponding region in Hungary; the Banat, which has a
corresponding region in Romania; and the Srijem, a wedge of land south of the
Danube but north of the Sava, which extends into Croatia.
I was reeling all
these facts off to John along the way, before we slipped off the motorway. We
travelled along an approach road into the city, and this was clearly the
neighbourhood where the Gypsy community lived. On the outskirts, it lacked any
visible state support for better infrastructure or a cleaner environment. It is
a similar case across Eastern Europe, and we come up for scrutiny too.
We came to the central
part now, and turned towards the works site for the building of the new bridge
across the Danube. It did not look like it had moved any further forward from
when we were here the previous year. We drove along the riverside for 100
yards, and then turned right into a concrete housing estate. We parked up,
faced the heat of the mid-afternoon, and trundled our luggage to the front
door.
The mother or
neighbour of the owner came to meet us, and gave us our keys. We could see the
Danube from the window, at an angle, and the place was basic but clean. Its
main value was that it was a 5-minute walk to the centre of the old town. We
left immediately after I made a call to my mother, to tell her about our
fraught overnight journey, and went straight to a bar on the shopping street.
We visited the same place we ate at last year. John got his promised beer.
We mulled food options
elsewhere, but settled on where we were. So, after eating, we had a proper walk
around the city. The main, open expanse at one end of the shopping street was
quiet, as the searing heat kept people in the shade. Parked on a pavement was a
water tanker providing free water to passers-by.
We looped around the
old city centre, taking in the brutal National Theatre, and the back streets
with their cafes and shops. We found a snug bar with a patio area out back and
had a couple of beers. Dusk approached before we left, and we were starting to
feel tired. So, we walked back via the river to look at the Fortress. We had an
early night, so we could be fresh for Belgrade the next day.
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