Novi Sad, Serbia - My Third and Final Former-Yugoslav Adventure

This past week has been crazy, so I just finally got time to sit down and write this article. Novi Sad was a really great weekend, but this post is going to be quick so I can start my Paris post, sorry Laslo.

Two weekends ago 6 of us went to visit Szilvia and Laslo's hometown of Novi Sad, Serbia for the long weekend. Cora, Daniel, Paola (from ECHEM, originally from Spain), and I went in Paola's car. Szilvia drove with Roland (Paola's Austrian friend). We drove through Hungary and into Serbia, arriving late on Thursday. We stayed in Szilvia and Laslo's uncle's old apartment which was packed with food, including beer in the fridge, hot supper in the oven, and the inescapable schnapps in the cupboard. Their uncle had cooked us a huge quiche-like dinner filled with eggs and cheese with a flaky crust on top, it was really good.

Friday we went to the Petrovaradin Fortress across the Danube from Novi Sad. There has been a fortified settlement at that location since before 3000BC, but the majority of the fortress that we saw was built by Austria-Hungary about 300 years ago to protect Novi Sad from the Turks.
The clocktower at the fortress, the symbol of Novi Sad, was under renovation, hence the missing arms. The long arm on the clock is actually the hour hand, as it is the only one visible from Novi Sad, and apparently the locals weren't too concerned with the exact time, so that's all they needed.
From the fortress you can see the three bridges across the Danube which have been rebuilt after being bombed by NATO in 1999, along with the oil refinery, electrical, communications, and drinking water infrastructures, as well as some residential areas...
The fortress has now been converted into a museum, a 5 star hotel, a 1000 star hostel ("because it has pieces of the roof missing, so you see the stars through the holes in the ceiling" - Laslo), and an artisan community. The artist's houses have galleries on the ground floor and apartments on the upper floors. The fact that the fortress is always filled with artists has resulted in a lot of cool outdoor artwork.
A bit cold and damp from the fortress we went to meet Szilvia and Laslo's parents. Unfortunately they speak German, Hungarian, Serbian, Croatian, and Macedonian, but no English. Their father could speak some "Tarzan English" as they call it, and my poor German and Laslo and Szilvia's translations got me through the rest. They had prepared a delicious Hungarian paprikash, which we ate with noodles, wine, and of course, schnapps. After dinner we watched some Spanish 'Telenovela' soap operas with Cyrillic subtitles with their mom, random but a lot of fun. Most Serbian media is left in the original language with Cyrillic Serbian subtitles, to which Szilvia credits her knowledge of English.
That night we went to the city centre, which was really nice, like a small Vienna. In the central plaza there was an exhibit of painted cows where we found some now worthless old Yugoslav money on the street. I found a 50,000,000,000 Florin bill (uncontrolled inflation) and Cora found a 100,000,000 Florin bill.
Before going out we stopped at a Palačinka (Crêpe, č=ch) restaurant. We got delicious dessert versions, mine was a banana split, filled with ice creme and topped with bananas and (sweetened!) whipped creme. They were delicious, huge, and cheap. Even cheaper considering that Laslo paid, thanks again! In case you don't recognise them yet (which you should by now) the photo below is of Laslo and Szilvia.

That night we went to Szilvia's favourite bar, a tiny hole-in-the-wall club with faux-fur walls and a disco ball. The music was great, so Paola, Daniel, Szilvia, and I stayed until 3am or so, and were the last ones to leave. I taught them my full range of expert dance moves, including: the fisherman, the sprinkler, the grocery cart, the lawnmower, the standard car, and many more. I'm sure I tarnished the name of Canadian dancing in Serbia for many generations to come.

The view from the apartment:

The five of us crammed into Szilvia's little car to tour a bit before going to their Grandma's for a BBQ dinner.
The control for the windshield wipers was broken so Cora had to run out and squeegee the windows as fast as she could at red lights and stop signs.

Daniel, Paola, and I crammed in the back seat.

Their Grandma's house had a big kitchen building in the backyard, perfect for huge family barbeques. The photo below is of Szilvia and Laslo with their dad, grandma, and two cousins who speak better English than I do. Their dad cooked a whole pot of burgers, sausages, porkchops and bacon, with skewers of vegetables for Roland (who's a vegetarian).
Szilvia was singing along to the radio when her grandmother said, in sweet-old-lady Hungarian, "why, you still sing so badly..." and when Cora joined in (and neighbourhood dogs started to howl) she said "now the other one has started, God save us!". After dinner we decided to go skating with Laslo, and I shattered the stereotype that all Canadians are good at hockey.
The next morning we had a big breakfast, and were joined by their cousin, a friend, and the DJ from the faux-fur-covered bar who had burned us all CDs.
We left at 1:00 to beat the rush at the border as everyone returned from the long weekend. Reaching the Serbian border we stopped behind a sea of cars. Moving at a rate of 1 car every 5 min we crawled to the border. An hour later when we reached the border we saw why things were moving so slowly, from the other side of the border in no-mans-land there were cars as far as you could see heading towards Hungary. Stuck in the line with no escape we began the crawl forward as the sun began to set. After 2 hours and a minor altercation where we saw what happens when you mix a girl with a French temper and an American mouth with a frustrated Serbian man, we arrived at the border. In order to speed up the crossing Szilvia, Daniel, and I walked through the non-EU border while the cars went through the EU border. They were checking the cars very thoroughly, but they somehow missed the 2L of home-made schnapps in Roland's back seat (which he received from his long-lost relatives who he visited that weekend after tracking them down through birth certificates to a small city near Novi Sad).

Four and a half hours after we left Novi Sad, we were 1 hour away, but officially in Hungary. The rest of the ride went quickly, and we were back in Vienna by 10:30.

As it's taken me this long to finish this post, the Paris one might be a long time coming, although I guess I should finish it before I leave for Stockholm on Thursday.

Things are going great in Vienna, it's nice to have a relaxing weekend, and this morning it snowed for the first time. As of today I have been in Europe 6 months! I can't wait to see everyone at Christmas, which is just a few weeks away. However between now and then I have Stockholm, my German class, and the Christmas markets to keep me distracted. Once I return from Stockholm I will start writing posts about daily life in Vienna again, with lots of photos of the city decorated for Christmas.

Croatia

Last weekend was our trip to Rijeka, Croatia to see the sea and visit our friend Marina, who you may remember from Oktoberfest.

Attila, MA, José, and I left Vienna at 9am hoping to get to Rijeka around 6. However, we had to stop in Wiener Neustadt to pick up Farkhod, a 30 year old IAESTE trainee from Uzbekistan. We crammed him into the already packed car and headed to Croatia. On the way we stopped in Slovenia for lunch; the food was good, but nothing special. The wine was cheap, and tasted like it. We finally arrived at the Slovenia/Croatia border and that's when everything went wrong.

You probably won't be shocked to hear that people from Uzbekistan need visas to enter other countries, and as Croatia isn't EU, Farkhod's EU visa was useless. After a long discussion between Farkhod the the border officers he was finally allowed to leave Slovenia on the condition that he was allowed into Croatia. So, we pulled ahead 400m to the Croatia border, where we were stopped again, trapped in no-man's land while Farkhod tried to convince them to let him through. Surprise, surprise, he had to go back. So, we drove him back into Slovenia, and left him with his food, some clothes, and his wallet to find his own way back (he somehow ended up in Munich on his way back to Vienna, don't know how he managed that one).

After being thoroughly checked again at the border to ensure there were no more Uzbeks hidden in our car, we entered Croatia and drove the 20min to Rijeka. As we were entering the city, the sun was setting over the Adriatic.
After driving in circles attempting to find a parking spot, we found a spot to idle and phoned Marina. Looking for a landmark, Attila and MA discovered that we were right by Nikola Tesla's elementary school, now a part of the University of Rijeka. She met us there, and took us to our hostel. The hostel was run by the Red Cross and was really really cheap, at ~€8/person/night for a large 5 person room with an amazing view.

As the others weren't leaving Vienna until around 4pm, we went out to eat. We stopped into a pizza restaurant and read through the menu, someone jokingly pointed out that there was a smoked horsemeat pizza, and one thing lead to another...
It wasn't that bad, it tasted like prosciutto. After that, we went to a bar on a boat, then an English pub where we were finally met by the others.

The next morning we woke up late and missed our boat tour (which we weren't too upset about because it would have been €20). While everyone was getting ready I took these pictures of Rijeka and the Adriatic from our window, I told you it was a good view.

On one of the utility room doors in the hostel we found this sign; no grinding.

The central streets of Rijeka have been turned into a large pedestrian mall. One random thing is that the pedestrian street was paved in marble, the local stone, very classy.Unlike Bosnia, there were flags everywhere in Croatia. However, the flags of most of the Balkan countries and the Bosnian province of Srpska look very similar, with red, white, and blue stripes in different orders and occasionally a crest. Croatia's flag was no different.
Near the bus terminal there was this very ornate church, parts of it reminded me of the fisherman's bastion in Budapest.
The hills around Rijeka are filled with houses, our hostel was also on one of the hills, which was so steep that the buildings all along the street were set back a few meters and connected to the walled sidewalk by bridges one or two stories up from the ground floor.
After a super-cheap ($1) hearty lunch at a student cafeteria we drove about 20min to the tourist-town of Opatija, parked the cars and went right to one of the rocky beaches.
The water was clear blue and warm, considering the fact that the air was ~8°C. It wasn't warm enough to swim in, by European standards, but felt like the St.Lawrence in June.

Predrag, me, Attila, José, and Andrew.Jasmina (Macedonia) and CoraFrom that beach we walked along the seawall infront of large homes, hotels, and parks.

After walking around to the harbour and through a large park we came upon a coffee and cocktail bar with a sandy beach and lounge chairs. It was their last day of operation for the season so we had the place mostly to ourselves.
After a cappuccino we headed straight for the lounge chairs. José found it very cold, as winter in southern Portugal is about as cold as a warm fall day. Andrew on the other hand proved that 8°C is Canadian sunbathing weather.

Our short coffee stop turned into a long lounge by the Adriatic.The architecture and feel of Western Croatia is very Italian, because at one point it was a part of Italy, and is only 90km away from Trieste.

That night we toured around Rijeka, and ended up back in the now-very-crowded boat bar. The next morning we decided to part ways with one car (Attila, Cora, Jasmina, and myself) going back through Ljubljana, and the other car (MA, Predrag, José, and Andrew) taking the longer route through Zagreb, dropping Marina off at her parent's house on the way.

We opted to keep driving instead of entering Ljubljana, and got the Slovenia-Austria border just as it started to get dark.
We arrived back in Vienna at 8:00, and had the girls over to our place to celebrate Attila's 24th birthday.

Today (25th) I leave for Novi Sad, Serbia. Sounds like Szilvia and Laslo's family is very excited to meet us, it should be great. It'll be fun to hang out with Laslo again, and enjoy the extra long weekend (holiday + 1 extra hour from daylight savings).

After Serbia I have 1 evening to pack (for the move and Paris) and move into Haus Döbling, then Tuesday evening I have my first German class, and Wednesday I leave for Paris, so the Serbia post might be a while, and might be really quick to make room for what is sure to be a novel-length Paris post.

Gradiška and Banja Luka Bosnia

I know what you're thinking, Bosnia? There was a change in plans and our Bosnia and Croatia weekends were swapped. I would just like to say that I know the country is called Bosnia and Herzegovina, but that it far too long to write over and over, so I'll just call it Bosnia.

So, Friday at 3pm Andrew, MA, José, Cora, Predrag, and I boarded a bus for Gradiška (š = sh). The trip took 7.5 hours, taking us through Austria, Slovenia, and Croatia. Thankfully the bus was nice and modern and not full, giving us some room to stretch and sleep. We also had one rest stop somewhere in Slovenia where we played frisbee and I took the photo below. Although it still felt like home we knew we weren't in Kansas anymore.
We arrived in Predrag's home town of Gradiška at 10:30, 30 minutes ahead of schedule because we flew through the borders. We were met by Predrag's half-sister Milana and some of his friends. They took us and our 500lbs of luggage (I brought a normal sized backpack, I don't know why others (Cora) felt the need to bring enough for a week), to a really nice bar where his sister bought us a gigantic pizza (which came with bottles of sweet and spicy ketchup, something common in Eastern Europe) and a round of beer. Like in most Eastern European countries the beer was very cheap and good, around 1€ for 0.5L. From there we went on to a bar with live music. The place was very smoky, but the Serbian music was half decent. I asked Predrag to burn me a CD which I'll bring home at Christmas.

At that point we headed to Predrag's house as it was getting late. We were greeted by his mom and dad. His dad spoke broken German (about as much as I know) so we could communicate alright, but his mom only spoke Serbian, so Predrag had to be our translator. Even though we had just come from a bar and a giant pizza we were quickly offered a beer, a big piece of delicious pineapple cake, and our first shot of home-made plum schnapps (I would guess it was at least 60% alcohol, 1% plum, and 39% fire). By the time I finally got to sleep I was out like a light.

The next morning we had a chance to explore a bit before breakfast. This is Predrag's house, with the separate kitchen building to the right.To celebrate our visit to Bosnia, Predrag's parents killed one of their pigs, which is a big honour. Here is Predrag's dad roasting the pig.
Someone must have been sitting there all day turning it while we visited Banja Luka, because there was no motor, just a wooden pole.As a pre-breakfast snack Predrag picked us some white and black (red) grapes. They were really sweet, and the black ones tasted like artificial grape flavouring, who knew it was actually a real flavour?
Here is Predrag's niece Leo watching us cautiously as we checked out the pig pens.
The pig pens were filled with a bunch of 3 day old piglets. They were really cute, but we had to keep in mind that they were the younger siblings and cousins of supper, not pets.
The fields behind the house were filled with old-fashioned haystacks
After a hearty supper of eggs, chicken, bread, and pita (a mixture of egg and cheese topped with a thin crust) we drove to Banja Luka (Бања Лука), the second largest city in Bosnia, which was about 45 minutes away. On the way we met up with Laslo, our Serbian friend who used to used to work in Wiener Neustadt with Cora, José, and I.

In Banja Luka we stopped for coffee and beer at a bar in Predrag's dorm. The coffee was served in tiny little cups and wasn't very strong. I opted for a Pepsi, which was good but tasted almost nothing like the North American version. The guy between Andrew and MA is Sascha, one of Predrag's roommates.The beer (pivo or пиво) everyone drinks in Bosnia is Nektar, but in most cases you see it written in cursive Cyrillic like below.
Knowing my Greek letters from math and science courses, and receiving a quick crash course from Laslo I was able to read most of the Cyrillic writing, which when translated was usually easily understood. For example try and read the sign below.Mashinski Phakultet Banja Luka = Banja Luka Machining (Mechanical Engineering) Faculty.

After the bar we stopped in to see Predrag's room which he shared with 2 other guys. It was fairly small, but clean, much
nicer than the room we had in Budapest. The floor's bathrooms were pretty sick, just a row of dirty squat toilets. However, he only pays 5€/month so it was understandable, and worth it.

While walking down the street Andrew saw someone he had met in Austria at a conference the weekend before. While they were talking about their random encounter in Banja Luka, Cora, MA, and Laslo tried to balance on one of the a small poles which line the sidewalks. Thanks to my amazing photographic skills it looks like they actually managed it, when in fact they failed miserably.
Throughout Bosnia we saw churches and mosques being built. Many were destroyed or damaged in the recent war or in previous invasions. This Orthodox church with the gold roof was being re-built in the centre of the city where it once stood 100 years ago.
The high-price shopping street with painted plaster buildings reminds you that Bosnia used to be part of the Austrio-Hungarian Empire, and that is is recovering, slowly, from the war.In a large communist-era department store in the center of town we found this Popeye ride.
The Cyrillic street signs just looked really cool. The second line on the yellow part (градишка)
reads Gradiška. This sign also shows the prevalence of English as the international language of tourism, with both airport (aerodrom) and town center (centar) being written in both languages.
We checked out a few markets and walked over to the Kastel fortress. Unfortunately I don't remember much about the history of it, and the Wikipedia (Википедија) article is in Cyrillic Serbian. Either it was built to defend the city against the Ottomans or to protect the Ottomans against other invaders.

Me, Cora, Laslo, Drazen, Predrag, Sascha, Andrew, Ma, JoséParts of the fortress were still in ruins.

Taking a break form all the walking.

Downtown Banja Luka

On the walk back to the cars we passed this church, it looked like something from Expo '67 or the Jetsons.
Banja Luka is the capital of the Republika Srpska, the new (post war) Serbian portion of Bosnia. The government buildings were almost complete, but there were still some very brave construction workers on some very sketchy scaffolding.
We peaked in on a soccer game between FC Radnik from Bijeljina and FC Borac from Banja Luka (I directly translated the names from the poster, so they're probably spelled wrong). We didn't stay long, but it was cool to see.
On the way back to Gradiška we stopped into a restaurant for, you guessed it, a beer. When we finally got back Predrag's mom had made an amazing 3 course dinner with chicken noodle soup, cabbage rolls, pickled peppers, coleslaw, and pork. There was also plenty of bread, beer, and schnapps (surprise, surprise) and more pineapple cake for dessert.

Predrag and Leo

After dinner we just stayed around the table drinking and singing while MA played the guitar. Predrag's dad and friends sang some Serbian songs and we sang some English ones. It was a really fun night which reminded me of hanging out with friends at home.

Sunday morning I wandered around some more. Here are all the nuts they've gathered from the trees on their property. They became our pre-breakfast a few minutes later.
The ugliest bird I've ever seen. It is called a guinea fowl and is used as an alarm for the chicken coop. When scared by a snake or any other predator it apparently screams, alerting the farmer.Here we are eating nuts and pretzels for pre-breakfast. The guy in the white hat is Predrag's older brother.

What's breakfast without some home-made schnapps? For breakfast we had everything from the supper before, again, including the beer. I think I had more alcohol this weekend than I did last month at Oktoberfest! but, when in Rome...A group photo infront of the house right before we left. There were others where everyone is looking into the camera, but I like this one because Predrag's mom is laughing.

We got on the bus to head home at 2:30. Laslo, Drazen, Sascha, Leo, and Predrag stayed to wave goodbye. Predrag was going to stay another day and come back on Monday. The second bus was packed, and the guy I sat beside stank, so I knew it was going to feel like a much longer journey. What I didn't expect was how long we would have to wait at the borders. At the Bosnia-Croatia border and Croatia-Slovenia(EU) border we waited for over an hour, and had to get out of the bus to go through passport control. However, as I was sitting beside a smelly Bulgarian who kept pushing me further into the aisle, I was happy to get out of the bus to show my passport and stretch my legs. The trip ended up being over 9 hours long, but thankfully I caught the last tram home.

I would have to say that this was the best weekend so far. Seeing a country from the perspective of the locals is so much better than being a tourist and living in a hostel. So many people had warned me about Bosnia being a scary impoverished place, but I saw it as a country with a rough history and the desire to change and grow. As it is with all poorer countries I've been to, the people seem nicer and more sociable, with plenty of time to relax with friends and family.

This weekend we're going to Rijeka Croatia by car. While there we're going to hang out with IAESTE Rijeka, hike, and hopefully visit the coast. I'll be sure to take lots of photos for all of you who read this regularily (and never comment).

I've been going over old posts at work and finding lots of gramatical and spelling mistakes, so, if you find one (which many people have) please tell me so I can fix it. For example, in the Oktoberfest post I had written Liederhosen, which Szilvia reminded me means songs-pants, and that she was pretty sure I meant to write lederhosen which means leather-pants.