Serbia: Queue jumpers and being perved on by non - pervy - perves

You may be wondering if we even enjoyed Serbia by the title, let me reassure you we did!

Belgrade

We started in the capital of Serbia, Belgrade.

This probably brings to mind similar images for you as it did for me, that of war and destruction as a result of the Balkan wars in the 1990s.  I half expected to feel slightly unsafe, however we were pleasantly surprised to see Belgrade a very clean and modern city, with only the odd dilapidated building. (Having said that, when we did see one, it really was falling apart.  It looked like the bomb only hit it yesterday!).  Otherwise we had a very pleasant time wandering around, not to mention with the spectacular views of the confluence of the Danube and Sava river from the hilltop near the city centre.

The river in the foreground is the Sava, the background is the Danube.

Random bits!
Before I go on I thought I would just introduce you all to two great new discoveries on mine.  The first, below, is CHOCOLATE Philadelphia! I actually bought this in Sofia, Bulgaria, but I have been trying to ration it until now, using it only for breakfasts and emergencies.  Here I am eating it with my morning croissant.

 Second of all, allow me to introduce Gill's ingenious invention to make her less robbable (those are her exact words).  As an avid book worm, she recently purchased an electronic book, or to be precise, a kindle.  The rest below, should be self explanatory.

I was gutted when I saw this as she had actually offered to make me one also, but as I already had a cover I said no.  This was clearly as error, because this is genius!

Queue jumpers

Now back to Belgrade.  The free walking tour provided its insights into what life must have been like during the 90s, with stories of hyper inflation akin to that of Zimbabwe.  Check out these 50 and 5 billion Dinar notes!

The tour guide also explained that due to people having to queue for hours upon end just for a loaf of bread (which by the way, the 500 billion dinar note was just enough to buy!) people in Serbia are notoriously bad for queue jumping, and we can certainly testify to that!  I suppose our Britishness (and therefore fondness for orderly queues) combined with the Serbian disregard for queuing did not make a good mix!


Being perved on by non-pervy-perves

Another activity whilst in Belgrade was an evening dip in the Danube! Yes you heard right, I swam in the Danube! Ha!
There is a little island with a pedestrian bridge across it, and there there is a sandy beach, fully equipped with volleyball nets and outdoors showers n' all.

The wonderful evening dip was however slightly marred by the punishment inflicted upon me by the mosquitos.  Here is my leg post-danube-dip. :(




After a swim against the current (I didn't get anywhere) and admiring the astounding sunset, we were then approached by a Serbian man, (in Serbian- there aren't really many tourists so for the first time people actually first addressed us in their native language).

It was a surreal experience because it seemed like he was chatting us up, but there were none of the usual lines 'soooo do you have boyfriend? You very pretty ladies.  You like Serbian man?'
Nope none of that, he seemed like he genuinely wanted to practise his English! He even beckoned his friend over, who also just wanted a chat.  If we hadn't been so suspicious (and I hadn't also been feeling rather vulnerable in my bikini!) this might have even passed off for a genuine friendly conversation.  However they then invited us to dinner, to which we replied 'maybe' in as much of a non committal tone as possible, and then slinked off to the changing rooms and escaped.

Several other encounters of a similar nature led us to believe that Serbians clearly just have the gift of the gab when it comes to the ladies.  Avoiding the sleaziness definitely works- men, take note!

Novi Sad

Our second destination in Serbia was Novi Sad, home to a collection of very old (dating back to 12th century I believe) monasteries.  This was also very beautiful, with a fortress on the top of the hill affording stunning views of the city, especially at night!

In Novi Sad we did not encounter any perves, but did have a run in with a moody bus driver who dropped us off in the middle of nowhere (and nearly didn't give us our change! humph).

Below right was the monastery 'stop', with only a signpost and nothing else.  Considering this was supposed to be a tourist spot, we were expecting a little more!

The weather was blisteringly hot (the bus was a sauna), and we could not find the monastery.  We were grumpy due to the mean bus driver, and had no idea how to get back as there seemed to be no sign of a bus stop/station/nothing.  We had reached such a point of desperation that we even considered hitch hiking back (Mum- don't worry we didn't! )

Fortunately, the nicest lady in the world happened to be sitting nearby, (which was handy) who gave us drinks, shade, showed us where the monastery was, and believe it or not, drove us back to Novi Sad when we were done! (That is a good half an hour journey by the way).
So, thanks to the nicest lady in the world (she really was), Serbia was redeemed once again :)

Here is the unfortunately ever so slightly underwhelming monastery:

Pretty, but upon our arrival we realised we were actually only allowed inside the church! doh.  Everything was simply the monk's 'bed chambers', which was obviously off limits!

Slovenia was our next stop, but that is for next time!

xxxx