On entering Serbia, it certainly felt like we were leaving Europe behind. However, on reflection, this was really a case of a gradual move away from the West and towards the East. While we had been travelling through ex-Yugoslav countries for a while (probably 3 months at this point), there was a distinct difference in feeling between the coastal areas that had historically looked to, and been aligned with, the West (and in a lot of cases had been controlled by the Venetians or Austro-Hungarians for long periods) and Serbia, which has a definitely more slavic bent and has traditionally looked East to Russia instead of to Western Europe. Add to this the fact that on entering Serbia we hit an area that happened to be 80% Muslim and have a strong Ottoman influenced history – and it certainly started to feel distinctly different to the areas through which we had passed to this point.
After an encounter with a border official who determined to search a whole lot of our bags (not something we have yet had the pleasure of on this particular trip), we cycled into Serbia and onwards to Novi Pazar, which we really liked. It was the first town we had visited for a while that had a bit of atmosphere. The towns on the coast in Croatia, while lovely, lacked spirit due to being effectively entirely turned over to tourist endeavours and in Montenegro, the economics and the population levels did not really provide for this either. Not so in Novi Pazar. The town was busy with people everywhere. Cozy coffee shops could be found on every corner. Nut vendors filled hole in the wall spots in old buildings next to suppliers of coffee beans. Waiters from cafes ran around the streets delivering single, tiny cups of tea to other shops or to construction workers roadside. Not to mention the shisha bars (still operational during COVID) and the various cute cafes at which to see and be seen. All of this was set against a backdrop of a lot of cool old buildings interspersed with massive communist era monumental constructions in vaguely islamic style. A pretty interesting mix. We spent a day in the city trying out some food, recovering from our mountainous cycle out of Montenegro and arranging to hire a car for a couple of days.
As we had determined to head east, but there were a couple of things worth checking out west of Novi Pazar, we decided it would be worth hiring a car to visit these and avoid cycling in the wrong direction. For €20 per day, we managed to rent an absolute dunger of a car (no operational brights, back doors did not open, scratches everywhere, etc). However, as it was a Mercedes, we christened it “the Merc”, loaded the bicycle panniers into the occasionally operational boot and figured out that we needed to pull up on the gearstick in order to put the Merc into reverse. This was an exciting learning exercise where Tom managed to plant the car neatly into a wall on us picking it up and I was required to push it back into the pitch black field from which it came while he sat in the car in neutral alternately yelling at me to push and stop – turns out that the Merc was a bit more complicated than our typical dunger cars. Finally, though, us and the Merc were ready to go and we took off to see some of South-West Serbia. Our main goals for these couple of days were to visit a few churches around Novi Pazar, Studenica Monastery and the Uvac Nature Park. All of these were rather worthwhile and the drive between Studenica and Uvac was particularly lovely. The Serbian orthodox religious sites are generally rather interesting and include lots of incredible frescoes throughout the buildings. I include some pictures below of the sites and the frescoes. Uvac Park is a large area, but the main thing for which it is known is the impressively meandering lake through its centre. We did a walk to one of the main viewpoints, which was really quite awesome – but the low winter sunshine made photos a bit of a challenge.
The other item for which this section of the trip is notable is that we tried Komplet Lipinja for the first time. Likely also the last time. This is basically a bread bun, sliced open, coated in a cream cheese, topped with an egg, baked and then drizzled with meat drippings. The meat drippings were really a step too far for me and this interesting dish repeated on me for the rest of the morning. Far be it for me not to try the local food though. Going forward – I determined to stick with burek (which I am convinced is the king of all Serbian cuisine). While we had burek throughout the Balkans (and basically all burek is good burek), I maintain that (thus far), the Serbian burek far and away blows all other contenders out of the water. Partly, I believe this is due to the seriousness with which they approach this food – close on a religion. In any event, a chewy, crunchy, doughy (yes, it is possible that it can be all three) filo pastry pie filled with cheese, meat or spinach and consumed with drinking yoghurt was our favourite food in Serbia. We were very grateful that we were cycling a lot as it was definitely not something that one would eat on a diet and we indulged in this amazing item on a daily basis.
Our time in Serbia was split in two by the decision to visit Kosovo in the middle. Serbia obviously still claims that Kosovo is a part of Serbia and you can pass in easily through their administrative border post, but they will not stamp your passport as it would be an acknowledgment that you are exiting Serbia to another sovereign state. On coming back in, similarly, you can re-enter Serbia if you already have a Serbia entry stamp from a border crossing with another country, but not if you entered Kosovo from, say, Albania or Montenegro as Serbia considers this an illegal entrance into Serbia. Anyway, logistical considerations being what they were, we could enter (and exit) Kosovo from (and to) Serbia and we determined to do so. I will spend time expanding on my thoughts on Kosovo in a separate post.
On re-entering Serbia from Kosovo, other than a border guard confirming that we had originally entered Serbia from Montenegro (and seeming suspiciously excited when he thought this may not be the case), we flew through the border post and arrived in Serbia in good time. Unfortunately, there was no accommodation on the Serbian side of the border for quite some way and we found ourselves in the questionable position of needing (once again) to camp in freezing temperatures. Happily, I can confirm that while this remains something that would not be my number one choice, this experience was much more successful than our Montenegrin potato field. Admittedly, this was largely due to our collecting a mass of excellent fire wood and making a very large bonfire to cosy up to all evening. There may have also been some rakia involved (in this case, Montenegrin apple moonshine), which was very warming, if not particularly subtle.
Side note: Forestry seems to be a large industry in the south of Serbia and wherever we went there were logging trucks and large, very neatly organized, cut wood logs lining the sides of the roads ready to be picked up. Our campsite in Serbia happened to abut one of these large stockpiles awaiting pick up. We particularly enjoyed this as every now and again a car would pull up next to the waiting wood. The driver would exit the vehicle and have a surreptitious wander around the logs. On noticing us, we would wave at them. They would appear somewhat surprised to find us there and would wave back. They would then, quietly, slink away back to their car and take off. After this happened a couple of times, we determined that clearly it is something of a thing to stop by and help oneself to a few good logs in the winter time from such stockpiles and we were somewhat thwarting this natural course of events. Happily for the local populace, we took off in the morning and the normal state of affairs could resume the next day.
After our freezing night, we cycled the last few kilometres to Devil’s Town, which is a series of natural rock formations where sandstone has eroded in pinnacles with weird big rocks at the tip. The colours of the ground in the area are also quite interesting due to the minerals in the soil. However, the most interesting part of our visit to Devil’s Town was undoubtedly being stopped by a crew from Serbian National TV and being asked to do an interview on why we were there and our thoughts on the place. Given that we had done zero research and had little idea about what we were about to see I think they found us to be rather lacking interview subjects.
Our next key stop in Serbia was Niš, a large town en route to Bulgaria. And, Niš was nice! It felt a bit like an actual city and even had a few tourist attractions – with a rather intense bent. One of the key things to see in Niš was a Nazi concentration camp. It seems like most of the Jewish population of Niš was uniformly wiped out by being sent to various other camps or by mass executions near the town. The other uses of the camp were (i) for sending various people to forced labour camps in other parts of Europe; and (ii) for the control of the local population. When the Germans arrived, prominent citizens of the town were fairly efficiently rounded up and placed in the camp. Thereafter, any resistance from the locals in which a German soldier was killed resulted in the execution of 100 people in the camp or, if wounded, the execution of 50 people. Presumably a pretty effective method of instilling mass fear and compliance all round.
The gory history seemed somewhat of a theme here as one of the other key sites to visit was the Tower of Skulls. While something less than a tower these days (50 or so of the original 850 skulls remain embedded in a concrete block on the outskirts of town), it is still a pretty strange and somewhat intense tourist site. The history of this Tower dates back the 1800s when Serbian forces mounted a massive resistance to try and consolidate the Serbian state – military units were sent in multiple directions (i.e., towards various borders where Serbs were living in non-Serbian controlled areas), one of which was the southern border where Niš was part of the Ottoman empire. The Serbian forces were roundly defeated in this battle and the Ottomans summarily collected the dead soldiers’ skulls with the intention of sending them all back to Istanbul as evidence of their victory. It was not clear why, but the skulls did not appear to reach their intended destination and eventually got embedded in a tower on the outskirts of Niš as a bloody reminder to the locals of the results of revolting against their Ottoman overlords. This intention seems to have been somewhat lost, however, as the Tower has instead become a monument to the Serbian martyr/heroes who gave their lives to the liberation of the Serbian people.
Anyway, gory history aside, we rather liked Niš. It had a very old soviet air to it with large buildings and small time vendors selling what products they could put together. However, it also had some cute bars and a definite penchant for baked goods. In fact, Niš holds itself up as the top purveyor of burek in the country – and, given my previous note on burek being the King of Serbian cuisine, we obviously decided that we needed to weigh in on the claim for ourselves. I can report that the burek in Niš really is that exceptional. They are not playing. Further, we actually went to a bakery where the croissants looked so good that we needed to order one as well – while a Nutella filled croissant may not be traditional, the one produced by Bakery Anton Plus in Niš was in fact so excellent that Tom may have exclaimed – “Well, they could teach the French a thing or two.” Possibly not the most popular opinion, but one with which I found it difficult to argue having also partook in the consumption of said Nutella croissant. Given that we ate the croissant (and burek) too quickly to manage a photo – here is a picture of a pretty excellent old train.
Finally, while we obviously cannot speak for the north of Serbia, the area of southern Serbia through which we passed was quite interesting in terms of the constant feeling that the communist/Yugoslav past was not really that far behind. Soviet Ladas still make up a significant percentage of cars on the roads (I was a huge fan of this and absolutely loved seeing these cars all over), the rural areas feel very neglected and definitely not an example of affluent farming and the towns (as mentioned above) have a fair amount of rather excellent monumental communist style architecture. I think all of this was rather added to by the freezing temperatures and not infrequent grey mornings while we were there. For whatever reason, there was definitely something of a feeling of going back in time. Not exactly a holiday experience necessarily, but a chance to see something rather special and interesting nonetheless.
November 2020