Thursday 31st July 2025 – the border exiting Croatia was straightforward. The customs going into Serbia less so. They were very thorough indeed. He wanted to check the cubby box, the food boxes, the box with the old turbo, the drawer and the fridge. He moved food in the fridge and in the food boxes to check that nothing was hidden underneath. He was concerned about new car parts. I explained that it was an old vehicle and I needed small things like seals and bearings. He accepted this. I guess they are concerned about smuggling and weapons in particular. There was a long line of trucks at the border, it must take a very long time to get through. Customs were giving the Austrian truck in front of us a very thorough check too.
We are staying at Vidmar near Novi Sad (Serbia’s second city) which we will visit tomorrow, a university town on the Danube . Got a SIM card in Somar. It cost 600 Serbian Dinar (£4.43) with 40GB of data. Data is certainly cheap in this part of Europe. It is seriously hot in the sun today even though it is only 30 Celsius. For the second night in a row we have a whole campsite to ourselves.
Friday 1st August 2025 – visiting visitors Novi Sad. Town hall:
Roman Catholic cathedral (actually known as such but actually a parish church and not a cathedral at all):
All on the main square:
The city was bombed by NATO in 1999. All three bridges over the Danube were destroyed.
Amusingly on one street there was,a Guinness Irish Bar and a vape shop with a giant photo of Winston Churchill smoking a cigar!
Orthodox Cathedral (quite small with no pews, beautiful stained glass):
Serious bling:
View from the fortress to the Danube below:
Had a drink at the restaurant overlooking the river and found a patisserie that made excellent cakes. We has a slice of Pistachio, really good (forgot to take a photo in my indecent haste!). They had delicious looking rich chocolate one and even one with prunes. We visited the vegetable and fish market (but no fish today), however really good vegetables and fruit. We bought some delicious peaches and plums as well as courgette and cherry tomatoes. A lot of vegetables here haven’t had chemical pesticides used in their production (and are all the better for it). There were white aubergines and the pale green peppers that they so like in the Balkans.
The clock here has the large and small hands changed over. Apparently so the hour is easier to see!
We visited Krušedol Monastery. Also the small town of Sremski Karlovci. There is a late 18th century church here.
The roof dome has quite plain silhouette decoration and a stained glass window.
The clerical high school in the town serving as one of the seven seminaries of the Serbian Orthodox Church. There is to be a festival here so they were setting up a stage.
Karlovci Gymnasium, also known as the Sremski Karlovci Grammar School:
The building, erected in 1891, was designed by Hungarian architect ?ula Partoš. It is the oldest high school in Serbia founded in 1791. The school is known for its focus on modern and classical languages, including Ancient Greek, Latin, English, Russian, German, Japanese, Chinese, Norwegian, Spanish, and Italian.
Marble fountain in the town square with four Lions heads spouting water:
Saturday 2nd August 2025 – staying on the banks of the Danube east of Belgrade. A new site on a farm (Deer, donkeys, goats, sheep and horses) with brand new facilities including a kitchen. The flies in the summer in the Balkans drive you crazy. There are horseflies, blackflies and stable flies. They all bite! The stable flies look like house flies in the UK but they have sharp mouth parts and feed on blood like mosquitoes. The initial bite is quite painful! Not to mention the sandflies and mosquitoes!
Sunday 3rd August 2025 – visited the fortress at Golubac, built in the 14th century and restored with European Commission funding in 2019. It has repelled over 120 attacks in its history and has been passed between Turks, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Serbs, and Austrians. Sometimes for money. Legend has it it was never captured. The walls are up to 2.8 metres thick.
There are charcoal kilns here. Illegal apparently but very lucrative so it persists.
Monday 4th August 2025 – visited mesolithic archaeological site Lepenski Vir. Dating back to 9500 BC. Extraordinary stone heads, bone and antler artifacts, trapezoidal houses and burials were found here.
Genomic studies were also done on the inhabitants (interesting to me as I worked on the Human Genome project). Skulls and jaw bones were removed and buried separately. Male skulls and female jaw bones. Skeletons were buried oriented to the direction of the river and with legs crossed (representing childbirth – whether the skeleton is that of a male or female):
Amusingly there are conspiracy theories that the sculptures were done by aliens!
We went through the gorge representing the narrowest part of the Danube (around 100 metres wide). At its widest the river is 1.5 kilometres and the river is 2650 kilometres long. We had hoped to do a boat trip but the weather looked threatening.
On our way along the Danube there was a police radar trap. Waze (GPS app which we use for navigation) said the speed limit was 70kph. I thought I was safe doing 60kph. The police insisted that the speed limit was 50kph, issued a ticket and demanded a €15 fine. I protested but to no avail. Sometimes there is no point in arguing. The speed limits in Serbia are quite difficult to follow in any event. Signs are often conflicting too. On that road there are 80kph signs immediately followed by 50kph due to rock falls. Which takes precedence? Who knows? I am guessing the 50kph signs were installed later and the other signs left.
We drove across country down narrow roads far from populations. However we came across a town with a huge open mine on all sides of the valley belonging to the Chinese. 240,000 tonnes of copper and 7.5 tonnes of gold are mined here every year. It employs 7,500 people. The local river was seriously polluted and lots of fly tipping in the area too. The rural road from there had been repaired so many times it was like a patchwork quilt (at least they repair them!). We came across a village where children were practicing their dancing and another where a stage had been constructed and men were either wearing a red t shirt or a blue t shirt with Cyrillic on them. We are guessing possibly some orthodox festival. Orthodox Serbs fast twice a week on Wednesdays and Fridays – no meat or eggs. We understand that the Dormition fast is coming up from 14th to 27th August.
We are staying on an eco farm. We have been given aronia juice (chokeberry in English), a fruit known for its antioxidant properties that is increasingly popular and now grown commercially in Serbia. The fruit looks like a blueberry but tastes quick different. It is particularly high in vitamin C and has antioxidant properties four times that of blueberries so is often described as a “superfood” (although I have never heard of it before!). We are eating at the eco farm tonight so it will be interesting to taste the food. They have a huge vegetable garden with chillis, sweet peppers, beans, tomatoes, cucumber, squashes and courgettes. Everything is organic.
Dinner was delicious. Soup with homemade bread rolls. Homemade sausages made from a breed of Serbian pig. Chargrilled sweet peppers, tomatoes, fresh cucumber in spirit vinegar. Locally made cheese (from cows milk). Blueberry muffins for dessert (light as a feather).
Tuesday 5th August 2025 – pleased to say that George performed brilliantly yesterday with the hills. The new turbo has definitely given him a new lease of life. I suspect that it was less than half the labour cost of the UK too.
Visited the monastery of Manasija. A beautiful church in a 15th century fortress.
The church had a wonderful smell of aromatic oils that the monks import from Greece. There are only 4 monks here and we were told that the apprentices don’t stay for longer than a month finding the life too difficult. The staff who look after the place outnumber the monks. A lot of restoration has taken place and more is happening. They intend to restore the old dining hall which has been a ruin since a fire 2 centuries ago.
The main tower one of eleven. The outer pieces are to pour boiling oil or launch projectiles at attackers. The are two outer walls too.
The monks accommodation. It can accommodate up to 12 monks:
Extraordinary weaving of crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia) trunks into a vase shape:
Exquisite stone carving above the church door:
The church from the ramparts:
We then visited the Resavska Cave:
Visited the Lisine waterfall (billed as the seventh highest in Serbia!). Not hugely impressive but worth seeing.
When returning to the car we were approached by a British guy from Guildford who has a Serbian wife and a house here. He offered us a cup of PG tips (!) and his wife gave us advice on where to visit in Serbia, Macedonia, Greece and Bulgaria.
Wednesday 6th August 2025 – we use ground coffee every morning. It is difficult to bring enough of our favourite coffee from home and we struggle to find drinkable coffee in far flung places (even in Africa where they grow the beans!). The coffee we bought in Croatia is pretty awful (as it was in Guinea). Perhaps we will have better luck in Bulgaria or Greece. We have decided to head down to Greece for a bit (our friend Roland’s recommendation), maybe visit one of the islands and eat some fish!
Some very noisy woodpeckers in the turkey oaks next to us on the eco farm this morning. Not a bad serenade for breakfast time.
Another delicious dinner last night. Pork escalopes with saute potatoes, cucumber, tomatoes, cheese, grilled sweet peppers. Fresh bread warm from the oven. Definitely the best food we have eaten in the Balkans.
Wednesday 6th August 2025 – stayed on a farm on a hill above the valleys near Duboko. The road to get here is ling and incredibly steep. The eccentric campsite owner likes to give everyone copious quantities of Plum Brandy! He has a collection with bottles in the shape of a cross and even a grenade! Perhaps the latter with good reason, it is strong!
Thursday 7th August 2025 – visited the Stopica cave with curious rimstone pools.
Visited the Gostilje limestone waterfalls:
Went to the Studenica Monastery. A 12th century monastery with 3 churches (originally there were 7). The main church is made of marble with amazing frescoes (repainted in the 16th century).
We are staying on another small farm. The lovely lady owner Melinda has made us a delicious dinner of lamb stew with chickpeas. Homemade soup. Two types of cheese. Fresh cucumber, tomatoes and sweet peppers that we picked from their polytunnel. Really tasty home cooked food.
Friday 8th August 2025 – an extraordinary thing happened after breakfast. An orthodox priest in hat and elegant green and gold stole turned up. He blessed our Land Rover on the way in, lit some incense in a bowl, put an uprooted basil plant into some water and proceeded to bless Melinda, Rachel and I. He put his cross and the damp basil onto our foreheads and blessed us. It is the annual festival of Krsna Slava tomorrow. It is a day of feasting and spiritual renewal.
A van and tent with french people arrived last night. They asked Melinda this morning how much to pay and she said they should pay whatever they wanted, bless her. The French are heading to the three day Guca trumpet festival!
Melinda cooked us some of fresh eggs for breakfast and bought some assorted meats and cheese and bread. Home made jam from a mix of strawberry and plum. She also bought us freshly baked rolls for lunch and cut a huge watermelon (they are in season in Serbia and are for sale everywhere beside the road). The watermelon is so refreshing in the heat (high of 32 Celsius today). Ultraviolet levels are very high and the temperature is forecast for 37 Celsius on Friday.
We are having a quiet day, washing clothes and bedding. Melinda has a washing machine and a long line for drying. We are sitting in the shade of fruits trees (pear, plum and apricot).
Melissa is cooking a lamb for the festival so we are tempted to stay. She has 3 daughters and 7 grandchildren. She uses ChatGPT on her phone to translate Serbian to the language of her guests and vice versa. It works very well.
Saturday 9th August 2025 – Melinda just made super strong coffee and bought us 3 kinds of cake. We are being thoroughly spoilt here!
More freshly baked cake came out at lunchtime. Melinda said that she had got used to us being here and would miss us when we were gone. She is so kind, we now have a Serbian Mum!
The family are now arriving. Many grandchildren and so polite and welcoming. Three of them helped me recharge my internet. I simply couldn’t follow the app in the Serbian language!
A huge table has been set up on the verandah with about 25 places. Salted cold lamb was bought out for us as a snack before the meal has even started. Many of the grandchildren have been to the LoveFest down the road, the tickets are €45 for the three days, expensive in Serbia but modest in a European context. They were saying that there were plain clothes policeman trying to trick people into admitting they had drugs. Some festival goers were comatose on the floor apparently having taken drugs. The Serbians weren’t impressed saying they can enjoy without drugs.
I only took one photo at the dinner in order not to intrude:
There was a first course of mixed meats and salami with cheeses. The main course was roast lamb served cold. Dessert was delicious tortes and cheesecake.
We talked at length with the boyfriend of one of the granddaughters. About history, past conflicts in the region, current politics and struggles in Serbia. He is a software engineer living in Belgrade and he very kindly invited us to stay with them on another visit to see more of Serbia. His girlfriend is a biochemist and works for Eli Lilly and is doing a PhD at the same time. Serbia has some very well educated people, they are rightly proud of Belgrade university in particular. The challenge is going to be keeping those people, average salaries are low and taxes can be very high for entrepreneurs.
Cakes even appeared at breakfast!
We had a touching farewell with Melinda. Big hugs. She didn’t want to take any money for staying there but we insisted. She had prepared boxes with meat and cake for us to take and a jar of her organic pickled cucumber.
It is so nice after having met the most unspeakable campsite owner in Bosnia to meet such a special genuine caring individual in Serbia. It restores your faith in humanity.
Sunday 10th August 2025 – it is 37 Celsius today. Blisteringly hot.
