Eurotrip Leg 7 - Novi Sad, Serbia

January 4th - Me and Brian boarded a bus in Belgrade, Serbia and headed off to Novi Sad, which is the capital of the semi-autonomous state of Vojvodina, in Serbia. It is a smaller city (about 300-350 thousand people). We arrived there and called our friend Tammy, who I'd met earlier in the trip, and was supposed to let know if we were going to Novi Sad. She offered to show us around and hang out with her friends at night. Novi Sad had virtually no tourists that I could tell of, and we kind of got stared at a bit, lol, probably my red hair and baseball cap gave away the fact we weren't from there, speaking English (American English as they call it here) probably didn't help either, oh well, people were still friendly.

So Tammy met Brian and I at the cafe at the Hotel Novi Sad, where we had some tea and then we headed out to see downtown Novi Sad. It reminded both Brian and I of Regina, as it is a lot smaller than Belgrade yet still has quite a bit going on. We walked up and down some of the shop lined walking streets, past huge churches, schools, quite a nice city. Novi Sad had 2 of their 3 bridges completely destroyed by the NATO bombs during the war over Kosovo, one has now been rebuilt and I think the other one is a temporary bridge. It was soooo cold, the wind off of the Danube was freezing, so after walking around a bit we wanted to head inside somewhere, and one of Tammy's friends Jovana was going to meet us, so we headed down a scary alleyway, and up some stairs into an beautiful lounge, that had no advertising on the outside (something only the locals would know about), it helps making friends in situations such as this.

Jovana showed up, and we all ordered tea because of the cold. We sat around talking for a bit, and the question got brought up how long we were planning on staying. We had thought of going back that night, but threw the idea out there to stay overnight if we could find somewhere cheap. Well we got really lucky, because Jovana's dad happens to own the nicest hotel in Novi Sad, and she said she could give it to us for 1/2 price (about 40 euros instead of 80)...great deal, so 20 euros each, you can barely stay at a hostel for that. Once again, the generousity of the people here is astounding. A person we had been friends with for maybe 45 minutes going out of their way to make us feel welcome. So that was that, we were crashing at the beautiful Hotel Novi Sad.

After the teas, Brian and I wanted to see Petrovaradin fortress on the Danube, as it looked impressive and we are history geeks. So Jovana drove us over there in her new BMW X5 ($$!) The fortress was very cool, however we couldn't stay long, it was way too cold to be wandering around, we took some quick pictures and headed. We went to the hotel, where Jovana told the people at the front desk who we were and that we get 1/2 price. The girls left and we went upstairs caught a bit of BBC world news and then headed down to the restaraunt for some pizza.

At about 7:30, we were picked up by Tammy and her other friend, we went to their volleyball club and watched, and I was happy I wasn't playing, because they are damn good. After that we stopped at a cafe for tea again, and then got dropped off at the hotel for a powernap, and of course the girls had to go home to get ready to go out. Tammy picked us up again around midnight (things start late here), and the three of us went to a small pub-style place with Serbian turbo-folk music and an older crowd. We stuck around there for about an hour and then headed to a second place, which was a club on top of a building, with more of North American style music, but it was dying so we left after about 15 minutes. The third place was a Serbian live venue place with a Serb rock band playing and we met up with Jovana there. After that it was back to the hotel for sleep. The key thing I noticed is with no cover charge, people constantly hop from place to place, and a lot of places require reservations for tables, or else you have to stand. Before we left the live rock bar, we thanked Jovana for a 3rd, 4th and 5th time for allowing us to stay at her dad's hotel.

The next morning, Brian and I woke up around 9:30, grabbed some breakfast and took the bus back to Belgrade.

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