Blogs from South, Serbia, Europe

Just a short (and solemn) blog post today as we actually did something quite unusual for most of our rest day - we rested. We did visit two historical sites from WWII that are related in the most horrific manner. You see the Nazi's turned the Kings Army Barracks and surrounding buildings here in Nis into a concentration camp. It was mainly used for short term detention of prisoners before being relocated somewhere else as forced labour, unless of course they were executed instead. While some executions were carried out in the camp, most were taken to Bubanj a few kilometers away where they were executed and placed in mass graves. The concentration camp is mainly untouched from the end of WWII and is now a museum in honour of those that were imprisoned and murdered ... read more

When disaster strikes, the overall impetus seems to be to turn fortunes around through whatever means. Well, nobody really saw the state of the globe hitting such a bad patch, and remaining on red alert for so prolonged a period, but as any traveller will tell you, it pays to prepare for every eventuality, and then some. So, a 23 month-long period of absence was never in the original script, but in reality, that’s what it really amounted to when trying to pick up the thread once again and get back out onto the road. Being the right kind of season, a ski trip to Kopaonik, Serbia appeared on the radar, and that is precisely what took shape when a booking was made for a period of 8 days, which would see the New Year in ... read more

It’s our last day before dropping the hire car in Skopje. We are breaking the journey in Nis, mainly because it’s half way between Belgrade and Skopje. Nis has 3 very diverse tourist attractions; the 4th century Roman palace of Constantine the Great, an 18th century Turkish fortress and a 20th century Nazi Concentration Camp. It’s pouring with rain and takes almost an hour to fight our way out of Belgrade through the rush hour traffic, despite the old man going native and driving through red lights, in bus lanes, over pedestrian crossings etc. Eventually the rain clears and by the time we reach Nis it’s 20 degrees and sunny. After Novi Sad and Belgrade, we aren’t expecting to like Nis, but it’s actually quite nice. We walk through the pedestrian precinct to the fortress which ... read more

Pred odchodom davam este prat a vymienam rybam vodu. Balenie, sprcha a moze sa ist. Miriam s mami ma vyzdvihuju o 11/30, povodne som chcel startovat o hodinu neskor ale po zisteni, ze v rovnakom case odlietaju az 4 lety menim plan. V aute na dialnici fasujem rizek v chlebe, obed teda vybaveny. Na dialnici ziadne zapchy, takze pohodickova cca polhodinkova cesta. Na letisku sa to hemzi uz kopou ludi. Security tentoraz v pohode, ziadna buzeracia. Avsak jednemu cechackovy zabavuju maly noz. No nezabavuju, bo ho bere a odnasa ho niekam do letiskovej haly, neskor sa vracia bez neho. Colnica tiez ziadny problem iba otazka kam letim ked ukazujem len obcanku s cipom a nie pas. Cez gate prechadzam medzi poslednymi. Ako to uz byva zasa demencia ludi, za branou miesta na sedenie ale nie, jebovci ... read more

From Planina Vlasic, we travelled to Sarajevo, the city which has rebuilt itself after the horrors of the Serbian aggression in 1992-1995. On our way to our hotel, we stopped off at a cafe, where Rozle showed us how to drink coffee, in the traditional Bosnian way. He is an hilarious raconteur, and had us all in hysterics. Poignantly, a Muslim cemetery beside the cafe reminded us we were in a region only recently ravaged by war. We also stopped to visit a tunnel museum, created, to show how the residents of Sarajevo survived the Serbian attacks, by building a tunnel underneath the airport. Sarajevo is surrounded by mountains on all but one boundary. The airport, a strip of land between the city and 'free' Bosnia, the relatively flat land area of the region, was under ... read more