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Published: September 2nd 2023
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It was good to get a bit of a sleep in this morning, the cumulative effect of the virtually continuous riding is starting to take it's toll, well on me anyway. We then get a rest day and while you know you need some rest you really can't give up the chance to explore a city you may never see again.
The plan for today was to go on a guided walking tour and confirm our route through to the end of the trip.
Serbia has a long and tumultuous history. My knowledge of the Balkans is very poor and is obviously coloured by the reporting we get in the west. Today our guide took us on a journey through Serbia's chequered history. We were told that Serbia has been to war 114 times and that the city of Belgrade has been destroyed and rebuilt 40 times. We were told that Serbia signed a pact with Germany in WWII and the people protested so much they reneged on it, so the German's bombed Belgrade and then occupied it. At the end of the war the Americans then bombed Belgrade to drive the Germans out. You'd have to feel cursed
when both sides of the conflict bomb your city.
More recent history for Serbia was also told. Of how the Balkan states were unified into Yugoslavia and then how that has broken up again. Of the continuing issues between Serbia and Kosovo, and of the continued bombing by Nato of Serbia forcing them to withdraw from Kosovo. Our guide was 11 years old at the time of the bombing and recounted her story with a lot of emotion. Now it has to be said that Serbia was being accused of ethnic cleansing of the Albanians in Kosovo at the time but the underlying truth is that this country has suffered a lot over an extended period of time (in WW1 65% of the men aged between 16 and 65 were killed) and has endured Austrian, Otterman, and Russian occupation to name but a few. Belgrade is not a dramatically pretty city, it doesn't have the charm of Vienna or Budapest or Cologne. It's architecture is an eclectic mix of the buildings that survived one devistation along with the ones from the next rebuild. It's people are proud and stoic and there has certainly been no winners in the conflicts
here, but Belgrade seems to have suffered as much as anywhere. I certainly felt for the this proud city today.
The second task for the day was to finalise the route for the rest of the trip and we have pretty much done that. One more day along the Danube and then we will bid the might river good-bye before heading deep into Serbia and then into Bulgaria, through the captiol Sofia, and then finally a day spent in Greece before entering Turkey before our final drive to Istanbul.
By our planning we have 17 more riding days left totalling approximately 1,100kms. Our epic journey is about to enter it's final phase.
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