Serbia

 

The first day we were in Serbia, our morning excursion took us to Belgrade. We started with a walking tour through Belgrade Fortress. The ruins have been turned into a park and aren’t that impressive, but the location was important in former times because it is at the confluence between the Sava and Danube Rivers. These photos show part of the old wall, the place where the rivers come together, a plaza with a monument of “Victor” (a naked man seen from the rear in this photo), and a bird strutting down below the walls.

From there, we took a short bus ride to the Church of St. Sava, which is Serbian Orthodox. Although it was planned out between the two world wars and the first stone laid in 1935, construction was stopped until 1984, when they finally got government permission to complete it. It is a gorgeous church, as you can see from the photo at the top of this post. It is also stunning inside, as the next picture shows. There are no seats inside, though. During the 2-3 hour services they bring in chairs for the elderly and infirm, but most people are expected to stand.

That afternoon we took a bus excursion to Kovečica, which is a Slavic artists’ colony. We saw a number of cool paintings, but I didn’t take any photos because I didn’t want to infringe on anyone’s intellectual property rights.

While there, we also visited the workshop where Jan Memčik makes and restores violins. He explained the process to us and showed us examples of the wood he uses—Bosnian maple for the bottom and sides and resonant spruce for the top. The next two photos show Mr. Memčik at his work desk and an example of the Bosnian maple he uses.

Our second day in Serbia started with a stop at Golubac Fortress right on the Danube. It never saw much action as a fort because the owners kept giving it away peacefully, but it must have given pause to would-be conquerors. Because the area next to the river is narrow with mountains rising above it, for about a century (until fairly recently), the road ran right through it until fairly recently, when tunnels were built to route the road around it. Before then, trucks and buses scraped the tops of the arches and often got stuck in them. The problem was usually solved by letting some air out of the tires, but still . . .

The following pictures show Golubac Fortress and a catapult that is a replica of ones used there.

The rest of the day was spent sailing along a scenic portion of the Danube called the Iron Gate, with Serbia on one side of the river and Romania on the other. We heard a couple of different reasons for the name. One is because the rocks along the cliff have iron ore in them. But the river here was tamed with a set of locks, which could also be considered an iron gate.

As I said, it was very scenic sailing, but I’ll just give you two highlights. The first photo shows the entrance to that stretch of the Danube, and the second is Decebalas Rex on the Romanian side of the river. He was a king who fought against the Roman Empire, and the carving is apparently their version of Mount Rushmore.

From Serbia, it was on to Bulgaria. I’ll blog about that next week.