Belgrade, Serbia

Belgrade is the capital of Serbia and the largest city in the Balkans, with a population of 1.7 million people. It lies in a great plain, at the confluence of the Danube and the Sava Rivers. Driving in flat Serbia was a welcome change from the twisty mountain roads that I’ve been driving now for three weeks. 😊

Unfortunately we were there on the European Final Four basketball championship weekend, so the city was full of rowdy fans (Madrid beat Istanbul in the final). When we first began walking down Knez Mihailova, the lively pedestrian boulevard full of shopping, eating and drinking establishments, I was put off by the crowds and just the “big city”. But after a overview walking tour and particularly the following day when Brian and I started out early to visit some sites, I started liking Belgrade more and more.

Belgrade is a interesting city that, like most other cities in the Balkans, has Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian influences. But unlike the other cities it also has art-deco architecture and many more communist-era buildings (we stayed in one, not our favorite lodging of our vacation 😑).  It boasts the centuries-old Belgrade Fortress that is bordered by the rivers and a huge park.

It’s also the home of the Church of St. Sava, one of the largest Orthodox churches in the world. The church is a work-in-progress, looks great on the outside but only the dome is finished inside the building.

We noticed on the city map that there were three sites of the bombings by NATO forces in 1999, so we decided to find those. We found two bombed buildings that were some type of military buildings; we asked a soldier who was standing there about it, and he just told us that NATO had made a mistake and civilians who were working there were killed. This was in the Kosovo War, which I’m embarrassed to say I don’t know much about.

We visited the Nicola Tesla museum. Tesla was a Serb who ended up having to come to America to find a sponsor (Mr. Westinghouse, at first) to bankroll a laboratory for Tesla to work on his electricity inventions. He is best known for his invention of alternating current electrical supply in the late 1880s, but among other patents he also invented wireless electric power and tried to convince everyone of its  future importance (everyone thought he was crazy!). He was altruistic and believed he could invent a way to provide free electricity to everyone on earth, but no one would support this idea and after many years he had to scrap it. I’ve seen his statue at Niagara Falls so many times but I didn’t really understand his importance to the world. We waited in line for an hour to get a tour of this museum, but it was worth the wait (and we had some interesting conversations with some Istanbul fans).

We enjoyed Belgrade’s bohemian area, the Skadarlija Quarter, which is another pedestrian street full of preserved houses turned into shops, outside cafes and restaurants. There’s plenty of traditional live music and it’s a lively area.

Today we drove back to Zagreb, Croatia to fly back to the States. We enjoyed our trip, but as always there’s no place like home!

East Meets West at Sarajevo

Sarajevo is sometimes known as the city where East meets West due to the dual architecture from their two main military occupations: the Ottoman Empire for 400 years and the Austrian – Hungarian Empire for 40 years. Their old city, called Bascarsija, is totally Ottoman and walking through it makes you feel like you are in Istanbul.

The rest of the main city is filled with beautiful Viennese architecture. In addition, Roman Catholic churches, Orthodox Christian churches and Islamic mosques are found throughout the city (unfortunately, the city’s population of 10,000 Jews before WWII has dwindled to only 700 presently, and one can visit the country’s only remaining Jewish Temple in Sarajevo).

For many years it has been and remains a city where all faiths live together peacefully (except for the 1991 – 1995 war). The city is a melting pot of Serbs, Croats, and Muslims, and they all suffered the same problems for 44 months, during what became known as the Seige of Sarajevo.

It’s called a seige because it was not hand-to-hand combat between neighbors or armies, but a medieval-like seige by the Bosnian Serbian army, backed by Yugoslavia’s leader Slobodan Milosevic. The residents were cut off from food, water, electricity, medicine, phones, etc. for those 44 months. Our guide told us he was 9 years old when the war started and he spent the next four years living in the basement of his family’s apartment building along with the other families of his building. Because of intermittent sniper fire, it was too dangerous for families to continue living above ground. He went to makeshift school in his basement and he rarely was allowed outdoors, and only close enough to be able to return to the basement if firing started. We had watched a series of videos of the Seige of Sarajevo in the war museum in Mostar, which documented how difficult it was for the residents to survive. Although we didn’t notice buildings still remaining that obviously were destroyed during that war, like those we saw in Mostar, every tall building that we saw in Sarajevo was pockmarked with bullet and shrapnel holes. Out of approximately 300,000 residents that went through the seige, about 10,000 were killed, most from just being on the street at the wrong time and getting killed by sniper fire.

The city is also known for being the location of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in June, 1914, near the Latin Bridge, which helped to instigate the beginning of WWI. That story is also an interesting one, and there is a plaque at the assassination spot along with photos and a small museum.

We had a beer at the beautiful Sarajevska Brewery that was founded in 1864, making it the oldest industrial plant in BiH. It has run uninterrupted since, even during the Seige. During those years production was low, but the brewery was integral to the survival of Sarajevo residents because it is located on a spring and was the only place that had fresh water continuously throughout the war. Residents would walk miles with large plastic canisters to the brewery to get water for survival. So this brewery is very beloved by all Sarajevans.  We also lucked out when I checked for a concert the night we were there, and got tickets in the 3rd row for the Sarajevo Symphony and a wonderful Russian violinist at the National Theater – it was great!

Our guide joked that Sarajevo is known to most people now for two bad things and only one good thing: two wars (WWI and the Seige) and being the location of the 1984 Olympics. We found it to be a very pleasant, beautiful city and we would encourage people to visit there.

Driving Mountainous Montenegro!

Phew! I was beat after driving through Montenegro back into Bosnia – Herzegovina to visit Sarajevo. What we thought would be a six-hour drive (with stops) ended up taking us nine hours!

We began our day by driving what turned out to be a harrowing drive to see Ostrog Monastery in Montenegro.  We approached from the north, on a road that serpentined up the mountain; it got narrower and narrower until it was basically a one-lane road without shoulders or railings to keep you from falling off the cliff when meeting a car coming down. Fortunately we were there early so we didn’t meet too many cars and I only had to back up once to a wider spot – I had no back up camera on my rental car, so I had visions of actually backing off the cliff! That drive was scary enough that I decided to take the “new road” back down, even though it meant we had to backtrack and go 20 miles out of our way.

I had seen pictures of Ostrog Monastery, a gleaming white Orthodox Christian monastery built in 1665 within two large caves in a cliff high up a valleyside. It looked so impressive I decided we had to visit it, even though it would take a chunk of time out of our day. It was founded by St. Basil, a bishop of Herzegovina, who brought his monks here after their Monastery was destroyed by the Ottomans. Although the original Monastery  was subsequently destroyed by a fire and rebuilt in the 1920’s, two cave churches survived which have beautiful frescoes dating back to the late 1400’s. St. Basil’s remains are entombed there, and it is the most popular pilgrimage site in Montenegro.

We drove several hours along a beautiful river gorge, through many tunnels (just natural rock tunnels, many long, with no inside lights!) with gorgeous views all the way. After so many twist and turns, we finally crossed the border back into BiH – but wait, I had to ask the border policeman if we were in BiH or in Serbia. The big sign welcomed us to the Republic of Srpska?

We found out later, from our walking tour in Sarajevo, that BiH has two separate political regions, the Federation (mainly Bosniaks and Croats) and the Republic of Srpska (mostly Serbs). He likened it to Spain and Catalonia, that the Serbs would like to separate totally from BiH, just like the Catalonians.

This border crossing was very primitive, just a small hut with one border guard. After we passed through, the road was so narrow that we wondered where is the border crossing for the people leaving the country? We drove across a flimsy-looking wooden plank bridge and onto this what I thought was a single lane road, totally pot-holed, portions unpaved, mountainside slides on parts of the road… We really were incredulous that this showed on our map as a main highway! After awhile it became a paved road and we continued up and over (more switchbacks) many mountains to a normal fairly straight and level highway, and into the capital city of Sarajevo. A hard driving day!

Picturesque Kotor, Montenegro

About an hour east of Dubrovnik lies the Bay of Kotor, in Montenegro.

And at the end of the bay is the town of Kotor, surrounded by a wall that snakes up the mountain to a ruined 6th century Illyrian-built Fortress of San Giovanni (or St. John). Are you tired of hearing about walled medieval towns yet?  Well, somehow this town is different. Plenty of tourists inside (two cruise ships were here this day), but it seems more like a real town where people live than a tourist attraction like Dubrovnik. Little kids are playing in the square after school, people’s laundry is hanging out the windows, everyone feeds the cats that hang about guarding for stray mice… It was just delightful.

Of course it helped that we had a hike to pass the time – up the Ladder of Kotor, also known as the Ladder of Cattaro. It’s part of a trail that originally went over a mountain pass to link inner Montenegro to the coast. Our goal originally was to go as far as we felt good, not necessarily the 1355 steps to the Fortress, but maybe to the Church of Our Lady of Health, built in 1518 by survivors of the 14th century plague and a pilgrimage site for the locals (it can only be reached by foot).

We just wanted to see the spectacular views of the town and surrounding bay. But we arrived to the church fairly quickly (amazing that the views take your mind off the climbing switchbacks) and surprisingly we felt good enough to go farther up. By the time we got to the ruins of a smaller fort, the Montenegro flag at the top of St. John’s Fortress was waving us upwards and it seemed close enough for us to continue on. We ended up going the entire way and it was a fantastic hike! A well-deserved large beer beckoned from one of many cafes below, and we scrambled back down to enjoy the evening.

After a dinner of – Brian’s favorite – shopska salad, and a vegetarian pizza (Balkan pizza is delicious, plenty of various veggies, no cheese by request and thin crust!), we walked around waiting for dark to see the lit up city walls, beautiful!

A Short Visit to Dubrovnik

We made a short trip to see Dubrovnik, Croatia for just one night – and it was long enough. I had heard about the town many years ago and wanted to visit, but I think I waited too long… It was jam-packed with cruise tourists, bus tourists and Game of Throne tourists (apparently some of the sites in the show were filmed here). Don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautiful walled city, right on the sea and with other old forts and castle ruins around it. But the crowds during the day were off-putting and I can’t imagine how much worse it would be during the height of the summer tourist season.

The top thing to do is to walk the walls, which we did and it was very nice – again, we were glad to be here in May weather instead of the summer heat!

Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina

(I must preface this post by apologizing in advance because it is the first of several posts you’ll get today. I have had problems uploading pics from my camera so several posts have been pending…)

Instead of taking the fast way (the motorway) to Bosnia-Herzegovenia (BiH), we elected to drive along the Croatian coast – good decision, it was gorgeous! A winding drive along the blue, blue Adriatic on the right, with soaring mountains on our left.

BiH is a small country where three cultures were living together peacefully while in Tito’s Yugoslavia: Muslim Bosniaks, Eastern Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats. Then in 1991 when Yugoslavia split up, these three groups began to  fight each other and the country suffered greatly during the war. Although much has been rebuilt since, there is still much damage to be seen. Here the war is much more evident than in Slovenia and Croatia.

The village of Medugorje was our first stop in BiH. If you’re Catholic, you’ve probably heard about it… in 1981 the Virgin Mary appeared and spoke to some teenagers and since then other visions have been recorded. Although the church has not officially recognized it as a legitimate pilgrimage site, over 15 million people have visited Medugorje and now it is one of the top pilgrimage sites in the world. It’s a tiny town with a large modern basilica, but the main draw is Apparition Hill, where the Blessed Mother is still said to appear to several of the teenagers who first had the visions. We were surprised that the way up the hill is strewn with rocks, probably the most rocky path we’ve ever taken on a hike. Hard to believe that some pilgrims go up barefoot or on their knees, we even saw a man being carried up on a chair on a stretcher. At the top is a beautiful statue of Mary and Christ on the Cross. It is a very spiritual place, and I have to say that I was very affected by this site.

 

Mostar is a small town first mentioned in records in 1474 when it was under Turkish rule; the men who guarded the suspension bridge over the lovely Neretva River were called mostari, or bridge keepers, and it’s thought the town was named after them. Mostar became the center of Ottoman rule in Herzegovina. The town grew around the now famous stone bridge, Stari Most (old bridge), which was completed in 1566. After 400 years, it was destroyed in 1993 by the Yugoslav Peoples Army and Bosnian Serb forces, along with almost the entire eastern side of the river (the Bosniak, or Muslim side). The bridge is the main attraction of Mostar. It was rebuilt in 2004 to the exact specifications from the original, and it is said to represent the reunified town. However, we read that there are still two hospitals, two school systems, two bus stations in Mostar… although it was not overtly evident to us, it still is a divided city.

We stayed in the pedestrian-only east bank in the Old Town, and enjoyed wandering through the bazaar and the mosques-filled (the oldest from 1552) cobblestone streets.

The bridge, river and old buildings are the stars of us picture-takers, and if you’re lucky you might see a young man or two dive off the top of the Stari Most while you have your camera out.

Much of the town has been rebuilt but the ravages of the recent war is still so obvious. Many bombed out houses and buildings still remain, and on many buildings you can still see bullet and mortar holes – it’s very sad. We went to visit the catholic Cathedral and found that masses are held in the basement since the church is still being repaired above. You can’t tell this from the outside, and we just stumbled upon the basement altar when we were snooping around. In the basement they also have a room with a written history, photos and remnants from the destruction of of the church during the Yugoslavian war.

We visited the local war museum, which focused on the 1991 – 1995 war atrocities afflicted on the people, the concentration camps, the genocide of the Bosniaks and the affects on the resident’s lives for those four years. Very haunting and sad. Almost 25 years have past, but they want people to remember so that it doesn’t happen again. To that end, “Don’t Forget” stones have been placed throughout the city.

We really liked Mostar a lot. A beautiful small, leafy town with lots of varied history. And, I have to add, the roasted vegetable platter was my best dinner of our trip!

 

Split Old Town

Upon driving south again from the natural wonder of Plitvice Lakes and going through an abundance of mountain tunnels, entering the 2nd largest city of Split on the Dalmatian coast is like returning to civilization – the shock of a bustling city. We are staying right on the Riva (the promenade next to the sea) with a view of the harbor and the old town, just perfect!

Split was started in the 4th century AD by the Roman Emperor Diocletian, who wanted to retire to his native area. He built a huge palace here, died here, and eventually his palace was abandoned. The townspeople of a neighboring village, fleeing the Turkish invaders, moved into the palace grounds and a medieval town was born. In the 15th century, the Venetians took over the Dalmatian coast and Split was expanded and fortified with stone walls. Now the Old Town is made up of two square sections, the east half that used to be Diocletian’s palace and the west side that was the medieval town that formed next door, both of which within the walls. It faces the harbor – actually the palace was built right on the water, but now it is back some from the sea and is fronted by the Riva promenade. Diocletian’s ruined palace has been replaced by crooked pedestrian streets but the medieval area still has a gate at each end. It’s small and compact, filled with tiny shops, cafes and restaurants, with lots of Roman ruins to gaze at while people watching (Split is now a cruise stop so there’s no end to the tourist groups).

Peristyle Square was the centerpiece of Diocletian’s palace. It is ringed by red granite pillars from ancient Egypt and contains a black sphinx that is the only one of Diocletian’s collection of 13 that’s still intact. His mausoleum has been replaced by the 4th century Cathedral of St. Domnius, which is regarded as the oldest Catholic cathedral in the world that remains in use in its original structure. It’s ironic that Diocletian’s mausoleum was replaced by a cathedral since he was famously against religion and tortured and executed thousands of Christians here on the Dalmatian coast.

Across from the Cathedral is the roman Jupiter’s Temple, which was converted into St. John’s Baptistery.  It still contains a 12th century baptismal font big enough to immerse an adult, with intricate engravings still intact.

We toured the Diocletian’s palace cellars, which were only discovered within the last 50 years, due to the fact that the early Middle Ages inhabitants began to use the cellars for a dumping ground. It was filled in over the centuries and was discovered after the war bombings. That was an important find because it led to archeologists being able to reveal the original floorplan and layout of the Emperor’s living quarters. The basement or cellars still have many of the original stone construction and artifacts and even some wooden beams preserved there. The purpose of the basement was to level out the original structure as it was built on a slope to the sea, to provide fortification for the large marble and stone palace and was used by the palace primarily for storage (later it was used to house those peoples who were fleeing invaders, as mentioned earlier).

Split was a welcome place to relax, walk the Riva, the Roman ruins and medieval streets before we move back inland a bit to Bosnia/Herzegovina.

 

 

Plitvice Lakes National Park

I’ve never seen anything like this park! It’s a lush valley of 16 terraced lakes, separated by natural travertine dams and laced together by probably 1000 waterfalls, a boat ride and miles of impressive plank walks. It was named Croatia’s 1st national park in 1949, but it was in the area where the Yugoslavian war started in 1991 and for five years the park was allowed to grow wild. That allowed its ecosystem to recover from the impact of so many tourists. It’s now again Croatia’s most visited destination, and I can understand why.

We spent six hours in the park, walking miles of trails, oohing and aahing (?) over the beauty around every bend. We were beat but we loved it!

I’ll just let the pictures speak for themselves…

 

A Cool Castle, the Adriatic Sea and Roman Ruins

Continuing south through Slovenia, we took a slight detour to visit the dramatic Predjama Castle. Rebuilt in 1570 after the original two versions were destroyed by a siege and an earthquake, respectively, the present version was built into the opening of a cave high up on a cliff.  It has an interesting background as to how one of the inhabitants in the 1400’s was a robber baron who hid out there under seige by an enemy army for over a year. Because of its location built into the cliff and a series of tunnels in the adjoining caves, it was basically impregnable by the area’s enemies. The inhabitants were able to store and replenish their food supplies in the caves and a series of tunnels attached to the castle and that exited vertically to the mountaintop. Inside, it’s impressive to see how the natural cave and the man-made castle walls are interwoven throughout the castle. Archeologists have found evidence of a torture chamber underneath the living quarters, and there are many exhibits from medieval times that we enjoyed. A much better tour than what was described in our book!

Then it was goodbye to beautiful Slovenia! The country is not touristy and has so much to see, it is definitely worth a visit…

We ended our day in Croatia, in the town of Rovinj on the Istrian Peninsula (bordered by Italy and the Adriatic Sea). It’s said that Italy still feels that this part of Croatia should belong to them; you hear mostly Italian spoken and many buildings are venetian-style as it was part of the Republic of Venice from the 13th to 18th century.  There’s no major sights in Rovinj, but it’s a pleasant ancient town on the water with delightfully twisty streets and old crumbling buildings – very cute (and good italian food!).

We were wowed by Pula, another harbor town at the southern tip of the peninsula. Pula is said to have the best Roman ruins in Croatia, including one of the best-preserved (and the 6th largest) of the remaining Roman amphitheaters. In 177 BC, Pula was an important port in the Roman Empire. It was destroyed in the years after Julius Caesar’s death, then rebuilt in the 1st century AD. That’s when the amphitheater and other structures were built. We walked around marveling at this magnificent structure (we’ve been to the one in Rome which must be bigger, but somehow this was just as impressive). It was completed in 80 AD, about the same time as the Colosseum, and remained in use until the beginning of the 5th century. It’s unique in that it is built into a slight hill, which saved on the amount of stone needed to build it, and also provided a natural foundation for some of the 25,000 seats. The 4 rectangular towers around the outside are also unique – they held wooden staircases to get the crowds in and out more efficiently. They also each had a water reservoir to spray water on the crowds to refresh them and to mask the smell of blood – ugh.

Other intact Roman remains in Pula include the impressive 1st century Temple of Augustus, a roman floor mosaic that was unearthed by locals who were cleaning up after WWII bombings, and the Arch of Sergius (Michaelangelo’s favorite Roman artifact in Pula).

Driving the Julian Alps

I was so looking forward to this drive, as I love mountain scenery. We were hoping for good weather and we were blessed with a clear, cool day.  😊

The Julian Alps (named for Julius Caesar)  are mostly in Triglav National Park and are in the northwest part of Slovenia, close to the border of Austria and Italy. It’s a big skiing and ski jumping area. The crowning glory of the park is Mt. Triglav, the country’s high peak. The spectacular drive that we took consists of 50 hairpin turns, 24 up to Vrsic Pass and 26 down to the beautiful Soca River valley. The drive from Lake Bled to the town of Kobarid, which was our destination, would only take 2 1/2 hours without any stops, but we planned on taking the whole day so we could stop for pictures and short hikes.

Of course I can’t pass up a waterfall hike, and one was recommended that was in the park but before we got on the Vrsic Pass road. One of the fun things outside of the US is that you’re able to drive or hike on roads and paths that are a little… dicey? Not necessarily unsafe, but extremely narrow, or unpaved, or roads and trails without railings when close to a cliff… Just a situation that makes your heart beat a little faster 😨.  The road up to this waterfall and then to the subsequent viewpoint of Mt. Triglav is one of those roads. Not dangerous, but I wasn’t sure if it was really the right road – you’d never find a road like it in the US. Anyway, we got to the waterfall hike and the hike to the viewpoint and both were fabulous!

This area saw a lot of fighting in WWI between the Austro-Hungarian troops and the Italians, and there are a lot of historic sights all around – fortification and supply line ruins, cemeteries, etc. One interesting stop is a small Russian chapel. The Vrsic Pass road was built during WWI by 10,000 Russian POW’s (held by the Austro-Hungarians) to help supply the Soca Front. They were held in terrible conditions and in addition to hundreds who died from illness and exposure, hundreds more were killed by a horrible avalanche. This chapel was built in their honor. After several more viewing stops we crossed the treeline and hit the snow line and finally reached the summit of Vrsic Pass. On the way down, we passed through little villages and wound through the lovely Soca River valley with its many suspension bridges. The Soca River is the most beautiful turquoise color imaginable, all the way from its source to its end at Trieste, Italy (into the Adriatic Sea) . We followed it for most of two days and marveled at its beauty the whole time.

We spent the night at the small town of Kobarid. Ernest Hemmingway drove a Red Cross ambulance for the Italians in this region during WWI and mentioned Kobarid (by its Italian name) in his novel “A Farewell to Arms”. Kobarid has a WWI museum that is dedicated to the years of fighting at the “Soca Front” – we visited it, but again neither of us knew enough about that portion of the war to really appreciate the museum. There’s also a hilltop Italian mausoleum topped by a church that was built to house the remains of over 7000 WWI Italian soldiers (moved from hundreds of cemeteries in the whole area). Much Slovenian history happened here and it’s an interesting region.

The next morning we took a short hike to a spectacular nearby waterfall before leaving Kobarid. It was mentioned as something to do here, but it was way better than we expected. After passing through some remains of Italian tunnels and fortifications from the war, we wound through some lovely forest, next to the Soca River and then a lovely small creek. After awhile we could hear the waterfall and had to walk over a couple of single plank bridges before having to walk a wooden walkway along a cliff wall (it looked scarier from afar than when we actually did it). But our reward around the last bend in the gorge was a high waterfall pouring into a beautiful pool. Just gorgeous!

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