The Delicious Pig...and other Serbian tales

After my short stop in Timisoara, Romania, I took an early morning train to Serbia. We crossed the border in Vrsac, an entirely uneventful border crossing except for the immigration official who spent the whole time shouting across the length of the station at his lazy colleague. I was impressed with my seat-mates who were 2 Brazilian guys, returning home from Ukraine overland (with no stops!).

Our train was an hour late so I thought I'd have no chance of catching my scheduled bus to Novi Sad. This was slightly worrying as someone was due to pick me up from there, to take me to my accommodation in Vrdnik – and this had been arranged entirely by email with a guy in Canada. I had a phone number in Serbia but of course, my Ukrainian SIM card hadn't worked since I crossed into Moldova...and besides, I reckoned the person on the other end of the phone wouldn't speak English!

However, I hadn't yet experienced Serbian taxi drivers. The cab I picked up outside the train station understood that I needed the bus station (annoyingly quite far away) and set out like a bat out of hell. I tried to explain that I didn't have any Serbian dinars yet, but he wasn't getting my message until I waved some Romanian lei at him – at which point he recoiled in horror “No lei! No lei!” - but kept on driving. He pulled into the bus station and spotted a bus to Novi Sad which was pulling out. Now, I hadn't told him where I was going but somehow he guessed, and parked his taxi so that it blocked the bus; jumped out shouting at the bus driver and threw my backpack into his arms; and stood there looking pleased as punch!

Now I was trying to explain my lack of dinars to 2 Serbian guys. The taxi driver took the 5 Euros I handed him and promptly vanished (well, at least he'd ensured I caught my bus so I guess that was worth a substantial tip), and the bus driver looked perplexed but waved me onto the bus. He didn't want my lei or US dollars, and I didn't have enough Euros left for the bus fare, but we resolved this by stopping at the ATM on our way out of town. I could finally relax, especially when my seat-mate (a Serbian who was now mainly living in Rome) pointed out that my watch was one hour ahead of Serbian time – so I was actually on the correct bus service! We rolled along the incredibly flat Serbian landscape, passing farm after farm after farm.

When I arrived in Novi Sad, I easily spotted Jasminka and her niece Senka waiting for me. We set out for Vrdnik so I could settle in to my little apartment at Jasminka's house. It was great – a big double room with a little kitchenette, dining area/lounge, and wet room. The other room wasn't occupied (Vrdnik is mainly a summer destination for Serbian tourists) so I had plenty of space!

Serbian bacon & onions in the sunshine

I was promptly offered some lunch of Serbian bacon & onion.  A bit hard to work out how to eat this at first (I needed some lessons in carving my bacon!) and I'm not sure that much raw onion is a good idea, but I was assured that pig is what the doctor prescribes in Serbia as a remedy for all your ills!

Senka left for her house (a few villages away) since she has a small baby and was missing her. This left me & Jasminka to try to communicate with the help of my eastern Europe phrasebook & her picture dictionary!

I walked around the village and visited the monastery (there are 16 in the area around Fruska Gora National Park). It was neat to see that it's still occupied by the nuns and they were selling homemade honey and wine. Then I walked up to the spa to get the hours (9am-9pm) and price (200 dinars = less than 2 GBP!) for using their pool. Unfortunately the outdoor pools were closed due to major renovations at their hotel, but maybe it was a bit early in the year for them to be open anyways. Finally, I stocked up on some food at the local corner shop and went home to make some dinner.

After dinner I hit the town, and settled in at the Red Baron pub. Luckily they were showing the news on television and I used this as a conversation starter, as there was a story about tractors & police that I'd experienced (but not understood) on my bus ride to Novi Sad. I asked my neighbour what the story was, and she explained that the farmers had blocked traffic in some areas in a kind a strike about their income. But, she said that she worked in a government-funded job and she hadn't been paid in over a month, so she found it hard to have any sympathy with them. It seemed like only people who worked in private jobs (like the bartender at our pub) were actually getting their paycheques.

I then had a great chat with Jovana and the bartender, Petar (aka Pepe), which led to them inviting me to a dinner they were planning to cook the next day! I also experienced dark beer with an added orange slice (not bad at all) and when my bill arrived, discovered that 2 of my 3 drinks had been purchased by others – at least one by a man I barely spoke to. I was beginning to like this town.

Breakfast for oneAdd caption, Serbian style

The following morning I awoke to find a massive breakfast in my dining area. I managed about half of it before I set out on my borrowed bicycle across the hills in search of monasteries.

Well, I didn't find any more monasteries but I did make it to the next village, where most of the villagers were attending a wake (or similar) at someone's house in the town center – and a bit further out of town was the cemetery with some young gravediggers hard at work. It really struck me that the headstones in the cemetery were almost entirely for elderly couples. How amazing to see that nearly everyone lived for 70 years or longer, and were still together after years of marriage!

It started to rain so I returned to Vrdnik and grabbed my swimsuit – it was time to swim! The spa had special hangers which held your clothes, shoes & other belongings, and you placed this in an unmanned cloakroom area while you swam. A bit disconcerting but no one else was worried about their wallets, etc, so I went with the flow. The pool was a nice temperature, I think around 32C, and it was not too busy so I managed to swim a few laps and stretch out my “bike muscles”. The pool area was not very impressive – lots of peeling paint, moldy bits on the walls, and a shallow pool which had bits of moss or algae floating in it – but I was pretty sure I'd survive it.

As I was heading to the spa, Jovana had sent me a text to say they were starting to cook dinner, so I was in a hurry to drop off my wet swimsuit and get to Petar's apartment. I was very surprised to find Jasminka in my dining area with a steaming bowl of soup and a fish dinner! We had a very awkward conversation which included me waving around a coaster from the Red Baron and pointing at “friend” in my phrasebook, which I think was interpreted as “I am a lush and will skip dinner to hang out at the pub”. I'm pretty sure that I was only allowed out because I promised to eat my dinner later – oh dear.

I had a great evening with Petar and Jovana, including Petar's homemade sausage/salami and an experimental “Turkish chicken” dish. Petar had to go to his boss' birthday party at the pub so Jovana and I headed home. By the time I watched a movie I had enough space to squeeze in a bit of Jasminka's food as well ;-)

The next day was Saturday, and Senka reappeared with her husband, baby Lenka, and her mother in tow. I shared a leisurely fish lunch with the family - including some raiki made by Senka's dad; my new favourite food pavlaka (it's a bit like sour cream but really thick and delicious!); and some chicken soup with dumplings. I ate until I was stuffed – and then at the urging of the family, I ate a bit more.... Then we left Lenka with her grandma and great-aunt and Senka, her husband (Jakob?) & I went off for a drive/hike to Vrdnik Tower. We also visited a hilltop restaurant, and the monastery & delicious (& frogtastic!) spring at Jazak. When we returned, Senka and I went to visit Jasminka's neighbour who makes wine, and tried a glass or two. What a lovely afternoon with some very nice people – by now, I felt like I'd been adopted!

Senka and her family headed home in the late afternoon and I sadly began to pack up & prepare for moving on the next day. I had one more thing to look forward to though - a demonstration of traditional Serbian dance which happened to be taking place at the spa that evening.  The place was packed!  I didn't understand much but it was all good fun, and it was amusing to see that the following two items are fundamental to Serbian folk dancing - a good strong belt, and a small object (a bit like a mini cat o' nine tails?) which is whirled around in one hand by the lead dancer & sometimes by everyone.  The best bit was at the end when the band played a song that everyone else clearly knew, and EVERYONE started dancing  =) Here's a little excerpt from the evening (the first attempt to use the "movie" function of my camera):

Senka drove me to Novi Sad the next morning - after we had some hot dog-like sausages (I'm sure I can thank the pig for those too), bread & more pavlaka for breakfast.  After a few ATM and currency exchange issues at the bus station, I just managed to make it on to the Nis bus service (with a little help from Senka who paid my “bus station” fee – yep, in Serbia you pay to enter the bus station!). I was sad to be leaving my new family & friends in Vrdnik – it had been a perfect choice for meeting Serbian people and experiencing real life there. I was so impressed with the self-sufficiency – everyone is producing their own food and there is certainly no such thing as a “ready meal”!

I finished my stay in Serbia with a short stop in Nis - shorter than expected, actually, since the train to Istanbul was mysteriously cancelled and I had to take a bus to Sofia verrrry early in the morning instead.  Too bad as there are lots of interesting monuments in Nis that I would've liked to see, including the Skull Tower!  Ah well, I'll just have to go back....