Thursday 31 May 2007

Serbia: Novi Sad

There were absolutely no road signs from Croatia to Serbia but over a few more hills we found the border crossing where Roger learnt not to take photos of the border guards.

We thought we'd test our fitness by venturing into the hills of Fruška Gora National Park, 500m up, to an area of hills, forests, orchards and monasteries. We took a steep detour and found our first Orthodox monastery in the middle of nowhere. We were greeted by about 10 barking dogs and some friendly monks who showed us around. We then missed our route down off the hills and continued along the hilly road for many more kilometres than planned.


Fruska Gora monastery

The Turks were in Serbia for 500 years, compared with only 150 years in Croatia, and the difference is apparent in the music especially; droning arabic-sounding guitar tunes are popular here.

In Novi Sad we happily discovered an abundance of street food and the first really hot peppers in Europe. The town centre is attractive with wide pedestrian boulevardes but travel a few hundred metres from the centre and you're suddenly in drab suburbia.





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