Late my first night out in Novi Sad, I walked along cobblestone streets back towards my hotel a few blocks off the central plaza. Serbia is pretty rough around the edges, but old town Novi Sad is generally as polished and charming as any European city. As I near the last cross street a tall, lanky figure crossed ahead of me in dark shadows with a guitar slung off his shoulder.
He looks back at me and shouts.
-“Ej, bio si na mom nastupu ranije!”
“Я не понимаю.” I respond in my still limited Russian phraseology hoping its close enough to Serbian, or would otherwise be understood.
“I do not understand. English?” I add further.
“-Oh! You were at my show earlier.”
“Oh, yeah! I checked out a few bars and bands. You were the bassist at the first joint. It was really fun. Everybody knew the songs. I was impressed!”
“-Yeah, it’s called Yu-rock. You went to all the best places. This is the music that brings people together. You know, the kind were people end the night going home with a woman instead of getting into fights.”
“Yeah, that‘s certainly much better. The vibes were great! Everyone was embracing each other and signing in chorus.”
I spent five days in Serbia, and what I gathered fairly quickly is it is a proud country and a proud people. There appears to be quite a bit of nostalgia from the Yugoslavia days when it was the seat of power over a much larger nation. The post breakup period since the 1990s has been complicated and at times violent. On the surface, there appeared to be an attitude to the demeanor of most. Lots of aggressive looking tattooed men (and women) and a peppering of anti-EU and anti-NATO graffiti about, which given the 1999 controversial bombing of Belgrade, one can at least understand where it emanates from, rightly or wrongly. Similarly to the tactful politics of Yugoslavia under Tito, Serbia continues to balance its allegiances between the West and East, the EU and Russia.
Beyond the façade, though, I found a kind populace delighting in the early summer weather as much as anywhere.
—
Still, Serbia was the first sense I had of not being in ‘Kansas’ anymore, as it would begin denoting an apparent transition from the familiar to the progressively more distinct and novel cultures and countries from those known to me previously.
For one, I thought, damn, I need to start reading my How to Speak Russion book again. Not because Serbian is Russian, although it is a Slavic language sharing perhap 50-60% of vocabulary, but also because it uses the Cyrillic alphabet and pronunciation. Without knowledge of that alphabet, all the signs and adverts are completely unrecognizable, even if the word is close enough when spoken to be intelligible to English. It’s an experience akin becoming a newborn learning how to make sounds and sense of the world around you again. Humbling without a doubt, frustrating and debilitating for sure.
It also was not my original plan. To the extent I had one, but that is also the point of this trip – to call an audible as the conditions on the ground or the last minute curiosity of an alternate train connection warrants.
GoogleMaps, ChatGPT, and other trip planner tools have made modern travel exceptionally more seamless and less enigmatic than previously, but things started to break down as I attempted to chart my course beyond eastern Slovakia. I had wanted to go hike the obscure Rodnei mountain range in northern Romania, but the most direct route was through Ukraine, and while part of me was intrigued with this possibility, I knew this was clearly best avoided despite the great distance from front lines. Having read Hemingway as an adolescent and romanticized seeking a modern cause célèbre akin to fighting fascism in 1930s Spain, I am not yet prepared to take such a bold course, despite believing that conflict represents one of the greatest fronts for the defense of modern rules-based, freedom-loving societies and smaller state sovereignty.
All other routes routed through Budapest, far west of my target destination in northern Romania, and then suggested a cacophony of changes in route. Taking a look at the calendar, I also recognized my time was compressing, and I did not have the time to hike there as well as journey into Moldova, another off the beaten path country I had been curious about. I will note this region for a follow up journey.
As such, the option straight south into Serbia via Belgrade and onward to Sofia and then Istanbul seemed straightforward enough and would preserve a reasonable amount of time to transit across Türkiye. Plus, I had never been to either of these countries.
Seemed straight forward….
—-
Man, what the hell happened here?
A sleek, polished structure as I approached from afar turned absent of life and increasingly decrepit as I inspected more closely. If I held any hope of still getting the train from the Novi Sad station to Belgrade that Google Maps directed me to take, the sight of nearly two dozen rose-clad memorial wreaths and protruding rebar from the front facade at its entrance vanquished those expectations as unexpectedly as those poor souls lost their lives here, somehow…
Fortunately, the bus station was next door. Still, I immediately had to Google this situation. A series of curious events was starting to add up.
Travel can teach you the inner workings and socio-political undercurrents of a nation or region in ways you are unlikely to learn about from afar, or simply can’t avoid once you are there, at least if you are a slightly curious type.
I recall once getting unexpectedly caught up in anti-free trade protests in Bogotá organized in support of affected Colombian onion growers as one such front row lesson to the far reaching insights of witnessing on-the-ground social discontent. What started as curious observation of a large street manifestation quickly escalated to dozens of participants and me running from tear gas canisters and possible detention as police corralled “supporters” within the confines of the narrow, cobblestone streets of the Candelaria district. Fortunately, my hostel was within the collapsing perimeter of the security forces, and I evaded further jeopardy. Another hostel-goer, however, took a gas canister straight to the upper back and had a nasty looking laceration.
This time, it began on my train from Subotica near the Hungarian border, which upon approaching Novi Sad, simply blew right past it. Hmmm…
When it stopped at the next town on the opposite side of the river, Petrovaradin, I simply figured that the station there was somehow better equipped for the high-speed intercity train that I was on. No problem, Google Maps suggested I could get a regional train back across the river, but when I tried to find the train listing and platform, nothing was displayed on the station monitor. I asked at the ticket counter and they simply responded that there were only buses to Novi Sad. After some confusion and resulting adventure figuring out the right bus into the city, I discounted the original oddity to the recess of my mind.
Now, bearing witness to the state of the Novi Sad train station, my Google search returns the summary of a tragedy that occurred on November 1, 2024 when the canopy of the newly renovated station suddenly collapsed killing 16 people standing below it. From that moment on, I began taking a second look at the infrastructure I choose to rest under.
The outcry from the tragedy led to massive student-led protests accusing the central government of corruption and its mismanagement of public infrastructure projects, as well as other elements of discontent with the national state of affairs.
I left it there for the time being and secured my ticket on the bus to Belgrade, but it would not be the end of the saga and recent history lesson I was to find…
Entering Belgrade, one is greeted by the brutalist communist architecture of New Belgrade: wide boulevards, bleak behemoths of concrete grey housing blocks, and the admittedly cool looking Genex tower (or Western Gate) which, with more time, I would have enjoyed visiting.
After transferring on a local bus into the historic and also modern parts of downtown, I noticed a consistent slew of shoddy graffiti on public edifices throughout displaying “FCK BLK” or “FCK SNS” slogans, or sometimes one with the original crossed out and replaced by the other. Besides noting the lack of artistic styling I largely ignore it, despite how pervasive it is.
Near the central square, there is also a massive patriotic banner hanging off the side of a tall building with the flag and colors of Serbia, along with the writing Србија побеђује. Having gratefully studied Cyrillic, I decipher that the first word means Serbia, but am at a loss about the second word. Still, I entertain myself as I walk about everywhere attempting to read out the signs and adverts in my head as a form of practice, despite still not knowing what most of them mean.
I would later begin to see other examples of this same phrase, and then more interestingly, thanks to my burgeoning Russian knowledge, saw stickers pasted about reading Студенти побеђују, which I knew meant Students … something….
Ok, this is connected somehow…
I Google the phrase again, and it all comes back to the Novi Sad train station incident. The student-led protests garnered substantial societal support amassing rallies of 100,000s and grew to include tactics such as blockading streets and faculty buildings regularly for 16 minutes in honor of the victims and in call for institutional and political reforms. Hence the “FCK BLK” graffiti refers to “Blokaderis” as the students, and the “SNS” on the other hand standing for the initials of the Serbian Progressive Party, which is in power, and is sometimes interchanged for “VCC”, short for Vučić, the nearly decade-long President.
Later, the students adopted the slogan that “The students were winning” (Студенти побеђују) in their efforts to push for sweeping national reforms. In response, the central government co-opted their slogan to instead say that “Serbia was winning” (Србија побеђује) to the humor of the student movement that the government couldn’t come up with anything more clever. Pro-government sympathizers then had gone about ravaging the city with the anti-student graffiti wars.
It was all coming full circle.
Without an ounce of curiosity to look into all this beyond my initial observations, one could have glanced over all of this, chalking it up to shoddy adolescent vandalism and unstylistic graffiti skills.
In summary, its fascinating what you can learn following the bread crumbs from something as basic as consistently incorrect Google Map travel itineraries that prove false and misleading.
I won’t pretend to truly understand matters appropriately enough to opine on the validity or righteous of either side, but it is clearly a significant current in Serbian society and politics at the moment.
—
Sociopolitics aside, I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Serbia, visiting the historic city of Novi Sad, the capital of Belgrade, and the provincial town of Niš, the latter being historical birthplace of Constantine the Great, the emperor who would convert the Roman empire to Christianity. It is an exceptionally affordable country to travel in and is far off the beaten path of typical European tourist circuits.
Each and every one of the cities featured a fortress built between the 15-18th centuries along either the Danube or the Nišava rivers and were in impressive condition. All built to defend against the volley of invasions by or against the Ottoman, Austrians, or Serbian forces in control at the time. Some even leveraged earlier Roman foundations from earlier defense systems in the same location.
In many countries you’d expect these to be national monuments cordoned off for timed entry and museum passes. In Serbia, they simply serve as city parks where access is entirely granted to scramble around on most any wall or ruin one cares to. They are the host to large music festivals, or small ones, cafes, or picnic goers and sunset revelers. I enjoyed them all, and the vantage points to the adjacent waters were obvious to their strategic importance. I caught every sunset from one, as did most of local society.
Belgrade was also an enjoyable city, despite its rough edges and scrappy graffiti wars. Side walk cafes abound throughout and the nightlife is vibrant even into late hours. I stepped into my first orthodox church here and observed the ornate painted mosaics, from which I would begin encountering many more as I journey further into the eastern reaches of the former Roman empire.
As an energy nerd, I also couldn’t help but queue for entrance into Nikola Tesla museum and take part in the real world experiments of operable generators and transformers they had stationed there as well as observe many of his other early and foundational revolutionizing inventions. The brilliance of that human being is mind blowing giving the effect and impetus to which he aided modern power and technology, a testament to how a single individual can have an exceptional impact on humanity as a whole if curiosity and unhindered pursuit of it is given way.
Lastly, in Niš, I caught a Serbian pop rock concert, stepped into the Nišville Jazz museum (the festival unfortunately doesn’t take place until August), and visited two fascinating historical monuments.
First, the skull tower, where in the Battle of Čegar Stevan Sindjelic defiantly but unsuccessfully led Serbian forces in defense against invading Ottomans. The victors constructed the tower with the defenders’ skulls to intimidate future resistance. To the contrary, it has become a centuries long testament to Serbian independence and pride to combat foreign dominance in their country in its pursuits of freedom. 58 out of 952 skulls still remain in the ruin.
Mediana was my last stop which was a 3rd-4th century Roman villa that hosted entourages of Constantine the Great and served as a meeting place amongst Roman leadership. Having gained recent stone-laying experience during my time in Berlin, I took particular interest in the well-preserved millennia-old stone mosaics of Greek gods and intricate patterns along the remaining hallways.
Later that day I caught a bus onward to Sofia in Bulgaria and delighted in the magnificent mountain scenery crossing southwesterly through the Balkans.
Leave a Reply