EEET2013 – Day 11-13 – Belgrade & Novi Sad (Serbia)

Posting our post cards in the last minutes before our night train left the Budapest train station, I realized that it had been approximately six years and ten months since I had been there the first time while on ‘Mini-Exchange’ during my Exchange Trimester in Austria in Fall 2006. But no time to remember too much about it.  Before we knew it the train left and country number two, after Slovakia, was checked on our EEET2013 –list. [If you still don’t know it: EEET2013 stands for: Eastern Europe Eurail Trip (and the year)].

An eight hour trip, with a one hour stop in the middle of nowhere to check all the passenger’s passports, later we stepped out of the train in Belgrade, capital of Serbia and former capital of Yugoslavia. That last word was going to come back to us for numerous times in the next week, although we didn’t know it back then. 

Getting tired of continuous travelling, but still standing strong.

Play & Go!

A coffee, visit to an original French toilet (flies included) and about twenty degrees Celcius later, we took our bags and headed to our hostel. Although it took us some time, more than two hours to be honest, to find it, I must say that this was definitely one of the best hostels and hosts I have ever encountered. Hostel Goodnight Grooves in Belgrade is perfectly located, right behind the main walking street, and only fifteen mins. from the main train station. The hosts welcomed us with the typical Serbian drink: Rakija which is a mix of Schnapps and Vodka. Kind of the best way to describe it I guess. Moreover, we got an hour-long description of what there was to do and see in Belgrade and what kind of typical dishes, drinks, etc. we should certainly try, or not at all. I have been to quite a few hostels in three continents by now (hupsa, that sounds awesome…) and I really have never been received that well by anyone. The best part was: when I told them how amazed I was by their reception, they were surprised as they thought every hostel should receive people (=customers) the way they do. Admirable is probably the word to be used here.

Once we got installed in the hostel, we were so tired from the train ride, the long and hot days of the Volt Festival and Budapest, that we decided to do a nap. After our very refreshing nap, we headed to the walking street, the real city centre of Belgrade and strolled around for a couple of hours before getting back to the hostel for an early night to bed. We did note to ourselves: so many Serbs speak English so well, and they are so way nicer and friendlier than Hungarians. We liked Belgrade better already it seemed.

The next day we had planned an excursion to NoviSad. Hang on lads, this is going to be an EPIC story. (quote: Chris M., my Canadian friend from Erasmus). After losing 45mins to purchase our tickets, we had missed two trains. [Tip: if you wish to travel by bus or train in Serbia, be sure to book your tickets in advance to not get stressed out when you need to leave fast!] But after all, that misfortune turned out to be one of the best days of our whole trip! On the train, which was very old, even for Serbian standards, we met a curious and intriguing guy. Karlo was, at the beginning, just a random Serbian dude who wanted to sit next to us. But very soon he started talking to us, just as almost every Serbian, in very good English. Within five minutes it seemed as if we had known him for years and he even invited us to be his guests for the day.           

Serbian guides & friends

It gets even better: while we were talking about Belgium and Serbia, suddenly a young lady stood up and almost shouted: “Bruges?! Are you from Belgium?!” This sympathic girl, happens to play for the Waregem Basketbal Team and has been living in West-Vlaanderen, Belgium for the past year! Yes, she even had a non-understandable accent when she spoke a little Dutch! The four of us chatted for a while until we arrived at our destination, Novi Sad, and we had to say goodbye to our new sports idol and promised each other to hang out once we all got back to Belgium.

Karlo was, as promised, our guide for the day and after having a local hamburger (damn, I love bread in the Balkan!) he took us to his apartment where we were both cruelly raped and incredibly tortured by him and his vampire-friends. How. Nope. Stop, that’s not true. In matter a fact, we arrived at his apartment, together with two of his friends and the five of us spent around three hours chitchatting about Yugoslavia, Belgium, the world and the famous ExitFestival. Exit Fest was actually the reason Liesbeth and I started planning this trip, but soon became clear that we preferred VoltFestival’s line-up above Exit’s. But now here we were, in Novi Sad, the city where Exit is organized every year since 2000 and we even were here during the festival itself! During our tour, by master guide Karlo, we tried to get closer to the famous Petrovaradin Fortress, where the actual festival takes place, but unfortunately that didn’t work… Novi Sad is a small but comfortable city, which we enjoyed a lot in the late afternoon sun together with our new friends. They even invited us for next year’s edition of Exit! Although our new friends insisted we would stay over for a night of, without a doubt, epic fun, we took the last train back to Belgrade and got back to the hostel around 1A.M.

New Polish friends

Our third day in Serbia really was all about Belgrade. Together with two new Polish friends, whom we had met at our hostel, we headed for the Free Walking Tour and enjoyed a morning in the Serbian capital. At noon, we had lunch with our Polish compatriots. They had been travelling all over Europe during the last fifteen years. Every year during their holidays they tried to do a different part of Europe and they were very surprised to hear about the existence of something like the Free Walking Tours. As you can see, the older guard can steal learn from the new one! In the evening the two of us made a promenade around the city all the way to the Orthodoxe Cathedral of Saint Sava, which was an amazing sight at night. We packed our bags before heading to bed rather early as the next day we were going travel for eight hours for a mere 250kms. Yes, indeed eight hours for 250kms to our next destination, and another new country… 

But by selling big burgers at less than two Euros and half liters of beer of Stella Artois which are cheaper in the supermarkets than they are in Belgium, made it certain: Watch out Serbia: we’ll be back!

peace out_

Liesbeth&Thibault

Great view over the city of Belgrade

Second largest orthodoxe church of Europe

[Note: everyone in Eastern Europe seems to know about the “Political Problems” in our little Belgium; “back home” as we say here. I must admit that it is nothing to be proud of as it is usually the only thing they know about Belgium, except for maybe some football teams]