BLOG # 10:  SERBIA TO BULGARIA

We had two days in Serbia; the first spent in the capital Belgrade.  Belgrade is a large, clean city but not as attractive as other cities we visited.  There is a bit of a drab, grayness about it.  The tour involved hours of walking, so Betty stayed onboard as I visited a church, a pedestrian area and a fort.

Trivia:  Unlike a Roman Catholic Cathedral an Orthodox Church has no statues, no organ, and no pews upon which to sit.

On our second day in Serbia we first stopped at the Golubac Fortress,

prior to our afternoon sail through the Iron Gates.  The Iron Gates refers to a 100 km stretch of water where the Danube narrows dramatically and the cliffs of the Carpathian Mountains rise sharply from the Romanian side and the cliffs of the Balkan Mountains rise on the Serbian side.  The huge carving shown among the pictures is of an ancient Romanian hero.  It was carved around 1900 and it took 12 sculptors 10 years to complete.

After hearing stories of the war while in Croatia I was interested in the Serbian side.  While in Belgrade our guide seemed to avoid talking about anything beyond “the golden years” of Tito.  At one point I asked her if she were avoiding later history.  I noted that there are always two sides and she interpreted this as sympathy for Serbia.  She then unloaded an emotional defence of Serbia, but I must confess some of the arguments had a bit a Putin-like reasoning.  In the evening a wonderful lecturer came on board the boat to talk about the history of Serbia.  Even though he was even-handed in his description of the buildup to the war I was still left mostly with sympathy for the break-away states of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and now Kosovo.  Serbia is currently blocked from admission to the European Union because of its refusal to recognize Kosovo.

After breakfast I took a stroll into Vidin, Bulgaria.  Vidin has the highest unemployment in Bulgaria, yet the small city seemed quite pleasant.  In the afternoon we went to a winery for tastings  Even directly from the barrels the wines were excellent.  I am very impressed with Bulgarian wine, which unfortunately is not available in Nova Scotia, instead most of the wines are exported to China.