retiredmartin

October 2023. Novi Sad. Serbia.

Mrs RM had spent hours researching ways to explore the unexplored Serbia, but (not for the only time) a trip got cancelled late due to lack of bookings. Travelling through central Europe early October has its benefits (cheaper, plenty of accommodation, potential of great weather), but you take a risk things won’t run.

I shared Mrs RM’s disappointment, though in truth escaping eight (8) hours on a coach after a night of beer on top of wine felt like a win. And we could tick off second city Novi Sad on one of the (few) Serbian trains.

Breakfast at Hotel Beograd was a stunning affair,

spoilt/enhanced by an unrelenting soundtrack of 80s MOR covers. You could have been in a Whitley Bay micropub.

We needed that breakfast, as the train railway station turned out to be a 45 minute slog through the southern suburbs, and not at point B (marked Belgrade Rail Station below) at all, oh no.

But in fairness those 45 minutes gave us a pretty good picture of the Serbian capital, whose centrepiece Republic Square suddenly looked a little better,

and if I called it “stately but a bit drab” then I could say that about Marylebone and a fair bit of Brussels as well.

It certainly felt safe. Well, as long as you left before 12th December, anyway.

The only real challenge is negotiating the Serbian equivalent of Spaghetti Junction.

At the station, a mass of redevelopment, we helped a man called Richard lug his suitcases up the steps and then negotiate the ticket machine.

Richard came from just outside Doncaster Airport, so I made him read my blog post on his local.

Novi Sad isn’t much of a second city, but it was one of the European Capitals of Culture in 2022. But then so was Liverpool a few years back.

The station was a hefty walk from the centre (again), and by the end of the day we’d amassed over 30k steps, with a calorie loss almost equivalent to the beer and peanuts that day.

“What doesn’t (quite) kill you makes you stronger” I said, without conviction.

Novi Sad is quite pleasant,

but it’s Petrovaradin fortress on the other side of the Danube you come for,

There’s something odd about the clock, apparently. We missed it; can you see it ?

Fresh lemonade at the top of the steps for a quid, but frankly it was the promise of a beer and a taxi that gave Mrs RM the impetus to press on towards the studenty bit of town next to the synagogue.

Reader, I delivered the pub, but I lied about the taxi.