Across the Northwest Balkans with Steven

We got dropped off at a petrol station in Vrsac, a town just on the Serbia side of the Serbia-Romania border.

Shortly after arriving we were stopped by a young man on a bike who asked "are you strangers?"  He told us that they don't see many foreigners in their small town, despite it being only about 120km from Serbia's capital, Belgrade/Beograd.

We had multiple reasons for stopping in Vrsac, despite the fact that our day's destination was Beograd.  First, it was actually slightly cheaper to take the private shuttle to Vrsac, then switch to a train to Beograd (until 2016 there was a Romanian state railway train that ran to Vrsac, but they got into an argument with Serbian authorities over payment for use of the Serbian tracks, so the service stopped and with it the last public transportation between Romania and Serbia).  Second, on our previous visit to Serbia in 2012 we'd seen Beograd, Novi Sad and that was about it, so we wanted a chance to explore a wee bit more of the country. Finally, Vrsac is at the heart of Serbia's most highly regarded wine region, so we felt like we had to stop while passing through.

Vrsac is a cute little town.  We had a bit of a walk through it on our way to the Vinik Family Winery, one of only two in town that are open to the public (the lady at the tourism information office phoned the winemaker and told us "he'll be in around noon").  

We had a fabulous time at the winery.  The winemaker only spoke Serbian and German, but one of a group of customers who'd been in before us (and who were probably the reason the winemaker was there at all) spoke English and very kindly hung around to have a few more samples and to translate for us.  You could tell that the winemaker was just having fun talking with us. We traded wine-related aphorisms and jokes and sipped our way through a mix of western European style (Sauvignon Blanc, Merlot) and uniquely Serbian ones (a dessert wine made from a Serbian grape and a fortified herbed one that tasted a lot like the vermouth we'd enjoyed in Barcelona).  He also shared a bunch of un-wine-related stories such as "Serbians love wars. We fight everyone! But we haven't had one with New Zealand. Yet".

On departing we picked up a couple of bottles and despite our small purchase (it seems like these guys were used to visitors walking off with multiple cases) were even offered an (entirely unnecessary) ride to the train station.

The train to Beograd was modern and quick (although it left from a slightly dilapidated station.  When Sarah went to the toilet she was greeted by a friendly dog sauntering out. It was clear that it hadn't really been used as anything other than a doggy lounge for some time).

In Beograd we had a lazy evening during which I made up some pasta with Ajvar sauce.  For those of you who don't remember from the entry six years ago, ajvar is a Balkan condiment/staple food that is made of pureed sweet red peppers with other odds and ends.  It's ubiquitous in Serbian cuisine and very yummy even just on its own.

The next day our friend Steven arrived to join us.  He'd just moved to London from NZ and after finding a job had a spare week.  And as he pointed out, it was both nice and financially sensible to do so. A load of washing in London cost the same as his share of a night in our (washing machine equipped) Airbnb in Beograd.

The next couple of days were a combination of revisiting things we'd done in our previous visit and testing out the brews of Beograd.

I was pretty impressed by the bog-standard Jelen lager which, like many Romanian brews, came in huge 2L PET bottles at very inexpensive prices (around NZD 3 for two litres).  Late on our first night we popped in to a branch of the Black Turtle brewpub. The staff were friendly, but the place was super-smokey and the beers were a mix of a few uninspiring brews (Stout and Ale) and a few things with fruit syrups added to lager that wasn't as good as the macro stuff.  But maybe I shouldn't be they so hard on them. They were pretty much the only place open at 01:00 on a Wednesday!

While, as previously mentioned, a lot of what we did was repetition of 2012, it was still different because that was December and this was June.  The parklike grounds of the castle were much (much) more pleasant to walk around in. We visited the same lovely pair of churches in the castle as last time, but this time were shooed away by an Orthodox priest who was unhappy about Steven's and my (below the knee) shorts or our jandals.  Simarly instead of huddling round the fire at the ancient ? (that's what it's called, "?") restaurant we could've sat outside (though the old, dark decor and chunky wooden furniture inside were too fun to pass up). And unlike in December, the big string of permanently moored boat restaurant/bar/clubs were actually open.  Walking up the gangplank and sipping a drink (mint lemonade in this case) at one of the was something I'd wanted to do for years. The hammock-y chairs/lounges/beds put over the river were an extra bonus.

Our final night in Beograd we did some more beer-sploring.  We had several well made (mostly hop-forward) craft brews at Gunners Pub, and then, while searching for the Samo Pivo (Just Beer) bar, stumbled across their bottle shop instead.  It was pretty much my dream store. It sold craft beer from Serbia and elsewhere in Europe, board games and comic books. And you were allowed to drink your purchases there. Particularly memorable were a fabulous raspberry Berliner Weisse and a really dirty-earthy, brilliant pink beetroot IPA (which, I think my mate Dave brewed the first ever example of and my mates Sam and Stu brewed the first ever commerical example of).  We did end up making it to the big patio of Samo Pivo after the bottle shop closed, but the shop is always going to be the winner for me (especially after they gifted Sarah an awesome T-shirt from a festival they'd run a couple months back).

The bus trip from Beograd to Sarajevo took us through some really beautiful country.  I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that the road between two countries that were so recently at war and/or supporting different sides in a civil war didn't seem to be a major trade route.  Relatedly, all buses in Sarajevo going to/coming from the Serbian Republic or Montenegro are based in the east bus station, located (confusingly) far to the west of the main bus station in a majority Serbian residential neighbourhood.

The old town of Sarajevo is just beautiful.  It's (obviously) been almost entirely rebuilt over the last decade or so.  But it's so pretty that you assume that the patrons of the many (many) cafes on the cobbled streets and alleys must be fellow tourists.  But they're all Bosnians! Not so at the restaurant Sarah's mom recommended to us, which is a mainstay of expats and diplomats (but still cooked up some mean Bosnian cuisine).

Sarajevo's location is a really spectacular one.  It sits in a valley that is almost closed at one end, meaning that if you walk up past the depressingly large 1990s cemeteries to the old fortresses at the city's east end you get impressive views over the mountains.  Sarah, Steven and I did this and sat and had a mini picnic (complete with 2L PET bottle of Sarajevsko beer [those 2L bottles seem to be a thing all over the former Yugoslav countries]). While we were sitting a cute kitty joined us and brought us the gift of a (still living) legless lizard that it had caught.

Looking back towards the city you saw heaps of minarets and domed mosques.  Bosnia is majority Muslim, and their cuisine, coffee and other elements of the culture have inhereted a lot from Turkey.  The Turkish call to prayer is (to my ear) one of the prettiest, but I think the ethereal, echoing, impassioned Bosnian one is still prettier.  Interestingly, language is one thing that they did not inherit from the Turks.  Bosnian is virtually identical to Serbian, Croatian and Montenegran, the biggest difference being that the former is mostly written in Cyrillic characters while the others use mostly the Latin alphabet.

Sarajevo is centred around the river Miljacka.  It is crossed by several bridges as it runs through the city, including the famous old Latin bridge.  It was on the north bank of the river, right near the Latin Bridge that Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip shot and killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary (and his oft forgotten wife Sophia), thus precipitating A-H's invasion of Serbia and thence the First World War.  If you had to pick a single location and moment that changed twentieth century history the most, this would be a pretty hard candidate to argue with. So standing right there on that spot was one of my highlights of visiting Sarajevo.

The Balkans are, as everyone knows, no stranger to conflict.  On our final day in Sarajevo we began the day with a visit to the Museum of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide.  It's impossible to visit Sarajevo and not be aware of the war. Neighbourhoods are segregated along ethno-religious lines and buildings are either brand new or scarred by bullets and artillery shells.  But the museum really brings it home. The stories of the misery and cruelty just go on and on and on. It was a relief to visit the room dedicated to (and decorated with) wishes for peace from visitors from all around the world.  In this room they were playing a great video that showed many facets of how people went about daily life during the over three-year long siege of the city. The continuous operation of the theatre and newspapers brought hope and life.  The tram system was always in danger (as were its passengers), but kept the city connected. But of course these were individual stars in a largely black time. People had to stretch huge canvases across streets to obscure the view of snipers and make it safe to walk.  Finding fuel and food and even water were difficult and dangerous tasks. Public parks were turned into the cemeteries we'd already seen to make room for the thousands of dead. And medical services were stretched to and past their limits.

The other sections of the museum that focussed more on the progress of the war and the atrocities that took place during it were seemingly endless.  It made you wonder how you could possibly live alongside (or even in the same city as) your neighbours of different religion, wondering if they still hated you as at least some of their brethren did (obviously and excessively) during the war.

Somehow at least some of Sarajevo makes it work though.  The night before we went to the museum we'd been to a rakia (Bosnian fruit brandy) bar and shared drinks and toasts with two Serbian women and a large group of Bosnians, all of whom appeared not to (and said as much) care about one another's religion or ethnicity, that they were just happy to spend their evening with good people and good rakia and to welcome guests to the country.

We bid Steven farewell with lots of hugs at Sarajevo.  He was headed to Montenegro for a flight back to the UK, so he had to take a trolleybus back out to the distant eastern bus station.  We meanwhile waited and waited and waited for a tram to take us to the train station. When we arrived at the communist era station we went to the ticket window and waited while the attendant ploddingly filled out our tickets and our seat reservation forms by hand.  It was nervous times but we made it on to the (modern and very slick looking) train south to Mostar with a few minutes to spare.

Thanks are, of course, due to Steven who went through the trouble of flying across a continent to spend a few days with us.  Thankfully, as we've now learned, it was a short farewell, not a long goodbye, as we'll be seeing him again in Belgium in a couple weeks time.

Rosy Beer Garden

Sometimes when you travel a lot you get kind of complacent and/or lazy about certain things.  If you're going away for a weekend you check and recheck every detail of your journey. When you've been travelling for over a year you intersperse looking for accommodation for tomorrow night with checking out what costs are like in Riga in September, then carry on booking a room for tomorrow.

Then, after walking half an hour from the train station to your home for the night and messaging your host to tell them you're off the train and should be there in about ten minutes you're met with a surprised "you mean today?!"

So that was how we went from being unsure whether to stay in Arad or Timisoara to deciding to spend the night in Arad to going to Timisoara after all in the space of a few hours.  

Turns out this was just fine.  Arad was pleasant enough, but it's (to me) major attraction, a huge 18th century star-shaped fortress was almost invisible from the outside (due to a combination of low profile, trees surrounding it and the very size that makes it so cool).  And Timisoara was, in a word, lovely.

In fact old Tim' turned out to be our favourite city in Romania.  The walk from the train station to our hostel took us right through the old centre, which is pretty and clean, but all of the restoration work on it gives the feeling of being something that just needed to be done to keep the city a pleasant place to live, rather than something that's been done to dandify it for the tourism industry (unlike the Sibiu upper town and even our fondly remembered Sighisoara).

In a traditional tourist sense we did virtually nothing in Timisoara.  But we had an awesome time anyway.  

We hung out at a music festival in a big riverside park.  While there we visited the craft beer stall, had several cracking IPAs, and learned of the existence of the brand new Bereta Brewing taproom in Timosoara.  We spent and evening there too. Just about everything they made was very good. Maybe a bit too much focus on hops and (dare I, of all people, say it) adjuncts and not enough malt and yeast focussed beers.  But we had a great coconut milkshake IPA, a pretty good saison and a kveik fermented imperial stout (which was, to be honest, less interesting than I expected. Perhaps it just needed more time for the funky bugs to get working).  The night before we left Timisoara I went back to patronize the bottle shop part of the taproom to spend the last of our Romanian Lei. I'd picked a few bottles before asking the young woman working there for her advice. She suggested a pistachio imperial stout which meant I wouldn't have quite enough Lei for the Berliner Weisse too.  As I was putting it back she very sweetly offered it to me as a gift as it was her favourite of their range. I'm partly writing this just to relate a nice story and partly to remind myself that I should post her a nice sour from Belgium when we're there in a couple of weeks.

Our other major outing was a Sunday afternoon walk along the sedate and stately River Bega.  We walked along the north side, which turned out to be a mix of disused industrial land, trails through grassland and behind people's back yards.  On the way back we took the cycle trail which was just full of Timisoaranas biking out to La Pod Popas, a kind of country restaurant/beer garden where I had my best Romanian Mici (basically cylinders of spiced ground beef with mustard [I'd been kind of missing mustard for a while]).  Visiting Pod Popas on a Sunday was one of those instances where visiting somewhere while it was busy is better than when you have it to yourself.

A few other miscellaneous Timisoara gems:

The rose garden (Romania had great roses all over the country)

The parks and squares.  With the number of them all over the city it was hard to figure out how there was actually room for buildings!

The beautiful Orthodox cathedral, which reminded me of a larger, colourful version of the cone-domed Orthodox churches in Georgia and Armenia.

Our final corvigi.  While a lot of similatities exist between Romanian and Serbian (where we were headed next) and other Balkan cuisines, Romania definitely wins the seeded, ring shaped bread contest.

It's hard to believe that there is NO scheduled public transportation between Timisoara and Beograd/Belgrade, two large cities barely 100km apart, but so it is.

We arranged seats on a private shuttle across the Serbian border to the town of Vrsac and said our final fond farewell to Romania, its beautiful rural train trips, its fabulous castles and its perpetually thunderstormy mountains.

Sighi-Sibi-Hune

Other than the Roma people I'd never really realized how ethnically diverse Romania was.  The majority of the people are Romanian, but then there are also a large minority of Hungarians, of course the Roma and small numbers of Serbs, Ukranians, Tatars, Turks and Slovaks.  And although they aren't as numerous as they once were, the area of Transylvania we passed through on a slow moving local train was the heartland of the Romanian Germans.

Transplanted during Hungarian rule in the twelfth century, these Germans were yet another bunch of Saxons who ended up far from their homeland in East Prussia.  In Transylvania they built fortified churches which made the already beautiful villages we passed even lovelier. And in the case of Sighisoara they built an entire fortified town atop a rocky knob overlooking the Tarnava River.

Sighisoara is one of the prettiest towns I've ever seen, with its multiple defensive towers, central clock tower and church spires all rising still higher above the old town, its walls and its orange tiled roofs.  We arrived at our chosen guesthouse literally seconds before a German woman who was informed we'd got the last room (though our lovely host did phone a mate to find her another place to stay). We were greeted with shots of Palinca, Romanian plum brandy and shown up to our room with an absolutely fabulous view out over the old town.

Sighisoara is a very popular spot for day trippers from Brasov and Sibiu.  On our first evening we got to wander its polished cobbles with almost no one else around.  Medieval towns always seem particularly magical in the evening gloaming! In particular, when we popped out through a tiny little gate to the outside of the walls the view of one of the defensive towers was exactly what one expects on hearing "Transylvania".  (Interestingly, each of the town's guilds was responsible for one of the towers, so they have names like "bootmakers' tower", "butchers' tower", and "tinsmiths' tower".)

Even the next day with the daytrippers in full effect and the restaurants abustle, the Vlad (the impaler) Tepes birth house and the torture museum drawing their crowds, Sighsoara was still an absolute delight.  And as with many such places, a short walk away from the main square and streets (e.g. up the two hundred or so covered stairs to the Catholic Church and associated cemetery [if you're going to build your church on top of a hill high above a town that sees lots of snow in the winter, making it easy for your parishioners to get there on Sunday is a sensible move]) then you could quickly be all alone again.

Before saying a fond farewell to Sighisoara in the afternoon we tried our first corvigi, round baked goods similar to Turkish simit or larger, much narrower bagels.  They're often coated with poppy seeds (Mac), sesame seeds (Susan!) or Sunflower seeds (I don't remember) and are a very moreish snack.

We generally chose the cheaper, slower Regional trains in Romania, both to save money and because train travel through the Transylvanian countryside was just a delightful experience in and of itself.  So taking it a bit slower was no bad thing. Rolling hills, distant mountains (some still snow capped), endless rustic orange roofed villages and swollen rivers, flowing high and fast with the June rains that kept us out of the mountains.

The old town of Sibiu is, for many, one of the highlights of Transylvania.  It was pretty enough, but I have to admit that it felt just a little bland to us, especially after Sighisoara.  The two main squares of Sibiu and the surrounding streets (we stayed on one, in a lovely place with a kitchen and a washing machine [hooray for laundry!]) were very clearly not our favourite part of the city.  That was the lower town. Less scrubbed up, full of second hand clothes shops and a great little market where we bought a big hunk of slightly sour, semihard smoked cheese and two litres of homemade wine in a reused water bottle.

From Sibiu it was another beautiful train journey to the town of Deva.  From Deva we wanted to catch a bus down to nearby Hunedoara, however it wasn't immediately clear where it left from, or even if there was one aside from the single long distance bus that passed between the two towns.  Now Romanian, being a Romance language had proved easier to learn than, say, Polish, but only five days into our visit, we were still at a very basic level. And for some reason I found myself trying to speak Spanish to everyone.  Funnily enough, when I asked a man in the station a out the bus to Hunedoara in garbled Romanian he replied "habla Español?" and we sorted everything out with no trouble. Then on arriving at our (wonderful) accommodation in Hunedoara, it turned out that one of the two managers also spoke Spanish, so I had a nice chat with him as well.  Apparently it's quite common for Romanians to learn at least one other Romance language.  I'm always so tickled when my mediocre second or third language skills come in handy somewhere other than in their homelands!

The main reason for our visit to Hunedoara (and most people would say, mostly correctly, the only reason to visit Hunedoara) is the fabulous Castle Corvin, which is just plonked down, quite incongruously, in an industrial suburb of the town.  As with Castle Bran (so we'd heard) the exterior of the castle is far more impressive than the inside. Also similarly to Bran (but smaller in magnitude) the area just outside the entrance was a mass of souvenir stands and museums of questionable connection to their immediate surroundings.  So we contented ourselves with a circuit around the castle, which mostly backed onto people's back gardens.

Though there were no other sightseeing highlights of Hunedoara, we had still more fabulous Romanian baked goods there, including a delicious cherry jam filled crescent thing dusted with powdered sugar, cheese stuffed corvigi, and a sweet poppy seed filled strudel.  While we would get on to having a few restaurant meals in Romania, self catering with local produce and baked goods were serving us very nicely indeed thank you.

One night in Hunedoara is plenty, and while I was sorely tempted by the wild Retezat branch of the Carpathians to the south, the forecast still made alpine hiking seem like a poor idea, so we returned to Deva to catch the final train of our travel through Romania.