Deviation: Novi Sad Back to Belgrade.

May 31, 2015

There's an identical church to this in Budapest. Note the colourful roof-tiles and resulting pattern.

The two Peruvian street musicians and other guy that checked in late were up and gone when lazy me gets out of bed at nine. But then I didn't go to bed until one o'clock and supposedly the body needs eight hours sleep.

This morning I'm on the lookout for another hostel, somewhere with a kitchen. On the Hostelworld website I've come up with a Hostel Sova and downloaded the map pinpointing the location not far from the main square. Once I find it, upstairs on the second floor of a classis old nineteenth century townhouse, there's no one in the reception-cum-living room except for a thirty-something man with spiky hair sat on a sofa browsing a tablet. I peek into the kitchen and go through French windows out onto a balcony and gaze down the street, then come in and take a seat opposite the aforesaid guest, thinking a receptionist will soon be along. The young man then speaks up "You look for bed?" I reply that I am. "I think they are full. I know yesterday they sent people away. Wait. I check." He rises and goes over and sits behind the reception desk and gets on the phone. The phone makes a faint bleep then he speaks a moment, then rises and hands the phone to me saying "you can speak." I ask the woman's voice on the other end have they a bed for the night? The reply is "Sorry, we are full!" then the phone rings off.

I return to Hostel Downtown thinking as it's Sunday, some people may have checked out. But when I get there the inside courtyard balcony and reception area are full of guests sat round browsing maps and things planning their day. It looks doubtful there'll be place and soon as I make my way round a group sat on the floor, the receptionist come along. I ask and she confirms that they are indeed full.

I sit down at a table on the street outside the café downstairs and order an omelette for breakfast while considering the options. I had planned on a day off to have a look around the city. The thought of checking in to a hotel enters my head, but I don't want to spend thirty euros. Its a gorgeous sunny day so I decide the best thing to do is ride my bike. The plan is to return to Belgrade.

The omelette takes a while but when the waitress come out and put the platter on the table, it is pleasing to the eye with slices of red and green peppers submerged in the egg. I take slice after slice of bread from a basket and lop off rectangular pieces of omelette that I put upon each slice and eat open-sandwich style. When I'm finished I have a second cappuccino. The waitress asks me "How is my English?" I reply "Fluent." It is pretty flawless as she asks me how long I've been in Serbia and after getting over the awe of me saying I cycled all the way from Ireland, gets on to telling me Novi Sad is the second largest city in Serbia and capital of the northern Vojvodina region, which used to be part of Hungary.

On the bridge upon which I entered town yesterday afternoon I'm in two minds. I cannot face the monotomy of returning on that road I rode up from Belgrade on. The alternative I'm looking down on: a promenade with bike path along the riverfront east. The start of it anyway.

From the bridge where I entered town the previous day, I decide to follow the riverfront below and take an alternative route back to Belgrade.

The riverside bike path come to a dead end beyond huge scaffolding for a concrete bridge-arch, part of a new bridge project. The only way then is a turn away from the river, which although with a sign for the motorway, is along empty street through industrial park, turning right then left, eventually out upon a dual-carriageway with a sign for Belgrade and Zrenjanin. Having checked the map, this is the road I want until a right turn off at Kac.

Derelict industry to the side of the dual-carriageway east.

A couple of kilometres in as I ride along a smooth shoulder, an old Volkwagon Passet slows. The driver a stout man about sixty sounds amical enough as he leans over the passenger side and tries telling me something through the open window. It sounds like he is saying something like cycling isn't permitted on this road. But when he drives on I wonder. The road has most of the characteristics of a motorway, though I passed a bus-stop and I didn't see a blue-car motorway sign when entering.

However, just ahead is the slip onto the motorway shown on my map as a thick line dissecting this road at a right-angle, beyond which the road narrows to single-carriageway and a few kilometres further I come to the turnoff on the right to Kac.

Soon I enter the village and I'm glad to see a small supermarket open. Off the shelves I collect all I'll need to keep me going for the day, mainly fluids as it's hot and will reach the mid thirties by afternoon. At the single check-out the matronly blond scans the items, but has to run off to weight and label bananas, which I think got her back up. She return and finishes and I'm still fiddling about putting things in a carrier-bag, as she calls out the totted up sum. Usually I see the figure on the till-display, but it isn't there. She repeats "shi...." something and I raise my eye-brow flabbergasted as she hurriedly repeats a third time, this time making a clicking suck sound of frustration at not getting through to me. Two twelve year old girls next in the queue think it is funny, look at me curiously then to one another and giggle. I hand over a thousand banknote, then she grabs a pen and writes the figure on a scrap of paper and shoves it in front of me. 619. So I fish around for nineteen change, hand the change over with the banknote and she hands me back two two-hundreds.

I push the bike into the shade at the side of the supermarket, take my clothes pannier I use as a seat and lay it upon the concrete, sit down and crack open a cold can of beer. The ultimate refreshment on a hot day. That woman wasn't very nice, but then again I would perhaps feel the same way working on a Sunday when some tourist come in and makes work for me by not labelling the bananas and then doesn't get what I'm saying.

The way on is slow meandering with poppy sprinkled verges, little traffic and level with wheat and maize stretching off on either side. Off to the west I can see the low wooded hill beyond the Danube the road crossed yesterday. I pass through a couple more villages and in one I assume I must've taken a wrong turn. I don't discover this until quite a bit later. About two or it could've been later, I approach a rampart, a green bank-like low hill the whole way from left to right ahead of me and when the road reaches it, the road swings left and follows alongside for a few kilometres to a village, in the street of which there's some kind of festival going on. The way full of people having a day out. There's music and stalls selling clothes and this and that. I make my way through the throng as best I can. Then the road climbs up the said hill emerging up upon a plain plateau, again with colourful verge and expanse of crop either side. The road run straight ahead, then descends sharply to a small village on the same side of the long hill I climbed up earlier; whereupon, seeing ahead a string of power-lines on pylons, see they are the same I passed underneath earlier, I become aware that I'm going back on myself and that I'm no longer on the right road. But in the village two byroads meet another road, including the one I come downhill upon, and I kind of find my bearings after riding a little on before stopping and turning around, having realised that I should've turned left in the village, taking me on with the power-lines behind me. The road I've turned onto continues alongside the slope on the left and within a kilometre, the elongated hill turn a corner to the left, opening into a shallow valley. There is now a long low hill off on the right and I become doubtful I'm on the right road after all.

A cyclist wearing a pink Giro jersey waves.

It is half three when I come to a picnic place with a nice roof over to get out of the sun. Time for lunch. There's also an interpretation board with a map. The map shows I'm in the Tisa valley, a tributary running from the north into the Danube and from the map, I work out where I am.

I don't hang around after lunching on bananas, yogurt and orange-juice, being anxious I may not make it back to Belgrade today. There isn't much wild camping option. I'm moving again by four. A little way on I pass a farmer herding a large flock of sheep up the bank to the roadside verge. Momentarily I hear a sheep bleating a wee way off and see her and lamb come running across the field to re-join the flock having been left behind. A bit further a farmer with half a dozen cows is grazing the longacre, the roadside, while watching they don't stray. It is quite a way until I reach Titel where I cross the Tisa river and the road on follows a fork in the river for six kilometres, whereupon I turn right on the main highway from Zrenjanin to Belgrade. It being late Sunday afternoon there are few trucks and, so the ride south to the capital isn't too stressful. Furthermore the road surface is a lot better on this road than the road Is on Saturday.

I arrive in the city centre timely at eight o'clock and return to Bongo's and check in. The always open supermarket round the corner is open to ten, so I go there to shop. I return, crack open a refreshing can of beer, then cook a tomato and onion omelette with mash-potatoes for dinner.

Tuesday

There is one more walking tour of Belgrade I had to do: The Communist Tour. I meet up with others by the equestrian monument in Republic Square. We are a small group making it easier to stay close to our guide and follow what she is saying. Mainly to do with one man, Josip Broz, or Tito as he was better known. He was born in a small village in Croatia to a poor family, one of seven siblings and after basis schooling became a locksmith, then had to do national service in the Austro-Hungarian army.

The guide becomes a little sketchy with events here, but she was doing her best, as much of Tito's earlier life is not written down. But it is known that the army were impressed by him and sent him to Russia to fight in the October 1917 revolution and somewhere about this time, the kernel of communism for a united Yugoslavia was sown.

During the tour we visit the Yugoslavia museum wherein is a exhibition of art and photos depicting events under World War Two occupation, when Yugoslavia was carves up between the Axes Powers: Germany, Italy, Romania and Bulgaria. Croatia being Nazi allies remained un-occupied and her army rages a campaign of terror against the civilian population. There are disturbing old black and white photos of whole villages, the men, women and children being marched at gunpoint along roads to detention in Croatian concentration camps. And other horrible scenes of the emaciated inmates behind rolls of barbwire, scenes which were to reappear in Yugoslavia in the early nineties.

Tito at this point having made his way up the ranks in the army and being ideologically opposed to fascism, led a liberation army, or Partisans. He first liberated his home village and retook an ever increasing area as the war wore on and the enemy faltered. And because of his successes, became well liked both at home and internationally, that at the end of the war he was elected president of a new country called "The Socialist Federation Of Yugoslavia" uniting six former kingdoms: Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Macedonia.

Tito was a strong leader and would be no stronger country's puppet. He wouldn't bend to Stalin. He broke off relations with The Soviet Union in 1948, in so doing, not becoming a Warsaw Pact country. While he saw it right that everybody in society should have the same, he introduced a society without the stringent state control of Eastern Block countries. And after post war rebuilding, by the nineteen-sixties a more liberal system was introduce where a degree of private enterprise was permitted and citizens were free to travel. A halfway house between east and west with free education and health care. But religious and ethnic tension were plastered over. Furthermore the country was borrowing a lot of money, which after Tito's death in 1980, led to an economic crisis during the eighties. Then, with the fall of The Berlin Wall, Slovenia then Croatia being richer and thereby un-satisfied that they would continue to pay a significantly larger share of international debt and seeing the likes of Poland running their own affairs, elected to breakaway from Belgrade and set up their own sovereign states. A problem for Croatia because a large part of the populous were Serb and Belgrade would remain adamant that the Serbian people should remain living in one country, which led ultimately to war and the break up of Yugoslavia.

Serbian Military Museum's open air display in the grounds of Belgrade castle.

Circa 1905 German made artillery piece. A turn of the century weapon of mass destruction.

A group of Japanese tourists with a guide on the wall of Belgrade castle. According to Lonely Planet: Belgrade is the in city to visit.

In the castle grounds: the house where the organisation that look after the castle live.

Today's ride: 112 km (70 miles)
Total: 4,762 km (2,957 miles)

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