Plitvice Lakes

After a greuling overnight bus ride on a minibus built for the cast of Time Bandits, we arrived early yesterday morning in the Croatian capital of Zagreb. We had enough time to briefly have coffee with another former Zivinive resident, a friend of the Mrs. who has also kindly offered to host us here in Zagreb. We were then back on a bus for a day trip to Plitvice National Park in Croatia. A lovely spot, if a bit overrun by tourists. I will try to upload a personal photo later but this should give you the idea.

We had a relaxing night with our hosts, and are now preparing to see the sights in Zagreb. It looks to be a lovely day here.

Hotel Vrbak

The Hotel Vrbak


It is really hard to put into words the architectural wonder of Novi Pazar's Hotel Vrbak. To me, it is as if toward the end of the 18th century, a group of Ottoman architects were taken by a time-traveling spaceship to the latter part of the 1970s, then told to use that experience to design a hotel. Over the top (literally as it spans a small river), grand, detailed, and right in the center of town, it is also a tad run down, rather empty, and like much of this part of the world, a bit vandalized with graffiti; it was a real treat to spend a night there. Laurence Mitchell, the author of the extremely well-written Bradt guide to Serbia, described it like this: ¨however much communist-period architects were under instruction to provide cheap, utilitarian housing for the proletariat, they were given completely free reign when it came to the design of hotels...a wacky architectural conceit that was taken seriously by a planning committee and immortalised in concrete -- a curious combination of retro-Ottoman and modernism.¨

The interior room decoration are consistent with the outside, too. Hexagons abound, with arch-like details and wrought-iron window treatments.







In a landscape with far too many post-war cities full of grey apartment blocks (really, communism is over, why don't the residents throw a coat of paint on these exterior walls?), the Hotel Vrbak is an impressive and unique sight.

(If you have further interest, please click on the official website for more photos.)

Crkva Petrova

The Oldest Church in Serbia (Saint Peter or Crkva Petrova) lies just 3 kilometers from central Novi Pazar. It's old gravestones and green, hill side location is evocative of old Celtic churches in Ireland. It was here around a thousand years ago that Stefan Nemaja organized the council that outlawed the Bogomil heresey in Serbia (I have no idea what that means but it sure sounds important).



The church was locked, so the Mrs. asked a local if she knew where to find someone with the key. The woman, who was herding about a half dozen goats, said that she could tell her where to get it, then handed her her goatherder's staff, walked away, and told her to keep the goats off the church grounds. Needless to say, the Mrs. was not happy and unprepared to tend to goats, but after a few minutes the woman returned and gave us directions to a house to get the key. That house had a garden full of ripe plums that we were free to sample, and the attendant brought out an enormous, heavy, iron key to let us inside. After a look around, we walked back to busy, central Novi Pazar, without the goats.

Rounding Out

A quick summary - after spending nearly a week wrestling with the Bosnian authorities over paperwork for the Mrs., we grabbed a bus to Mostar (which lost its transmission en route, but was repaired by the driver and bus attendant on the side of the road and continued on to Mostar). We grabbed a local bus to Blagaj and spent the night in a restored, 18th century Ottoman house and visited the dervish house at the mouth of the river Buna. We then made a raid on the tourist stonghold of Mostar, grabbing a few photos of the new Old Bridge before a ¨bus trip¨ (really a bewildering car ride to a minibus) to Tebinje, in the part of Hercegovina known as Republika Srpska, where upon arrival my bag was missing from the minibus. After relaxing in Trebinje, we embarked on another guerrilla-style raid of another tourist-held town, Dubrovnik, Croatia, and before nightfall found quarters in Herceg Novi, Montenegro. The next afternoon we arrived in Kotor, at the end of a bay attached to the Adriatic, for a few days of kajaking and climbing the old walls of the town. Then it was off to the old Montenegro capital of Cetinje (Tse-tin-yeh) for some museums and sights, and a trip around the largest lake in the Balkans, Lake Skadar. From there we were on to Durmitor park, then some Crna Gora hospitality with family in Nikšić (where en route the tire blew out on our minibus, and our driver jumped in a car with no explanation, leaving us on the side of the road). We left Montenegro for Serbia, with a stop in Novi Pazar, in the largely Muslim Sanđak region, then a lot of buses to get to the mountains of Zlatibor and a ride on the Šargan Eight railway. We then spent four nights in Novi Sad, the capital of Serbia's Vojvodina region, with a visit to the largely-Hungarian town of Subotica and a hike in the rolling, fetile hills of Fruška Gora. We also made a day trip to Belgrade - where we will return again before we leave - and now find ourselves again visiting Živinice in NE Bosnia. Tonight we plan to get an overnight bus to Zagreb, then carry on for a day trip to Plitivice Lake National Park in Croatia, followed by spending the weekend poking around the Croatian capital.

Bože! The Fruit Is So Good Here Now

Moving into Serbia, gonna eat a lot of peaches...

Photos

Back in Živinice again, somewhat unexpectedly, but as a result of good news on the paperwork front. In the meantime, here are some photos of some stops along the way.



Blagaj



Bridge in Trebinje



Bay of Kotor and Kotor Town



Cetinje



River near Lake Skadar



Ostrog Monastery



Durmitor National Park

I plan to catch up over the next few days with more posts.

ppd.

It is quite wet in Vojvodina today so the planned hike in the Fruska Gora hills was not to be. So we hopped on a bus to poke around Belgrade today for some museums. On the bus to the capital we discovered that on Mondays those museums are closed. The rain held off long enough to look around the mighty fortress at Kalemegdan at least. Hopefully tomorrow we get out to the hills.