Crossing the Danube River means entering the flat Pannonia Plain where you orientate yourself only by the next tree or lonely house. Considering that the official alphabet in Serbia is Cyrillic and that road signs are rare then that tree or house takes on more importance during your journey. Nature at this time of year (May 2012) generously painted everything in a lush green cloaking the trees and houses from sight. Everything looked the same especially for four city girls.

Confused and tired by the oppressive heat we decided to stop along the way at Salas, called Sekin Salas which means Sisters Ranch. If you want to experience the real Serbia you should try to stay at one of the many ranches which offer a combination of rural Serbia with good food, clean air and lots of activities – horse riding, fishing, cooking classes…embroidery classes…During our hour stop we managed to meet the loveable Rasha, a ginger corgi who we considered stealing away, but after realising that Rasha has friends on the Ranch – three cats, two goats, a pheasant, an over-protective chicken with eight yellow chicks and two more dogs lazily asleep in the front garden – we decided that Rasha had a better life than we did, so we left him in his natural surroundings.
After refreshments and taking photos of everything that represented the old, disappearing Serbia that was so generously on display in the house, we continued driving towards Kovacica, a place well known for its Slovak naive art.

The Museum of Naive Folk Art is situated centrally on the main street. The Museum itself is very small but very rich in the numbers of paintings they own so the exhibition keeps changing all the time. The first one to strike you is a huge, colourful and lively painting by Jan Glozik illustrating the 200 years since the Slovak people moved from what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the eastern border, nowadays Serbia, by order of the Emperor. The painting consists of 200 people representing each year since they moved to this part of the world. If you have a very good eye you can see a self-portrait of the painter incorporated into the maze of colours.

The left side of the museum has an exhibition of another famous naïve art painter, Martin Janos, whose paintings emphasise the hands and feet and thereby the hard manual work on the farms of the region. The third room is dedicated to the Queen of naïve art, Zuzana Halupova. There are 31 paintings exhibited here, most of them oil on canvas. She, as with Martin Janos, has a leitmotif which is that each painting has a girl in a pink skirt somewhere in it. Zuzana never had kids of her own and so she put one in every one of her paintings. She was member of the children’s charity UNICEF and in 1974 she painted the UNICEF Christmas Card which was sold worldwide. She left more than 1000 paintings to the museum but due to the lack of the space only a certain number can be shown. There are talks about a new, bigger Museum to be opened in a different location.

Outside the Museum there is a courtyard with three galleries, in one of them you can have your own portrait painted. All the galleries are run by local painters who can tell you about local life and how they have preserved their culture and traditions for over 200 years. Mr Pavel Babka, a successful painter who exhibits all around the world and is the owner of the largest gallery, pointed out that even when a painter becomes worldwide successful, he still stays in Kovacica, within very strong Slovak Community.

With more than half a million visitors every year, Belgrade Beer Fest is among the biggest (if not the biggest) beer festival in South Eastern Europe that traditionally takes place every year in late August. During it’s 8 years long history as a free-entrance event, around 4,000,000 visitors enjoyed in over 400 music performances, tasted over 80 local and international beer brands and took part in numerous socially responsible campaigns.

Thanks to it’s great concept and unforgettable atmosphere, Belgrade Beer Festival received numerous recognitions throughout the world.

British newspaper “The Independent” placed the Belgrade Beer Fest among 20 world events that should be seen. Well known professor Dennis Wilcox in his book “PR Strategies and Tactics”, used at over 350 Universities all over the world, presented Belgrade Beer Fest as positive example of marketing and PR campaign. One of the last recognitions, Festival received in 2009 as the marketing event of the year. This recognition was given by expert marketing magazine “Taboo”, for a big social campaign “I choose to Recycle”. The goals of the campaign were to build the ecological awareness in Serbia and to buy recycling containers for Belgrade elementary schools.

Festival is established as one of the most important segments in the Serbian tourist offer and as a brand which presents the very best of local music (and beer) scene.  If you are a beer-lover that happens to be in Serbia in late August, you should definitely put Belgrade Beer Fest on your to-do list.

If you had the chance to experience it by yourself, we would love if you could send us your impression!

You can find out more about the Beer Fest at it’s official homepage.

“We are standing at the top of the Amphitheatre with capacity of 12000 seats” – the voice of enthusiastic guide wake me up.

We are at Viminacium, one of many Roman town and fortress in Serbia, not far from the capital city Belgrade. The Viminacium itself was the capital city of the Upper Moesia as well as the administrative, military and commercial centre until 582 when was destroyed by Avars. The city was on transition point between the West and East Roman Empire at very interesting time when Rome capital was transferred to the East, the Constantinople, today Istanbul.

The archaeological site of Viminacum cover huge area and some still undiscovered due to presence of power plant which produces 20% of Serbia energy hence not possible to relocate and land owned by locals which government is trying to buy of them in order to expand excavations but also stop locals from stilling aftercarfts generously uncovered after rain.

Except typical Public Bath, with all the water navigations we saw fresco decorated tombs, on some of them colour still well preserved and with good mixture of the pagans and Christian symbols. The most remarkable tomb marked G5517 in which is clearly visible the Christogram in double floral garland. Relying on legends and historical sources this type of Cross is defined as Constantine Cross in memory of the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity and introduce the Christianity as the official religion. The pagan tomb marked as G2624 is full of combination of the floral and animal pictures. The paintings in tombs proved that that pagans and Christians were sometimes buried at the same cemetery.
Serbia has the largest number of Roman emperors born outside of Italy – 17 among them Constantine I and Justinian I. The itinerarium Romanum Serbiae is a project to integrate a visit of all major Roman excavation on teritory of Serbia such as Sirmium (Today known as Sremska Mitrovica), Singindunum (Today know as Belgrade), Viminacium ( known as Stari Kostolac), combined with visit to the forts of Naissus today known as Nis, Pontes known as Kostol and Diana known as Karats. The itinerary would include visits to the imperial residences Felix Romuliana (today known as Gamzigrad) and UNESCO site, Šarkamen, Mediana and Iustiniana Prima.

In 2013 the celebration of the 1700 of the Edict of Milan by Emperor Constantine to legalise Christianity in the Roman Empire will take place in the birth town of Constantine, the Naissus, today Nis. The vast number of people expects to see the historic moment when the Pope and the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church meet for the first time.

Text by Ms M Gardiner

We get back on the highway and although we had planned that morning to visit some of the monasteries of the region (they are located in a region called Fruška Gora), tired as we are, it is tempting to postpone this visit until some other time. This is not really an option though since Vladimir’s father had been telling me for years that I should absolutely visit the monasteries of Serbia when I go there ─ we simply cannot skip them all today (there are more than twenty in Fruška Gora alone). We opt to visit Krušedol and Grgeteg which are nor far from the highway. And right there, right after leaving the highway, we find ourselves in the countryside: small roads, corn fields, hedges of blackberry bushes. This looks eerily like the French countryside. We have no trouble finding the Krušedol monastery but a sign at the entrance indicates that one should not be wearing shorts to visit ─ not a good start. Olja who is wearing pants goes in and finds out that we are OK to enter as long as we do not go into the chapel. The white walls of the monastery buildings on the cloudless sky background of intense blue are a magnificent and peaceful sight. Everywhere you look it is an interesting mix of shadows and low light. Here are geraniums in pots under the white arcades, there are onions drying up, over there is a big quince tree which bears heavy green fruit. Peace and quiet. Although this is supposed to be one of the most visited monasteries of Serbia, the three of us are the only ones here today. In the background, barely perceptible, the brothers in the chapel are singing the evening prayers.

Text by Arnaud Jacquin

Photo by Hostel Nis

Arriving by car from Zagreb on what was once called the Highway of Brotherhood and Unity the further I ventured into Serbia the more I felt like this, yes, this was the Balkans. A strange place shrouded in clichées and stereotypes, a different world so near to my native Germany and yet so far, where road signs give you directions you cannot read and where you ask yourself, the nearer you get to Београд, whether coming here might prove to have been a mistake.

And there in the distance I could make out something: a grey high rise building, shaped a bit like an Arc of Triumph or a gate, the windows glistening in the afternoon sun. Lowering my eyes I saw more high rises, smaller but just as grey. The traffic picked up. Cars were whizzing past me, from brand new models to old and tired ones which at home would have been pulled off the roads two decades earlier. The buildings were covered in huge advertisements (to disguise their ugliness?) telling me to buy the ubiquitous Coca Cola and never-before-seen products like Chipsy crisps. I followed the road straight ahead towards the centre, no, towards the центар.

And then a bridge, a river and finally the first view of Belgrade proper: crossing the Sava, the confluence with the mighty Danube on my left, it stretched out over a hill straight ahead. Buildings and more buildings, their facades blackened by decades of traffic. Inbetween the golden bell tower of the Orthodox cathedral. In the distance the ruins of a fortress. And in the middle, standing tall above everything else, a black tower.

As I took in this panorama my mind started to race. Was this the Heart of Darkness I had expected after ten years of Western propaganda? I let the name roll over my tongue, over and over again: Bel-grad, Be-o-grad. The name was certainly the same, there was no doubt. But what I saw and what I had expected to see did not match as easily. Before me lay a city full of energy, full of life. I could feel it and I was enthralled. I couldn’t really point out what it was that so touched me. I just knew that this was indeed the White City, a place I wanted to get to know better, where I wanted to live.

When I think back now I can’t help but smile. Belgrade has changed my life over the past few years. I walked the streets, I lived there. And it all started on that day back in 2006 in this most unlikely of places where I first had the one sensation that so many people described before: to unconditionally fall in love with a city. Hvala ti, Beograde!

Text by Stefan Pfeuffer

Kafanas are a cult for Serbian people and any self-respecting Serb has kafana or two. Maybe three depending on what your average Serbian citizen needs one for at any given time in his social life.In the past a kafana always had red or blue checked tablecloths and tin ashtrays but today many kafanas masquerade as restaurants or cafes or even clubs, but at heart they are simply a kafana. So there is a kafana for a social gathering which includes lots of alcohol interspersed with breaks for tasty food, loud live folk music, with smashed glases on the floor and dancing on the tables.

There are kafanas near the office where all the office games and intrigue take place, always described however as ‘business meetings’. There are a few kafanas which are always full even though there is never any live music or good food, but which still live on their reputation as a haunt for long-ago heroes or intellectuals who would freely discuss politics during the communist era when there was no reliable information except what could be gleaned in such places – nowadays people still go there to be seen and to gossip. And there is a new breed of family kafanas where there is no live music only a kids’ garden in the back, and very good food!
You know you have succeeded in life if the waiter of your kafana knows you by name, your favourite table has a reserved sign on it just for you and when you get your favourite drink served before you even take your jacket off. If you are well known and short of money you can drink and eat free and pay when you get money. You waiter is your best friend and confidant as he knows where you are and never tells anybody. Not even your other half.

If you are coming to Belgrade youu must explore a bohemian part of town called Skadarlija where live music and good food last until the early hours. The most famous kafana here is Tri Sesira (the three hats) but there are many others, such as the Dva Jelena ( Two stags ), Ima Dana and the famous Znak Pitanja (the question mark, the kafana with no name). This is in an old traditional house, typically Serbian, very rustic, with laid-back service and good food.

A small tip for foreigners going to a kafana with Serbians – your host will never allow you to pay for dinner or drinks, so don’t even try to pay. Just raise your glass, look at your host and shout cheers – ZIVELI!!!!!

Text by Ms M Gardiner

I can hear my mum on the phone to her brother in Holland and her best friend just across the river Danube which is just at the end of the number 706 bus in a different part of Belgrade and wish them a Merry Christmas too. Despite the celebratory feelings we, the Serbian people, don’t actually celebrate Christmas on the 25th December. Our Christmas comes a bit later on the 7th January – some people in the West call us the “Eastern Catholics”.

This is because of our use of the traditional Julian Calendar, under which December 25 falls on the Gregorian calendar’s January 7. The Julian calendar, a reform of the Roman calendar, was introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BC and it has a regular year of 365 days divided into 12 months, and a leap day is added to February every four years. Hence the Julian year is on average 365.25 days long. The Gregorian solar calendar is an arithmetical calendar. It counts days as the basic unit of time, grouping them into years of 365 or 366 days;

During this festive time, you greet another person with “Christ is Born,” which should be responded to with “Truly He is Born.” The Serbian name for Christmas is Božić , which is the diminutive form of the word bog, meaning ‘God’. Most Serbian families celebrate the Christmas/New Year season with a Christmas tree in the house. The decoration of the tree is a very good opportunity to gather family members around, and the main tradition is for the head of the household to go into a forest on Christmas Eve (6th January) preferably before sunrise, or at least before noon, to select a young and straight oak tree and a log cut from it is in the evening ceremoniously put on the domestic fire. A bundle of straw is taken into the house and spread over the floor.

On Christmas Day, (7th January) the celebration is announced at dawn by church bells and by shooting. Huge importance is given to the first visit a family receives that day. People expect that it will bring prosperity and well-being for their household in the ensuing year; this visit is often pre-arranged. Christmas dinner is the most celebratory meal a family has during a year. A special, festive loaf of bread is baked for this occasion, and the main course is roast pork . It is not traditional in Serbia to exchange gifts at Christmas. Gift giving is, nevertheless, connected with the holiday, being traditionally done on the three Sundays that immediately precede it. Children, women, and men, respectively, are the set gift-givers on these three days. Closely related to Christmas is New Year’s Day by the Julian calendar (January 14 on the Gregorian calendar), whose traditional folk name is Little Christmas. I wont be in Belgrade for little Christmas but I am sure I will celebrate it in London with my friends Rachel, Elke, Fran….

Text by Ms M. Gardiner

Photo by Bibi