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Day 26 Novi Sad, Serbia – Sunday 5 July

Another beautiful sunny day and not too hot. We first had a quick bus tour of Novi Sad, which is Serbia’s second largest city and then a walk through the central town.

This is the fortress of Novi Sad. It encloses a couple of hundred hectares evidently. We don’t go up there by foot as chose the other afternoon excursion.

Novi Sad was rebuilt in the late 1800s after the town was flattened by the Hungarians that were occupying the fortress across the river. Evidently they responded after a couple of drunk Serbian solders fired off a cannon, so possibly all a big misunderstanding. 

A very modern opera house was constructed by the communists in the middle of the old part of the city. It’s not too bad but is rather incongruous with its neighbours.
The Catholic Church of the Name of the Virgin Mary
The Hungarian roof tiles are spectacular.
The main square is quite impressive
A free water station
I think this is a bishops house or the mayors palace. It’s grand anyway.

We spent some time hearing about a statue and remembrance commemoration for 1400 people killed by the Hungarians in the 1950s (I think) but no reference to the tens of thousands of Serbias neighbours slaughtered by them in the 1990s. Our guide referred to a couple of the bridges that had to be rebuilt after NATO inexplicably bombed them. A few of us felt that there was a pretty reasonable explanation for that!  

Commemorating the families that got wiped out.

Anyway, Novi Sad is very quaint and a lot prettier than Belgrade. 

The road near the River is all dug up as they are putting in new water pipes or drains. It makes managing the buses backwards and forwards a big tricky.

After lunch we had a wine and honey excursion. We went by bus to this pretty rural town with a winery and honey making museum. The wine was ok. The honey was yum. 

Originally a monastery it is now a school for Orthodox priests.
Still part of the seminary
The new addition to the seminary
The Orthodox Bishops palace
Can’t remember the name of the church
It’s very ornate inside and is the first one we e seen with paintings rather than frescoes. Not keen on the relic of St someone’s hand inside a glass case though.
In a bus park that has about 20 spaces it was funny to see this degree of closeness.
Inside the honey museum
Original design of bee hives before they started making the box frames
An early form of the modern hive
We did well as we were the last of our group so got the bread and cheese to ourselves.
Typical houses from the village
One of the new bridges under construction. We got a good view of it.
The fortress looked great with the sun on it.
Not sure if this van was meant to be half in the river. Perhaps they’d just launched something!

The entertainment last night was a battle of the sexes competition between 4 women and 4 men.  They took it in turns to demonstrate their ability to finish songs, do signature dances and sing in different styles. I’d have been hopeless so hats off to all of them for trying.