Category: Serbia

I had no pre-conceptions of Belgrade but had a feeling there would be plenty to do over the three nights I was planning to stay whilst I worked out plans for my next destination. What I found was a very cool capital city, with the boats running up and down the river Danube by night playing up to Belgrade’s reputation as party capital of Europe. Partying with 18 year olds doing drugs isn’t my usual scene even on a Saturday night so I gave it a miss in favour of a night time wander around the fortress and a cocktail at the Basta jazz bar with a few of the yoga girls who were also spending a night in the city.

Apparently some planning in advanced is actually required as I did not know that everything is shut on Mondays, the day I had designated for doing basically everything. I spent the morning walking 20,000 steps back and forth from closed museum to closed restaurant. The one vegetarian restaurant I wanted to visit managed to be closed the entire time I was in the area.

The smaller city of Novi Sad was on my list of places to see in Serbia so I joined a day trip in order to also take in some of the hundreds of churches in the area. I found out on the bus that it also included wine tasting in the picturesque town of Sremski Karlovci, which most of us agreed was actually a case of ‘have a small glass of wine for free’ – very nice Serbian dessert wine but not exactly a wine tasting experience!

We stopped at the Krusedol Monastery which has some really beautiful frescos inside that you are actually allowed to take photos of for once (paintings on the walls). Note that women are not permitted to enter behind the curtain and during services men stand on one side, being below God, and women stand on the other, being below men – something that our female guide said she is fine with. My male tour guide later on in Belgrade said the monks just live off the state and get drunk at funerals, painting a picture of a very corrupt Church in a predominantly Orthodox Christian country.

Novi Sad itself is small and pretty, with the usual views from a fortress I’ve come to expect in this part of the world. Unfortunately none of us actually got to see any of the city (other than Yelena who had the foresight to do her own thing) as the rest of us opted for a group lunch. This meant we sat at a restaurant for the entire two hours free time, first waiting for food (I twice found chicken in my veggie pasta even after sending it back the first time and eating half of the replacement where they had clearly just tried and failed to pick the pieces out) then waiting to pay where the staff had a meltdown over splitting the bill and shouted at us ‘have you ever been to a restaurant before?’!

The uneventful day ended on a high as I met these two lovely girls, Liesel from South Africa and Yelena from the US. After the tour we bought drinks and watched the sunset over the Danube from the Fortress…. along with half of Belgrade from the number of Instagram photoshoots going on.

Here the kiosks on the street corners don’t just sell you a bottle of cider, they even open it for you. This made us so excited we happily got ripped off by taking a photo with the students hanging around the fortress dressed as soldiers and topping up their beer money.

A travel concept that has totally passed me by until now is the ‘air bnb experience’ – thanks Liesel for the recommendation! On her advice I booked my first experience with the lovely Sava who took me and two others on a walk through Belgrade. He showed us some really cool local spots including hidden speakeasies and clubs disguised as run down buildings covered in graffiti, and where to buy a Yugoslavian 1,000,000,000 note.

After the barrage of war history in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Albania, this was much more focused on the Serbia of today. Sava also said there is very low crime in Belgrade as potential muggers know that Serbians will fight back…

I managed to get in the National Museum of Serbia on Tuesday morning. My idea of a museum visit is a quick look around until I’m bored. This is impossible in Belgrade as there is a one way system that the security guards, positioned in every room, will insist that you follow and if you try to skip something, they will somehow know this and make sure you go back and look at that painting. After an hour or so I could not pretend to look at any more European art so made my escape, feeling guilty as one of the guards appeared at the exit to wave goodbye.

If they had been open on Monday I would have visited both the Tesla Museum and Tito Museum, but luckily Belgrade is also the perfect place for sitting at pavement cafes, drinking coffee and people watching. Three days was otherwise enough and unable able to resist the lure of another passport stamp I booked onto a bus going south to North Macedonia…

When one of the women on the minibus to my next yoga retreat asked “so what is the general feeling on bringing alcohol?” I knew that we would become friends. Eight of us had just joined the bus in Belgrade, driven by a man who was built like the mountains he was transporting us into and who didn’t speak a word of English. My instructions on finding him at the meeting point were ‘he’s a big guy, you can’t miss him – he speaks no English and has a white van’ – what could go wrong?! Nothing as it turns out – when we stopped for delicious food and drinks enroute to the Tara National Park it was apparent that he was a sweetheart as demonstrated by the local kittens who couldn’t get enough of him.

I sold out against my principles to do this entire trip overland and chose to fly to Belgrade from Podgerica, instead of taking the 11 hour train (I was put off by stories of several more hours of delays and operating within a narrow window to enter Serbia with my negative result from a brutal PCR test I did not want to repeat), having signed up for a week with ‘My Yogic Adventure’. The lovely woman behind this brilliant yoga holiday concept is Marija, whose philosophy is if she doesn’t love it, she won’t host it. And this week she is hosting a group of 12 at a traditional mountain lodge in the perfect, peaceful setting on the Tara Mountain, close to the Bosnia and Herzegovina border. It’s so good I don’t really want to share it!

The Lodge is called Tarweek and can also be booked independently, ideal if you have a car. It’s fairly simple (single rooms have shared bathrooms) but has a huge kitchen, living area and the slopes of the mountain as a garden. Best of all is the group of like minded women it has attracted – within a few hours it’s like we’re old friends.

All aboard the school bus on our way to the mountains, we stopped at a small shop to panic buy snacks as only breakfast and dinner are included. Why yoga retreats like to skip lunch I don’t know?! Back to the pressing question, Marija has said that we are all adults and can decide for ourselves if we want to drink or detox, so red wine was added to the shopping list along with a ridiculous amount of bread and dried fruit.

We settled into a daily routine of rising early for silent mornings (that means no talking!) and two hours of yoga and meditation before breakfast prepared by our gorgeous Russian chef Katya who cooks our meals whilst also working as a translator and riding around on her motorbike.

Breakfast is usually followed by a group hike through the forest to one of many viewpoints, before an afternoon yoga / stretching session and wonderful sociable dinners. The days conclude with evening games, stargazing or songs around the fire wrapped in huge blankets – the temperature drops considerably up here and I finally got to make use of my fleece. September is in fact perfect hiking weather, a refreshing change to the heat of the Balkans.

There is an abundance of wildlife in the national park and on the first hike I almost tripped over this beauty, nothing less than a Viper as it was hanging out on the path before making it’s way into the bushes. The unfortunate video commentary ‘it’s just a shoelace’ referred to another much smaller and likely already dead snake, and either Ivana didn’t have her glasses on or Serbians only count the poisonous varieties!

Sadly despite many warning signs I didn’t see a single bear (“Bear Brown Lay Down, Bear Black Fight Back, Bear White Good Night”) and I think I was the only person who wanted to see one – but there were plenty of dogs roaming around, observing our yoga practice and accompanying us on sunrise walks. Though this particular dog ensured it was the least silent sunrise of the week.

No yoga retreat would be complete without a fire, this time accompanied by intention setting under the New Moon, some tunes on the guitar and red wine thanks to second wine instigator Julia.

The night sky here is astounding. You need to be on a mountain to see the Milky Way like this – the following photo is stolen from fellow yogi Sen’s father Darius, the only man on the retreat.

Silent mornings and in particular silent sunrise were a revelation. This is peace and quiet to enjoy the nature but you’re not alone. This type of retreat is not prison – everything is optional – but most people choose to take part in most activities. 20 mins of meditation may seem daunting, as may getting up at 5.30 for sunrise, but when you have the quiet support of people around you it becomes doable. I was further sure this is my kind of yoga retreat when Marija offered me an afternoon expresso and I could enjoy my snacks in public with the rest of the group rather than guiltily in my room like in Montenegro.

Maybe I was lucky to find a group with a wicked sense of humour – laughing is also therapy, proven when we went kayaking and Janet (minibus wine instigator) and I got stuck going in circles as the rest of the group disappeared around the Canyon. Eventually we decided to chill instead of chasing them and had a very relaxing time, arriving back just five minutes before the group – of course nobody believed that we hadn’t been lazing in hammocks the entire time. We found out later that the instructor didn’t completely give up on us, he was apparently checking we were still upright via his mobile phone camera albeit using the zoom facility to the max.

One of the more bizarre attractions is the peat bog in Crveni Potok which is fenced off to preserve it (you can jump up and down and feel how springy it is elsewhere in the forest). A sign said it dates back 9000 years but neither Janet nor I could muster much excitement over this particular view.

Time flies when you have a routine and all too quickly the week came to an end. I was unsure how I’d survive the city and make my own decisions on what time to eat or what to wear… Separate post on Serbia’s cool capital, Belgrade, coming next.