Djurdjevic - Personal Photos

January 23, 2011

Personal photos, September 2005

Serbia 2005

Tour of Serbia - Part 3: Mt. Zlatibor, Visegrad, Novi Sad, Mt. Fruska Gora

SERBIA, Sep 16, 2005 - Friday started bright but chilly on Mt. Zlatibor this Friday morning. As I had an easy day ahead (I thought), I decided to veer off my plan a little and make a side trip to Visegrad, a border town between Serbia and Bosnia on the river Drina. The place is famous for its ancient bridge, also the title of a literature Nobel-prize winning novel by Ivo Andric, a Serbian writer of Bosnian heritage. The last time I was in Visegrad was back in 1968, when I did my graduate thesis at the University of Belgrade - design of a highway between Visegrad and Zvornik (it is still not fully completed!). After no more than 15 minutes in that southwesterly direction, I could see some clouds and fog rolling in (above in the distance), the way fog comes in off the ocean over the South San Francisco hills.

As soon as I drove out of the 770m (about half a mile)-long Shargan tunnel, the scenery changed dramatically. Suddenly, I was in a really foggy day (above), the way the weather can also change in the Bay Area, or the way Mt. Kopaonik looked on Thursday morning.

The fog didn't last long, though. Not long afterward, I saw a sign "prepare to stop, police checkpoint." Then a road barrier showed up that looked like a border crossing. A policeman approached me and asked for my documents. I wasn't sure what he meant by that, so I asked him if he wanted my car registration.

While I fumbled in my wallet to find the passport, I asked him "is this some sort of a border crossing?"

"It sure is," he said. "Right over there is Bosnia," he pointed to a spot a few yards ahead.

"Not here," he said indifferently. "Do you want to turn around and go back?" he asked me.

"I sure do," I replied. I did not want to have any complication from entering a NATO-occupied and run country. And so ended my intended visit to Visegrad, a few miles short, and a few minutes early. Oh well... I turned around and drove back to where I came from.

When I reached Kremna, where I was supposed to turn left and head for Mt. Tara, another policeman stopped me. "Oh, boy," I thought, wondering what it was about Sparky (my car) that attracted all this attention by the men in blue.

I wanted to say, "what do you care?", but I did reply, "to Valjevo via Bajina Basta."

"And what if I took the road from Uzice to Bajina Basta?" I asked looking at the map.

"Best made plans of mice and men..." I thought but did not say anything. Instead, I just sighed, turned around again, and went back again to where I had come from.

Which meant I got to see another "ruin," as my sweetheart Karen would have called it - a medieval castle on the western approach to Uzice (above).

All along the way through Serbia, I have been seeing new churches being built and old one renovated. The first one above was in the town of Pozega, the second in the little village of Draginja, south of Sabac. As I was passing through Sabac, I made a snap decision to go on to Mt. Fruska Gora and Novi Sad, the second largest city in Serbia, before returning to Sremska Mitrovica for the night. I felt gypped of the planned visit to Mt. Tara, and thought this could be a good substitute, especially as I used to spend many happy days on Mt. Fruska Gora as a kid and a young man. My parents, for example, had their summer home and retirement farm in Lezimir, a village in the foothills of Mt. Fruska Gora.

Just as I crossed the river Sava at Sabac, I came across a road sign that read Klenak. I realized this was the village in which my parents lived when I was baptized (I had "moved" them there at the age of six months, having developed pneumonia in Belgrade; so on doctor's orders they moved to the country). Given that I have not been here since (I only know of it from my birth/baptism certificate), I decided to drop in. I was surprised to see this enormous church steeple, which I had seen before from the road. It belonged to Klenak's St. Nicholas church. I had assumed that that's where I was baptized when I took this picture. I was close. I was actually baptized by a priest from that church, but who came to my parents home as it was winter (and thus cold - most Serbian churches are not heated).

All through Serbia, I have been coming across various unusual traffic obstacles on the road - goats, cows, horse-drawn buggies, and, of course, tons of tractors. But this was my first combine that took up more than the width of a lane of a two-lane highway. But my little Sparky and I squeezed through with no problems... :-)

Here's another unusual obstacle... a horse-drawn Gypsie cart behind which a group of men can be seen working on a rooftop. The shot was taken from my car against the sun, which is why it is so bright. Unbeknownst to the photographer at the time (I was driving), he and the camera ended up in the picture, too. :-)

As I've said before, Novi Sad is Serbia's second largest city. It it situated north of Mt. Fruska Gora on the banks of the river Danube. This shot of Novi Sad was taken from Mt. Fruska Gora foothills south of Novi Sad, with the river visible in the left center part of the picture.

Novi Sad was probably the most bombed-out city during the NATO bombing of Serbia. I remember filing many contemporaneous reports about the various targets being hit there. Several of its bridges were also destroyed, blocking the Danube river traffic for years (which affected the economies of Austria, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, too - all Danubian countries). This was one of the bridges that was hit and rebuilt. I crossed into Novi Sad over it myself before taking this shot.

Close by was this pontoon bridge that served as a temporary crossing during and after the war. It is still being used. The structure in the background is the Petrovaradin Fortress, an Austro-Hungarian era military encampment where my father commanded an anti-artillery battery that fired on German planes flying over to bomb Belgrade in April 1941, when Hitler attacked Serbia. (I just realized, there is so much history, both personal and national, everywhere I go...).

I was surprised to see all these school children waiting for a bus at 5PM. Later on, Ljilja explained that schools in Serbia operate in two shifts... thus such a late finish to classes.

Mt. Fruska Gora looks from the air like a giant bread loaf perched smack in the middle of the fertile Panonian flatlands (where there was once a Panonian Sea). The area incorporates the Vojvodina district in Serbia, Slavonia in Croatia, all of Hungary and parts of northestern Romania. Mt. Fruska Gora is what we also saw from Sremska Mitrovica, and all the way during the drive from Belgrade to my sister's place.

This is a monument atop Mt. Fruska Gora at Iriski Venac (Irig Wreath) raised in honor of resistance fighters against the Nazis in World War II. It was erected in my youth. We, as schoolchildren, made many field trips to it.

This is a view of the monument from the forest side, revealing a beautiful scenery around it.

Or how about this? This green tunnels, formed by trees closing in over the road, reminded me of the many drives we took through the Western Australia countryside around the Bolt Hole. Except for different foliage, of course, the feel was the same. I drove along the spine of Mt. Fruska Gora westward for about 30km (18 miles) hoping to end up in Lezimir, my parent's country home and retirement farm. Since there were no signs anywhere, it was sheer luck, or shall we say God's hand, that led me there. Alas, I could not find the actual farm, but at least I saw the village.

A short while later, I got a call from Ljilja, telling me about their phone trouble as the reason I was not getting through all afternoon. And that's all she wrote, as they say, for Tour of Serbia 2005... three biggest cities, plus tons of beautiful countryside laced with personal mementos and centuries of history. It was fun...