My Aunties husbands fathers (Ted) wife (Ljiljana) is part Serbian and they live in a little town called Grocka about 30km south of Belgrade. i had decided to take the overnight train to Belgrade - i didn't appreciate overnight didn't necessarily mean sleeper train. 10 hours on a train, 4 passport checks, 3 ticket checks and then a visit from the police telling me not to sleep and and not to leave my bags. At this point i had the lights out and was curled up over 3 seats underneath my sleeping bag. So i only got 20 minutes of sleep, ouch.
Ted met me in the morning and he and his wife proceed to spoil me rotten, feed me to bursting and give me a great tour of some of some of the areas. It really is a hard life. Their house is lovely overlooking the river Danube - and that day Ted took me out on his Cruiser boat for a couple of hours which was fantastic. The next day i had a tour of Belgrade, it has a fantastic park/castle area overlooking the Danube. The streets are nice and wide with some great buildings - amazing considering it has been destroyed 40 times. We take a day trip to Smederevo and see the ruins of what must have been an amazing castle complex. Through all our trips Ljiljana gives me explanations of what things are and what has happened in the area - her knowledge is prolific. I now have a real sense of Serbian/Montenegro's history, as well as The Serbian perspective on the recent war. it's fascinating stuff, and now I've heard views from Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia it makes me realise how 'Westernised' my views have been. i could now quite believe America whispered into people's ears to cause such a war - it really doesn't take that much of a leap of faith.
I take a day trip to Novi sad, considering the round journey takes a car journey, then a bus, then another bus, the another bus, then a tram and a final bus, it wasn't worth it. There's a nice castle 'ruin' above the river and the town is quite a small, pleasant shopping haven, but it was too much travelling for on little town. Due to my ever brilliant powers of getting lost i miss my stop on the way back to Grocka. there are no street lights of course and it's a long walk back to their house...grrrr
My final day is a trip to Kragujevac via the town of Topola. At Topola is the church of St Peters (aka Oplenac). Now this REALLY is an impressive church - and coming from me that's no light thing. Virtually every square inch of the inside is decorated with fantastic mosaics. of course Ljiljana knows all about it. i really have has a personal guided tour these last few days, and although i don't like tours this one has been great. I've lived a home life for a few days - dogs, slippers and TV. Albeit the TV has mainly been in Russian :) - Ljiljana speaks fluent Russian, Ted doesn't but it doesn't stop him from trying to answer the questions on who wants to be a millionaire (or a few thousand pounds richer as it's Russia). it is funny watching the language interactions.
After 4 nights they drop me off in Kragujevac and we say our goodbyes. I'm back to one...
