Yesterday I took the van to Sarajevo. The day before I was supposed to go to Novi Sad, but something told me to go to Sarajevo instead.
I like Belgrade. It wasn't a large city, but it had some beautiful parts, with a lot of communist-style architecture. Again, one section wasn't actually in Serbia at a time, but was part of the Austia-Hungarian empire-the city is a bridge from Central to Western Europe. An interesting place, and a fun place, with some good going out.
For planning trips between cities in Europe, I have used a website called www.goeuro.com, which compares the price of plane vs train vs bus. The website doesn't give much info about the Balkans, and there aren't any other websites I could find which give good comparative information, so I asked at the hostel, and was told that I could take a bus from the bus station, but a less expensive, (and faster) way would be to take a van from the hostel, which would pick me up directly, and drop me off at the hostel in Sarajevo. So that is what I did.
So a 9 person van picked me up at the hostel. The van was full, with folks staying at other hostels. As there was one additional pickup after mine, I was sitting in the middle of the front seat (next to the driver and another passenger). The van was a stick shift. (no, the driver wasn't reaching in between my legs to shift), but just about every time he did he elbowed me. The girl next to me was a cute 20ish something Australian.
The ride was about 6 hours, and only about 1 hour of it (tops), was on a highway, the rest was on a curvy two lane road. We passed various towns, farms, ramsackle houses, waterfalls, as well as the checkpoint between Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. We even passed seemingly small villages that incongruously had high rise apartment houses. I would love to say the trip was just amazingly scenic , but it was just amazingly looong. 6 hours of anything is boring. And I am still feeling a bit light headed.
Eventually we got to Sarajevo. The Austrailian girl and I we're both staying at the same hostel. I checked in to my 14-bunk room (of course, I had a top bunk), and then took a walk around. The hostel is right in the old town, so I walked out-the environment reminds me a little of Morocco, as there is a big Muslim influence, a few mosques, and a call to worship playing. Plus there are lot of stores, restaurants, etc. After going back for a nap-I went out again, and walked around and had some chicken soup(for the cold) and pizza for dinner. The chicken soup was for the cold but the pizza just looked good. I was worried about getting sick from eating too much pizza, but that wouldn't come to pass, the pizza was disgusting, so I had just a few slices.
