Belgrade on the Danube

tiny Serbian Orthodox church next to farmhouse

The drive to Belgrade from Sarajevo, which we did today, is first through beautiful mountains and deep valleys and finally across a huge plain full of farms large and small.  This is cabbage harvest season right now, so great mounds of them are in markets and roadside stands everywhere. 

We passed a charming little Orthodox church next to a farmhouse.  Beyond the border villages, we didn’t see any mosques.  There are few Muslims now in Serbia, though some Muslim villages remain nearer the Bosnian border.  Serbia is home to the Serbian Orthodox Church and most citizens practice the orthodox religion.

millennial tower

In Belgrade, right under the massive fortress, is an unusual Orthodox church that used to be a storage barn for gunpowder.  Now it has chandeliers made of bronze bullets and swords and beautiful frescoes covering the ceiling and sides of the church.  It has no typical dome, just a long, narrow nave with no place to sit.  It is a popular church for weddings since it overlooks the meeting point of the Sava and Danube Rivers.

where the Sava and Danube meet

Across the Danube from the main city of Belgrade is Zemun, once a town unto itself and now a part of the city.  But, citizens of Zemun say they are unique and from Zemun, not Belgrade.  The old part of this area runs along the Danube, with a long promenade filled, when it’s pleasant weather, with sidewalk cafes, cyclists and people walking along the water.  Today it was pouring, so the promenade had only a few sturdy souls hunched under their umbrellas, including us.

gate to Belgrade fortress

fresco in Orthodox church at fortress

The Austro-Hungarian empire marked the corners of its empire with millennial towers about 100 years ago, to mark the supposed 1000 years of its power.  That didn’t last long after that, since World War I came along and ended any pretense of its rule.

baroque building in Zemun

Belgrade proper has been occupied since before Roman times.  Its huge fortress was a frontier post of the Roman Empire and has been used continuously since then.  Each succeeding power changed and added to the fortress until it was mostly destroyed during World War I.  For centuries, the populace of Belgrade lived inside the walls, down near the Danube, while the ruling class lived atop the hill where the administrative and religious parts of the fortress stood.  Below, the Sava and Danube Rivers come together, forming the mighty Danube flows for nearly 1800 miles to the Black Sea.

Sarajevo, a city of sorrow and hope

view of Sarajevo

It’s hard to know where to begin with Sarajevo—it’s nearly 5 centuries as part of the Ottoman Empire, its time in the Austro-Hungarian empire, its much more recent and horrific 44 month siege during the Bosnian-Serbian War of 1991 to 1995.  And it’s all so complicated that an overview just isn’t possible.  But, I’ll give a sample.

door to the main mosque

During the Ottoman period, Sarajevo was home to large numbers of Orthodox Christians, Jews and Muslims, all living together.  Their houses of worship were all mixed up in the city because the Ottomans tolerated all monotheistic religions, though Muslims received preferential treatment.  The Bosnian War undermined the centuries of living together in peace.  So today, religion continues to drive fear, resentment and nationalism.

Serbian Orthodox church

The Christians and Muslims were, and still are, Southern Slavs, while the Jews were mostly Sephardic Jews driven out of Portugal and Spain during the Inquisition.  Only about 1000 Jews live in Sarajevo today, having been decimated by the Holocaust.  Muslims were converts from Orthodox Christianity, embracing Islam because of the high taxes imposed on them by the Muslim Ottoman Empire if they remained Christian.  

Today, 54% of Bosnians are Muslims.  Most of the rest are Serbian Orthodox Christians and a small percentage are Roman Catholic.  This is important because religion played a big role in the war and is a key factor in the uneasiness in the country today.

baroque style City Hall, rebuilt after the war

During the siege of Sarajevo, minimal supplies initially got into the city, mostly packaged meals the UN received from the US military, but not nearly enough to meet the needs of the population.  In 1993, over a 4 month period, volunteers dug a tunnel under the airport runways, which were under the control of the UN, providing first, a way for the Bosnian Army to get out of Sarajevo and defend one of the key hills above the city, and second, a way to bring supplies into the city, which continued until the war was over.

tunnel under airport

Meanwhile, the Yugoslav Army, mostly Serbs, surrounded Sarajevo and besieged the city, lobbing an average of 370 mortars per day into Sarajevo.  Nearly 12,000 people died from these incessant attacks, including 1601 children.  Citizens painted the "Sarajevo rose" wherever a mortar killed at least 3 people--these are all over the city.  

Sarajevo rose

Snipers took shots at anyone who ventured into “sniper alley”, a nearly 3 mile stretch of the main road, from high buildings on the edge of the city.  As you walk around the city today, cemeteries are everywhere—on former parks, playgrounds, soccer fields, anywhere with a little space for a burial.

Outside the city, Serbs were implementing their “ethnic cleansing” plan to remove Bosnian Muslims from Bosnia, by forced removal and outright slaughter.  Finally, when the massacres of 8000 men and boys at Srebrenica and further genocide occurred elsewhere in Bosnia, the U.S. and NATO began bombing Serbian army positions around Sarajevo.  

Talk to Serbs, and they don’t dispute the Serbs’ slaughter of Muslims, but they point out that the Bosnian army massacred Serbs as well, though in much smaller numbers.  They greatly resent the NATO bombing of Serbs and the “unfairness of the Hague” that prosecuted many times more Serbs than Bosnians and Croats.

cemetery for all religions--unusual

The terrible war came to an end in Dayton, Ohio, when the Dayton Accords were signed by the presidents of Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia.  But, the political structure of the agreement, which continues today, is chaotic, involving 14 Parliaments, 5 presidents, nearly 150 ministers and huge bureaucracies in this tiny country.

Today, Sarajevo looks like any modern city of more than 400,000 inhabitants, full of people, office towers, apartment buildings and small businesses.  There are churches and mosques, but only 1 working synagogue.  Most of the city has been rebuilt, including the Turkish bazaar and elegant pedestrian shopping streets.  But, you see graffiti saying, essentially, that only Serbs can take care of Serbs, a clear reference to Serbian nationalism.  Bosnians don’t want the Serbian parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina to become fully independent or to join with Serbia.  Most Serbs support independence of their section of Bosnia, Republika Srpska.  There is potential for another war percolating just beneath the surface of life here.

We took a tour called “The Fall of Sarajevo”, which was a fascinating trip around the city, including the mountains overlooking Sarajevo where the Serbian Army besieged the city, the secret tunnel that enabled citizens to resupply the city, and, of course, the famous bobsled run from the 1984 Olympics, now a graffiti artist’s concrete canvas.

main square in the old city

The city is beautiful.  It has buildings of Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian and, unfortunately because they're so ugly, Communist design.  Today was perfectly clear, so the city and its surrounding mountains gleamed from the rains and clear air.  We had a wonderful guided walk around the old part of the city, where a row of bricks in one street proclaims “where east meets west”, delineating the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian parts of the city.  The old bazaar is alive with souvenir shops, craftsmen and restaurants, as well as people eating and shopping and praying at the many mosques.  The European part of the city has gracious baroque buildings in the midst of skyscrapers and the ever-present Communist concrete blocks.

bobsled art

Citizens of all ethnicities and religions walk the streets and drink coffee in the cafes.  Women in headscarves and long coats, Muslim women wearing whatever they want, Christian women in elegant shoes and dresses, men of unknown religion (all Slavs) eating sandwiches and smoking in restaurants—right now, people of all beliefs share their city with one another, and tourists from all over the world.

Driving through Montenegro's beautiful mountains

Durmitor National Park landscape in the rain

Montenegro is 90% mountains, something you quickly learn when you enter the country along the coast where the mountains plummet into the deep coves and bays of the Adriatic.  Likewise, drive north to the heartland of this tiny country, and you’re spending your entire time navigating hairpin turns amidst high peaks and, at this time of year, colorful beech forests.

We drove to Zabljak, a ski town and entry point to the Durmitor National Park.  The terrain is quite unusual.  Much of it looks like the Mongolian steppe—grasslands and hummocky hills in the broad valleys in between the high mountains.  There are scattered farmhouses and small villages in the valleys and sometimes atop the mountain passes, with an occasional restaurant, but this is a sparsely populated area.

mountains above Zabljak in the rain

Durmitor National Park is stunning.  We drove up into the Park on a very narrow road, admiring the limestone pinnacles and steep mountains with their surprising cover of golden grasses.  This is above tree line here, at only about 7000 feet, but there is lots of vegetation in rich autumn color.

Today, the rain that hit us in Kotor continued with driving force from the high winds.  Sometimes, the windshield wipers couldn’t go fast enough to keep up.  Occasionally, we’d have a let up in the density of the rain as we wound up and down the narrow roads.  The rain made it almost impossible to take any photos, but I am including a couple of scraggly ones since they’re all I have.

Zabljak is a town of several thousand people, with lots of hotels, restaurants, condos and ski homes scattered over the landscape.  It looks completely unplanned.  There is a small center with a supermarket and the majority of restaurants.  There are probably quite a few shops, but most of the town is closed until ski season starts.  

Zabljak ski area

We drove to the tiny ski area which has only 3 lifts and, despite the high mountains surrounding it, offers very little elevation gain from bottom to top.  A server at one of the restaurants said they skied off the second highest mountain, which would be accessible by the narrow road we took into the Park, but that would be a long, very steep downhill and a very difficult struggle back to the top.  And a terrifying drive in the icy winter.  If the winds blowing snow are as strong as the ones we encountered blowing the rain, driving would be virtually impossible during a storm.

After staying at a pleasant ski hotel in Zabljak, we drove to Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina today.  This is scenery most of the world has never heard about and is absolutely spectacular.  We drove through 2 deep gorges that make Glenwood Canyon seem small.  Their cliffs tower and sometimes hang over the road, which is narrow and winding.  Deep in the gorge below is a reservoir.  Once you get below the dam, the canyon is narrow and very deep.

reservoir filling a deep gorge

The slightly less rugged mountainsides are covered in beech forests, now bright yellow, orange and red.  There are some fir trees and a few pine trees.  On these slopes, logging would be impossible.  They are either cliffs or just too steep.  But, the road is an engineering marvel, cut into the mountainsides and cliffs, passing through dozens of tunnels, and winding down into deep, dark valleys before heading back up to narrow passes.

Piva Canyon reservoir

We crossed the border from Montenegro to Republika Srpska, which is a reluctantly autonomous region of Bosnia and Herzegovina, born out of the 1995 Dayton peace talks that ended the horrific war between Serbia and the other former Yugoslav provinces.  I did a little reading about Srpska since the border very clearly said Welcome to Republika Srpska, not Bosnia and Herzegovina and learned there is still a very strong desire for independence in Srpska.  This is not supported by the UN or the EU or US, so is on hold, but, to me, it’s a bit alarming as the 1991-1995 war was so terrible.  More on that after we visit the sites in Sarajevo tomorrow, which will include the places where Bosnian Muslim men and boys were murdered by the thousands by the Yugoslav (mostly Serb) army.

road through mountains

Stunning Kotor, Montenegro

Bay of Kotor

Nestled at the end of a long and winding bay, Kotor is yet another charming medieval city along the Adriatic Coast, now in Montenegro.  It's about 1 1/2 hours south of Dubrovnik, depending on how long it takes to cross the border between Croatia and Montenegro--about 30 minutes yesterday when we drove across.
The bay is spectacular, rimmed by rugged mountains of limestone and some pretty little towns built of limestone hundreds of years ago.  One is Perast, popular with busloads of tourists who stop to eat ice cream and stroll along the clear waters of the bay.

town of Perast

We stopped to look also before continuing on to Kotor, 10 kilometers up the road at the very end of the bay.  It was a perfect day, with rain expected for the next 7 days, so we climbed the 1350 steps up to the fortress, 850 feet above the walled town of Kotor.  It took about 45 minutes, with time to stop and photograph the town below and the gorgeous views of the bay. 

Two large cruise ships were in the port, so many of their passengers joined us on our trek up the mountain.  One Japanese couple excitedly broke the peace with a dreadful drone, but shut it off when I asked them to respect the quiet and beauty of the place.
We're staying at an old hotel right inside the city walls.  People who walk the city walls can look right into our room, which we did as well today.  In the morning, with a mix of rain and some soggy respites, we hiked about 5 miles along the bay.  There are tourist boats crisscrossing the bay, fishermen along the road casting into the water and repairing nets, cyclists oblivious to the rain and women walking to the local market. 

Kotor from the fortress

A few of the villas along the bay have been restored, some into small hotels, but many are crumbling and badly in need of repair.  The marina at Kotor is filled with expensive yachts, but most people don't seem to live all that well.  Montenegro is a democracy now, but still deals with oligarchs and corruption.  It is a mountainous republic that is beginning to attract lots of tourists, arriving mostly on cruise ships, but increasingly by bus or car with plans to stay a few days.

St. Luke's Church in Kotor with fortress on mountain above

Tomorrow, we head to Durmitor National Park in the mountains of Montenegro, reported to be a particularly beautiful area.

Dubrovnik--a destroyed city rebuilt and thriving

view of Dubrovnik

On December 6, 1991, Serbian forces bombed Dubrovnik, a UNESCO World Heritage city, mercilessly.  The bombardment lasted only one day, but most of the buildings in the old city were destroyed or heavily damaged.  The walls remained mostly intact.

monastery with new and old tile roofs

You can tell which buildings survived the bombing by looking at the roofs--those with weathered, light red, tiles were not hit.  All the bright red tiles show reconstructed and renovated buildings.  Remarkably, the city was rebuilt in only 10 years between the end of the war with Serbia in 1995 and 2005, thanks to UNESCO funding and expertise.
Dubrovnik also endured an 8 month siege during this time.  Food and munitions were smuggled past the naval blockade at night by the owners of small boats.  You wouldn't see much of this devastation today, though some buildings remain in bombed out ruins.  On some walls are photos showing the old city on fire and the decimated medieval buildings.

monastery roofs that weren't bombed

Onofrian fountain

The Onofrian Fountain just inside the city walls still provides fresh, potable water to thirsty tourists and locals.  The fountain was built in the early 15th century to provide water to the town, water which came from springs several miles away.  The spring water was brought to the city via aqueduct and through channels in the city walls.  Though I'm very wary of water the world over, particularly from public fountains, no one else seemed to be disturbed by drinking it and no one reports getting sick in travel reviews.

fresh water spigot on fountain

old city walls

Dubrovnik sits on a point in the Adriatic, surrounded by high stone walls and the brilliant sea.  In the evening, kayakers move across the water, silvery in the late light, towards a pretty cove below the fortress just outside the city walls.  There are islands all around, so the water is usually calm. 
When we arrived, there were 7 cruise ships ranging from very small to enormous docked in the port of Dubrovnik.  Our guide told us that there was a day several years ago when 13 very large cruise ships all docked in the port, disgorging thousands and thousands of tourists.  The town was so crowded that the narrow streets were literally at a standstill.  No one could move.

water pipes in city wall leading to fountain

Now the city limits the number of cruise ships and the number of tourists who can come inside the city each day.  Fortunately, we were staying at a hotel, the Pucic Palace, right in the center of the old city, so we could wander early and late with minimal crowding.  We are also here late in the season (end of October) when the cruise ships are fewer and the city is beginning to shut its tourist infrastructure down for the winter, when no ships come.  But, it's important to remember that Croatia and its lovely old cities rely on the cruise tourists for their very survival.  The coastal economy is built on tourism, wine production, shellfish (much less) and olives, with tourism being the big driver of the economy.

The island of Korcula

view of Korcula's old city

Korcula was the third Croatian island we visited, one where we spent 2 nights overlooking the Mediterranean in a charming hotel with gorgeous views, but also requiring about 100 steps up the narrow street to get to our room.  Good exercise, but not for everyone.

the sea between Korcula and the mainland

Korcula land gate

Like the other Adriatic islands, Korcula is a mountainous limestone island, about 30 miles long and 4 miles across.  It is known for its excellent white wine, Pocip.  We drove all over the island, visiting villages and beaches as well as a winery where the next tourists to walk in were Don's nephew and his wife, completely shocking all of us since none of us knew the other two were traveling in Croatia and we haven't even seen them in 2 years.  That was fun!  And the wine was very good.
The old city of Korcula has a charter that specified how the town would be built, managed and lived in.  For example, it required windows on houses opposite each other to be offset from one another so that people in one house couldn't peer into their neighbor's windows.
Between two houses in the city, there had to be a space where garbage and sewage could be tossed so it wouldn't go directly into the street.  That does sound very smelly and rather disgusting, so I imagine the city (and probably all cities of that era) smelled terrible by our standards.

cathedral door

At night, the city gates were closed and no one was allowed inside once they'd closed.  The drawbridges over the moat were raised and the huge gates locked.  If you arrived late, you simply waited outside until morning.

Eve reminding Catholics of their sins

The cathedral is not very exciting, but it does have interesting statuary on its facade.  Unlike most Adams and Eves, these are squatting, naked, displaying their genitals.  This was to show everyone entering the church that they needed to recognize their sins when they went inside the cathedral.

Adam--also a sinner

The beaches are mostly rocky, but there are a couple of small, sandy beaches that are very popular with islanders and tourists alike.  Now, they are nearly empty and Korcula is mostly closed for the season.  Our hotel closed the day we left and almost no restaurants were still open.  But, the clear water was still lovely and we did get to see a small octopus enjoying a respite from the beach's crowds of summer swimmers.

octupus on sea bottom

Oysters, Muscles and homemade wine--on the way to Dubrovnik

islands off Adriatic Coast near Dubrovnik

On our drive to Dubrovnik from Korcula along Croatia's stunning Adriatic coast, we stopped for a very special lunch of oysters and muscles, fresh from the clear waters of the Mediterranean.  An excursion to taste oysters and wine is pretty typical for this part of the coast, but our host had clearly thought about how to make his customers' experience truly unique.

an oyster farm

Denis and his family have one of the many oyster farms found in the long, narrow bays that form the Adriatic coast.  They also own the tip of a densely wooded peninsula that is now protected from development.  He decided to set up a charming picnic spot on his family's land for his wonderful version of the oyster and wine lunch.  He built 3 long outdoor tables and benches of split logs, two flush toilets, and, recently, a small kitchen and covered eating space in case of rain.  He brings water from the mainland by boat, storing it in a large tank above the picnic area and treats his waste water in another large tank before discharging it into the bay away from the picnic site.
Inside the kitchen are a sink with fresh water, two large propane burners, a refrigerator, rack for wine glasses, dishwasher and storage for everything he needs.  The meal is very simple--fresh oysters on the half shell, with only a squirt of lemon, muscles cooked to perfection in seawater and served on a sauce of olive oil, white wine, garlic and onions, fresh bread and wine made by Denis' father.  So, you get to sit in this quiet, shady spot looking out at the Mediterranean, enjoying an incredible, absolutely fresh meal, cooked just for you as you relax and watch.  If shellfish aren't for you, Denis grills zucchini fresh from his garden and adds bread and cheese.

Denis preparing muscles in kitchen he built

He started his business 7 years ago.  Now, he is so busy that his business supports 2 families.  During the tourist season, from April to the end of October, he hosts 5 different private parties, ranging from 2 to 25 people every day.  Each party gets its own private transfer by boat, tour of the oyster farm, fresh-cooked meal of oysters and muscles taken from the ocean that morning and lecture on oyster and muscle-farming.  It takes 6 people, all family members, to serve their guests during the summer.  His biggest customers are the cruise lines that pour into Dubrovnik during the tourist season.  But, never are there more than 25 guests at one time.
In the winter, the entire family tends the oyster and muscle farms.  Because there are millions of snails on the sea floor that live on oysters, the oyster farmers put out rows of plastic line, many filaments per line, for the baby oysters to attach to as they drift about on the currents.  That way, they won't attach to rocks where the snails will kill and eat them (the snail secretes a chemical that bores a small hole into the oyster shell, killing the oyster.  The shell pops open and in goes the snail for its feast.).

muscles in the pot

When the oysters get to be year old, the farmers cement 2 oysters back to back around the plastic line so they can't fall off.  Oysters can only attach once, so this is the only way to make sure they don't drop to the sea floor.  They are ready to eat when they are 3 years old.  Denis said the farming is not a lot of work, but is very slow.  Oysters need very clean water to survive.  Denis pointed out all the sea urchins on the shallow rocks, telling us that where there are no sea urchins cleaning pollutants from the water, there will be no oysters.
When we bring a group here, this will be one of our stops which we'll all remember.

Island hopping off of Split, Croatia

view of Split from the bay

The drive from Zagreb to Split is through the mountains and down to the Mediterranean.  On the way, we stopped at the beautiful Plitvice Lakes National Park for a several mile walk along the lakes and waterfalls and through a thick forest rich with red and yellow fall colors amidst the pine trees.  It was very crowded with tourists and Croatians, which curbed the appeal a bit but we enjoyed the walk nevertheless.

basement of Diocletian's Palace, Split

Split's lovely old city dates back to pre-Greek times, but the highlight today is Diocletian's Palace, built by Diocletian in the 4th century AD for his retirement.  It is really a huge fortress filling a good portion of the old city.  It wasn't excavated and partially renovated until a few decades ago.  Today, you can enter through the old basement, though it has been occupied continuously since the 7th century, which was filled with trash and petrified human waste until it was cleaned out by the citizens.  Must have been rather disgusting, but it did seem to preserve a magnificent substructure of giant arches and long corridors.  Diocletian's mausoleum became a Catholic cathedral in the medieval period.  Today, only about 100 hardy souls reside inside the palace, in the midst of restaurants, tourists shops and, during the high season, hordes of tourists.

cave for hiding warships--Vis

We spent yesterday taking a speedboat to the islands of Vis and Hvar to check them out for a future trip with a group.  Croatia has over 1000 islands off its coast, mostly tiny, but quite a few that are long, narrow, mountainous and very rocky.  Today, the larger islands live on tourism, vineyards and wineries, and olive production.  The steep mountainsides were terraced millennia ago for vineyards and, later, lavender and olive orchards.  Today, many of them are returning to viniculture.  The huge piles of rocks and endless stone walls prove the unbelievable effort farmers made to clear enough limestone rocks to allow them to farm.  Many of their old villages are empty today because it is much easier to make a living off of tourists than agriculture.

Vis

Vis, far out in the Adriatic, was a military island until 1989.  During World War II, American and British airmen flew B-17 bombing raids over Italy and Yugoslavia from a small airbase cut into one of the valleys.  Our guide stopped to show us poignant monuments to the Americans and British who died helping to free Yugoslavia from German occupation. 

Hvar's old city

Marshal Tito used Vis as a base for the resistance to the Germans during World War II, an effort he led.  He holed up in  a cave on Vis when necessary and cut giant tunnels into the rocky promontories jutting out into the sea to hide warships.  After he became the dictator of the former Yugoslavia, he turned the island into a military base, so no one but local islanders could live or visit there.  Vis has only been developing its tourist industry for the last 30 years, so the infrastructure is small.  Yesterday, all the hotels had already closed for the season and only a few restaurants remained open. 

Hvar's main piazza

But, we toured part of the island in a ratty old Land Rover with a guide who talked non-stop and showed us the old airfield and tunnels along with vineyards and olive orchards.
An hour's race in our speedboat over rather rough seas took us to Hvar (pronounced Hwar), another rugged and beautiful island of rugged mountains, deep coves, several villages and towns (in addition to Hvar) and 15 wineries.  Hvar, too, has steeply terraced fields surrounded by huge mounds of limestone rocks.  Most of these are fallow because a fire destroyed the vineyards.  But, some are being replanted with grapes. 

Count's lion--Hvar

islands in the Adriatic from a Hvar mountaintop

Both Vis and Hvar date to Greek times, but the ruins are mostly from the Roman era.  Their old cities are beautiful medieval towns built of bricks carved from the limestone mountains.  They are both on gorgeous bays of clear turquoise water with steep, stark mountains rising above them.  Both have castles high on the mountaintops.  Hvar has a much more developed tourist infrastructure because it has been a mecca for travelers for decades.  The views are spectacular no matter where you go.  We drove up over the mountains from Hvar to see more of the island and to take in its magnificent views out over the countless islands and back to the mainland (lost in haze).