Cetinje

Long time ago that I recommended a dub song so maybe you now turn on Zenzile - Icepack Sonar.

Due to the very late arrival of the train it was hard to find a room for the night in Podgorica but the super friendly people helped me. Podgorica is not a very scenic town because it was completely destroyed in World War II and because its population grew quickly during the last last decades. Nowadays almost a third of Montenegro's inhabitants live in Podgorica. I felt very sick that day and was happy that I found a bus to Cetinje quickly. Therefore I have no photos of Podgorica.

Cetinje is located in the Adriatic mountains at the entrance of the Lovćen National Park. It is the former capital of Montenegro, it was never destroyed and therefore it consists of older houses. Some of the former embassies are now museums and one can visit the former king's residence. These buildings are arranged in a garden-like neighborhood which also includes a monastery complex. So the town is perfect to relax a bit. When I was there, a festival was going on in the monastery and children played parts of Montenegro's very interesting history in theater role plays. In the evening the streets were full of people. Everybody, yes really everybody, was cheering on the national water polo team in the world championship final. I have never watched a full water polo game before and this one was very exciting - too bad that Montenegro lost!

In the Njegoševa street.

The monastery.

Biljarda in the heart of the garden-like area.

The former residence of king Nikola.

The National Museum.

There are many museums to visit and I bought a combination ticket. Unfortunately there is absolutely no information in the museums. Take for example a virtual tour in of the museums of the National Museum of Montenegro - you can see that there are no information sheets or something similar. The personal is very friendly but they did not know much because they were only ticket sellers. Too bad because the museums have the potential to attract many tourists.

Inside the national museum. Who's bust is that, what uniform is that, who are the people on the images and what is the context?

On the second day I felt strong enough to walk a bit further around and took a path from the monastery to the mausoleum of a bishop because it provides a nice view to the Lovćen mountains. In the forest I was suddenly chased by a dog. I don't understand where it came from and could not see him at first but heard its barking coming closer and closer. In panic I climbed and run as fast as I could and just made it up to the mausoleum. There were other people and the dog desist from me. What the hell! The next hour I could not breath normally because of my infection and I must admit that I started to hate wild/street dogs.

View towards the monastery and the mausoleum on top of the hill.

View at Cetinje from the mausoleum.

Long train running

My heavy infection destroyed my plans to visit Novi Sad and I thought it is a good idea to go to the adriatic mountains because there are better weather conditions.
Buying the train ticket was again a problem. At the Belgrade main station they told me that there is a kind of seat lottery and that they cannot sell me a ticket in advance. I would need to come to the ticket counter an hour before the train leaves and then it might be possible so buy one - it was obvious that I should bribe them. I therefore went to a private travel agency and could by a ticket without problems.

Doobie Brothers- Long train running would fit for the long train run but maybe also Salma Agha - Come Closer.

Belgrade's main station.

A local train - note that is has only one passenger car but 2 locomotives and both where staffed.

The railway infrastructure at the main station is bad. The rails are so abandoned that the trains can only enter and leave the station with walking pace and passengers told me that derailments happen frequently. There are also people crossing the rails outside the station as if there is a pathway across them. So I sat in an international train was looking out of the window and noticed that the train was as fast as a mother with a baby stroller that she pushed along the rails - I was flabbergasted. However, our locomotive broke down 200 meters from the main station and we had to wait 2 hours for a replacement. It was interesting to see how a dozen of railway workers and also passengers tried to repair it. Most of the time there were only discussions and finally someone came up with a huge hammer and some wrenches - without success.

People around the broken locomotive.

I thought that the train line from Mostar to Sarajevo cannot be topped but the train line from Belgrade to Bar much longer and I would say it is even more spectacular. The rivers are so deep, the mountain walls high and the valleys very narrow. If you ever considered to take the Glacier Express consider to take instead a train from Bar towards Belgrade. I recommend this direction because the section from Bar to the Serbian border is the most spectacular one. It contains for example the famous Mala Rijeka Viaduct. Because of our broken locomotive we arrived Podgorica in the dark so that I missed to see parts of this section.

View at Užice with its typical
Yugoslavian tower blocks.

Most probably the Potpeć Reservoir

At the border to Montenegro.

My original plan was to go to Žabljak to rest in a place with less heat and to see the Tara canyon (the deepest in Europe) but because of the delay of the train I missed the bus from Mojkovac. Angela who I met in the train, convinced me to drive to Podgorica, sleep there a night and then go to Montenegro's old capital Cetinje. Angela, this way many thanks for a superb 12 hour train ride, for interesting talks and discussions (sometimes together with the whole railroad car) about almost everything. Also thanks that you pulled me back inside the train when I was trying to shoot a photo out of the window.
The railroad line has more than 250 tunnels! The landscape is so extremely amazing and I spent a lot of time to shoot photos but the next tunnel came in most cases faster than I could shoot. It took a while until I realized that it is sometimes better to relax and just enjoy. (There are enough photos in the Internet that one can use to remember.)

Angela - she didn't want be photographed so I had to trick her to get this snapshot ;-)

Cycling the final round in Belgrade

Because of my disease I was looking for a museum to see something without the need to move much. I have seen some but all were a bit disappointing. However, this way I saw parts of the city I would otherwise not have seen.
As music for this post I recommend Elitni Odredi - Ne Koci (wow 24 million clicks while Serbia has only 7.1 million inhabitants).

The first attempt was to see the House of Flowers. While cycling there I took the wrong lane at this crossing and landed at the highway and there was no way to return. So I was cycling on it a bit until I could leave. The amazing thing is that nobody cared, even not the police!

One of the villas in the area of the Museum of Yugoslav History.

The House of Flowers is the mausoleum of Josip Tito and is located in a nice part of the city with beautiful parks and villas. The Mausoleum itself does not contain much information, only a few images of Tito and the history of the Non-Aligned Movement he co-founded. Besides the mausoleum is a museum showing some clothings and artisans of the Balkans but unfortunately without any information how things where used, from which time they are etc.

At the entrance of the mausoleum complex is the Museum of Yugoslav History (Museum "May 25th"). The few things exhibited were gifts Tito received from other statesmen. A major part of the exhibition hall was empty. A very bored and friendly student at the museum's office was happy that a person came to talk. I asked her for a museum of history but apparently there is no such museum where Balkan's exciting history is explained. Eventually she sent me to the

Nikola Tesla Museum. A museum about Teslas work is in my opinion a penalty but they sadly managed to create an uninformative museum about electricity. The museum is very small and half of it is about the history of the museum itself. The other half contains some electro motors and Tesla coils. The show they offer only shows some lightnings and explains nothing. For example the unit of the magnetic field strength was named to honor Tesla but this fact does not appear nor is explained what a magnetic field strength is. OK, I am a physicist but every Christmas lecture at your local university will show you more and if you like you can learn much, much more. To get information about Tesla's life and the background of his investigations it is better to read it Wikipedia article. (Sorry.)

Building of the Museum "May 25th".

The sarcophagus of Tito.

The house of the Nikola Tesla Museum.

The second floor was closed.

I have also seen many other places like the neighborhood of Dušanovac , the Bajrakli mosque and Stari dvor but lost these images. Here are nevertheless some images of further parts of the town:

The House  of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia.

The Elektrotehnički Fakultet of the

University of Belgrade.

The Eternal flame in the not so beautiful Friendship park.

The huge Palace of Serbia.

Cemetery of Trolleybuses. in a street at the Danube Port district. (Just after taking this image suddenly 2 dogs hunted me and I think I broke my personal speed record on a city bike to flee although I was already very sick this time.) This was not the last time I was attacked by dogs and I can really not understand why rich and bored woman in western Europe care about street dogs.

I forgot to mention that Belgrade was heavily destroyed by Germany in World War II. It is sad to see everywhere in Europe the results of this war and that the scars are still visible. Fortunately nobody blamed me for anything in the past, some only don't like the politics of Angela Merkel.

Seltsamer Spazierritt

aus aktuellem Anlass, weil so viel Wahrheit drin steckt und dank einer treuen Leserin dieses Blogs:

"Seltsamer Spazierritt" von Johann Peter Hebel

Ein Mann reitet auf seinem Esel nach Haus und läßt seinen Buben zu Fuß nebenher laufen. Kommt ein
Wanderer und sagt: "Das ist nicht recht, Vater, dass Ihr reitet und lasst Euern Sohn laufen; Ihr habt stärkere Glieder." Da stieg der Vater vom Esel herab und ließ den Sohn reiten. Kommt wieder ein Wandersmann und sagt: "Das ist nicht recht, Bursche, dass du reitest und lässest Deinen Vater zu Fuß gehen. Du hast jüngere Beine." Da saßen beide auf und ritten eine Strecke. Kommt ein dritter Wandersmann und sagt: "Was ist das für ein Unverstand, zwei Kerle auf einem schwachen Tiere? Sollte man nicht einen Stock nehmen und Euch beide hinabjagen?" Da stiegen beide ab und gingen selbdritt zu Fuß, rechts und links der Vater und Sohn und in der Mitte der Esel. Kommt ein vierter Wandersmann und sagt: "Ihr seid drei kuriose Gesellen. Ist's nicht genug, wenn zwei zu Fuß gehen? Geht's nicht leichter, wenn einer von Euch reitet?" Da band der Vater dem Esel die vordern Beine zusammen, und der Sohn band ihm die hintern Beine zusammen, zogen einen starken Baumpfahl durch, der an der Straße stand, und trugen den Esel auf der Achsel heim.

So weit kann's kommen, wenn man es allen Leuten will recht machen.

Cycling another round - Zemun

For this part a Serbian pop classic suits well:  Željko Joksimović Lane Moje
Zemun was formerly part of the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia and therefore at the other side of the border to Serbia. The former border line is still visible by the architecture - Zemun looks like a typical small Austro-Hungarian town:

The main road through Zemun.

The most delicious bakery I have been.

By the way, I of course tried out everything I found in bakeries. And without an exception the food is delicious. I like especially the different types of filled dough. The dough is sometimes a kind of Danish pastry and sometimes Puff pastry and the filling ca be meat or vegetables. The pastries are rich in calories so that 2 of them are like a full meal. The typical Kifla are also quite tasty.

From the castle of Zemun in Gardoš only a few walls are preserved but from its hill you have a great view over Belgrade and the Danube. There are also nice restaurants while at the Zemun riverside you find mostly expensive tourist restaurants. At the highest point of the castle hill is the Gardoš Tower which is open and offers a nice view.

The Gardoš tower.

View from the tower towards the old town of Belgrade.

View towards Novi Beograd.

At the riverside of Zemun. The arm of the Danube is full of small boats and some people bath at the coast of the Great war island. The tower in the background is the Ušće tower.

Cycling the next round - Novi Beograd

Belgrade offers so many places to see and the city is not very large. And with this rented bike

My bike. (Capriolo builds good bikes (I tested some in a store.) but don't yet sell them in Germany.)

it was easy to see a lot. So start The Quantic Soul Orchestra - Melodious Wayfarerand and cross the Ada bridge to enter Novi Beograd - a part of the city full of concrete houses in the brutalist style:
 

View from the Ada bridge to the houses
behind the Novi Beograd railway station.

Typical view in Novi Beograd.

Interesting architecture. (I guess the
rooms will  get less light.)

Almost every city in eastern Europe has zones with concrete houses but Novi Beograd is a major part of the city and compared to concrete zones of other cities I find this area livable. There is enough space between the houses so that you can enjoy the view from the upper floors, there is some green and playgrounds and it is not far to the riversides.
At the railway station is a replica of the Terazije place how it looked in 1920. (I could not find out why it is there and how it was/is used.
The most impressing building of Novi Begrad is in my opinion the Western Gate. Unfortunately the Café in the "UFO" at its top is closed and also the tower with the huge advertisement is partially closed. The other tower contains flats and I tried to get a view over the city from its uppermost floor. But it was only possible to see the other tower through a bull's-eye window of the lift tower.
Another huge building is the Belgrade Arena. While crossing it, I noticed that Serbia's sport teams are very successful in different sports: basketball, handball, water polo, volleyball, tennis. They were not very successful recently in football but this sport is still the national sport.

The park around the tower has
seen better times.

"Terazije 1920"

The Western gate photographed
from the east.

A few words about Cyrillic

There are no songs about script systems (a gap in the market ;-) ), so why not listening to a Brazilian classic?: Milton Nascimento - Tudo o que você podia ser

As you might have noticed in the images and the maps I linked, the Cyrillic script is used in Serbia. This script is also used in other countries of the Balkans but in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia one can choose between the Latin and the Cyrillic script. In Bosnia Cyrillic is mostly used in the Serbian entity while I haven't seen it often in the Bosnian-Croat entity. In Serbia all official documents have to be in Cyrillic but for tourists maps, etc. the Latin script is used. There are also some street signs in the 2 scripts. For the private usage some (also younger people) told me that Cyrillic is easier to write by hand while on the PC the Latin script is faster to use. In Montenegro Cyrillic is not as present as in Serbia, except of some towns where people feel more like Serbians than Montenegrins (for example in Херцег Нови).

Reading Cyrillic is relatively easy because there are conversion tables for the different languages. This is the one for Serbian:

Cyrillic	Latin	IPA
А а	A a	a
Б б	B b	b
В в	V v	ʋ
Г г	G g	ɡ
Д д	D d	d
Ђ ђ	Đ đ	d͡ʑ
Е е	E e	e
Ж ж	Ž ž	ʒ
З з	Z z	z
И и	I i	i
Ј ј	J j	j
К к	K k	k
Л л	L l	l
Љ љ	Lj lj	ʎ
М м	M m	m
Н н	N n	n
Њ њ	Nj nj	ɲ
О о	O o	o
П п	P p	p
Р р	R r	r
С с	S s	s
Т т	T t	t
Ћ ћ	Ć ć	t͡ɕ
У у	U u	u
Ф ф	F f	f
Х х	H h	x
Ц ц	C c	t͡s
Ч ч	Č č	t͡ʃ
Џ џ	Dž dž	d͡ʒ
Ш ш	Š š	ʃ

The characters might look complicated but when you think of the Greek characters you learned at school for math variables you will see many similarities. For example the Г is the Greek Gamma, П is the Greek Pi, Ф is the Greek Phi, Л is very close to the Greek Lambda,  etc. Finally keep in mind that the Cyrillic С is the Latin S and then you almost have it.

You might wonder why it should be helpful to read a language one can nevertheless not understand. Well, if you ask people in the streets or look in a map because you want to visit e.g. the beautiful Kraljevski kompleks, it is very helpful to read that the road sign with "Краљевски комплекс" is the one you need to follow.

Cycling around

Belgrade is not a very picturesque city but a very nice place to stay and to relax. it is not too large so that cycling around was a good decision. I got a high-quality bike for only 5 € a day and there are several bike stations all over the city in case one gets a defect.
This is the first post about some places I discovered. For cycling I like to hear music pushing me forward. Thus I had a look at the incredible Wikipedia article about Serbian Rock and found

Nežni Dalibor - Ti si sam

The main pedestrian zone, the Mihailova Street.

Interesting architecture in the same street.

Nothern end of the same street.

Somewhere in the inner city.

Some restaurant boats are very impressive.

The oldest house from the Ottoman times.

The Sava lake is another thing that makes Belgrade unique. This lake is a former arm of the Sava river so that the water is flat and not moving. Therefore the water temperature is high which is ideal for swimming and bathing. In the winter the lake freezes early making it perfect for ice skating. At the western end of the lake is a waterskiing resort.

View along the lake from its eastern end

At the beach

In Germany we have the new Berlin airport that is years behind its construction plan. Serbia has the Prokop railway station which is in construction since 1974. This station is the heart of Belgrade's commuter rail system and partially in service. There is much room for improvement for the rail system. Some underground stations look very nice but for example the station in Novi Beograd is an impertinence.

View at the station from here.

As I learned last year in Bosnia, Yugoslavia was a very atheistic country. Nevertheless people often told me that religion is very important for them. Once I made the mistake to ask a woman when she had been the last time in a church - silence, but she looked embarrassed. New churches are in construction and the main church of course need to be super large. This is the Cathedral of Saint Sava - the largest orthodox church in the world. Its interior is still not finished but it is therefore possible to photograph it without any restrictions.

The church is inside a niche park area.

View inside.

Another nice church is St. Mark. By chance there was a church service giong on when I entered it. This was my first time I attended an orthodox ceremony. (I was surprised that one has to stand so long, that were several priests and that they don't look at the audience most of the time. But maybe this was a special ceremony.) I know it is not polite to shoot photos at religious ceremonies but standing there so long I could not resist. What you can see is that the attendance is very small although it was a weekend. I also noticed that there are not enough churches that, let's say, 10% of the citizens could have a seat in a church. So it is a bit strange that many say that religion is extremely important for Serbia.

Also this church is beside a park.

The main entrance.

A ceremony.