Serbia blog …

Wow! This Serbia blog hopefully shows how Serbia is awesome, just incredible scenery. You’d be hard pressed to find more beautiful rolling hills anywhere in Europe! Just stunningly beautiful. But getting to see them means that you have to drive on Serbian roads – ahem!!! And deal with the Serbian drivers – hmmm! As well as the policemen and women! And avoid crashes – definitely do this! Still, it’s an amazingly beautiful country! You should definitely go!

Oh, and the people – wow! So tall – even most of the women were taller than I am and I’m six feet tall! They’re like the Dutch! And so many of them are great looking too. So … tall, great looking, proud and slightly passively aggressive! An interesting combination.

Oh yeah, and it seems that the public health messaging around smoking hasn’t reached Serbia yet – as everyone smokes, from the very old to the very young – it’s a sight we’ve not really seen on this scale since the 1980s!!

Oh, and it seems that there is an advantage to Brexit after all – only one that we’ve come across to date mind you!!

Serbian roads

So when we first entered Serbia, we thought great look at this, the roads are a massive improvement over Hungarian roads! How wrong we were!

Many of the roads in Serbia are atrocious! And many are just rubble dirt tracks with deadly sheer drops to the side!

Often you will be asked to stop at a traffic light as the road has become almost impassable, only to find that when your light turns green, you’re meeting traffic head on with no room to manoeuvre! This is because often they will only put one set of traffic lights up – for the drivers travelling towards you, there were no traffic lights!!!

Quite often the roads are single track with huge potholes on either side of the road, but with two lanes of traffic … travelling at speed. This makes for an interesting game of who shifts into the pothole ridden path first. If you’re lucky, both you and the oncoming driver will slow down to accommodate; if you’re not so lucky you’ll get a blaring car horn at you to shift over! We found it best to ignore the aggressive noises, slow down and keep near the centre, so as to show them that you’re not intimidated! A dangerous game considering the number of crashes that there are ….

To be fair, many are being upgraded, and many are being widened; so perhaps in a few years it’ll be great?!

Incredible diversions!

And then there’s the diversions because of new road construction – one such diversion took us off the road, though a garden centre car park, through someone garage – literally through the inside of the garage! – along the side of a what looked like a disused factory building, through another car park, and back onto the road you wanted to be on! Try getting away with that in the UK – incredible!

Serbian drivers

Many, many Serbian drivers have aggressive tendencies and are poor at driving in the main! This means that you will see, encounter and almost be involved in several crashes per day! That is, if you drive as much as we do 😉

We saw many head on crashes between lorries – some in villages where the traffic is meant to be slower! We saw many instances of cars crashing into the back of lorries, as they attempt to overtake by driving six inches behind, unaware that there is traffic ahead that the lorry has to stop for!

Also, we were almost involved in multiple crashes, but found that slowing down and throwing hands up into the air out of the windows tended to diffuse the situation – again, showing them that you’re not intimidated! In fact, we’ve found that this technique helps in many countries in Eastern Europe!

We even saw Serbian drivers fighting (literally fisticuff fighting) with policemen as they were charged with poor driving and crashes! The policewoman who was with the policeman who was involved in the fight looked on as if this was a normal state of affairs!

Wild animals in Serbia

And then there’s all of the wild horses and wild dogs that roam the street as if they’ve never encountered a car – absolutely no regard whatsoever for moving – so blasé! None of them aggressive though that we saw – nice!

Border control and customs

So the border between Hungary and Serbia means that you’re leaving the EU, and leaving the Schengen area, and thus you should get your passport stamped for proof of how many days you’ve stayed within Schengen.

A Brexit advantage!

When turning up at border control exiting Hungary and entering Serbia, the queue of traffic was huge (or at least I thought it was huge until I went to Moldova)! We sat there waiting in line, when I noticed that there was another gate to the right with only two cars in it.

Then I noticed that the line we were in was for EU and Swiss cars. Oh yeah I thought, we’re not in the EU any longer – it had slipped my mind. So we jumped queue, even though the gate traffic light was red – was this a bad move we thought! Ah well, we’ve done it now! Ten minutes later, we were at the front of the queue; the longer queue hadn’t moved at all; we were asked for passport and V5 (car ownership document) and we were through! Hoorah! Finally! It seem that there is an advantage to Brexit after all! 😉

Note that they didn’t ask for car insurance documentation, nor international driving license, green card? In fact, to date no country has asked for any of these documents! (d.n. there are in fact many countries in Europe that ask for car insurance, but we’d not come across any at this stage!) Nor have any countries required us to display a UK sticker on the back of your car as far as we know! (d.n. we travelled to almost every country in Europe [2024] and none ever asked for the UK sticker).

Serbian customs

Customs however caught us slightly by surprise, as we were asked whether we had alcohol or cigarettes we wanted to declare – nope! We opened the boot of the car to show what was inside. All seemed good, but then just as we were leaving the customs guy threw an off hand query as to whether we had guns or narcotics. We’re such goody goodies these days that we were shocked to be even asked such a question! Lol … how times have changed!

Camping and accommodation in Serbia

Wow, so we thought that we’d get a load of cheap camping in, in this beautiful country – well that’s not happening, because there’s still loads of land mines in the countryside apparently from the war in the 1990s. As a result of this, wild camping is not really on. In fact there are very few camp sites in Serbia at all – at least few that we came across.

As an alternative however, accommodation is pretty decent value for money. As are most things in Serbia – its far cheaper than Croatia and Slovenia – I guess that there are advantages to not being in the EU!

However, if you do book accommodation, don’t forget to book NON-SMOKING rooms – else you’ll get a smoking room, as that’s what most people want it seems. And even if you book a non-smoking room, in reality you’ll probably get a room that no-one has smoked in today, and the windows have been left open all day 😉

Oh by the way, avoid the thieves in Belgrade that run the Rooms Konak Mikan on Marsala Birjuzova street. They provide cheap, centrally located rooms that are the worst we’ve stayed in! The mattresses has actual metal spikes sticking up through the sheets so you literally could not lie down. When confronted, the receptionist said that the owner knew but didn’t care. The cleaners knew too as they were laughing about it on the morning. I almost ripped the whole mattress up!

Uvac canyon, Serbia

So all of that above may have put you off visiting the mighty Serbia somewhat – but don’t let it, as it really is a sight to behold – stunning! I fact, it’s not since we were in Norway have we had to stop so often to take in the magnificent views!

An example of this is the Uvac canyon! The river Vac is only 25 miles from its source to its mouth, and yet it meanders so crazily that the rives is over 70 miles in length!

We stayed over in Nova Varoš, and hoped to be able to make it to the canyon in our car. All the info and blogs online stated that the roads were terrible, and only passable by 4×4 vehicles! Our plan was to drive as far as we could and walk the rest of the way. Well there’s no need for any of that now, as clearly someone received the message that such a great site needs a great road! After a rough couple of miles start, the road to Uvac canyon is as smooth as silk brand new – all the way to the canyon viewpoint – awesome!

It’s a pretty rare sight to see and well worth the effort. In fact all around the area, the countryside is stunning!

Derdap gorge, Serbia

Simply amazing! To think that the Iron Gate has been around for such a long time and we’d never even heard of it it just bewildering! I guess because Serbia isn’t set up for tourism for the west as much as other countries, the comms haven’t really reached us yet! It’s shocking as it’s truly an amazing sight.

As you drive along the side of the gorge the view is broken up by these little tunnels, meaning that you can’t really see ahead too far, providing endless surprises! Like the rock sculpture of Decebalus, or the different faces of the gorge.

My only complaint – there aren’t enough stopping places to admire the view!!

Golubac fortress, Serbia

Golubac fortress is yet another example of how incredibly beautiful Serbia can be – it’s just stunning, and so well maintained. Serbians really are very proud of their heritage. The fortress is situated at the entrance to the Derdap gorge and overlooks Romania.

Parking can be a problem, so just park 5 minutes walk away before you get to the fortress – free and easy – no waiting in lengthy queues.

You’re bound to then encounter the overly officious entry guards – who must be ex-important people, by the way that they undertake their job! Honestly, you’d think that you were viewing the crown jewels! One guy wouldn’t let me out of the fortress until I showed him an entry ticket, which I’d left on a café table having finished my visit – lol!

Oh and watch out for poisonous snakes … apparently! I think that this is just a ruse to stop you walking on the nicely kept grass!

Sremski Karlovci

A pretty little village, billed as the prettiest in Serbia. It’s in the flatter north of the country, which wasn’t as stunning as the beautiful rolling hills or the mountains elsewhere. Plus the village itself is pretty tiny. That said, its well set up for visitors – there are loads of places to eat and drink and plenty of vintners premises, if you like your wine! Plus, they’re very friendly and its one of the few places in Serbia where quite a lot of people speak English!

It was good for us, as we were travelling through the country, and is definitely worth a half day trip if you’re in the area.

Valijevo

We stumbled across Valijevo by accident – it wasn’t even on our list of places to visit. As we were on our way to Nova Varoš, but we’re so glad that we did drive through! We ended up stopping for half a day – loads of lovely trendy restaurants and cafés to sit in in the sun and take in the atmosphere. There’s also a great selection of shops – we bought some wedding attire here – they spoke perfect English and went well beyond what we consider the norm to help us out – outstanding service!

Belgrade

Belgrade, the capital – brilliant! Fantastic atmosphere. Incredibly friendly polite people everywhere. Lots of people enjoying themselves and relaxing. Masses of shops. A great fortress to explore. Great food and drink, great night life. Not too big – an excellent city.

Very few Western Europeans we thought, from listening to people talking. Lots of Russian visitors we noticed. One Russian guy thanked me and said ‘England Russia Friends’ after we stopped to let him take photos of his son. Nice! 🙂