Zemun

Hello everyone,

Today we ended up figuring out the bus to Zemun and travelled there ourselves. Just a 10-15 minute bus ride from the old town of Belgrade, technically speaking, Zemun is a suburb of Belgrade. However, the people who live here are adamant it isn’t. And for centuries, Zemun was a separate city to Belgrade. In fact it was the border town in between the Austrian and Ottoman Empires. 

We walked through the green market and boarded the very hot bus. No air con = cooler outside than on the bus! But it was better than walking 1.5 hours. 

Once we arrived in Zemun, we walked through the park. Back in the day, this park was used as a quarantine zone for people wanting to cross between the Ottoman and Austrian empires. People could spend weeks here. 

We also saw the main square, the market and a few beautiful churches. We stumbled across a Jewish Synagogue that has been converted into a restaurant due to most Jews leaving the area years ago. Apparently it is planned that it will be converted back to a synagogue soon. Then we walked along the Danube River (looked nice and brown like the Yarra at home!). It was so hot today, 30 degrees. 

We ascended the Gardoš Hill after this up some questionable “stairs”. We were silly though as we went all the way to the tower and didn’t have any cash, so we had to climb back down, get money and climb back up. Sigh!! Once up top with money in hand, we climbed the Gardoš Tower. 

This was built in 1896 with some remnants of a 14th century fortification. Over time it has been used as a watch tower for the town, and nowadays it’s used as a lookout. We got beautiful clear views across both rivers to Belgrade and could see some of the attractions we have visited over the last couple of days.

Then we checked out the nearby cemetery. Mum is a cemetery tragic and loves reading headstones, but she relied on me here because they were all in Cyrillic! I had fun converting the Cyrillic letters into Latin so we could read peoples’ names. We found it a little creepy that so many peoples’ gravestones seemed to have like “1936 - 20 “ with a space suggesting it’s all set up just waiting for them to die and fill in the year. Yikes! Morbid.

On the recommendation of the receptionist at our hostel, we then had a cold drink and a sandwich at the cafe adjacent to the tower. We had Somersby apple cider with a touch of watermelon which was refreshing and delicious, as well as a Caesar salad sandwich. All in all for three drinks and two toasties we paid just $16 Aussie. The view was awesome and it was nice to sit and not have anywhere to be. I also used the ice from my drink to ice my mozzie bites, which unfortunately are now over a week old and I have had another allergic reaction to. You suck, mosquitoes!

We got to the church in the cemetery and the door was open. Mum walked straight in, but I noticed a man walking in with flowers and a photo on the door and thought “ohhh...this is a funeral!” Needless to say, Mum did a complete 180 the second she realised. Oops!! There weren’t many people around luckily. 

Once back down in Zemun, we had a laugh at how many people here just drive up on the footpath, whack on their hazard lights and get out to go in a shop/get money out etc. Hilariously chaotic!

We bought some raspberries at the local market and then caught the bus back and walked to our hostel. We are quite glad to have left our stinky, smoky room! We caught a taxi 15 minutes away to our new hotel for our tour. 

This is my first tour with Travel Talk, and so far I’m pretty disappointed. We weren’t sent a confirmation email with where to meet our tour at all, and it was only by chance yesterday we realised the information (and hotel details) that we had were out of date. We met our guides and they seem nice, but a few things on our itinerary are different to what is still up online advertising our tour. I’m super disappointed because it made it sound like we did a city tour of Belgrade tonight and then left first thing tomorrow for Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina. But instead the city tour here is 8-11 tomorrow and we won’t get to Sarajevo until 7pm. I had really wanted to ride the cable car and go to the abandoned bobsled track that was used as a sniper base during the Homeland War. Now we probably won’t have time.

After having a bit of a whinge to Mum, I’ve put my head back in tour mode. The only way we could see quite a bit of this area with the 8 days of our trip that we have left was to book this tour. I need to get back in the mode where I let go of being in control of what we do and when we leave, and accept that we will see what we see. However, I’m also not too impressed that we’ve been told there are FORTY SIX people on our tour. That is just about two of the classes I teach put together! I don’t think border crossings with that many people will be very fun.... I’m just suuuuper grateful that I booked my Egypt and Jordan tour in January with G Adventures, who cap their tours at 18. I nearly booked Travel Talk. Mum and I are not usually the type of people to take a tour where you spend 5 minutes everywhere, but we will make the best of it. We have a tour meeting at 7pm tonight where we will learn more about what’s coming up.

Love to all
Claire
Xoxox