Author: Peter Meggyesy

Bosnia and Herzegovina has to be one of the most screwy countries on the planet. Two capitol cities, 2 states within a country with independently functioning political and administrative functions. Three presidents are elected, one from each of the ethnic groupings and each serves as president rotating every 6 months for a 5 year term. Makes one grow cross eyed just thinking about it.
The genesis of the muddle is in the diverse ethnic mix. To the west is a large minority Croat population, to the east Serbs, in the middle are Bosnians who are a muslim grouping a throwback to the 450 years of Ottoman control here. After beating up on the Croats the Serbs turned on the Bosnians. The civil war here was particularly brutal with genocide perpetrated by the Serbs at its worst was the butchering of 8000 Bosnians in 3 days at the town of Srbenica. The “solution to the civil war was a tripartite agreement that encoded these odd divisions.
Again we are on a tour. Bosnian roads reflect the poor status of this country after neglect from the communist time and the aftermath of the subsequent civil war. Our first stop is in the rustic medieval village of Pocitelj. We bound up the hill to the fortress overlooking the cobblestone village. Freshly squeezed pomegranate juice refreshes us on the way back.

Throughout the 1990s my lifesaver locum was a chap called Peter Ferwerda. He was a thorough compassionate GP, a devout Catholic who attended mass daily. While I had developed an obsession with trekking in the Himalayas he developed an obsession with a town called Medjugorje here in Bosnia. In 1981 6 local children/teenagers claimed to have seen an apparition of the Virgin Mary and the story they related to the local Franciscan monk was very similar to the sighting of Mary in Fatima, Portugal. At a time when the children were in atheist, communist then Yugoslavia and before the advent of the world wide web it seems to be a strong case to be accepted as a pilgrimage site which is what it has become. Years of communism and civil war has hampered any church investigation and the passage of time adds to the difficulty in establishing the veracity of the claim. In the meanwhile Dr Ferwerda has becoming Fr Ferwerda and this place has become a pilgrimage site. Having said that, there is a gentle spirituality to this place which I enjoyed a lot more than the mass of humanity at Lourdes all those years ago.

Our final stop is the raison d’etre for our day trip, the visit to Mostar. As with Dubrovnik I first became aware of this town in Bosnia during theBalkan wars between 1991 and 1995. When it was completed in 1566/67, the bridge had the widest arch in the world and was a masterpiece of Ottoman architecture. So much so, that the city of Mostar is actually named after the bridge and is derived from the Slavic word – mostari – for ‘bridge keepers’. In the messy Balkan war of the 1990s it was not just the Serbs who were the aggressors. Croats and Bosnians faced off in Mostar. The city was divided in 2 west for the Croats and East for the Bosnians. Pockmarks on buildings bear evidence of gunfire. In 1993 the Croats blew up the historic Mostar bridge in another act of cultural vandalism. Incorporating material from the demolished bridge it has been carefully reconstructed. It remains the centerpiece of the historic old town.

Sunday lunch the sun is shining and the Adriatic sea is behind us. We are in a cafe in Trogir half an hour drive from Split. We had booked a Blue Cave boat tour but the “monsoon” from yesterday and a similar, erroneous, forecast for today led to the cancellation of the tour.

We awoke to bright sunshine and drove into the Diocletian Palace in Split to get some sunshine pictures as opposed to yesterday. Diocletian was born in Salona 5 kms away from present day Split. A fearsome warrior, he rose in the ranks of the Roman army and eventually became Emperor of the Dalmatian section of the Roman empire. As emperor he moved to Split and built a massive palace complex the foundations of which are still on display today. Over the centuries people moved in and especially when Venice ruled here multiple levels were added on. The result is a beautiful amalgam of historical structures and a tourist wonderland.

When our cruise was cancelled I had to do some quick research for alternative destinations to fill our day. I stumbled on the town of Trogir a 30 minute drive away. The pictures and blogs showed another medieval town with a thriving old city, cathedral and even a castle and it did not disappoint.

We finished the day with a side trip to Salona where Diocletian grew up and the remains of a 300 AD Roman city housing 60,000 residents is on display.

Our day concludes with a 7 course degustation dinner at a Michelin nominated restaurant. It’s a tough life but someone has to do it.

Morning and evening pictures from our beachside accommodation.

Mid morning has us driving through a deluge of biblical proportions. The 130 km/h motorways are reduced to 80 km/h and even at that the bucketing down rain and aquaplaning surface water make even 80ks dangerous.
The morning out from Plitvice started out with low cloud and no rain. The first 90 minutes was over winding rural roads up and down over successive foggy ranges. All seemed easy until the motorway . Close to our destination of Split and through the rain bands we stopped at a petrol station for a toilet stop and some drinks. Bad call as the toilets were outside and we emerged soaked as drowned rats from the experience.
Nonetheless our smart Air BnB priced at $70 per night is 10 meters from the beach and the Adriatic see and we made it on time for our guided walk through the centrepiece of this town Diocletian’s palace dating back to the 4th century AD.

Two weeks in and we have a routine going. It is a well oiled machine and we are a team. Breakfast is a simple cup of coffee. We have our small suitcases to pack, supplied by the larger suitcase from the boot of our rental car. Google maps directs us (most of the time) with Suzanne as co pilot monitoring the maps especially in the bigger cities. She has quickly learned to ignore my anxious curses when maps refuses to tell me which fork to take and I need to take a punt. She helps me by getting out and directing me in the tighter European city spots. We both involve ourselves in the planning for ongoing accommodation and we have regular “duelling banjo” contests, me with AirBnB and her with Booking .com. To date Air BnB has delivered in spades with great apartments often less than $100 per day.

The drive from Novi Sad to Plitvice is one of our longer ones but most is on motorway. We arrive at a quirky complex with multiple chalets clearly designed for winter ski season tourists. The national park is a 5 minute drive from our chalet and we are blessed with soe lovely mid autumn sunshine and warmth. 

All around is the sound of cascading water. It is if the earth below is bursting with the water pressure and all around the earth erupts with flowing water ranging from large waterfalls to bubbling cascades. Geologically the upper lakes system is formed by a series of cascading lakes resulting from collapsed limestone caves which also accounts for the emerald blue coloured waters.

The park has 8 walk circuits. The entry tickets include a boat ride across the top lake and a train trip between the two main gates but there is no one circuit that incorporates all of this including the distinctive upper and lower lakes areas. With Suzannes foot issues I have opted for the lower lakes  2-3 hours circuit. Amazingly, halfway through we were both cruising and happy to continue beyond our track to the boat trip. Beyond that we easily progressed through the pretty upper lakes and then I spot a short cut up to the train back to our entrance. In just over 3 hours we have serendipitously cobbled together  a “best of” route for the park. The views and pictures are amazing. Hope you enjoy.

Upper Lakes

Novi Sad, an hour north of Belgrade is Serbia’s second city. It is a lively city with wide avenues and is a very easy driving city. We arrive mid morning and easily drive up to and park just beneath the Petrovaradin Fortress with easy, very unlike the rest of Europe. Nicknamed the Gibraltar of the Danube it is located on the right bank of the Danube with commanding views across Novi Sad. Built atop of previous forts dating back to the Romans the present day structure dates from 1692. Entrance is via a tunnel and a quirky fact is that the clocktower has the hands reversed, the small hand shows minutes and the big hand hours. This way it could be easily seen by fishermen on the Danube.

There is an extensive old town here with squares, churches and outdoor cafes aplenty. he day of walking is completed with a visit to the beach on the Danube. The sand is surprisingly good but as it is now mid autumn there is no one brave enough to brave the cold Danube water today.

Catholic Cathedral

Not my idea of a holiday but dental tourism is big in Serbia. Tourists requiring expensive dental treatments from US and Europe find it cheaper to fly here, have a holiday and get their teeth fixed. Despite being a reluctant dental patient here I am in a dental chair in full view of the waiting room with a Serbian dentist leaning over me. Last night a big chunk of an incisor tooth fell off. Fortunately the nerve was not exposed. Ten painless minutes and a payment of a meagre $28 later problem solved.

We are in Subotica right at the top of Serbia across from the border with Hungary. It’s a very Hungarian city with a pretty Old Town to amble aimlessly around and take in the ambience.

Two things become immediately apparent when visiting Serbia. Firstly, food portions here are massive. Secondly smokers are everywhere and even dining alfresco is marred by cigarette pollution. Dining inside is unbearable for a non-smoker. Fortunately lunch on arrival in Belgrade was outside in a sparsely patroned restaurant. In the Old Town Skadarlia is the Bohemian quarter lined with cafes and restaurants. Sadly it is only 400 metres long.

Belgrade interestingly is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world with uninterrupted occupation going back to the 6th millenium BC. It is a modern European capitol but surprisingly light on with historical buildings and features.
We start our exploration at Republic square.

Sunset was at Belgrade fortress. Situated strategically and picturesquely above the junction of the Sava and Danube Rivers it has layers of history dating back to Celtic peoples in the 3rd century BC through the Romans and various occupying forces through the middle ages. The present structure was started by Hungary’s Bela 1 in the 11th century and extended by Lazarevic in 1402. Impressive, it is an enjoyable conclusion to our day in Belgrade.

The final attraction is the Church of St Sava built as the main cathedral of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Started in 1935 the combination of WW2 and communism meant tha it was not completed until 1984. This is one of the largest churches in the world with the dome modelled on Istanbul’s Hagia Sophis. The inside is breathtakingly beautiful.

Every time I apply for a visa they ask for my place of birth. It is Neresnica. My passport reflects that as does my birth certificate. It is almost like a mythical place in a mythical country what then was Yugoslavia, a country that no longer exists. All I have is a grainy black and white photograph of where I was born.

My birth place is now in modern day Serbia and long ago I determined that when I visit Serbia I will go to Neresnica.
My story begins in the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. For 12 days between 23 October and 4 November university students, one of whom was my dad, rose in defiance of the Soviet backed government. Russian tanks rolled in on 4 November and the brief sunlight of freedom was snuffed out. I was conceived at some time during the revolution and subsequent events forever altered the trajectory of my life.

After the Soviets suppressed the revolution there was a hiatus then an order to return to work. In that transition time many fled to Austria. My parents did not and actually returned to work. One day in December my parents returned home from work to be informed that the authorities had been around and had dug up the rifle used by dad in the revolution buried in the garden. With his arrest imminent they decided to flee. The easy Austrian option had closed so they decided to flee to Szeged, my father’s home with a view to crossing the border to Yugoslavia illegally risking imprisonment and execution.

The story of their escape from Hungary across the border into Yugoslavia is in itself a ripping yarn but beyond the scope of this post. Suffice it to say the end result was arrival at a refugee camp in Neresnica. My parents were moved from camp to camp during their time in Yugoslavia. Neresnica is a tiny hamlet south of Kucevo where the Yugoslavs sent Hungarian refugees and established a camp. It was a former gold mining settlement that had ceased operations on the River Pek in 1954.

Come July 1957 my mother was heavily pregnant with me. Other refugees had delivered at the local Kucevo hospital and the babies had come back with infections so she and dad decided to conceal her labour to have her delivering at the camp. In labour, aged 20 she concealed her pain to the point where she had progressed to the point where she was unable to be transported to hospital. This was achieved but not without delivering a tiny baby with respiratory distress whose survival was touch and go. I was conceived in revolution and born as a refugee.

Fast forward 66 years here I am in Neresnica and a round faced spritely 78 year old local guy arrives pedalling an ancient bike. Arriving in Neresnica the night before we have booked an apartment literally in the middle of nowhere. Google maps could not locate it. When booking this I figure that at least I will get a photo with the Neresnica sign.

My prearrival fantasy had me finding someone who in their old age would remember the refugee camp but with no Serbian language, the passage of time and the remotenes of Neresnica the most likely outcome was the picture with the sign, a few random requests around town and a whole lot of negativity.

Our accomodation host is a young woman who spoke good English. She has no knowledge of the history I relate but her uncle does. Her uncle and I shared no common language but I can see his eye light up when my story is translated. The next morning they take us into town and show us the house they think will best match with my photo. While our accommodation host shows us around the uncle disappears . He knows the man who would remember the refugee camp and amazingly he is happy to donate his time to us. When I show him the photo his 78 year old eyes light up and immediately takes us down to the buildings on the photo. The upper building was a kitchen/dining hall and the front building a medical area. I was born here!

Suppressing tears I am overwhelmed by the experience. This nice guy has brought to life my birth 66 years ago. He was a Yugoslav boy, 12 years old allowed to play football with the Hungarian refugees. He remembers a Hungarian refugee driver with 10 sons who was nice to him. He relates the story of a gypsy boy who in 4 months learnt enough Hungarian to act as translator between the Hungarians and the locals. He relays stories of Hungarian Football players who were there as refugees and a champion swimmer called Agnes.

The chances of this sort of experience are infinetissimely small and as I am standing here talking to a completely stranger who was there at the time of my unusual birth circumstances I struggle to fight back the tears. My parents’ time in Yugoslavia left them with a bad impression of the local people. Here I am with the owners of the apartment we are staying with and the random 78 year old who was 12 when I was born giving me 2 hours of their lives for no reward, to bring to life my birth experience. Suddenly I feel overwhelmed and while it is not a part of my heritage a small part of my heart belongs here now.

Romania’s capitol is our last stop. It is a city of just under 2 million people with the traffic of a city double the size. Nonetheless we make it to our Air BnB uneventfully. This is a city very different from the classical medieval cities we have seen so far. This was not built by 12th century German immigrants and prior to the accession of King Carol the first was an uninspiring city of basic wooden buildings, apart from the more solidly built churches. Carol was ashamed of what he had inherited and moved quickly to construct a grand city with architecturally eclectic buildings from the late 19th century.

Under 100 years later and this city is transformed again by one of the nastiest Soviet dictators Nicolae Ceasescu. He lead one of the most authoritarian and megalomaniac regimes behind the Iron Curtain. Ruthless and driven, he wanted to transform Bucharest. He toured the great cities of the world, Paris, London, Vienna, Buadapest as well as cozying up to the North Korean leaders. Inspired by what he had seen he created tree lined boulevards, fountains, redirected a river to flow through the city. The Budapest parliament he recreated but as a massive 9 story high building with 9 floors underground beneath it complete with bomb shelters and escape tunnels. In all of this the land was arbitrarily acquired with whole neighborhoods being razed to the ground, residents evicted without any compensation. The result is an incongruous fusion of classic French and contemporary Pyongyang. Trust me I have been to both. It is somewhat reaffirming of my belief in karma that he was arrested and summarily executed in 1989.

Sadly the post Soviet era has supplanted evil Communist dictators with equally unsavoury dictators in the guise of free enterprise democracies heavily into corrupt rule for their oligarchs .

Drive drive, quick is the anxious call on my right. I am trying to take a photo from my driver’s seat and I look around to see Suzanne face to face with a juvenile brown bear paws holding down our windows, close enough to give Suzanne a big tongue kiss! I throw the car into first gear and the bear’s claws scrape off the side of the car with mama watching on from the other side.
It is 1968 and the Czechoslavakian revolution is quashed with Soviet tanks rolling into Prague much as they did 12 years earlier trampling on my parents’ life in Budapest after the Hungarian revolution of 1956. I remember the events as they unfolded as an adolescent. My parents shared their insights and the end results were never in doubt. Fascinatingly these events had reverberations in Ceausesceu’s Romania as this megalomaniac Iron curtain dictator suddenly developed paranoid delusions of Russian troops coming from Eastern Europe against Romania. He decided that he needed a way through the Carpathian Mountains for his forces to cross and repel any advances from Eastern Europe. The idea for the Transfagarasan was born. Started in 1970 and completed in 1974 and built with conscripted military, this is an amazing undertaking. Officially 40 workers died but it is suspected that hundreds actually died carving this track out of the raw mountains. At the top 2000 metres high there is a long tunnel 884 metre (Balea) blasted through the rock and down the northern slopes dizzying switchbacks make this one of the top drives in the world as described by Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson.
We have climbed the hairpin bends, seen the Balea Falls crested the summit and skirted the Balea lake when out to the right in the grass off the road I spot a brown bear. I drive my car into prime position and Suzanne does the rest with the camera. On an amazing high I remind her of my comments at the beginning of the drive that apart from the scenery all I need is a bear sighting for me to climax in my underwear!
A few minutes further on there are two bears on the side of the road, one sitting in the most gorgeous pose. We have prime position but it rapidly degenerates into a scene reminiscent of African game parks with vehicles crowding around a wild animal. We move on sated with our 3 bears and I crack a Goldilocks joke. Lo and behold we round another corner and it is mama bear to the let and 2 juvenile bears to the right. I am merrily photographing mama bear who initially looks aggressive when Suzanne has her intimate bear encounter.

We have one more bear encounter on my side of the car before arriving at the massive dam that encloses the Balea Lake.

We have climbed the hairpin bends, seen the Balea Falls crested the summit and skirted the Balea lake when out to the right in the grass off the road I spot a brown bear. I drive my car into prime position and Suzanne does the rest with the camera. On an amazing high I reminder her of my comments at the beginning of the drive that apart from the scenery all I need is a bear sighting for me to climax in my underwear!

A few minutes further on there are two bears on the side of the road, one sitting in the most gorgeous pose. We have prime position but it rapidly degenerates into a scene reminiscent of African game parks with vehicles crowding around a wild animal. We move on sated with our 3 bears and I crack a Goldilocks joke. Lo and behold we round another corner and it is mama bear to the left and 2 juvenile bears to the right. I am merrily photographing mama bear who initially looks aggressive when Suzanne has her intimate bear encounter.

We have one more bear encounter on my side of the car before arriving at the massive dam that encloses the Balea Lake.