Sofia to Niš

Our bus ride to Niš was relatively uneventful (I think we're going to try to time all of our border crossings from here out during daylight hours). Around dusk after entering Serbia, our bus began following a road that hugged a winding river at the bottom of a drastic, sheer walled canyon. Mental note to revisit on a motorcycle. We arrived around 8pm, grabbed a nearby taxi to the hostel that we had booked (or so we thought). Turns out this one (which was perfectly well reviewed) was built in a rather nondescript neighborhood of townhouses a few kilometers from the city center. Our cab driver dropped us off and disappeared pretty quickly, and we walked up to the front door of a building that we quickly realized was completely dark. Not a great sign when it's dark out, in a random neighborhood in a brand new country. We proceeded to press any and all buttons (there were several) that looked like doorbells, unsuccessful until a grumpy tenant of the same building came to the door to inform us the hostel was closed for the winter and that we should try calling the number on the sign. We still have an India sim card in our cell phone, which we quickly learned does not work in Serbia, and our not so friendly acquaintance proceeded to insist that he could not help us. We were suddenly very glad that we hadn't taken the slightly cheaper train that would have arrived after midnight.

We started the trek back towards town (it pays to pay close attention when taking a cab somewhere you don't know the language and don't yet have a map) in search of somewhere more centrally located and, more importantly, open. After a few kilometers and a dead end down a long, eerie street following a "hostel" sign (I'm pretty sure there are some gruesome movies out there that started this way), we hailed a passing cab and, with no language in common among us, were able to communicate our intent with the word "hostel" and a giant question mark scribbled in my notebook. The icing on the cake was that the place we ended up staying (perfectly friendly and actually staffed) is about a hundred meters from the bus stop. Even four+ months in we're teaching ourselves valuable lessons.

Outside the Sofia train station

Niš is a fairly quiet, sometimes beautiful, and (with the exception of our first encounter) an extremely friendly place. I get the sense that if my impressionability to new locations hadn't been dulled by the breadth of cultures we've thrown ourselves into, I would feel baffled to be in someplace of which my strongest impression was gained through an 8th grade current events segment in my history class about the ongoing Balkans crisis. While these countries (save maybe Croatia) were never primary destinations, we always knew we'd have to travel through them by some route. There's a lot of tragedy in the history of this part of the world, and it's inspiring to find that such places often exude the most warmth and friendliness (again, save the grouchypants that was so decidedly unhelpful at the first hostel).

After getting settled in our room and chatting with some super nice young guys who were down from Belgrade to play a show, we headed out across the river to the main walking street in search of some food. It's hard to do an appropriate amount of food research in countries that we're passing through in a few days. The guy at the hostel desk insisted that Serbia, of course, is known for its barbeque. Score. Turns out there are a ton of little streetside stalls that serve up various grilled meat sandwiches with a wonderful choose-your-own-topping system. We hit up one of these places and after exchanging a lot of pointing, several big smiles, and a surprising small number of Serbian Dinar, we had two enormous, perfectly seasoned and well garnished pork patty sandwiches. They were amazing.

The next morning we headed out to explore the town. There also seem to be a wealth of bakeries offering various sweet and savory pastries constructed out of puffy pastry. Either we picked the wrong one or ordered wrong and were left with an over-chewy, slightly stale pretzel stick thing and a rather bland ham and cheese pastry. Can't win every time.

From the little I read, the city is also known, to some extent, for a warm cafe culture and on a brisk grey Balkan winter morning, coffee sounded really good. We returned to a quaint cafe that we had passed the night before that was thoroughly decorated like a early 20th century tram car (despite the city had never actually used them) and had the first decent coffee (cappucino) since Antalya, and after our failure with the pastries still fresh in our memories (and on our palates) and easily enticed by a menu filled with dessert options, we opted for a few chocolate and other goody filled crepes. As crepes go, they weren't exemplary, but with enough cookie crumbles, chocolate/hazelnut sauce and canned whipped cream we had no complaints. Plus they were enormous and the generous remains made  great late night/breakfast the next day snacks. 

We spent most of the afternoon wandering around the old fort that takes up much of the downtown area. While not much to look at compared to the grandiosity of the forts of Rajasthan, it was full of playground fixtures, crumbling old buildings, and served as a perfectly peaceful place for us and handful of other local couples to wander. 

Translation?

Reminds me of Paris

Pardon my dramatic use of some of the buried features of our small camera

 We relaxed for much of the rest of the evening, pausing to venture out to another nearby streetside grill restaurant. Chicken for me topped with onions, lettuce, a few hot peppers and some magical mystery boullion-type seasoning mix, and for Cindhu a peppered pork patty (say that three times fast) with spicy/sweet pepper jam, shredded cabbage, and julienned carrots. We had a fun conversation with the young guy staffing the counter, somehow covering Nikolai Tesla, the birth of emperor Constantine (in Niš), and his admiration of Allen Iverson (who apparently did a stint in the Eastern European basketball circuit) in a few short minutes. I really dig this place.

This morning we headed out to the nearby covered market full of clothes (they really like windbreakers/track jackets here), home supplies, and a wealth of fresh produce. We've both seriously missed cooking on this trip and were easily inspired (armed with a reasonably equipped hostel kitchen) to do a bit of grocery shopping for dinner. We've gotten into the habit, especially while we're country hopping, of taking out a limited amount of local currency, paying for rooms and our next transportation, and then finding creative ways to feed and entertain ourselves on a limited remaining local currency budget. For the equivalent of about $2.50, we grabbed some pasta, sweet onions, a head of garlic (which the guy gave us for free), some freshly sliced bacon, brussels sprouts and a miniature stick of butter that actually turned out to be yeast. If you're impatient, you can scroll to the bottom for the product. We stopped briefly back at the hostel to store our groceries and take stock of that last couple hundred Dinar that would get us through to our early morning bus to Sarajevo.

Crunchy, slightly buttery sesame sticks for a snack for our long walk

We then walked the several kilometers to one of the few important historical sites around Niš, the "skull tower". A memento of the brutality of the Ottoman empire, housed in a small, chapel like building that just so happens to be closed on Mondays. After pleading in pantomime with the two older ladies who were staffing the ticket office (I'm not exactly sure why there were people on staff on the day it was closed), we finally convinced them to unlock the gate for us to visit the tower. It's a pretty chilling monument - a short square tower that is tiled with the skulls of Serbian rebel soldiers erected by the Ottoman army as a reminder to the local population. Turns out the Ottoman general incharge had the de-skulled scalps stitched up and filled with cotton and shipped to the Sultan in Istanbul as trophies. Most of the original skulls have since been reclaimed by families looking for a proper burial.

We sadly didn't find the time to make it out to the outskirts to see Bubanj, home of three enormous sculptures of fists jutting up in the middle of a field where countless Serbs were executed by the Nazis. One statue each for the men, women, and children that were killed. It's sobering to see the myriad of ways that that period of history is remembered in this part of the world. Makes seeing the wealth of swastika-emblemed replicas in the street antique market of Sofia that much more harrowing.  

It's been a while since I've gotten pictures of old bikes on here

I'm sad we're not fitting Belgrade into this trip. I am a big fan of Tesla and it would have fun to seen his birthplace and museum. We're on to Sarajevo tomorrow for a few days before heading to southern Croatia.

And now for our first cooking (mostly Cindhu's) of the trip!

Pasta with caramelized onions, bacon, and sauteed brussels sprouts, seasoned with some of the porcini powder we impulse bought in the Ladies Market in Sofia. So delicious and now the hostel smells incredible.