Welcome back to the latest part of my Yugoslavian Travel Series! In Part V we concluded our trip to Sarajevo by visiting some random places around the town and driving to the Vrelo Bosne – a beautiful mountain spring and nature park.
Today, we are heading to Serbia!
Getting There
For people who aren't very used to mountains, traveling the Balkans by bus is a worthwhile experience in and off itself, since a significant part of most larger travel routes will inevitably lead you through spectacular valleys with very enjoyable views.
If you plan to spend most of your stay in the larger cities – as I did – traveling by bus is also a great opportunity to take a look at how most non-urbanites live around the country. Although Serbia is a comparatively poor country by European standards, its towns and villages are very picturesque and have a bit of an early 20th century vibe (at least that's how I felt).
For some reason you are going to see many sunflower fields on this route, as it seems to be the main culture grown by small farmers.
Although I am kind of a train romantic (which heartless person isn't?), I heard that it is explicitly NOT recommended to travel the Balkans by train, since the local railroads are so poorly developed that it will take ages to get from one town to another and the wagons are not going to be very comfortable.
After about 10 hours (I can't remember anymore) and several smaller stops, we arrived in Belgrade and crossed the Sava River (a tributary of the Danube) over this bridge into Old Belgrade, as opposed to Novi Beograd – a "modern" quarter built in 1948. And by "modern" I mean predominantly communist and utilitarian in its architecture.
Anyone noticed the reflection if my camera in the window?
St. Sava Cathedral
Let's get straight to the heart of this and visit Serbia's most famous building. After taking a taxi from the Central Bus Station to my hostel, which was not far from the city center, I only had a few hours until sunset, so the first and only thing I did that day was visiting the St. Sava Cathedral. I got a lot of photos from different angles, so bear with me – I'll try to keep it interesting.
Saint Sava – a name frequently encountered in Serbian toponymy – could be called the national saint of Serbia, although he was not a person of merely religious importance, but a central figure in medieval Serbian history. In fact he was a medieval Serbian prince of the 12th and early 13th century, who was not only the first Archbishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church, but also the author of its first constitution (or a proto-version thereof) and the single most important contributor to medieval Serbian literature.
Did you know that J. R. R. Tolkien liked to read medieval Serbian epics? It can only be speculated whether he took any inspiration from them for his Lord of the Rings novels, yet the Slavic roots of characters such as Boromir strike many people as very obvious – the name literally means "fighter for peace" if you understand any Slavic language.
Statue of Karađorđe near St. Sava Cathedral.
We may also look into the history of another great Serbian hero whose statue stands in front of St. Sava Cathedral and who is commonly known as Karađorđe, or The Black George (the letter đ is read as dj).
He was the leader of the First Serbian Uprising against the Turkish Ottoman Empire and also the head of a short-lived Serbian state which evolved as a result of the revolt. If you read Tolstoi's classic Anna Karenina, you should be slightly familiar with the Serbian struggle for independence, as one of the book's heroes leaves Russia to join the fight of the Serbs – his fellow Orthodox Slavs – against the Muslim-Turkish oppressors. That falls in the time of Karađorđe and Miloš Obrenović – another famed Serbian revolutionary.
Karađorđe, unfortunately, was assassinated, and in accordance with old Turkish custom, his head was sent to Istanbul. (Dracula enthusiasts might know that the Turks did the same with Vlad Tepes. It's rumored that his stuffed head is still kept somewhere in Istanbul.)
Entrance to the St. Sava Cathedral
The cathedral itself is a relatively new building, although it has been under construction for about 80 years now and might still not be entirely complete.
As you can see, the interior was under heavy construction and completely undecorated while I was there. However, the building – one of the biggest churches in the world – is still impressive. Like most Orthodox churches, architecturally it has similarities to ancient Byzantine structures and St. Sava itself can hardly deny its semblance to the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (now Istanbul).
It is said that when Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. walked into the freshly completed Hagia Sophia, he proclaimed: "Solomon, I have outdone thee!" (in reference to Solomon's Temple from the Old Testament). I like imagining Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić doing the same in St. Sava: "Justinian, I have outdone thee!"
Let's finish this off with an epic picture of illuminated St. Sava at night.
TO BE CONTINUED
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it! Check out the previous parts of my Yugoslavian Adventure Series and stay with me for the upcoming Part VII, where we are going to discover Belgrade's city center and the House of Flowers – the final resting place of legendary Yugoslavian leader Josip Broz Tito! If you like my content, please follow me and consider to resteem it! :)