Niš, Serbia

Tricia T
Oct 8, 2016
3 min read

I literally just got back this week from my mini eastern Europe trip. I went to Serbia and Macedonia for a week in total. This time, I will first write about my 3 days in Niš, Serbia, where I traveled with my buddies, Marija and Yan whom I met in Vienna. Maria is from Niš, so we stayed at her home where she lives with her parents. Her parents went away those days for a spa trip coincidentally so we have the house for ourselves. When I stepped inside her home, I felt like I was back to the 80s. The decorations and settings are very antique, which is amazing. Of course there are modern electrical appliances, but there are also really old ones, like the television and the portable dishwasher. It is really interesting to visit a home that has kept its own traditional style and culture unlike other modern homes.

This trip is like a history lesson for us, it is the land of the Byzantine empire, the birthplace of Constantine the great, a historical city with a huge fortress in the middle of the city and a skull tower made of heads of Serbian soldiers by the Turks. It is interesting but at the same time horrific. Imagine during those days, you see the head of soldiers with decaying skins, meat and brains stuck in the concrete laying on top of each other. How cold-blooded can war and mankind be? There were originally 952 skulls but only 54 remains, the others were taken from the family members of those soldiers or stolen.

After we visit the skull tower, we went to where Constantine the great lived — Mediana. It is now a museum with a cover built over the mosaics of the remaining house. It is a pretty cool place if you like history, you can learn a lot about his residence there. For me, his name rings a bell because I studied world history when I was in high school and I certainly remember Byzantine empire somehow. I actually did not know that Niš is where he resided, but it’s a cool discovery to me. If only I can met with my history teacher, I will totally brag about it.

If you intend to come visit this museum, I highly recommend you to take the bus because we didn’t on the way there and it’s a long long walk. So we took the bus back, and the bus system over there is quite different from the European and Asian ones. In Europe, or at least Sweden, you can buy a ticket beforehand and enter the bus. Maybe there will be checkers or maybe there won’t be. In Asia, you pay when you get on the bus right in front of the bus driver to the coin box or with a smart card called “octopus” that deducts money. Here in Serbia, there is a person who will come to you and ask you to pay, and he is suppose to remember everyone who just got on the bus and ask them to pay. I don’t know if this is efficient or not, but at least it created another job position this way.

Anyways, at night, we went to a traditional Serbian restaurant which is a Kafana. A Kafana is a bistro where they serve you traditional food, alcoholic beverages with live music performances. According to Marija’s boyfriend, this is a social gathering place where all unresolved issues and problems get resolved. Kind of like an old Italian restaurant owned by the mafia from the movie “Leon the professional” from my point of view. We ordered some salad, baked beans and bbq meat and they all tasted delicious.

Time flies and 3 days are gone. Yan and I are supposed to head towards to Macedonia to attend an event in Ohrid. We said our goodbyes and hopped on to the bus to Skopje. Everything seems to be going well but what fun will there be without a little surprise? And you will find out what kind of adventure we had on our way down to Macedonia in my next post.