Just a quick one hour bus ride northwest of Belgrade is lovely Novi Sad, the capitol of Vojvodina, the autonomous province in the northern part of Serbia. It has all the beautiful architecture and cobblestone streets, but without the loud hustle and bustle of Belgrade. I arrived in the early afternoon, checked into my hotel and started exploring. Shortly after setting off it started raining, a lot! I was pretty soaked by the time I stopped for dinner, but at least I got a break from the heat.

With it’s handful of world class museums and it’s giant fortress overlooking from the riverside, Novi Sad is just a quick stop, but definitely a worthwhile one. Matica Srpska has a tremendous collection of Serbian art spanning the ages and is considered a national treasure. Also nearby is the city museum foreign art collection, which was originally the private collection of Branko Ilic, a local doctor who donated his entire collection to the city in 1966. I also had the entire Museum of Vojvodina to myself, which was kind of a dream come true for introverted me, comprising the whole history of this region. I regret not taking more pictures with my phone to share here (all these posts are created on my phone, by the way), but I didn’t forget to get a pic of the three gold plated Roman helmets that were excavated not far from here. Awesome! All three museums were pretty phenomenal.

The Petrovaradin Fortress overlooking the town has been here in some form since the bronze age, but most of what’s here today was built by the Austro-Hungarians. After WWI and the Austro-Hungarian defeat, a Serbian general was charged with destroying all of their old fortresses. He destroyed several, until he got to Novi Sad, then he just decided to stop. There’s a lot of speculation, but no one really knows why he didn’t destroy it. As a result this is now the only remaining Austro-Hungarian fortress left in Serbia.

I walked the whole wall of that fortress and the views all around of Novi Sad and the Danube River were just beautiful. It’s been raining a lot here the last few days, but the day I explored the fortress the sun was out and just brutal. Until I left to head back to town, then the rain started up again and cooled everything down again. My timing is never quite right.

Unfortunately, the day trip I had planned to Bac didn’t work out. The local bus times weren’t really conducive to a day trip, so my last day in Novi Sad was kind of a slow one. I think I needed the break, though, because I’ve been going full blast since I got here. Tomorrow I’m headed out to my next stop and I’ll be doing something I’ve never done in a foreign country before. Until the next post…