Passing through Vukovar on the Way to Serbia

Sunday, Aug. 14, 2016--Osijek, Croatia, to Novi Sad, Serbia

We caught a noon bus today.  On the way from Osijek to Novi Sad, we passed by Vukovar.  Back in the early 1990s, it was on the news every night, because it was the main area of the fight between the Croatians trying to get independence and the Yugoslavian National Army trying to keep it in the communist fold and it was the location for a massacre.  Night-after-night for months, there were TV reports of the fighting and scenes of the war damage.  The city is now mostly rebuilt, but it has only half the population it had before, and evidence of the war still remains.  We saw two towers in the city that had huge chunks missing and large holes remaining due to shelling.  There were a few remaining damaged homes and buildings that had only partial walls and roofs because of the war.

Crossing through immigration at the Serbian border, the female official really studied the history of both mine and Wes' travels that came up on the screen after scanning the chip on the passport.  I think she was surprised to see so many countries in so many parts of the world.  She may have been trying to figure if there was a pattern to it all that would indicate we were a bad guys.

Our apartment in Novi Sad, "Central 65m apartment, free parking," is one of the good ones.  It is so clean, light, attractive, roomy, etc.  It would be easy to stay here for much longer than we have planned.

We left for downtown not long after arriving, because we needed to get some Serbian dinars.  We checked all the different money exchange offices we could find and changed the rest of my Danish currency into dinars.  That meant we could have dinner!!  After sitting on the main square watching people for a while, we stopped at a Gyros Land near our apartment that has a good reputation.  We brought our gyros home and ate them on the balcony that can be seen in the photos on the page link above for the apartment.

The rest of the evening we just relaxed.  It's amazing how tiring a travel day can be.  There is the stress of getting out of the old place, finding out where to catch the bus at the station, checking the bags, getting the seats on the bus, following the route to know where we are while wondering if we will arrive on time, finding our way from the bus station to the new apartment, meeting the owner of the apartment and dealing with business matters related to our stay, and, in the case of today, getting money and then finding a place to eat before the day is over.