Sue's Travels: Danube Trip - 3 September 2011

We arrived in Vukovar and left for our walking tour at 8:30 am. Our guide walked us down the path to see a famous building in Vukovar, which I can’t remember what it was. She then spoke about the war between the Serbs and the Croats which took place in 1991. She spoke of growing up with the awareness of land mines that you had to be careful about. Half of the group remained in the Vukovar shopping district and the other half of us went to see the Monastery on the other end of the town. I got some pictures of the church and bought a souvenir which was a model of a dove found in a five thousand year old archeology site. We had to be back on board ship by 10:30 so that the ship could leave for Novi Sad.

I spent a leisurely morning on the sun deck watching the world go by. Lunch was served at 1:00pm and I went down to the dining room to eat. This was the first time that I had a problem with the food in that they were serving pork meatballs and pizza made with ham and bacon. I wound up doubling up on the salads. After lunch I went back up to the sun deck, but tried to stay in the shade. The ship was not scheduled to arrive in Novi Sad until 2:30pm. It arrived on time, but coming in was difficult as we had to tie up to another ship that was already in place. At about 3:30pm we took off for a walking tour of Novi Sad. We saw a bit of the public park and then went into the pedestrian mall. On the first street that we walked, there were two story buildings. The bottom floor was a shop and the shop owner lived in the apartment above. Some of the apartments had windows that were like boxes. Apparently they were used by the “Grandmothers” to watch what was going on in the street below during the cold weather. Our tour guide told the story in a very amusing way. I wonder if he was aware that most of the people on the tour were of that age. We continued on to the end of that street where we saw the very ornate residence of the arch bishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church. We then went to the main square. On one side was the Roman Catholic Cathedral and on the other was the Town Hall. There was a statue of an important politician in fighting for the Serbians in the Hungarian Parliament. There were some interesting buildings with relatively ornate decoration, but I never did find out what they were as we had to rush off to catch our bus. Bette and I had signed up to go to the Krushedol Monastery and the wine tasting at the Zlvanovic family winery.

We arrived at the Monastery while they were doing one of their three hour services. We were permitted to enter the church, but could not take pictures of the interesting frescos on the walls. Apparently when the Turks destroyed the church in the 17^th (?) century, they just painted over the existing paintings. The Krushedol Monastery is located on the Friska Gora mountain and is noted for the fresco painting some of which date back to the 15^th century. It is the burial place o some of the legendary personalities in Serbian history. I enjoyed listening to the service, because it reminded me of a cantor chanting. It did not sound like the chanting in the catholic church.

Our next stop was in the village of Sremski Karlovci to see the winery of the Zlvanovic family. They have been in the wine making business for seven generations and have been in the honey making business for five generations. We were served Reisling, Chardonay, Caverna Savignon, Malot, white Bermet and red Bermet. I did not particularly like the Bermet not that it was bad, it just isn’t my thing. I did buy a bottle of Chardonay. They honey was very good and I bought three jars; light, dark and fruit and nut honey. I spent 19 Euros for the four items. I hope that I am not overloading my suitcase!

We returned to the ship in time for dinner. We sat at dinner a fairly long time talking and then I tried to get to use the internet. When I initially went to the bar, it was in use. When I went the second time, the ship had pulled out and consequently was not available. They only thing to do was to write up my day and go to sleep!