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Serbia and Montenegro

Hiking

One of the added bonuses of being a teacher is that you get to go on the class trips. In the fall of 2004, Dave went with the 7th grade class as they took a visit to some famous monasteries and caves in southern Serbia. Getting out into the rural areas certainly gives on a different point of view than staying in Belgrade does.

Obviously, life outside the big city is much more agrarian, and I felt at times that I'd stepped back a hundred years.

Ways of life are preserved from years gone by

as are the houses and barns

the landscape is beautiful, especially in the fall and spring

and the babbling brooks are gorgeous...

The big draw in the area are the Resavska caves - the largest in all of Serbia. The temperature is about 40 degrees (F) year round - a rude shock when coming in from a warm late summer hike! The formations are fantastic, but already showing the wear and tear of having groups of people walking through.

We stayed at a great little hotel and fish hatchery (that fish sign says "parking" in Cyrillic). We also met this couple who were brewing rakia, the traditionl plum brandy drunk in Serbia.

We had the chance to visit several famous monasteries, and found out that word has a different connotation. The building above is what I would call a convent, since it is inhabited by nuns. It is a "young" building, having been built in the 15th century, and home to some of the oldest scriptures written in Cyrillic-based Serbian. The pictures to the right are from the monastery housing the remains of the hero of the Battle of Kosovo in the 1200s.

One of the nicest surprises of the visit was the vineyards that were right across the road. A group of the ladies there invited us over, share their harvest with us, and asked us to take pictures so we could send them the photos!

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