Novi Sad, Serbia and Vukovar, Croatia

This morning we visited Novi Sad, a truly multicultural city in Serbia. While most of the places we have visited during this trip had significant Ottoman impact through occupation of up to 500 years, no such thing happened here as the Ottoman Turk advance stopped a few miles from here and never started up again. Hence, the people here have much more in common with the Austro Hungarians than they do with anyone else. With the exception of being shelled by the Austro Hungarians from the Petrovaradin Fortress across the Danube (they took revenge for the Serbs not siding with them) and the NATO bombing of bridges and other infrastructure in 1999 during the Yugoslavian Civil War, the city was left to flourish. In fact, the Austro Hungarian Empress provided land for the Serbs to build the city. Since most of the artisans came from this community, they were in high demand, the local wealth grew, and the city prospered. Consequently, walking through the city center provided many beautiful examples of multiple architectural styles. The resultant cosmopolitan atmosphere attracted other artists, professionals, etc. to the city, including many non-Serbs. This earned Novi Sad the title “The Athens of Serbia.” Across the river, we visited the Petrovaradin Fortress which is the second largest fortress in Europe. It took over 70 years to build and was claimed to be impregnable, although that was never put to the test in that it was never attacked. In addition to the large number of outer walls, the fortress also has four floors under the ground with nearly 10 miles of connected tunnels. Apparently, Austrian kings used the fortress as a place to store their riches and it is rumored that some of the treasure has never been found. One other interesting elements of the fortress is the clock tower that has its minute and hour hands reversed so the boats on the Danube could at least tell the hour.