Day 37 – May 22 Sunday

We woke at 6am, Kosta & I went for a walk to buy the Sunday paper & Kosta bought a bunch of flowers for Tereza.  We had breakfast, typical Hungarian of meats, cheese, bread & herbal tea – delicious & a great change after all the hotel food.  We were picked up by Klara & her husband Zoltan with their son David for a tour of a nearby ancient historic town, Sremski Karlovci.  They had planned to take us to see the Cathedral & the Patriarch Residence (the Patriarch is equivalent to the Pope in the Serbian Orthodox religion), however, there was a big crowd & TV cameras & security.  A huge religious ceremony was going on, the bones of Saint Nicholas were being moved (the patron saint) & this was the massive religious ceremony for that event.  Needless to say, we didn’t get in to see inside that church, however, there are a few other very old places in town that we visited.

First up was the nearby religious school that specialised in teaching languages.  A young student showed us around & explained in good English (even though she specialises in French) the different important people, events & parts of the school.  The main hall was beautifully painted & decorated, with busts of the men that were principal in the foundation of the language school.  Of special interest were two freestanding large heaters at either end of the hall, I hadn’t seen any like them before.  Languages taught were Latin, Greek, English, French & Chinese.  Next was the library, with over 18,000 old books.  Open on display were some books dating from the 1500s & 1600s, one written in the Cyrillic alphabet in 1562, another in Latin from 1544, still in remarkable condition.

Walking along the street amongst many old buildings, one old inn had a sign indicating it was established in 1620.  A number of other old stone buildings we walked past were in need of a little tender care to bring them up to scratch, a bit of time & money.  The next old church we visited had an extraordinary colourful wall of religious icons at the altar, plus an amazing fresco on the dome ceiling.  The walls were also covered with religious frescoes, depicting many scenes from the bibles.  We walked past a few other churches that were closed due to the religious festival so headed back to the car & drove a little further to the Chapel of Peace where a peace treaty was signed in 1699 between the Turks, Austro-Hungarians, Venetians & Polish, with the English & Dutch presiding as the peacemakers.  This round church has four entrances, built for each of the negotiating parties to enter (the Turkish door was sealed so they could not come back & only a few years ago was opened again)   The treaty was signed at a round table, so that all parties were treated as equals.  The church is slowly being restored, but apparently the foreign money for the restoration keeps disappearing in the bureaucracy that apparently has an amount of corruption.

Next we drove to the Fruska Gora National Park & visited one of the more than 20 monasteries that were built in the forest to try & escape persecution during the communist regime, when a lot of the Orthodox churches were destroyed by the communists.  The crimson gateway building to the monastery looks a relatively recent addition, around 200 metres from the main building (maybe its just the recent paint job).  The church was full with a busload of kids when we arrived & a bit noisy as a result.  The fresco’s are dark in here from all the candle smoke, all the walls & ceilings are totally covered with frescos & in places you can see where new paintings have been painted over old different paintings.  The icon wall in front of the altar is again impressive, with all the gold frames & gold paint on the icons shining brightly. It’s a real shame that these wonderful frescoes aren’t restored.  The outside wall of the church had an unusual sundial on the walls of this stylish old church with twin bell towers.

It was a warm 29C, too hot for a spring day.  On the way back to Novi Sad we stopped at a natural spring for a refreshing face wash & drink, then stopped at another church that was also closed due to the religious festival.  It was built to celebrate the defeat of the Turks & had a Turkish half moon under the cross on the spire.  We went back to Klara & Zoltan’s lovely apartment where they whipped up really nice Hungarian style lunch, we sat & chatted for a while until Zoli took David off to a friend’s birthday party. We then went off with Klara to see the old fort of Petrovaradin, built between 1692 & 1780 on the banks of the Danube River, covering an area of over 100 hectares.  The old clock tower was built in 1837 & has the distinguishing unusual feature that the large hand on the clock faces points to the hour, instead of the minute as per the usual case.  Apparently the hour was more important to the seamen that sailed up & down the Danube River.   It was such lovely balmy weather as we wondered around & watched a few barges being pushed & pulled along the river & as we were leaving a Danube passenger riverboat, the “Mozart”, left it’s dock on the Novi Sad riverbank & continued its journey upstream. (the Danube is not blue, it is a dirty brown colour).

It was getting late so Klara took us back to her place, again gave us a great Hungarian meal & when Zoltan & David returned from a birthday party, laden with balloons, we were driven back to Kosta & Gizella’s apartment where the feeding, drinking & talking continued into the night. We had such an enjoyable day.