Day 41 – May 26 Thursday

This morning Kosta took us by bus into the CBD of Novi Sad.  It has improved so much since we were here 14 years ago, the centre has been closed to traffic & is now a large pedestrian mall.  There are cafe’s everywhere with footpath tables & umbrellas, the shopfronts have been tidied up & there is so much clean space.  It was a pleasure to walk around & look at all the beautiful old buildings in peace.  We went into the large Catholic church & had a look at the huge stained glass windows & the rest of the artwork inside, another very nice church.  This church was built by the Hungarians when Novi Sad was part of Hungary & all of the old writing on the walls is in Hungarian.  We walked into the park with an ice cream & checked out the white swans in the pond & all the red faced tortoises. We felt that this city square is as good or better than some of the famous ones we have seen in other countries.  Back by bus, its a good way to travel around the city, they are frequent & cover the city well, the city is reasonably compact for so many people, most live in 5 or 6 story apartment buildings, so the population density is fairly high.

In the afternoon we walked down to Zoltan & Klara’s apartment with Gizella & got there at 5pm to meet their daughter Dorika, who was away in Italy competing successfully (1^st place) in a jazz ballet competition when we visited them last time.  We had another great chat, went through some family photos, then had another great meal while the two kids went off to their respective English & violin lessons.  After the kids returned we had a special treat, Dorika played the violin for us (she wins 1^st place every time in violin competitions, very talented girl), then David played his violin for us.  They are both very good, it was really great to hear them play.  Zoltan kindly drove us back, he thought it was too dark for us to walk safely back.