By This morning was spent cruising. We passed through two locks and then onwards through the ‘Iron Gates’. The Danube river cuts through the Carpathian and Balkan Mountains. History abounds here. Those crazy Romans had a VAST empire and they made their mark all along the river.
I geeked out and took way too many pictures of the boats going through the locks. I’ve experienced locks before, but I’m still intrigued by the technology.
The afternoon was filled with a BIG excursion to Lepenski Vir Archaeological Park and Golubac Castle.
I don’t think I’ve ever been to an archeological park before, so this was quite the adventure. When digging for research in preparation for the building of the lock system, a major site was discovered. The latest data suggests that the chronology of here spans between 9500/7200–6000 BC. This absolutely blows my mind. The researchers noted a religion (that looks weirdly like fish faces) and some knowledge of constellations. Progress took precedence, so the poor archeologists dug up what they could and moved it to this site, and the original site was flooded.
We spent about an hour (probably more – on vacations you lose track of time) and then got back on the bus for Golubac Castle, where our boat was waiting for us. Golubac castle is a medieval fortress that they’ve brought back from ruins (fun fact, the highway used to run right through it). They’ve done a good job with the rehab/renovation and you get a real sense of what life was like back then. I got some pretty good pictures but was pretty drained by then, so I wandered back to the boat. While we slept, the boat took us to Belgrade.
Belgrade was demolished 41 times. 41. And they keep/kept rebuilding it! With that much destruction, you know it was tossed back and forth between empires. Its location is key, which is why folks were fighting over it (and destroying it). The port is within walking distance of downtown, which was nice. We had a tour of the city and then were whisked away to the Serbian Royal’s palace. Along the way we may or may not have passed the American Embassy where I may or may not have taken a picture.
Thank goodness Uniworld hired a speaker to explain the Serbian history…because it is complicated. There are probably more Serbians not in Serbia. When all of these countries were united within Yugoslavia there were lots of marriages and relocations that caused a nice blending of people. It sounds like, from this presentation, people think more along the lines of ethnicity than they do around country (e.g., I’m a Serbian who happens to live in Croatia). More about that topic in my post on Croatia.
The highlight was that night, when we had a special tour of Saint Sava church which concluded with an a capella performance by a small ensemble from the church. The night was absolutely magical.
That was all for Belgrade. We set sail for Croatia at midnight.
