Travels with Kathryn

So, I have had a rather uninteresting couple of days from a blog perspective because I have been either travelling or trying to hide from a developing cold…

However, to bring you up to date, I caught (the same) bus from Kotor back to Podgorica and am excited to report that: (i) the driver did not chain smoke; and (ii) it was not raining, together this made for a far more pleasant journey. I even managed to get a photo of some of the beautiful views:

Montenegro is joining the list of places I would like to come back to. The scenery really is stunning, and particularly around the bay of Kotor has a real Italy feel only much cheaper and with far fewer people!

As I was having a spare day in Podgorica (due to getting the night train the next day), and as I said, I have something of a cold, I had booked into the Hilton which has a spa (and I’m a great believer in the healing powers of water, steam and relaxation). Throughout this trip, I have stayed at perfectly fine hotels, but nothing fancy, and this felt fancy. Ignoring the fact that it had a spa and room service for a moment, my room had a huge bed, a chaise longue (I do love a chaise longue), a desk with a big squishy chair and (oh the excitement) a bathtub. I am pretty sure this is my first bath of the trip, and I certainly availed myself of it. I also spent significant amounts of time in the spa – particularly the steam room in the hope that this would push the cold through.

Yesterday at 8.20pm I boarded my overnight train from Podgorica to Belgrade. My expectations were low given what I had read online and the cost (€24), but you know what, my bunk bed was fine, I slept ok and the toilet even had toilet roll (this is not typical on all European trains). The borders were easy enough as the border police boarded the trains, so I did not have to get out of bed. However, I have entered another country, and although they did stamp my passport its so faint that I can barely read it! I would like to make a plea to border control that if they are going to stamp (and they should always stamp mine), they could have a bit of pride in their job and make it readable. I am just asking.

Anyway, I arrived in Belgrade at 7am and annoyingly not into the station that I thought we were going to – I blame my illness on my stupidity here. Therefore, I had to take a mildly rip-off taxi to my hotel. However, things improved when I arrived at my hotel – it may not have had a chaise longue, but they did let me check in straight away for the very reasonable cost of €10. Hurrah! I showered, had a little lie down to recover, and to wait for the rain to stop and then set off on a little explore.

Tomorrow, I am planning on taking a walking tour, so I will cover the history and more detail in my next post, but Belgrade does get a bad write-up. It is not a pretty city, but it does have a certain gritiness, which I rather like. I decided to walk to the Church of Saint Sava.

This is a modern Serbian Orthadox church built on the location of the grave of Saint Sava (clue in the name there), who founded the Serbian Orthodox Church. A church had been planned here for many years, and several competitions were held to select a design (and there are a number of funny and somewhat controversial stories there) before finally settling on a design in 1932 and it is modelled on Istanbul’s Hagia Sofia. The building started in 1935 but then stopped when Yugoslavia was occupied during WW2, and the Germans used it as a storage depot, and the Tito did the same. It took the Orthodox church until 1985 (and many, many letters to Tito) before building commenced again – and is seen as one of the signs that communism was falling in the region. It is also HUGE, it is 91m long, 81m high, with a 30m central dome and can hold 10,000 people – it is currently the largest Orthodox church in the Balkans and is one of the largest churches in the world. The interior (all 12,000m2) is completely covered in gold mosaics, but interestingly, the cost of this has been funded by Russia. In 2009, Russian president Dmitri Medvedev visited the church and was asked if Russia would fund part of the interior decoration, he said they would fund it all – Vladamir Putin continued this support when he visited the church in 2011. As of 2019, Russia had donated around €10 million of the total cost of €100 million, which has been spent on the church. I am not going to repeat my views on where money could be better spent, particularly in this region, but I felt very much the same way looking at this church. I mean, it is very nice, but…

I shall save the other sites for tomorrow, and I also popped into the supermarket to replenish my snack box (some of them are sensible – promise). A hot shower and early to bed, as I fully intend to be over this cold by tomorrow morning just in time for my brother to arrive. Fingers crossed!