Hello from Serbia

Marina Apatin

Hi All,

   Just a quick email. 

As an introduction to Serbia, Apatin is a good hostess.  Nice big friendly clean marina with great wifi.  A cute town with a pretty good grocery store.  And a lovely small walkable town center.

Our final two big cities will be Belgrade here in Serbia and Bucharest, the capital of Romania.   If anyone has been and has some “off the beaten track” suggestions let me know. 

We’re soon off down the river to a place called Vukovar where there is a marina that might be deep enough and might have room.  Now way to know until we get there.  The “no way to know until we get there” way of travel is …. Well, I always want to “book a room before we get there” so this is quite different.  So far it has pretty much worked out and if we have to tie up in the middle of nowhere, we have enough canned goods for a good amount of time so being stuck for a day won’t be a problem.  And it’s not like we don’t know where we’ll be sleeping as we take our beds with us. 

It will take time to write up Budapest but I did get some lovely photos.  I never thought about a city being beautiful, but Budapest really is.

Ru

Apatin Marina and Town

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Serbian Border Patrol which was quick and painless.  You can see we’re now flying the Serbian courtesy flag.

An oldish geezer helped us tie up for “10 Euro” and a beer.  The border guards officially collected 70 Euro for a cruising permit to enter Serbia.  Somebody has to pay to maintain the waterways so I think our having to pay for a cruising permit is fair.

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Marina Apatin

Mostly a marina for small fishing boats…

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A fisherman working on his boat.

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An evening shot of the marina office and apartments complex.  The statue is topped with a cross so if you know nothing about a country, you vaguely know the religion.  Cross, Crescent, Star…all tell the instant story.

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The town promenade.

In a small café R R and M had beer but I ordered lemonade.  I tried every which way to get some ice because the water wasn’t at all cold and it was a hot day.  I asked for ice which in German is Ice cream so then I drew a picture.  But no ice.

We stayed in town for dinner and had pizza.  We ordered two large sardine pizza for RR and M and a veggie pizza for me.  We got 1 large sardine pizza and the rest veggie.  When you don’t speak the language you just never know.