Serbia

City tour this morning of Belgrade including the Kalemegdan Fortress, the House of Flowers (aka Tito’s Memorial) and the 2nd largest Orthodox Church, Sava Church. We would have liked to take the bike ride option, but didn’t want to miss seeing the sights in Belgrade.

Too naked for the town square, apparently...

The bombed building

The Fortress

And the Sava Church, which is unfinished; only the lower crypt is open, but based on the crypt, the church will be lovely. It will hold 12,0000. Another take on the last supper in the first photo.

Tito’s Memorial was an interesting exhibit of a internationally-liked ruler of the former Yugoslavia; 290 or so countries sent delegates to his funeral. Many brought gifts of ornately decorated relay batons, since there had been an annual event where Tito (Josip Broz) was presented a baton. The display of just a few of them was very interesting, with batons clearly representing countries, professions and various groups, the video shows a Canadian carrying an elaborate baton.

After lunch, we toured the National Opera House - this was extra to the excursions included in the cruise. The tour ended with a mini concert, two singers from the local school who alternatively sang pieces from The Mariage of Figaro, Faust, Tosti and The Barber of Seville.

I liked the playbills from Madam Butterfly (1926) and Swan Lake (1927)

We finished the day’s entertainment with an after-dinner presentation of folk music and dancing. Easy to see influences from Russia and Turkey. Hard to convey the speed of their movements.

Another lovely day. Every forecast threatens rain, but we haven’t seen any.

Today we sailed between Romania and Serbia, stopping twice on the Serbia side as we rravelled through the Iron Gate section of the Danube and passed the Djerdap 1 lock, followed by the Decebalus rock statue (a Dacian king).

Today’s excursion took us to possibly the oldest human settlement in the world. This was found in the mid ‘60’s when the dam was being built theatre would widen the river and flood various areas. Archeologists sought to determine what would be lost to the flooding. As a result,several of these first settlements were found dating back to 9500 to 7500 BC. One of the uncovered communities was relocated a few hundred meters up river and almost 30 meters higher. These ancient people had excellent food sources and lived longer lives and were taller than those that came after. Very interesting exhibit.

Then the bus took us to meet up with our Emerald Star ship, which had sailed farther up river, to dock next to the Golubac Fortress.