First Impressions of SERBIA – NOT what we expected!

Hey friends, welcome to Serbia! In this video we visit some of Serbia’s most beautiful nature areas, the Tara National Park and Uvac Canyon.
We take a ride on the quirky Sargan 8 railway – after a very difficult ticket purchasing process.
We stay at an epic wild camp by the river, and try the local food and beer.

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WHO ARE WE?
We are Nigel and Sue, a couple of outdoor adventurers. After living in a van travelling around Australia for 3.5 years on our big lap, we’ve moved to Europe, bought a new van and we’re now exploring the highlights and hidden gems of this continent. Join us for all the history and culture of Europe along with the day to day realities of living in a van.

Website: https://nigelandsueadventures.com
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Serbia, a country we weren’t quite sure about. 
Would we feel welcome here? Would it be easy in our camper van? Or would this be one of 
those places that tests us? What we found was stunning nature, epic wild camps, and a few 
travel challenges along the way. These are our first impressions of Serbia, and it wasn’t 
quite what we expected. We’re making our way for the border with Serbia. For both of us, 
there’s kind of a bit of trepidation. Obviously, we’ve just been in Bosnia, learning about 
the Bosnian war, the genocide in Srebrenica, and with the Yeah, we’re kind of little 
bit uneasy, I guess. So, we hope to get a good welcome at um the border to Serbia. The 
border between Bosnia and Serbia runs along the Drina River. Much more official looking 
border control on this side of the river. Um, done. Car Documents. Yep. Yeah. First time in 
Serbia. Is there anything to declare? Nothing. No. Welcome to Serbia. Those guys were friendly 
enough. Yeah. Yeah. But that’s the first time we’ve been asked to, you know, do we have 
anything to declare or to inspect the inside of the vehicle. We are making our way to um what’s 
it called? Tara National Park. We’re heading Tricksy, that’s kind of cool. God, look at where we’re going 
up the side of this cliff. Yeah. I was just reading that the Tara National 
Park has the largest population of brown bears in Serbia. You might get to see 
one after all, might you? Close one. No, you have to give them your peanut butter sandwich. 
And we’re still climbing up. Here’s our first Serbian beers. I can’t tell you what it says. They 
may not have vegetarian food. I’ve got a salad, which is basically just tomato with cheese on it. 
Tomato and cheese. I don’t actually like tomato. Um, but I think there might be a bit of onion in 
there. Just as well Sue drinks beer and chips and eats chips. I’ve order Yeah, I’ve ordered chips 
and bread and this salad which has got cheese. So, I’m going to have a cheesy chip sandwich 
with maybe a couple of bits of tomato. But the good news is the beer. Nigel, how much 
is this beer? $3.50. So, it’s about $2.20 US. Uh, less than £2. I mean, how bargain? We’ll 
just have to live on beer while we’re in Serbia. Where are you from? Australia. Australia. I don’t 
know. Far away. What town? Brisbane. Brisbane. So, this is my dinner. Uh, so these are meatballs 
and within the mashed potato. Um, so yeah, quite quite a saucy number. Thoughts on the 
food Nige? So you’ve seen it. Can’t say I’m terribly excited about it. Just thinking 
that what I would expect to get in Russia, meatballs, potatoes, very basic salad. Chips 
are good and the beer is good and cheap. This is where we spent our first night in 
Serbia in a car park, which we thought was going to be fine. And it was until about 
10:30 when some local hooligans turned up, revving their engines, chatting, just kids being 
kids. You know, they were gone in about an hour, but it was just as we were turning the lights 
out. A bear. Hopefully that’s the only one we see today. We went to the visitor center which was 
open but there was no ranger inside. I think it’s part information office and part ethnographic 
museum. And looks like they rent bikes. We are here and we’re going to walk up to here. I think 
I know on this trail here. The plan was to take the trail up to the best lookouts. I’m really 
excited to head out on the trails today. I was just thinking, Susie, it’s good. It’s nice that 
they’ve got these anti-bear fences in place. Oh, wow. What do you reckon? That 
was worth hiking for. Wow. So, the trails here are really well marked, which is a good thing cuz there’s 
trails branching off everywhere. Look at that. Wow. Well, guys, friends, 
we saved the best one for last, I think. Having this mountain view and 
everything in the view as well. What a spot. Big thumbs up for Tara National Park. 
So, now we have the choice of walking 2 hours and 10 minutes or 1 hour and 45 minutes. 
I need coffee. Let’s go the quick way. Holy mackerel. Nice bear. Much as it would be 
cool to see a bear in the wild. Kind of happy if we don’t. Nigel just said he’s got his sneakers 
on, he can probably run faster. He doesn’t have to run faster than the berry and he has to run faster 
than me. That golden moment when you’ve been on a 4hour hike. Poss!!. There’s no campsite within 
the Tara National Park and we needed to top up our water. So, we headed to Kremna, a small village 
on the way to our next main destination. So, we’ve been parked up here in a campsite for the 
last three nights. Now, as you know, we don’t do campsites that often, but we stayed in this one 
an extra night because I got really sick. And you do not want to be sick when you’re while camping, 
if you get my drift. It was nice to have a toilet close by. So, this is our first campsite we’ve 
stayed at in Serbia. It’s kind of expensive at €27 a night, but that included electricity, water, 
obviously, nice hot showers and toilets. Uh, and there is laundry facility here for €4 per load. 
And they have a dryer that’s an additional €4. So, yeah, it’s been quite nice. We’re near the town 
called Kremna. There’s not much in this village. First impressions of Serbia. Kremna, one of 
the most promising tourist destinations in Serbia. And yet, no restaurants. And that hotel 
looks very closed. Today, we’re going to make our way to the Sargan 8 railway. Yesterday, 
this is the website for the Sargan 8 train, and it’s giving us the details of where to get the 
ticket with these email addresses. And straight away I’m getting a return email saying that the 
email address is unknown. So I don’t know how we booked this train. The lovely lady Branca here at 
the campsite tried to phone them for us and the local railway station told her to ring Belgrade. 
She rang Belgrade. They told her to we have to book it through the local railway station. So 
it’s really not being very helpful or easy. So, we’re just going to drive there tomorrow. 
Fortunately, it’s only a 15-minute drive and cross our fingers and hope that we can get 
a ticket. Yeah. Yeah. We’re going to turn right. Yeah. This is the park. So, we are in Mokra Gora 
uh in a coach park. The Sargan 8 is a narrow gauge railway first built during World War I to link 
Belgrade and Sarajevo. Construction stopped after a tragic explosion killed around 200 workers, but 
the line was finally completed in 1925 and carried passengers for nearly 50 years. Closed in 1974, a 
short scenic stretch was restored and reopened to tourists in 2003. The famous figure 8 track winds 
through tunnels and breathtaking mountain views. Place is a zoo. Um, not holding much hope. Sue’s 
at the ticket booth. Um, see how she she’s gotten on here. Okay, I have the tickets. Yes. Success. 
Oh, well done. Cuz it look like a bit of a zoo here. I know. It does look like a zoo, but we 
have our tickets. We’re in cabin number three. Are we? I don’t know. There is no reserved 
seating, so we just get on and get a seat. The journey takes 2 hours and 10 minutes and 
there are three stops. Five stops I think. Any food on the nothing on the train and no 
English commentary. So, but one of the stops it stops for half an hour. Seems to be some sort 
of problem. We’ve been told that the train is 24. Okay. We’re not with a group. Oh, we need to go down there. 
[ Guard speaking in Serbian ] I don’t think anyone knows what’s going on here, 
but hopefully we can get on. We’re not with a group. Well, we’re on the train, but standing 
room only in this little outside cabin. So, not ideal. Um, we were sold a ticket. Same 
price that everybody paid for a seating ticket, but we have to stand. Do I need to remind you 
how excited Nigel is about being on a train? That’s it. That’s it, guys. 
We’re off. We are on our way. This is epic. That was exciting. Okay, so we got off at the end station. 
I don’t know what it’s called. And we’ve got 10 minutes here. There’s a lady selling 
delicious pies, burek type things. It’s not really burek. It’s called she called it Domace, 
I think. Yeah. It’s not like um flaky pastry. It’s It’s different. It’s okay though when 
you’re hungry. Bet these dogs would like it. On the way back, we’re stopping 
at all the other stations as well. There we go. Stop here. You can see. So, we’re at this level here. And then you 
look down and can see the train track down below us. They call this train the Sargan 8. 
And it actually kind of does figure eights. So this is a map of how the train does 
the figure eight. We’ve come from there and now we got to go and underneath. Ah. So 
we’re going this going underneath. Yep. Then we go around and again and then come 
out there. Ah, no. Oh, it’s amazing. Leaving the railway before finding a campsite, we have one of our most exciting stops in all of 
Serbia. LIDL!! an actual real supermarket. Well, here’s where we can get lunch. Three bags 
of shopping, water and dog food. 8,533 Dinar which is about 130 Australian dollars 
or about $85 and included dog food, which you put in the boot. We found this 
potential free camp, a primo spot here, local farmer with his cows. Good man. We 
hid in the van until the rain stopped and then we enjoyed this beautiful 
rainbow. Rainbow over the Poss. We’re always so grateful to find places like this 
to park up for the night, but… we wish we didn’t have to but one of the things we like to do when 
we arrive at a campsite or a wild camp is clean up some of the garbage that other people have left 
behind. It seems crazy that in such a beautiful place, people just throw their rubbish around. 
This really was a gorgeous place to camp along with the cows and the horses. We could have stayed 
here for a week, but we wanted to get to the Uvac Canyon while the weather was good. The road 
directions to the Uvac Canyon viewpoint were very unclear. Google Maps hasn’t caught up with a new 
road which was actually built a couple of years ago and so we were trying to navigate by reviews 
and comments on the Park for Night app. Yeah, cuz little bit confused here about which way to go. 
This is a dirt road on on Google Earth, right? And this road does look newer than that road there. 
So, she doesn’t know where the hell she is. So, now we’ve turned around because it appears 
that the road was not the right road. We’re going to try that other road. After we turned 
around, we saw this tiny sign for Uvac Canyon. We’re just following the sign to the viewpoint 
up a very steep hill. We’re really out in the farmland now. This is so cool. We are nearly 
there. It’s been a pretty epic drive. Well, we finally made it to the Uvac Canyon Special 
Nature Reserve. This is the car park. It’s not very big. And this canyon is really 
known for its how it kind of meanders and it just creates this beautiful outlook, but 
it’s also particularly known for these rare birds that are here. And they’re called 
griffon vultures. And there we go. We do have one of those griffon vultures. We got 
to find him on the zoom. There he is. Oh, that’s beautiful. Look at that. The bird 
man’s pretty excited about the birds. Oh my god. We walk down to the viewing platform for the best views of the canyon and 
the vultures. Once nearly extinct, the griffon vulture now thrives above the Uvac 
Canyon. There are several hundred here. They have wingspans close to 3 m and can fly up to 
10 km high. We were mesmerized watching them. Wow. Wow. Wow. It’s a little bit scary. I’m not even 
a bird fan. Nigel’s the bird man, but these guys are amazing. Nigel and 
Sue’s top tip for visiting Uvac Canyon. Come here in the morning. The light is 
much better, not only for photography uh and spotting the canyon, but also 
for looking at the griffin vultures. Now, we’re going to get back in the van and find 
somewhere to stay tonight. I don’t know where. The road was good, but now it’s 
kind of jaggedy ass. All right, we’re coming up this little dirt road to see if 
this is going to be any good for a free camp, wild camp. Look at all the trash. Not much 
space to turn around. Is that a Yeah Nah?. Well, here we are. Afternoon in the van. We found 
ourselves a really sneaky wild camp. We’re like literally just off the road. But look at the 
mountains. Sun’s about to set and there’s a few little gravel roads that I think go to farmers. 
There’s the main road just down there. It’s got like a 360° view. Hey, it’s a pretty cool spot. 
It’s often about the vibe, isn’t it? Yeah. Now we got the farmer coming past. [ __ ] I’m scared. 
Oh no. Hang on. He’s gone the other way. Oh [ __ ] Is he stopping? He’s just kind of keep 
going. Yeah, he is. All right. Join us next week as we visit Belgrade, 
a buzzing city with a cool vibe, great craft beer, and funky street art. 
Though not all of it is so pleasant.