Everyone flies. Constantly and everywhere. That’s why we send our author Maximilian Reich to places where there are no tourist offices, no signs in German or English and no one to welcome you with a wreath of flowers and applause . Literally to the ass end of the world. This time: Serbia.
Kulen sausage, Tinder and a platter in the middle of nowhere
In Serbia there is Kulen sausage. For a long time, that was the only thing I knew about the country southeast of Switzerland between Slovenia and Romania. After my parents divorced, my mother took a job again. That’s why she hired Mrs. Dukic, with whom we could stay after school until my mother picked us up in the evening. The old lady helped us with our homework and cooked lunch. Very often we simply had sandwiches with kulen sausage. A kind of salami, but with a slightly sour taste. The stuff tasted disgusting. This was accompanied by fennel or camomile tea, which is the vegetable among drinks. Whether it was chamomile or fennel really didn’t matter to a child. We had heard that there was a war going on in Mrs. Dukic’s home country, and we didn’t dare protest against someone who came from such a harsh region. In my childhood imagination, Mrs. Dukic was a mixture of Cruella De Vil and Chuck Norris, who leaves her eyes open when washing her hair and doesn’t need anesthesia at the dentist. As a child, that was really hard for me.
As I got older, I was able to look after myself and my siblings on my own. We no longer had to see Mrs. Dukic, and since then I haven’t really thought about the country. Until my boss called me yesterday. “Max, what do you think of Serbia?”
A strange question. “Uh, with Google Maps?”
“Joker. I mean, what do you think of Serbia?” He said it the way you would ask someone’s opinion when you’re deciding between two ties for the gala dinner that evening. What do you think of the tie with the yellow ducks with the gray jacket?
“Well, that depends. If you’re thinking about where to spend your summer vacation this year, I would probably recommend Santorini.”
“Thank you, but I don’t want to go to Serbia or Santorini. I want you to go there.”
“To Santorini?”
“To Serbia!”
“Isn’t there a war going on?”
“Not for almost 20 years. Maybe you should read a newspaper from time to time instead of just writing for it.”
“Oh,” I waved it off. “Print media will soon die out anyway.”
“Do you want your jobs to die out?”
“Uh… no!” I said meekly.
“Very nice. So you’ll be flying to Serbia next week and writing a new episode for our column “Holiday greetings from the ass end of the world”. Then he hung up. I lit a cigarette and started my research while swearing out loud. I didn’t really feel like it. There is no beach in Serbia, nor is the country known for its architecture or art. I have many friends who have recently got married. I often sit with them at the breakfast table. But none of them has ever said: “We’ve just come back from our honeymoon in Serbia. Quite enchanting. The Venice of the Balkans, isn’t it Schnurzelchen?” Schnurzelchen nods and reaches for the Prosecco bottle. “Another glass of Mimosa?”
When I hear about Serbia, it’s really only in Hollywood movies, where the Serbs always play the villains, just like us Germans. Of course it’s just a mean cliché. On the other hand, it has to come from somewhere. The fact that the role of the Nazi is always played by a German and not an Icelander is unfortunately not just because we look better with side partings.
Only the best for star authors
The capital of Serbia is Belgrade, and – as I discover when I arrive there – it is surprisingly beautiful. A picturesque city with pretty boutiques and small cafés lined up along the Slave River. A colorful swarm of young and old people flit through the pedestrian zone. Almost all the women are wearing high heels and show off their slender legs under a skimpy miniskirt, while the men all have beards. I mention this because I myself have the beard growth of a Japanese baby and look enviously after every man with facial hair. I could be shipwrecked on a desert island, and after five years even the basketball player I’d be talking to would have more whiskers than me. As a teenager, I had heard that frequent shaving stimulates hair growth. Because I didn’t have a razor, I used to smear my mother’s depilatory cream on my upper lip every day. However, this only had the effect that my upper lip was constantly burning and smelled of peach.
Just as there is a hot dog stand on every street corner in New York, here in Belgrade there are freezers everywhere on the sidewalks. Older ladies or gentlemen sit in front of it and sell popsicles from it. That destroys my image of the rough-and-tumble Serb a little. Anyone who holds a dripping, slippery finger in their hands and licks the ground with their tongue like a dog at a water bowl to prevent the melted ice from sticking to their paws simply doesn’t look threatening. In general, I feel very comfortable here. The city strikes me as a mixture of Berlin and Paris, combining shabby and chic with beautiful house facades and hip bars, and I would love to stay longer, but the very next morning my train leaves for Sremski Karlovci.
Sremski Karlovci is a small town on the Danube, 80 kilometers north of Belgrade. The journey costs the equivalent of 3.50 francs. After an hour and a half, I get out and stand in front of a small station house, surrounded by green bushes and trees and with only one platform in front of it, barely wider and higher than a cycle path. Next to it is a narrow gravel path over which I pull my trolley. As I turn the corner, the market square opens up in front of me. Three cafés on the right, with open umbrellas, and a church opposite. A fountain splashes behind it. Actually quite nice. On the edge of the square, I discover the Prezident Hotel, which the editorial team has booked for me. As I enter via the sun terrace and read the sign on the door, I am delighted to see that this is a 5-star luxury resort, with spa and room service and all the trimmings. The FACES editorial team dug deep into their pockets for me. After all the years I’ve been writing for this magazine, it was time for a little more appreciation. You have to look after your star authors. “Good afternoon. A room has been reserved for me,” I say to the lady behind the reception desk and push the Booking.com printout across the counter to her as if it’s about an American Express card, and I had just ordered 5 kilos of unicorn mince. “And wrap it up for me, please. The price doesn’t matter.” The lady takes a quick look at my booking confirmation and then pushes it back to me. “You’ve come to the wrong place. This is the Premier Prezident Hotel. You have a room at the Vila Prezident Hotel.”
“Oh. Uh. And where is that?”
“You have to go straight down the road behind the market square. About ten minutes from here on the edge of the village.”
I hastily put the note back in my bag and grab my trolley. I’m embarrassed by the situation. I feel like a little kid playing hotel guest and want to get out of here quickly. When I step outside, the sun is high in the sky. Sweat is dripping from my forehead as I laboriously drag my suitcase up a hill on a country road. Behind the market square, a narrow alley leads through a ravine of dilapidated detached houses. A dog barks behind one of them. After about 800 meters, the houses suddenly stop. Grass is now growing where concrete once stood. Wide fields on both sides of the narrow country road over which I am dragging my suitcase, a group of cyclists in skin-tight full-body condoms cycle past me. After another 200 meters, a large sign appears on the left-hand side of the road. “Villa Prezident.”
Tipsy in Serbia
The villa looks a bit like my grandma’s house. A two-storey building made of gray stone with a Hollywood swing on the terrace. I check in at reception and move into my room. At least it’s spacious and clean, and the mattress is soft. I push my trolley under the bed and go back down to the center. After all, I’m not here for pleasure, but to write a text about the village. Even if I have no idea what to fill it with. The landmark is a square fountain on the market square with four lion heads, which bears the original name “The 4 Lions”. Right next to it is the orthodox church of St. Nicholas. A narrow church with two white towers and a narrow nave. I think churches are like babies and basically all look the same. Sure, there may be differences – but you never think: Oops, what’s that? You’ll never find a pool table or an espresso bar there. Sometimes the aisle to the altar consists of white tiles, in this case they are white and red. At the end is the altar, above which a dozen gold-framed idols are arranged in two rows like a game of memory. As I said, just church. Another attraction is the grammar school. A yellow brickwork from 1891 with windows framed in red and a bell tower in the middle. I once had a date and waited outside a playground until she came out of the house opposite. But all that came first was the policeman who checked my ID because worried mothers had called him. Since then, I prefer to stay away from children’s facilities. So I don’t take a look inside the school and continue my stroll through the town. I make a note in my notebook of a pharmacy, a petrol station, two shops and – if I haven’t missed any – seven wine cellars. Apparently, the area is a well-known wine-growing region in Serbia. A classic here is the “Bermet”. As I’m hungry anyway, I settle down in the “Four Lions Restaurant” right by the fountain and order a glass of Bermet and the “Serbian hamburger” for 4 euros. The waiter nods and brings me a slice of pressed minced meat and three onion rings. No lettuce, no tomatoes, and above all: no bread rolls above or below the meat.
The waiter looks at me: “All good?”
I don’t want to admit that I’ve made a mistake. I would look like a fool who is too stupid to order a meal and would embarrass the waiter to boot. So I make a good face for the bad game. “Great. Slice of meat. Yummy.” And the herbal liqueur wine tastes more like someone has poured a bottle of Underberg into a bucket of sangria.
After the meal – exactly two minutes later, because you don’t need longer to eat a meat patty – I order a second glass and open my Tinder app. My train doesn’t go back for another two days and I have to kill the time until then somehow. However, tindering in Sremski Karlovci is like digging for gold in Canada. There are just 9,000 people here, and I already have three glasses of Bermet in my blood and a little buzz by the time I finally have a match. A 28-year-old Englishwoman called Melissa, with shimmering green eyes and an athletic figure, dressed in a low-cut evening dress that leaves little room for fantasy. Excited, I order another glass of Bermet, which tastes better and better, and type a message into my cell phone: “Hi, what brings such a beautiful woman to this town?”
“I’m here with my parents to ride my bike. And you?”
“Should write an article about the place. But I don’t know what. There’s nothing here.”
“I’m bored too. Fancy an adventure?”
I down my Bermet and read the message again to make sure my drunken brain isn’t playing tricks on me. But even when I reread it, it still says in black and gray that this beauty wants to sleep with me. My fingers tremble with excitement as I type my answer: “Sure. When and where?”
“What’s the name of your hotel? I’ll come by your place at 3 pm. Okay?”
Okay? Does the goldfish poop in the pond? Of course that’s okay.
I ask for the bill and hurry back to the hotel to freshen up. I jump in the shower, brush my teeth and swap my T-shirt for a shirt. That’s it. Baby, to daddy.
Picnic and patties
My phone finally rings at half past three. “I’m here, come down.” Downstairs in front of the door is probably the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life – holding a bicycle. “Come on, let’s have a picnic.”
“A picnic?” I ask, trying hard to hide my disappointment. What kind of adventure is this? Otherwise it would be called “Indiana Jones and the Last Picnic”.
“Yes, I’ve brought wine and baguettes and cheese and fruit.” She taps a bag lying in a basket on the back of the luggage rack. “You ride and I’ll sit on the handlebars. Or don’t you feel like it?” She is wearing a colorful summer skirt and a pink top that goes wonderfully with her tanned cleavage. This woman could also have suggested cleaning porta-potties together at rock festivals and I would have shouted: “Yippee, why are we still standing around here?”
“Of course,” I say and swing myself onto the saddle. And I have to admit that: The landscape around Sremski Karlovci is really pretty. We drive past green meadows and wide fields, pass flowerbeds and a river. I can understand why many people come here to cycle. What’s more, there’s hardly any traffic and we have the road to ourselves.
While my companion squats on the handlebars in front of me and takes selfies, I pedal with difficulty. The sun beats down on us at 30 degrees and drives the sweat out of my pores. The alcohol in my blood does the rest. As we go downhill a little and our vehicle picks up speed, she grabs my forearms in fright to hold on and immediately lets go again. “Yuck, you’re sweating. Eww,” she says, wiping her hands on her jacket. After about fifteen minutes, the front wheel suddenly wobbles. Melissa looks up from her cell phone. “What’s that?”
“I think we’ve got a flat tire,” I say and pull over.
“Did you drive over broken glass?”
“I have no idea. I just saw your back.” I would have missed a whole mirror in front of me on the street.
“Great,” Melissa grumbles as if the mess is my fault and taps on her cell phone again. Without looking up from the screen, she asks: “How long will it take you to mend it?”
“Me? I have no idea how to do that. Do you even have any repair kit with you?”
“No, no, my dear. I’ve already got the picnic bag.”
How can you counter this logic? “Anyway, I can’t fix the bike.”
“What kind of man are you that can’t patch a tire?”
I didn’t know that patching a bicycle tire was a sign of masculinity. I’ve also never seen John Rambo cycling through Vietnam on a Holland bike.
“And now what?”
“We can just spread out our blanket here and have a picnic.” I point to the green meadow on our right. Melissa, however, looks as if there’s a septic tank there.
“Nah, I don’t want to be here.”
“And then what?”
“Oh, you know what? If you can’t even mend a bike, you’re nothing to me anyway. I think I’ll turn back.”
I stare at her with my mouth open. “Are you serious?”
“Yes,” she says and marches back in the direction we came from, cell phone in hand, without paying any further attention to me. I trudge ten meters behind them, grumbling. It’s not so much the disappointment about the unexpected outcome of this date or that I was denied my masculinity that makes me so upset. I’m much more annoyed that I’m still pushing her bike home for her despite everything. I really am a wimp.
When I finally get back to the hotel, my stomach is growling. I’m but too exhausted after the walk to look for a restaurant. The kitchen in the hotel’s dining room will do, I think, and study the menu at . There I find the “Gourmet Burger”. Possibly it’s called that because, unlike the mundane burger for the proletariat , it also contains two halves of bread and salad, I hope, but to be on the safe side I ask the waiter: “Does the gourmet burger come with bread?”
“Of course,” says the slender man with a matter-of-factness, as if I had asked him if he was going to wear trousers while cooking. A few minutes later, he returns from the kitchen and places a plate in front of me, on which is once again just the fried meat patty and a few onion rings. Next to it, he places a basket of sliced baguette. “Here you go, your bread.”
I would even prefer Kulen sausage now.
Curious to find out what else our author experiences in the middle of nowhere? Join him on Instagram (maximilian_reich) at on his travels, and see where he’s off to next … if he has internet there.
