We left Mokra Gora very early in the morning to continue our journey on Nis, a small Serbian city that sits close to the boarder of Bulgaria. As we had come to accept after spending a week now in Serbia, and after trying and failing on many occasions when we were planning this trip back in England, finding out travel information in Serbia is extremely difficult! We couldn’t find any website or point of information that we could pre book any train or bus tickets through, and could not find out any reliable timetable information either. We had been advised by 5 or so people in Mokra Gora that there was a bus that runs from the village to Uzice – a connecting city – but each time we were told a different time the bus might arrive, and even told it simply may not stop at all! We decided to listen to our new friend Aleksandra and wait for the bus at Mokra Gora’s only stop at 7am. Before we had even reached the stop, a local man driving in his car with an elderly lady pulled up beside us and asked if we needed to go to Uzice, for a few dinar less than the cost of a bus ticket. Although we are always told never to get into a stranger’s car back at home, in Mokra Gora we had seen this exchange happen regularly and figured we would get there faster, and he would have a little more money to do his shopping there. So we jumped in!
From Uzice we got a bus to Nis, which took around 5hrs, with no toilet stops or anyone who spoke English to ask! Luckily we had our great Air BnB host called Dusan waiting to meet us promptly as the bus station when we arrived, who couldn’t have been more helpful in advising us about the area, places to eat and drink, where all the amenities were. He recommended some excellent post-beer food in the form of Gurmanska plijeskavica, which is grilled pork served with flatbread, salad and kajmak (milk cream), and can be bought for the equivilant of £2 or less from many late night food stands.
After our long, stuffy coach journey we wanted to go to a bar for a few drinks, and he told us of a place nearby our apartment called The Beer Zone. On first impressions I thought it sounded like a dingy sports bar with English football fans smashing pints of flat Carling around, but of course there were very few English people here (we didn’t meet any in our time there), and the bar was excellent, as was the beer! It was full of young people inside, lots of wooden furniture, cool decorations and posters on the walls that wouldn’t look out of place in Shoreditches’ most hipster bars, and the customary thick clouds of cigarette smoke. There was a singer strumming on an acoustic guitar, and we drank local beer and shots called ‘Yugoslavian Death’ from the bar. As the night went on, we got talking to a group of Serbian guys at the table next to us, one of whom was celebrating his 24th birthday (all in photo below). They had lived in Nis all their lives, and were very passionate about Serbia, and believed that more people should visit the country as they would love it, and we couldn’t agree more! We celebrated with them for a couple of hours before we left in search of the Gurmanska plijeskavica that Dusan had told us about earlier, and then bed!
The next day we explored this small city, and found it to be very interesting but contrasting also. There were many fancy bars and restaurants in the city centre, with lots of people drinking in the sun that had just started to peep through the clouds. People were well-dressed and driving expensive cars. However, we needed to go to the train station to organise our journey to Plovdiv, Bulgaria the following day, and during the walk we noticed dilapidated houses, many homeless people and beggars, many of whom had untreated health issues that were apparent, but this is not unlike many other cities in the world. When we arrived at the station, it was predictably tricky trying to firstly find out what time our train would run, as we were told that that information is not accessible until the morning of the day you wish the travel, nor is it available online or by phone. This means if the train was due to leave Nis at 6am, we would have to be waiting around at the station before this time in order to know it was leaving, and catch it! Luckily, a different man was able to give us estimate times and so we decided to choose the earliest one of the two, which was at 6.15am. Fortunately this worked out well for us, but if you are planning on visiting Serbia I would suggest visiting the train station itself at least a day before you wish to travel, especially if you have a set day to travel that cannot be changed, or you are travelling into a different country.
Additionally, throughout the time we spent in Serbia, we were advised many times against using the trains as they are slow/unclean/unreliable. To be honest, we found that once we actually were on the train and knew where it was going, it was a fairly pleasant way of travelling, albeit a little slow. However, it is worth noting that a far more popular method of transport is by coach, which in our experience were clean, comfortable (if they stop for toilet breaks…) and always on time.