Apparently every Serb considers the Tara National Park and the neighbouring touristic attractions of Drvengrad and the Šargan Eight heritage railway to be a must-see. So I spent two days doing what tourists do. See the image captions for some narration (click the image if they don’t show up).
Drvengrad
A traditional serbian village built as a movie set for Emir Kusturica's "Life is a miracle".
Now an open air museum ...
... and some kind of perfect world idyll.
At least they share my enthusiasm for one of the greatest movie makers.
Šargan Eight heritage railway
I was promised to see a steam train.
But only a diesel engine was in operation.
Built in the 1920's, the railway section overcomes an altitude difference of 240m.
A route of lines consisting of 3 levels (only 2 are shown in the picture) and forming a figure eight when viewed from above (hence the name), ...
... as well as tunnels and bridges allow a constant slope of 0.18%.
There was a school class on the train.
After waving back I had their attention.
As I left the train they were surrounding me, asking questions in a wild mix of serbian and english: Where I'm from, what I do here, what i think of Serbia, if I want to be their friend. To seal the friendship I had to shake everyone's hand.
Entering the Tara national Park. Yes, this is considered as a road (admittedly not the main road).
As idylllic as this view is, the Perucac lake has a dark past, beeing a mass grave of several hundred victims of war crimes in the Yugoslav Wars.
Campsite on a pear plantation
Adjacent rakia destillery. The owner of the campsite and destillery was an elderly gentleman, welcoming every guest with a shot of his own rakia.
