We left Zajačar at 11:45 and had no problems on the drive, just an odd detour near Kraljevo on a meandering tiny back road. We never figured out how we ended up there. We arrived at our one bedroom Moon Apartman in the beautiful but over-developed resort town of Zlatibor in western Serbia at 4. We were greeted by 5 sweet stray dogs in the empty parking lot of the 6-7 story new building where we waited for Svetlana to arrive to let us in. The owner, Ivan, lives in Belgrade. Svetlana was polite but spoke little English and seemed in a hurry to let us in and show us around. She forgot to show us how the heat worked and what the WiFi password was but Ivan was always very quick to reply any time I wrote with questions. He also gave suggestions for hikes and restaurants.
After much studying I had chosen this apartment because it was on the edge of town and I thought it would be quiet. Upon arrival I discovered the frig was very noisy, as was the heating unit and the new water treatment plant down the hill. With windows closed we could avoid hearing the high pitched humming of the plant, and with the heater off we could avoid the hvac noise, and with the door to the bedroom closed I didn’t hear the frig…but…when I laid down that night to sleep I heard a quiet high pitched hum coming from some unknown source. I think it was coming from the apartment next door through the wall behind the bed. But whatever it was it drove me nuts. Here we were, in theory in a quiet part of town but all these modern conveniences made me feel on edge. The owner said the city is eventually going to build a wall around the treatment plant but I saw no signs of impending construction. I finally resorted to putting tissue in my left ear and sleeping on my right side (my left ear doesn’t hear quite as well).
We walked into town for dinner and had just sat down when I got a note from our neighbor, John, who said that our Housesitter, Dianne had told him that morning before flying back to Arizona, that the livingroom heater was stuck on. I had finally stopped worrying about the earlier issue with the battery, and then this. Luckily John turned off the breaker to the heater to avoid fire risk (fires are one of the things I’m most afraid of), but that meant they would have no heat in the livingroom for two weeks. It was the weekend so we didn’t want to pay extra to have an electrician come. Luckily we got a referral from our realtor and this guy was able to come install a new control a few days later. But i felt extra stressed those few days. Had we been there Jim could have installed a new control himself, for cheap, but the $257 was worth it since the alternative was to leave our house-sitters with no heat for two weeks.
Meanwhile, Zlatibor is in a beautiful location but it is a weird place. It is crowded with mid-rise condo buildings in various states of completion. Everyone we spoke with about the town confirmed it is a place for money laundering. The developers appear to have no consideration for the environment, aesthetics or scale. Most of this growth has occurred within the past 10 years and there appears to be no end in sight. I have no idea how many units exist currently in the town but definitely many thousands. Our building (completed in 2024) is almost empty of people (as are most of the buildings in town). On the weekend there were plenty of people strolling about but it was in no way crowded. I think winter is the busiest time because there is a tiny ski area and people from Belgrade like to come spend a few days in the snow. The town is sort of a Serbian wanna-be Vail, but nothing like Vail.
One might ask, why did you come here, knowing it was an overdeveloped tourist town? We chose this spot because it was a halfway point between the two destinations we were considering to go to next. We both really wanted to go to Montenegro to see people and places we love there, but I was concerned about the distance and logistics. The place we wanted to stay was not available the exact dates we wanted, and we weren’t sure how we would schedule various stops. The other option was to head north, back to Banja Koviljaca. Jim wasn’t thrilled about that idea. Stopping in zlatibor for a few days would give us a chance to sort out our plans. Plus, it is in a lovely location and we knew we could have some good walks.
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It’s Monday morning. I’m sitting up in bed writing. Jim is still sleeping (on the couch in the living room). This small one bedroom place is on the 3rd/4th floor (in Balkan countries the first floor is ‘o’, not ‘1’ ) of an 8 story condo building named ‘Moon’ . Despite the noise from the water treatment plant I am so glad I chose this location. We had never been here before but looking at the satellite view of the town I could tell that in most of this city tall condo buildings are crowded together. This building has a tall condo to one side but nothing in 2 directions so we have lovely views. I don’t know about the rest of the year but now in late September our building is nearly empty. I think only 3-4 of the 50 units are occupied.
Despite being smaller than most places we usually rent this apartment is fine. There is no teapot but there is a toaster, a rarity! The building is only a few years old and is clean and has high ceilings and large windows (with remote controlled rolling shades) on two sides with lovely views of rolling hills and patches of pine trees.
The only other thing about this apartment that I strongly dislike is the high pitched humming nose coming from the water treatment plant that despite being a good ways down the road is annoying 24/7. Luckily it is too chilly to want to sit in the balcony, and we have no need to have the windows open. Luckily the windows are such that that sound does not penetrate the apartment. I chose this apartment for its supposed quiet location away from the core of the town yet it is not quiet, especially at night, because of this horrible noise. I feel so claustrophobic when I cannot get away from disturbing sounds, especially ones that persist. It triggers in me both sadness about and rage against our modern world. Why, why, why do we insist on developing and implementing and becoming dependent upon technologies so bad for our health, societies and nature. Ugh.
In any case, we are glad to be here despite our complaints. The landscape is gorgeous. It reminds us of Colorado or Montana but with smaller mountains. Large gently sloping grassy hills and small mountains, mostly treeless or with small patches of pines, surround us. We wish we could have seen the place 20-30 years ago. A woman I know said she used to visit her grandma here every summer forty years ago and there were no big buildings, just quaint wooden houses. She loved it.
We ran into a man in his 40s on our little hike yesterday who is a tour guide in Belgrade but has a house here. He said the town needs rental units because it is such a popular place, but he agrees the growth has not been done well. It has caused a loss of nature (which is why many people used to come here) and the style and scale of the buildings is not in keeping with the original character of the area.
When viewed superficially this city, like the new Waterfront district in Belgrade, does not have anything about it to identify it as being in Serbia, aside from the half-done buildings and shoddy construction techniques. But on our walk through town and out into the hills and up to a small village a couple of miles away we passed numerous shops and fast food joints that sell traditional Serbian foods. And there are sections of town with rows of little booths where scores of merchants sell cheap (often Chinese made) souvenirs, but also home made jams, honey, juice, knitted socks and hats, embroidered pillows and cloths, meats and other Serbian goods. And we’ve seen many people wearing track suits, so popular in this country.
If I was someone else I could see how this would be a fun place to come with kids, especially in summer or winter. There is a small ski area here, a gondola one can ride year around, a Dino fun park, horseback riding, and ATV rentals (people zoom around town and across the fields on these ATVs which is for us another reason to dislike this place).
But we had a lovely walk yesterday, through town, over the main through-road on a pedestrian bridge, and up a long slope to get to a ridge with great views of the town behind us and more hills around us. From there we walked through a small village (Gajevi) that looked to have mostly newer small houses, and on to a small restaurant in an old house tucked away amid some houses. This place, Krčma Gai, has a wonderful view of rolling hills, fields (with sheep), and treeless little mountains. We sat on a covered patio and enjoyed the quiet, the view, and the luscious smells coming from the kitchen. We don’t normally eat lunch but I got an espresso, Jim some mineral water, and we shared a plate of fresh tomatoes and cucumbers and a delicious item we have not tried before. I don’t recall its name but it consisted of thin layers of crepes and homemade cheese and I think there was egg in it (?), and spinach and poppyseeds. It was yummy! We looked at the map on our phones trying to plot possible routes we might walk the next day.
We came home for a bit then walked back to the place we ate dinner our first night here. Food was good but nothing unusual (grilled chicken, potatoes, salad, homemade bread). We walked home towards a dramatic vivid sunset of oranges and deep pinks and orange-reds. Behind us the bright nearly full moon was rising. My grumpiness toward the ugly tall buildings around us was drowned out by the beauty of the sky in front of me. How grateful I am to be able to see, to walk, to travel and be here in this country. I feel sad that we will be leaving Serbia next week.
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It’s Tuesday morning now. We expect to leave Zlatibor in a couple hours. Even though this is a weird place I am glad we came here for a few days.
Yesterday after another leisurely morning we walked/hiked in the opposite direction from the day before. This time we headed up the sidewalk in front of our place to the top of the hill and turned left onto a dirt/rocky road. There is no development (yet) in this direction but I am sure more is coming. In advance of desired expansion this town has recently completed new wide roads complete with traffic circles on the outskirts of town. But for now there is nothing up there where we were other than a couple shallow pits where they appear to dump and load rocks for construction projects.
The landscape was similar to where we walked the day before- broad gently rolling hills covered with fall-yellow tall grasses. We could see mountains in the distance. As we continued our walk on this ridge we eventually came to pockets of pine trees, and then to a pine forest. We found a path through the trees that led steeply to the top of a ‘peak’ that was more like a high hill. As we expected, when we reached the little clearing at the top it was surrounded by dense trees so we did not have a view. But the views along the rest of the walk were great. As before we kept thinking the landscape looked like Colorado or Montana.
From there we turned around and took a right, hoping to get to the road where there was supposedly a gallery/shop of traditional art. I had seen it on the map and it was supposedly open. But after walking a long way down a gully through pines we came to a new side road at the bottom rather than a small road shown on Google Maps. We turned left, toward the supposed gallery and walked a long way on this mostly uninteresting new road that followed a stream. The landscape was pretty (trees, fields, no buildings nor houses) but the big wide new road with its elevated rocky berms made us feel cut off from the natural beauty nearby. When we reached the spot for the gallery there was nothing there. We are guessing that when they built the new road they must have torn it down. We then passed the new water treatment plant, the source of the high pitched noise we find so annoying. I’m in favor of water treatment (!) but wonder why it has to be so loud in an otherwise quiet spot. Our host said they will eventually build high walls around it to mitigate the noise in the neighborhood but we saw no signs of construction. It could be years, but hopefully not.
Before we left on our walk our power went off, not just in our apartment but in the whole building. When I informed our host in Belgrade he said to let him know if it wasn’t back on when we returned. Thank goodness it was on when we got back a few hours later. I’d much rather be without power than without water, but am grateful for both.
After a rest we walked through town to the opposite end where we had not yet been. We had thought the center of town was odd enough but when we went further things were even weirder! A huge ‘lake’ complete with a fountain and many jets of water spraying water into the lake from around the periphery is the centerpiece. On one side of the long lake there are a dozen activities for kids- alpine slide, trampoline with harnesses, brightly colored vinyl blow up slides and bouncy things, and other ugly things. But if you have kids and don’t care about beauty then this looks like a fun place to go. At the far end of the lake are several restaurants. Behind those is a Ferris wheel and presumably other rides but we did not go in that direction. Instead we circled back and walked the other side of the lake. On this side there is a long line of probably 30 booths. Most sold fast food – traditional things such as burek and gyros, and others sold pizza, ice cream or desserts. Sprinkled in were tiny clothing boutiques and sellers of traditional goods. People sat on benches by the lake eating said foods, while dogs sat staring and begging in hopes of receiving scraps. This town has the highest concentration of stray dogs that we have seen anywhere. I wonder what happens to them in winter. (I can guess what happens to them but don’t like to think about it). This area gets cold and snowy. On that side of the lake closest to town is a huge empty plaza next to a full size stage where concerts happen.
We went back to the center of town where we ate at Walter, a place recommended by our host. Food was decent and only $24 for mineral water, salad and 2 chicken dinners that included homemade bread, fries and corn. No green on the plate aside from some pale green cabbage in the salad. (We eat salad here with every dinner but rarely does it include lettuce).
Once home we waited eagerly for news of the electrician’s visit to our house in Seattle. We finally got a message from our neighbor who reported it only took fifteen minutes for the electrician to replace the control, but he did not yet know the cost. I hope that is the end of problems arising at the house!
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The next morning Jim made breakfast, we packed, cleaned and left the key with Svetlana. We stopped for gas on the way out of town, unknowingly choosing one of the chains that uses Russian gasoline, so we had to pay in Serbian cash.
We both were disappointed to not be going to Montenegro, knowing we might never see our friends there again. But we were at peace with our decision to return to the same apartment we’d been in a month earlier in Banja Koviljaca. I was looking forward to having a quiet social calendar and more time to relax.
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