Travelled by Bus down to Nis from Belgrade. Pretty easy to negotiate the well organized bus station.
Nice motorway all the way. Through a very agricultural, rolling countryside. Stopped half way at a tidy rest stop.
I just stopped in NIS to see some more of Serbia, and because I did not want to take a 7 or 8 hour bus ride down into Bulgaria.
Nis sits in a valley with a fast running river through the middle of town.
NIS has the look of a big country town. The occasional tractor or horse drawn wagon comes along the streets. NIS is one of the oldest cities in Europe, and over the centuries has gone back and forth between the east and west. The town was wrested from the Ottoman Empire as recently as the late 1800’s.
One of the top tourist attractions in town is a tower built in the early 1800’s as a “warning” by the Ottomans using the skulls of Serbs who tried an uprising. I did not go to have a look.
AN old fortress commands a site over the river. Today it is a city park. There are various bits and pieces of ruins here, but not much.
I like it that they have converted the old Turkish baths into a night club.
There is a small pretty nice downtown. But actually I have never seen a place like this. Where there has been some investment there might be a good restaurant, a glittering shopping mall, a good hotel. And there are some of these. But they stand in a sea of poverty, shambles and mess.
A good restaurant.
A local restaurant.
The Irish pub.
Poverty
One interesting feature of NIS is that the city smells like an ongoing barbecue. You can see the smoke from this shop.
This is a Rostilj, a small charcoal grill shop.
And they are everywhere. They grill up various meats and sell them as sandwiches into the street.
Footnote. Since you asked, this is what I mean by “crumbling”
And here in one photo is the effect of investment.
The third world’s cycle of sadness. No investment leads to no tools and no productivity so no wealth creation so no quality of life so no investment.
Heading south into Bulgaria tomorrow.