Day in Niš

Went jogging. The quality of the air was a disappointment. I'm out from the centre but there are a fair few trucks on the road.

Decided to slowly walk to town. Purely by chance came across the Tower of Skulls.


It's enclosed inside something resembling a mini orthodox church. But the so-called tower itself is made up of skulls of lopped off Serbian heads after some battle.

I'd like to say 'Don't get too close, they bite, as I found out', but that would be too disrespectful.



Must have been pretty impressive in it's day. Especially as it was in the open air. Now it probably is an icon to Serbian victory over the Turks. No wonder there's all this animosity over here. Yes, it's good to have memorials but they do do just that - make it hard for people to forget and forgive past injustices. Well, in this case it's the Turks that built this one against themselves.

Checked out some cevapcici at a street-side cafe. Unlike the Croatian and Bosnian ones, the Serbian ones are huge.



Here's the waitress bringing me my beer.



Statue from the skull tower park. No doubt some leader in battle.



For such an old city there don't seem to be many interesting old buildings around. Here's one of the few. Perhaps Nis was always pretty small and the buildings were never here?



Check this out ... a mix of old and new ...



The Nis outside drinking street is about the longest I've ever seen. Certainly several hundred metres.



Down by the river there are more drinking spots.



I discovered that it's possible to get up onto the walls of the castle. Well how else would you be able to pour boiling oil onto the attacking hordes?

Here's a photo looking back to the city across the bridge. I hope I kept the camera still enough.



And the obligatory statue in the main square.



Never did find out who the bloke on the horse is or how many Turks he killed or how long the Turks tortured him before cutting off his head for a souvenir. Certainly though it's a popular meeting spot as there seemed to be quite a few girls nearby waiting for their late boyfriends.

It's now 10:30 in the evening and the number of people on the street is phenomenal.



Don't these people have a home to go to? Have all tv transmissions been cancelled? And where are they going? There's no end to the stream of people. Or are they just walking from one end of the street and back again? Now I'm going to have to hang around here tonight to find out when the crowd starts to thin out.

Stopped off for a pljeskavica on the way home. Pick your style of meat and choose what you want over the top. All in some pita bread. Looks like a huge flat hamburger but with a big choice of toppings.

With it being about one in the morning I was starting to regret my decision to walk back to the hotel - especially in view of the types of films they were showing on the bus - but even on a Monday night there were always enough people around most of the time that it mostly felt pretty safe. But I wouldn't try it in Hobart!