Balkans, Day 3 - Serbia & Romania

So, the original reason we went through Serbia was to get to Romania, but I discovered a few weeks ago that my family is from there! They were ethnically German, but were sent to Kubin, Banat, Austria-Hungary to help drain the land and settle the area. I had known the Kubin tidbit for about 15 years, but I had never known where Kubin, Banat was. I recently started doing genealogy again after a many-year break, and I tried really hard to find Kubin. I finally did. Kubin was the German name of the town of Kovin, which was in the Banat region of Austria-Hungary, which is in modern-day Serbia. It just so happens that Kovin was very easy to add to our Balkan itinerary. I looked at the Google Maps satellite image and saw what appeared to be a very large cemetery. I didn't see anything else in town that resembled a cemetery, so I was hopeful that was the right place to find graves. I discovered that the Mormon church has the microfilms of the parish records from the time when my family was there, so a friend of a friend of a friend went to Salt Lake to find them for me. I was hopeful that there might be something in there that would help me find graves. She emailed me several documents, so I printed them out and brought them with me.

We got up in the morning bleary-eyed and cranky. We loaded the car and went in for our included breakfast. It pretty much sucked, so we were even more cranky. We asked at the desk if they exchanged money (we were going to need lunch in some small Serbian town, and we didn't have any Serbian Dinar. Thus far, we had gotten our food at gas stations that accepted credit cards, or just ate the snacks we brought with us)  She said no, but there was an ATM across the street. The only reason I mention this part at all is because of the dogs. As we walked to the bank, we saw a gang of three stray dogs hanging out together. Every time a car would go by, they all ran along beside it, barking madly. When that car got away, they started with the next one. I wanted a video, but Max said I would probably just get a video of a dog getting hit by a car. So, no video. They were all three still there and chased after us as we left later, though, so they were OK as of then.

So, I had again printed out Google Maps directions of how to get from Belgrade to Kovin. They were relatively straightforward. Belgrade is on the south side of the Danube, and Kovin is on the north. We pretty much just had to take the freeway to a spot across the river from Kovin, and take the bridge there. We drove for about an hour, when we saw a sign for Kovin (of course, it didn't tell us the name or number on the exit, but we decided it was probably the right one.

The exit was closed. We kept going, because we had no choice. We went into a gas station and bought a map of Serbia. It was all of Serbia, so it didn't have any little roads or little towns. But, we saw that the bridge only crossed the river at two places - Belgrade and Kovin. So, we had to get back to the Kovin bridge, or it was going to take us another hour and a half to get back to Belgrade to cross there. Luckily, I'm a map master, and I saw another way to do it with surface streets. It was hard to tell exactly where to go, because only the bigger streets were on there, but we just followed signs from one town to another, and got back to the Kovin crossing. Then, we got a bit lost in the town, but I found it. Yeah, me!

We got in the graveyard and started looking around. It was huge. Most of the graves looked pretty new, which was rather disappointing. But, we kept going, and found a part that was all older graves. They were mostly in horrible shape. Broken, covered in ivy, eaten by weeds, fallen down in the mud - just awful. We couldn't read most of them. There was even one where the crypt part had been broken open. It looked like a zombie had gotten out.

As we wandered, a very nice man came up and asked what we were looking for. He asked in Serbian, but we could tell when he mean through a bunch of signs and pointing. I wrote down the last name and time period, and he signal asked if they were Catholic. I said yes, so he led us to where the Catholics were buried. He also said "computer" and pointed at the front of the cemetery. So, Em & I went off in search of the computer while Max continued to look around. We tried to get in a building in that area, but it was locked. A gardener saw us and asked us what we were doing. I said "computer" and pointed to the graves. He said, "Who dead?" I nodded, so he took us to the building with the computer and told the man there what we were looking for. The man there said the computer is only available during the week. So, no luck there, but I showed the gardener the name, and he showed me where he thought they might be. We did find some Germans from the right time period, but not them. Again, though, there were a number of broken and/or unreadable stones, so they could have been there and we just didn't find them. The first guy came back and showed us a few more areas where they might be, but no luck. Ah, well, it was worth a try. I feel pretty confident that my family is in there somewhere.

A chapel to German Catholics

Then it was off to Romania. I had printed directions from Kovin to our hotel in Romania, but we again ran into the problem of no street signs anywhere. I did have the Serbia map, so I was able to pick out some towns along the route for which we could look for signs. At one point, we saw a sign that pointed to a town along our way, but it went down a road that looked unsavory. The other direction looked better, but it didn’t have the right town. So, we went with the unsavory road. It turned out to be the right one, so I’m sure glad we took it! It was Route 123. I would advise you to not use Route 123 in Serbia if you can help it. It is, shall we say, not the best kept road in the world. We were sure we were going to die, or get stuck, or something. 

About 10 minutes in, we saw a Mercedes come from the opposite direction, so we felt a bit better. After all, if a Mercedes could do it, so could we. We eventually caught up with a guy who had obviously done it before, since he avoided all but the smallest potholes, and seemed to know exactly where to drive through the lakes. So, we followed him move for move, and we made it through OK. I felt like I needed to hop out and pay him for being our Route 123 sherpa.

We made it through without any wrong turns, amazingly. At one point, we passed through a town of amazing houses. There was one that looked like the setting for a horror movie. It was great.

There were a bunch of others with the strangest style. We had seen some others like them around Serbia, but this one town seemed to have a bunch. Some (most) of them looked abandoned, but some were quite lovely.

All of the detail on there is brick and stone work

We stopped at a gas station to buy snacks with our Serbian money, since we were soon leaving, and there was a dog that came up and wagged her tail at us. She had obviously recently had puppies. I wouldn’t let Em touch her, but I told her that if the dog was still there when we came out, she could feed her some beef sticks we had in the car. When we came out, the dog was over on the grass feeding her puppies. Em threw the beef sticks to her, and she got up and gobbled them down. The puppies weren’t going to let that stop them, though! They got up and fed as their mom ate beef sticks.

Most of Serbia reminded me of a place where firemen or soldiers would go to train to get real world experience in an abandoned, burned out town. There were some pretty bits, but most of it was just depressing. There were stray dogs EVERYWHERE. I was not sad to leave Serbia.

Romania promised to be better. Well, not immediately. The landscape did change pretty soon after we crossed the border, though, turning from flat and desolate to tree-filled rolling hills. I know it’s not Serbia or Croatia’s fault that they were cursed with ugly, war-torn landscapes (and of course, we really only saw very small parts of both countries), but it was nice to get somewhere that didn’t make you want to just curl up and die.

We got to Timisoara at about 5. We also discovered that Romania is in a different time zone than the rest of continental Europe we’ve seen thus far. We checked in to our hotel, and then went out to explore and get some dinner. First, we stopped at what is delightfully called “Stonehenge”. It was right by our hotel, so we just walked there.

I had seen pictures of the Orthodox Cathedral on TripAdvisor, and I wanted to see it. I used the “map it” button, and we set off to find it. We had to drive downtown, but then we parked and walked. We walked all the way across downtown to find the Cathedral, but it wasn’t where the map had said it would be. Max checked a map that he had downloaded, and it said it was all the way back the other way, about a block from where we had parked. Argh. Ah, well. In the middle of downtown, we had seen a lovely square lined with colorful buildings. It was such a nice change from the grey of Croatia & Serbia.

We continued to walk towards the Cathedral, and we found Victory Square. It had some beautiful buildings on both sides.

The Cathedral was at the end of it. It is so pretty! The roof is bright green with colored tiled designs. Just lovely. We went inside, but I didn’t know if photography was allowed, and it was too dim inside for hip shots to work. It was the first time I had been in an Orthodox cathedral, it was pretty neat.

We didn’t have a whole bunch of Romanian money, so we got some cheap dinner in the little food stands in the square. I got mine at Chipsy Kings – fries with mayo. Yummy!

We went back to the hotel and got ready for bed. We Skyped with mom, it was fun. :)

Emma says:  The drive to the graveyard was really, really long, and I got really bored. The graveyard was really big, but we didn't find it. I kept telling mom that she should take pictures of the unreadable ones and say they were her family. Romania was pretty, and better than Bosnia. I got a giant pack of pigeons to come sit next to me when I threw them some bread, and then I just kept feeding them.