SERBIA the Media Never Show You

SERBIA the Media Never Show You

On the 24th of March 1999, after years of tensions in the Kosovo region, NATO forces, including those from my country, started a bombing campaign in the country of Serbia. The next 76 days were some of the darkest for a country that had already lived through the violent break up of Yugoslavia and the economic disaster that came with it. And to this day, when most people in the West hear the name Serbia, that’s what comes to mind. But this country’s changed a lot since then, and we’re about to begin a journey right across Serbia, starting here in Belgrade to try to discover more about this country and its people and how they live in 2025. By the way, Belgrade is heaven for all the lovers of brutalist architecture. Just look at this beauty. We spent about 5 days in the great and we fallen in love with it. As Russian British couple, the city feels very familiar and comfortable but different at the same time. It has so many different faces to it and people. People are just so friendly and so amazing. As I said, we absolutely love it here. But it’s time to head out of the city into the countryside and see the real face of Serbia. What’s interesting about Belgrade, it seems like it’s sectioned. So the beach where we’re driving now, this is the new grade and it’s more, you know, familiar to us. Let’s say it looks a lot like a lot of the cities in Russia and throughout posts Soviet countries, very communist, you know, very brutalist. Then there is the old part of the town which is very European and um bougie, very pretty. And also there is a completely brand new part to Bilgrade as well which is called Bgrade Waterfront. will definitely be back to Belgrade. And I wanted to let you know that we are currently planning a group tour throughout the Balkans. Definitely coming and exploring Serbia. So join our mailing list if you would like to be one of the first people to find out about the tours and join us. We are so excited and really can’t wait to be back already. [Music] Traveling through places like this, you spend a lot of time on random Wi-Fi, petrol stations, tiny cafes, guest houses, and honestly, that can be a bit sketchy. So, we’ve been using Surf SharkVPN to keep ourselves secure. Surf Shark encrypts all of your data. So, even if someone else is poking around on some dodgy Wi-Fi where you are in Niche or Noviad, they won’t see a thing. And because we are from the UK, we can switch our virtual location back home, which means we can still access the UK version of Netflix while we’re traveling. And all you need is one account across all of your devices, phones, laptops, tablets, anything, which is great when you’re traveling and you’re on the road and you’re trying to juggle uploads. So, if you’re traveling or would like to keep your online life private, we genuinely recommend Surf Shark. Head to surf shark.com/mattjjoia or use code mattjiulia at checkout for four extra months of Surf SharkVPN absolutely free. We’re nearly there. Nearly at the place. The drive is actually taking quite a while. And on the way, we stopped to have the best coffee in the world. Guess where? Gasprom. And look what I just saw on the way out. I’m becoming proper bulan. Started drinking coffee and all. Look at that. Look at that. Oh my god. And they are selling it. I wonder how much it is. Oh, there is a number for you just in case you want to buy it. Oh, maybe I should ring them. But I don’t even drive yet. Oh. beauty. So, the general direction we’re heading out of Belgrade is south, and that’s because we’re heading back towards Macedonia. Our car is actually registered in Belgrade. It’s a Serbian car, but we hired it in Macedonia. And we asked the hire company how much it would cost us to drop it off in Belgrade, and it was like €400 for like 5 days rental and dropping it off in Belgrade. Again, it’s registered in Belgrade. And in comparison, it was €85 to hire it for 5 days and drop it back in Macedonia. So needless to say, we’re driving our Serbian car all the way back to Macedonia to drop it off. And on the way, we’re actually making a bit of a detour and driving up into the mountains in the southwest of the country. And that’s because there’s one place that we desperately, desperately want to see here in Serbia that we’ve seen online quite a lot. And uh yeah, we’re heading in that direction now. So, as we left Belgra, we were driving on a like a motorway on a highway and recently it was just turned back down to a single track lane and you could see where they’re trying to build the next stage of that highway. And I was reading that eventually that’s going all the way down to Montenegro to the border with Montenegro. And that project it’s being done in stages like as they all often are these highways and I was looking at the funding for it and a lot of the projects here in Serbia generally uh have a lot of Chinese funding. There’s a metro being built in Belgrade that’s Chinese funded highspeed railway that’s going all the way to Budapest being funded by the Chinese government. Um and parts of this were however this was quite interesting that parts of this highway of this motorway were being funded by other parties and one of them was an Aabaijani and a Missouri construction company obviously associated with the Azoui government and I just find that fascinating that Baku obviously as we’ve shown in our videos before is a very well-off city right and they have the ability to host Formula 1 and worldwide events. expose but the country of Aabaijan many people are still struggling in destitute poverty outside of the city but Baku itself and the government infrastructure and the powers that be in and around the government have a lot of ability to project power it seems and to project soft power and aid projects in different places. It’s fascinating to me that here in Serbia, an aeroui company, which isn’t the first country that springs to mind for construction projects, is funding a massive motorway project. It’s fascinating when you travel, you find out so many just random things about countries and connections between each other. What’s the Well, welcome to the mountains of southwest Serbia. Just over in that direction is the border with Bosnia and Hatago. And in this side is the beautiful mountains of southwest Serbia and Kapalik that way. Some of the beautiful ski resorts of this country. But up here is the of Kadinachi. I think that’s how you pronounce it. Anyway, take a look at this. We’ve been reading about this online for so long. Wow. So, spomnik in Serb Croatian means memorial. The word spomnit is like the same in Russian. It means to remember. So Spomnik is the servo creation word for memorial and this is a memorial to the fighters of this region during World War II when Nazi Germany was invading and took over this part of Europe. The people of Ushich like this region fought back and they actually managed to create their own little mini republic in this region and kick the Nazi army out. And this was built in the 60s in the Yugoslav period as a memorial to those people and their cause and their bravery. National heroes. Yeah. 1979. The 23rd of September 1979 was when this was opened. Tito Tito. Well, Serbia and uh former Yugoslavian countries are known for having lots of different swamik peppered throughout the whole region and there are definitely some impressive ones. You know what I’m always thinking is that we left with the pyramids and the Great Wall of China and so many different things and imagine if overnight we just got wiped out and all the information with it and then the new I don’t know generation new humans find all these cultures what will they think what is it because some of them unless you know or you can read what it is you would never Yes. What is going on? A lot of these spondics don’t really look like your traditional war memorials as such. Right on top of this mountain. I mean these are strange old sculptures but yeah really really interesting and I guess that’s what makes them beautiful and unique and poignant and also location of them. Yeah it’s just not just the look of where they are located in the countries as well. We haven’t got the drone with us on this trip because we had to leave it in a certain country that we shouldn’t have bought it into, but if we did, we’d be able to show you this place from above. And it’s pretty incredible, actually, when you look at it directly from above. We’ll see if we can find a photo. A lot of thought went into these and the design of them. And yeah, this one’s pretty special. What do you reckon, mate? You like it? on it. I mean, he lives he lives here, so must like it. Must like it. After the Stalin Tito split, when Yugoslavia moved away from the USSR, the country moved away from all of the Marxist Leninist monuments that were being built prior to that. Tito wanted to build monuments that represented Yugoslavia better and the culture of this country of countries. And that’s why from that period onwards there were spomnics built all over Yugoslavia all the way from Slovenia in the north to Macedonia in the south including this one. Right mate, thanks for the tour. We’ll pay you on the way out. [Applause] He’s waiting for his tip. Is there a shop here? Uhhuh. That’s all I have. And when it went from being bulan weather in Bilgrade to being Baltic out here. That’s it. He’s forgotten about us. That’s it. As quick as we became friends, he’s forgotten we existed. What an amazing place. But now it’s time to continue our journey. We’re just driving for a town called And if you’ve ever read anything about Serbia online, this place would have come up 100% because it’s quite unique. You see all the beautiful old Bulan houses and bang, right in the middle somewhere you have a massive collection of brutalist buildings. It certainly does look uh interesting from the side. You can see it when you drive through the town, but the view from above is interesting and quite strange. No, it looks very unusual. Just look at them pretty houses. The town is very, very healing. Certainly makes for a very unusual location. I’ll find you. Okay, we can’t leave this dog without food. We just seen some uh shop for animals where you can get some dog food. Let’s go and grab some. Uh moakihrache. How much? Um, no. Cut it. Cut it. How much? So somehow I was just given this food for free because I wasn’t able to pay by card. [Music] Told you people in Serbia are just incredible. Okay. So, I wasn’t able to pay by card. Mhm. And this guy gave me all this food for free. You serious? Yep. He was like, “Just it’s okay. Just go. It’s fine.” Human food in there. Wow. You’re sweet. I don’t know how to react to things like that, you know, because it makes me feel guilty like that. I know. Shall we put it somewhere there? Yeah. I feel like I’ve lost my dog now. [Music] He’s done a runner. Maybe it wasn’t a real dog the whole time. It was just a mirage. Imagine that we’ll go to edit this video and there is nothing. We’re just talking to ourselves. He probably doesn’t want to talk to us after we left him an apple last time. Hello. Come on. Come on. Come on. Okay, go eat, baby. Voila. Ciao. I’m so happy he came back. Just as we’ve given up hope and we’re walking back to the car, he just appeared from around the corner. It wasn’t a mirage after all. Okay, let’s go find an ATM and uh give this guy some money for the food and buy some more food so we have it with us just in case. Okay. What a sweet guy. He’s like, “But what? We just pulled in in a random village on the way because we’re getting quite peckish. It doesn’t seem quite lively and busy driving through it, but let’s see what there is around. Hopefully, we can find something to eat. It’s very pretty. Very atmospheric. Little stream there. Look at that. Well, there’s not a lot going on here. There doesn’t seem to be a restaurant. I think we need to um speak to a local fast because the clouds are coming over and I’m pretty sure it’s going to rain at any minute. But take a look at this. Just over there, there’s a massive massive truck full of sweet corn. Corn on the cob. Look at this. Uh how do you say that? cut. Wow. Wow. Quala. Well, we made it back into the car just in time, but that’s cut our walk through the village short. So, let’s drive somewhere and see if we can find a restaurant on the road or something because yeah, no chance to walk around anymore. What a shame. What a beautiful village. I’d imagine in the summer, this place is just absolutely gorgeous. And with all that sweet corn we saw earlier, I think it just shows that, yeah, this is such a fertile land. And everything probably grows here. Climate’s perfect, isn’t it, for all that? I’ve seen there are lots of pottery shops throughout this village and actually seen a lot of it being sold as we were driving through Serbia. When we move to Serbia, I will be back. What if we live in an apartment? You just gonna have a load of pottery. I don’t care, mate. Living room. Yeah, you know, we’re going to have an I don’t know, some sort of outdoor space and uh I’m going to go dig a hole and cook something. Bookmark this place then. Tish done. Done. I got it on record. I got it on the video. True, true, true. It’s proper hammering down now. Welcome. Thank you. Please welcome Thank you very much. Oh, you have one key in the door and thank for are you from Nish? Yes. Da da. Yes. Can we eat? Uh, eat restaurant. Something Serbian. Yes. Local restaurant. Mean me. Yes. Uh, 5 minutes to walk. Perfect. Strike and left. That’s it. Google maps Google restaurant me. Me and Galia and Stanisk. I uh send uh free restaurants. Okay. What’s up? Thank you so much. Good day. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Bye, Stefan. Bye-bye. It just stopped raining and it got dark. I feel like we spent Well, I don’t feel like we did spend the whole day in the car. And uh Shall we go and get some food? Yeah, let’s go. It’s basically been we wanted to film a lot more in the mountains. We were we had like a whole route planned through the through the mountains, but the rain just ruined us. So, yeah, we stepped off foot on the gas and we’ve headed to the south and we’re in I think it’s the third city. I wanted to say second city, but I think Novisad is the second. So, the third city of Nish, the capital of the south of Serbia. Let’s go get some food. I’m starving. Let’s go. I started taking my shoes off. I don’t know why. Let me just grab some water. It’s a restaurant. Mez good. Okay. Julia’s dinner is baked beans and cabbage salad. Baked beans and cabbage salad. I’m going to fall for this. Wish me luck. This is going to be a long night. You know what? Tomorrow you might not need to press the gas as much. You just fart all the way back to Macedonia. It’s the boss. [Music] It’s pissing down again. We wanted to go for a walk around Nish, but um let’s go and get a burk instead, I guess. Borak burk bor like my sister. No risk. No. No. Honestly, on days like this, I count my lucky stars that we’ve got a bloody car. The idea of walking to a bus station or a train station right now is not the one. All right. Oh, wow. There’s a queue there. [Music] I think he cut it. Hello. Oh, so many flying rats. Got it. Apparently, best Buddha in town. We’re currently talking to Molly about traveling to Russia. They asked us, Molly is Don Travel Channel. They asked us the best ways, you know, to travel Russia and they recommended us. to this place. Apparently, it’s the best bury, not just in town, but in Serbia. Yeah. Voila. Should we drive out and eat them? Yeah. I feel like a gas prom coffee. I think it could be time. Gasp prom coffee and we’ll eat these in the car park. How romantic does that sound? Sounds really good. Great. Let’s go. Anton, apparently that’s the place. Well, we’re going to try it in a minute. And um if it’s not good, I’ll give you a good advice how to travel Russia. Look at this as well. You can get your Russian bottom moco and sh moco here if you want. Go in your coffee. Bab. It’s like a Russian gift shop. Oh, wow. Is it oil? They’re on top of one another. Yeah, it’s quite oily. It’s quite oily. I mean, bulk generally oily, aren’t they? The last one we had was about a week ago in Macedonia and it kind of put us off. It was so I’m like, this is amazing. It’s a lot better. That’s what a burk should be, right? Soft, hot, filling, crispy fo pastry. Yeah, it’s really good. Banging. Okay, let’s head out of the city to a place on the way we really wanted to see as well. Look, you see this? There is cirilic and Latin letters. And you can often find this throughout Serbia because there are officially two alphabets in Serbia. And let’s hoy hoy a little bit about languages because I just love it. Serbian. If you’re wondering if we can understand Serbian easily, well, there are lots of the same words. There are some words that pronounce differently and sometimes it’s easier for me to understand the word if I read it rather than someone saying it because it’s a bit confusing. Another thing that we realized the word will have a similar root but different meaning. So you’ll think it’s one thing but no false friends. This was the other spammen or spomnik that we really wanted to see here in Serbia. And this is probably one of the most poignant of all of them. We’re currently in a place called Buban. And it was here that mass executions of men, women, and children were carried out from 1942 to 1944 by the German army. And thousands and thousands of of people perished here. And actually in this area, in this wooded area and the area that we’re walking up to, there were trenches dug to bury the bodies. And with the Red Army coming towards Yugoslavia and entering Yugoslavia in 1944, a lot of those trenches were dug back up by prisoners of war. And the bodies were ordered to be burnt in order to get rid of any trace of the atrocities here. But what happened here was discovered. And this Bamenik was built in honor of the men, women, and children that perished here. Let’s take a look. The three fists behind us are supposed to represent the men, the women, and the children that were killed during this time. And World War II was supposed to be the last time that Yugoslavs, South Slavs, were pitted against one another and fought against one another. Obviously, we all know now that wasn’t the case. And only 50 years later during the break up of Yugoslavia, it happened again. And people in this part of the world have been through so much pain and so many wars. And I’d imagine for many spam menics like this have multi- layers, not just World War II, but the hurt and loss from the ’90s as well. [Applause] Right, we’ve got a flight to catch tonight, but it’s from Scopier. So, it’s full steam ahead to the Macedonian border. Let’s go south. The border is right there. Let’s head to Scorpia.

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This is Serbia, the heart of the Balkans. Serbia has been through some tumultuous times of the past few decades, from the fall of Yugoslavia to the losing of territories. Most people in the West only know of Serbia from the news, and mainly some of the recent conflicts and dark moments. But this is a country that is changing and has so more to it. Serbia is full of beautiful people, landscapes, great food and interesting history.
Join us as we travel across the entirety of Serbia, from Belgrade to the mountains in the west and Nis in the south. This is the real Serbia in 2025.

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