FIRST TIME in NOVI SAD, Serbia! 🇷🇸 – Is this city worth a visit?

In this week’s travel vlog we visit Novi Sad, Serbia for the first time. Is this city worth a visit?

We start our day in Novi Sad at a local market called Futoška pijaca where we eat a Serbian pork scone (Pogacice sa Cvarcima) and drink some fresh pomegranate juice.
We then stroll through the streets of Novi Sad where we admire the Novi Sad Synagogue and the Name of Mary Catholic church. We make a stop at the Trčika which is a cool café in an old tram. Here we get to taste a Plazma shake which is a milkshake made out of popular cookies in Serbia. While we continue our exploration we get some popcorn from a local street vendor. Then we visit Petrovaradin Fortress where we enjoy the beautiful view of Novi Sad. Finally,we end the day with a delicious Serbian dinner paired with rakjia at Plava Frajla restaurant.

Filmed on January 28th 2024

WATCH NEXT: Our other vlogs in Serbia
▶︎ https://youtu.be/-yF7foovfXA
▶︎ https://youtu.be/tLZQ5hgmrFc

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We’re Brandon and Anja, an international couple (from Canada and Germany) traveling the world together as digital nomads on a budget. We want to explore as many countries as possible and eat all the amazing local foods every place has to offer. We hope our travel vlogs can inspire others to do the same.

———————————
Chapters:
00:00 – Intro
00:43 – We eat a Serbian pork scone (Pogacice sa Cvarcima)
01:58 – We visit a local market (Futoška pijaca) in Novi Sad
03:35 – Novi Sad Synagogue
04:53 – Name of Mary Catholic church in Novi Sad
05:13 – Plazma Shake at Trčika, Novi Sad’s Tram Café/Bar
06:13 – Popcorn on the streets of Novi Sad
06:55 – Petrovaradin Fortress
08:34 – We eat Serbian food at Plava Frajla in Novi Sad
13:02 – End

Hello everybody, and welcome to another video. Today, we are in Novi Sad, Serbia’s second largest city. There’s around 290.000 people living in Novi Sad, which is obviously a lot smaller than Belgrade. So we’re gonna be walking around here a lot today. I can already see that the old town is super cute,

And there’s also a fortress here, I think. So we might go see that later. And of course, we’re gonna eat a bunch of food because so far, Serbian food has been amazing, so I can’t wait to try more things.

We came to the market in Novi Sad, and there’s a pastry shop right outside, and I couldn’t just walk past because I’m hungry and it’s breakfast time, and they had these pastries that looked really delicious. They were less than a dollar. And on the receipt, it said Pogačica. I’m not quite sure

What that means. I think it means scone. I don’t know if there’s a filling or maybe… I don’t know. Let’s see. There is a filling. I don’t know what it is. It’s kind of salty. I don’t know if it’s meat but it’s really yummy.

But I don’t know if it’s nuts? It’s not sweet at all, and it’s very fresh. It’s kind of a little bit greasy, like most pastries here. Yum. This is super soft and fresh. And even after smelling it as well, I have no idea what this is. I have no idea.

No idea what this is. Leave it in the comments! The pastry’s really soft. I feel like it needs something else, though. Yeah. It would good with something else inside. But it’s good on its own too. Yeah. It’s really fresh and flaky, the pastry,

But I feel like if it had some sort of butter or cream or cheese or something inside it would be good. Or kaymak. But, you know, the pastry itself is delicious. Whenever we go to a new city, we always like to check out the local markets

Because that’s truly where the heart of a city normally is. It’s really hustling and bustling today, even though it’s a Monday. There’s a variety of different things. There’s fresh produce. There’s movie posters. There’s clothes. There’s pretty much anything you could possibly want here.

We’re excited to check it out and see what else this market has. And it seems like we’re the only foreigners here, so I guess, you know, that’s when a place is legit. We got some fresh pomegranates juice because we saw lots of stands that sell pomegranates and juice.

It’s delicious. It’s also completely clearly filtered, which is quite nice. So when we were living in Istanbul, we stayed there for about like four months, something like that. We would always get pomegranate juice. I asked Anja if this is tart. She’s like, oh, no, not really. It is super tart.

Super sour. But delicious. And it’s in a good way because I absolutely love pomegranate juice, and I love that tart sourness to it. And as you said, I do like the fact that it’s filtered. Makes it easier to drink.

The bakery that was selling these scones was also selling pork cracklings and pork floss, I think. So we’re now wondering if maybe the the topping is porkflakes but it doesn’t taste too porky. It’s delicious. So this is the Novi Sad Synagogue, and it was completed in 1909,

And it’s a former synagogue, and now it has concerts and events there. It’s absolutely beautiful. I would love to go to a concert there. Yeah. I don’t think the kind of concerts we go to would be in this synagogue. You don’t know. You they have punk shows in there? Maybe.

No. It’s really, really cool. That architecture is absolutely beautiful. I don’t know. we haven’t been to many synagogues, I don’t think I’ve ever been inside one, no. This is one of the most beautiful ones we’ve seen from the outside for sure. Very impressive. There was a timeline of the first bicycle

And the first bike trail. And Brandon doesn’t care because he doesn’t know how to ride the bike. We’re here at the end of January, and it’s so sunny. It’s crazy. We’re so lucky with the weather. It hasn’t really rained once, so it’s the perfect day to explore Novi Sad.

This is the name of Mary Catholic Church, and it was finished in 1894. So it’s over a hundred years old, and it’s Nova Sad’s largest Gothic revival church. It’s beautiful. We just went to a bar called Trčika. I’m not sure how to say it, which is in this old tram cart.

This is what the trams used to be like until the 1950s, when all the trams were replaced by buses in Novi Sad. And it’s really cool. It’s a really cool atmosphere. It’s this old school train cart, and it’s pretty awesome. Yeah.

It’s so wide in there. It’s crazy how big the trams were back then. And there’s all these cool decorations. It looks like a time capsule. Like, you step back in time. But, yeah, we both enjoyed ourselves there. I got a Bailey’s coffee and Anja got a plazma shake,

Which basically just tasted like whole puréed glass of cookies. Yeah. A plazma is like the most popular cookie, I guess, in Serbia. The shake just tasted like somebody took the plazma cookie and mushed them up, and it was delicious. Yeah. My coffee was just okay,

But this place is absolutely worth checking out just for the environment because it’s super, super cool in there. Brandon wanted to get more popcorn. Yeah. We couldn’t resist. It’s one of the best things about Serbia is all these little popcorn stands everywhere. It’s delicious too. This was only sixty cents. Yeah. So cheap.

We are at the Petrovaradin fortress, which was finished in 1780, and there’s like a really cool clock tower here. And the view is amazing. It’s one of those places where everybody puts the locks on the fence or gate up here. I’m assuming it’s like a a love lock thing.

I’ve seen them all over the world, but I didn’t know they have one up here. I definitely think that Novia Sad is a lot prettier than it first seems when you come into the town, especially when you come into the train station or the bus station,

It looks a bit rough, I suppose. And then the old town has super pretty houses, and also on this side of the Danube River, all the houses looks so old and cute and quirky. It’s really really pretty.

Yeah. It was a bit weird when we first came in to the city from the bus, but after walking around a lot, it’s super pretty. It’s super charming, and we definitely like it here. Yes. I didn’t really wanna come up here at first because I was a bit lazy,

But now that I see the view, I think everyone should definitely come up to the fortress and to the clock tower. Especially on a sunny day, this. It’s really really awesome considering it’s January. And under the fortress, there are tunnels and catacombs that are over three hundred years old,

And there are apparently six kilometers long, and you can take a tour, and it’s really creepy, and I would love to do it, but it’s too expensive. Yeah. I think it was like $30 or something like that for private tour. I don’t know if there’s any other options besides that,

But it’s a bit out of our budget for 30 bucks. We’re at Plava Frajla right now, which is a restaurant, really close to our Airbnb, and this is where we’re gonna have food. And I’m so excited we got a cucumber salad for a starter,

But, well, it wasn’t really a cucumber salad. It was just cucumbers. The order went a bit wrong, I suppose, because I asked for a pickled cucumber salad, and it was just plain cucumbers, but we made it into a cucumber salad with some vinegar and oil and salt and pepper and all that.

So now it’s delicious. And we ordered some filled shish kebabs and a bunch of delicious stuff. And I also have rakija here. So živeli! Cheers, I suppose. So strong. This is apricot, but this actually tastes like apricot. I’m not gonna shoot it. This is way too much of a shot,

But I’m gonna sip on it and enjoy it. Delicious. All of our food has arrived. We actually ordered an appetizer, but everything came out at the same time. So the appetizer that we ordered was stuffed peppers. Apparently, you can order stuffed peppers in a different varieties. We get a deep fried version,

But I know that you can order just the peppers themselves without any breading and usually stuffed with a bunch of meat and rice. I think this is stuffed with Kaymak, if I’m not mistaken. So let’s see. Yeah. It is. It almost feels like a jalapeno. But I don’t think it’s a jalapeno.

I don’t know, let’s try it out. It’s not very spicy or anything like that. So I don’t definitely don’t think it’s a jalapeno, but it reminds me of like a jalapeno popper or something like that. Really creamy kaymak cheese. Nice and deep fried.

The pepper is very fresh as well. So, yeah, this is nice. This pepper has so much kaymak inside. This definitely tastes like a jalapeno popper, but so much better. Because this is not spicy. It’s also not spicy, but just a cheese inside and it’s so juicy.

It’s delicious. We are not eating cevapi here and things like that because we actually did a big food tour during the last few days. So if you wanna watch that, you should check out our other video where we eat a bunch of Serbian food.

And it was all divine. So I have some stuffed shish kebab here. I don’t know what it’s stuffed with. It doesn’t really look stuffed. Oh, I think it has ham inside and maybe cheese, and it also has cheese on top. I don’t know. The think it’s like chicken or something else.

It’s not like what I expected. I thought it would be like, a cevapi. It’s still delicious. I wanna see what this is because all of the meals came with this blob of something. Is it rice? It’s is almost like a savory rice pudding.

I don’t know, I think this is rice. Some have carrots inside. Yeah. It’s pretty yummy. I think I need some kaymak with this. So I tried to order this minced turkey dish, which looked like it came with some béchamel on top or mashed potatoes or something,

But obviously the language barrier was a problem, and he did not understand. So I got some other turkey dish. Looks like it’s basically just grilled turkey, and it comes with fries and rice. But this looked a little bit too plain,

So we decided to add some Kaymak in Ajvar on the side because of course, once you add that, it’s gonna be delicious anyways. I feel like if you add kaymk or Ajvar to anything, it’s gonna taste good. So definitely with these sauces it’s not bad at all.

Before we even came here, I looked at the menu and I looked at the desserts and I saw this blueberry pie, although it looks more like a strudel, and it looks absolutely amazing. It’s topped with all these blueberries, a little bit of ice cream on top.

It’s really hot. It’s melting. So I’m gonna dig in. I got the perfect bite. Wow. By far, the best thing we had this evening. Man, that’s good. It’s got a super strong blueberry flavor. Obviously. Nice creamy melted vanilla ice cream and a slightly chewy kind of filo pastry. That is absolutely delicious.

This is the best Blueberry dessert I’ve ever had. So good! This is the end of our day in Nova Sad. We had lots of fun, and we definitely think if you’re coming to Serbia, you should go visit some other smaller cities as well.

And yeah, if you like this video, please write us a comment, give us a like, and, of course, the most important thing by far, subscribe, and make sure that you go back and watch the rest of our social media videos.

Now, that is it, and we’ll see you all in the next one! Bye!