where in the world can you visit a house teetering precariously on a rock
in the middle of a cascading river and a secluded 13th century battle-worn
monastery situated deep in the autumnal coloured countryside i'll tell you where western serbia
i'm currently based in the city of Uzice in the district of Zlatibor
where we've already visited one of the country's most magnificent fortresses
today we're in Bajina Bašta straddling the border of bosnia and herzegovina
this is the video where we venture out into the serbian countryside for the first time
curious you should be excited i know i am western serbia really is next level travel let's get going
okay hello people welcome to friday today i am in the center of Bajina
Bašta and i am so tired i think i might die of exhaustion i've had three hours
sleep but we haven't got time to sleep we've got lots of exploring to do i'm right at this
sort of crossroads in the center of town Bajina Bašta kind of feels like like a small
town you know there are ladies sweeping the streets over there getting rid of the leaves
there are people chopping logs and things like that it's very much kind of a rurally area if you
know what i mean like farming there are orchards fields things like that smoke rising from chimneys
it's quite what's the word i can't think what the word is but you know what i mean
there's um you know all the usual stuff you would see in towns or cities in serbia bakeries
restaurants kafanas but a lot of the things we want to do in this video
are actually out of town that's why i'm here but let's look at that sign first yes it's
just one of those obligatory signs that shows the distances to places Belgrade 165 kilometers
away Novi Sad we went there a few videos ago there's Cacak somewhere that's not too far away
Uzice and we are on the eastern edge of Tara national park and that's one thing i feel
about here is that it's kind of a stopping off point for people to explore tara national park
okay i've gotta come back here later anyway so you never know we might do something here later
my vocabulary may not be at its usual high level today i can just about say dog cat and bollocks
um but anyway Bajina Bašta right another incredibly difficult place name to pronounce
in serbia i've been told it's like the word buying in english take off the g add an a Bajina
Bašta so i hope that's right and it was a it's been a town since like 1834 i think
it was built on the site of a former turkish settlement and baina bashter basically means
baja's garden so there was a guy baja osman who was responsible for basically turning
Bajina Bašta into a recognized town and it's like um yeah baja's garden because of all the orchards
and farming rounds here i believe we're heading up into this direction the bus station's up there
and there's a petrol station don't worry that's not where we're going here's the autobuska stanica
bus station it was about 450 dinar from Uzice 620am in the morning is the first bus
and i went to the toilet in the toilet over there earlier it's one of them sex toilets you know
the ones from people's phone numbers on the wall and elaborately drawn pictures of penises lovely
okay that didn't take too long to walk from the town down to the river drina which runs alongside
the town and also the border between serbia and bosnia and herzegovina which
is over there of course i know borders in this part of the world are debatable
i know some people will say that that's also Republika Srpska because i think it's republican
i can't pronounce anything today um yeah we're gonna have a look it looks really green doesn't it
at least with my eyes maybe not on camera
i'm just going down these steps in that shot of me walking down the steps at the end of it
you might have seen in the corner what we're here to see it's behind that thing up there
it's the house on the Drina let me walk down these steps first before i have an accident
how pretty there's a little boat moored up next to this what's it called a pontoon
i think with the house in the distance it's very peaceful i can hear fish lolloping about
in the river you've got that smell of fish as well look at the uh hills in the distance
i can hear ducks so you might be wondering why in the name of jesus christ is there a house built
on a rock in the middle of a river well i'll tell you why it was built in 1969 by a guy who
really just loved this area i believe i think it was him and a group of his friends he just
wanted a house in this area as like a little retreat kind of thing it's one bedroom obviously
it's not a mansion and i've been told two things right number one that it has been
swept away down the river by currents about five times and the other story i've heard is that has
never happened and actually it's remained on that rock regardless of strong currents or higher tide
um it does look a bit precarious if i'm honest you know that'll be a nightmare in bed you know
watching netflix and next thing you know just swept down the river see vocabulary can't do it
i have seen pictures that in the summer you can like get a kayak out onto the river the picture
i saw it was on that map earlier that i showed you just above the map i don't think i showed
you that i'm determined to get a bit closer so i've gone beyond the little lookout point
down here oh yeah we can get a bit closer
nice oh i've just walked into a spider's web
let's see if we can get down here how do i do this to myself there better not be a spider in my hair
this is handy there are conveniently placed rocks and trees to grab hold of it's still a bit
precarious though oh i made it i'm not going to go down there because it's like sand mud hell zone
yeah here it does say that there's a violent tantrum and the water carries off the tiny
house but then they replace it with a newer one even sturdier and there's a folk tale
this guy Marko Kraljuvec he wanted to get to the other side of the arena and he threw a rock
into the uh river because he didn't want to get his horse's hooves wet
right fast forward a little bit of time i've walked through buying bashed it again i'm
heading in the other direction we have cows we have hills we have the sun coming out and it's
also very manly here there are a lot of men like chopping wood with axes getting all sweaty while
smoking at the same time classic serbia i can also hear like a chainsaw in the background
yes cows with cowbells now for those of you that have seen my mexico videos you might
remember i'll be having flashbacks of me walking down the street into oblivion yes pizzagate in
ciudad cuauhtemoc in mexico when i walked 17 kilometers for a slightly diabolical slightly it
was horrendous a pizza that was awful we're doing it again not to the same degree we're heading to
the Raca monastery this is Bajina Bašta logs chopped up cats
oh it's a beautiful angel come on now come on
it is good to come out into a more rural area of serbia speaking of mexico this does kind of
remind me of some mexico videos i did where i just walked into the middle of nowhere in these
small places and somebody said to be in a comment recently the smaller the places in serbia the more
yugos and sustains there are as you can see and over here i've seen is it a ram
okay this is where i need to turn off the main road according to google maps
to go down where that car is going oh yeah there we go Bajina Bašta Raca monastery this
is serbia bloody brilliant i wanted to say as well um going on what i said earlier about
the fact that many people would say that over the river is still serbia
the issue of borders in this part of the world is always a contentious and divisive issue you know
there are so many things to consider when it comes to borders such as actual borders cultural borders
geopolitics people's actual opinions you know when i was in Vojvodina the amount of comments on that
video about you know it's not serbia it's hungry and you know it's the same here and add religion
into the mix especially around bosnia and you've got a whole other nightmare to talk about look at
all those houses down there it might not look like it on camera but it's insane because you've got
all these houses with the the classic orangey terracotta roofs you've got this kind of mist
above them and then the green of the hills behind and then up there you've got all these hills high
up i mean houses high up in the hills and i do notice here and also in would you say a lot
of houses use like um a proper you know fire with a chimney you know you see smoke rising
all the time what does this sign mean no skyscrapers probably not
right my lovers there is definitely a lot of tractors around here carrying logs that's a
southwest england accent a bad one speaking of southwest england it does feel a bit like
devon dorset you know these uh roads oh [ __ ] in the middle of nowhere with trees
and properly in the serbian countryside i've seen so many animals sheep something that was
well it looked like a swan but it wasn't the swan there was that ram earlier i saw a lot
of pumpkins on the ground houses here as i said with smoke coming out the top
it's so peaceful
birds in there are they like pheasants or something i don't know i'm not a bird expert
look at the colors this is the reason i do these ridiculous walks for dodgy pizzas but not in this
case because i wouldn't be able to experience these amazing autumnal colors as in usually
hearing chickens clucking and sheep bleating oh my vocabulary's come back we're here
i see the monastery let's have a closer look it's like a really large
complex okay the walk was definitely worth it you have to excuse the log soaring in the
background um the setting for this monastery is mind-blowing it's beautiful with these colors
surrounding it and then you've got the yellows of the buildings and then the actual monastery
behind me it was built in the 1200s originally so it's almost 800 years old if my maths served
me correctly um and it's been destroyed multiple times over the years i think in the 1800s again
in world war ii when the bulgarian army came through here and basically torched everything and
in this monastery during world war ii they stored the oldest
known preserved example of the serbian cyrillic alphabet underneath the altar to protect it from
um you know any more destruction and then obviously it's been
reconstructed over time it's just stunning there are paintings inside dating back to the 1800s
they've got all the information that you need to know about this monastery here outside
here i am sitting on the ground having a cigarette um outside the monastery um this
is once a lifetime stuff because i've always wanted to come to visit a monastery in serbia
that is you know one of the secluded middle of nowhere places of historical significance this
isn't the only one of course there are many many many in serbia throughout the country
in this kind of location and um i think it's a bit different from you know going to a church or a
cathedral in the middle of a city because you know i've had to walk all this way to come here and it
was really worth it um it's just so silent um but yeah inside gold everywhere artwork on the walls
very impressive and you'll notice that you know on the the side as you walk in there are
the are they like seats are they like pews because in orthodox religious buildings
there aren't like pews as in a church like a catholic church um so yeah that's one of the
differences you'll see in serbia when you go to orthodox religious buildings let's put the bag on
it's time to walk back to Bajina Bašta i know we haven't actually really been in by the bachelor
in this video but as i said at the beginning these are the two places i wanted to go today
i need to get back home to as you'd say because i have a job believe it or not um so yeah i've
really enjoyed this even though it's been a bit of a walk it's been brilliant and it's been my first
experience of serbian countryside hopefully not the last next up we're going to be in mokra gora
we're going on the Sargan Eight train it's a historical train in serbia with a lot of
history and amazing scenery once again um so don't forget to subscribe like leave a
comment have you been to this place let me know where else can you go in Bajina Bašta
leave it down in the comments check the end screens out as well at the end after the well when
the dramatic music starts probably and i'll see you next time on a train brilliant catch you later