24/6 Budapest to Osijek, local food lunch, city walk, local cuisine for tea

Today we took the bus to Osijek .

This is our trip leader, Ivan's, home city and we were in for a treat.  A few years ago Ivan was doing the local guide role here, until Intrepid invited him to be a full time leader of trips.

The trip took around 3.5 hours with the border crossing into Croatia included.  You never know how long the border crossing will take.

We drove into town over the river and past the old city walls and found that we were to be staying in the old part of town that was originally a garrison area for officers.  We were staying at Maksimilian guest house.  The place is so named after the officer who once owned it.

Our hosts had prepared a wonderful lunch of Croatian food for us.  A wonderful sausage called Kulen,

Kulen

Kulen and salami with prosciutto and local capsicum (they call this paprika) 

more local meat

very mild fresh cheese

There were often tomato and cucumber on offer here. 

shortbread pastry filled with cream cheese or fruit

fresh and refreshing fruit

more tomato and cucumber - this time chopped into a salad

a delicious cucumber and cream  salad

and bread of course. 

 vegetables, cheeses and breads, along with a welcome drink of their local Rakija (a spirit distilled and  clear in colour, which must be skulled from a shot glass) .Our Rakija was plum flavoured and left a warm glow in the chest after drinking. Not bad for a lunch time wake me up!! The RAkija was followed by a glass of Grasevina (the local white which is very pleasant) .

After filling up on this and relaxing in the beautiful garden for a while

our local guide turned up to take us for a walk in the city. Matte grew up in Osijek and was a young teenager in 1991 when the war broke out, so remembers it very well. He described to us what is was like to decide whether or not to go down to the basement yet again from your bed when you heard the sound of bombs landing nearby, and being caught out in the street when firing commenced and being frozen with fear until his Dad came out a rescued him.  He also believes that another war is inevitable and plans to send his wife and children away when this happens, but to stay himself.

Our group is not backward in coming forward, and Matte was kept very busy answering questions as we all tried to get our heads around the reasons for and timing of the war.  It is all very difficult to understand how former neighbors and friends could suddenly end up fighting on opposite sides of a war.

We also changed money here in the main city square , where we converted some of our Euro into Croatian Karuna.

This building has been left since the war in 1991.  No-one knows where/who the owner is, so it has to wait for 40 years before the government claim it and it can be repaired, sold, reused. In the meantime the adjoining neighbors live with a wreck beside them. 

Shrapnel damage on a building. 

Strange variation in buildings side by side. (one German built, one Soviet built)

old fortress.tower

across the drawbridge and through into the old town

Up on to the old walls - the first of many old fortress wall walks. (and the shortest of them)  

the old town

We walked back from the city along the riverbank and past the white bridge over the River Drava  (officialy this is called the Bridge of Youth, but no-one in the town calls it this.  The bridge is lit up at night by red, blue and white lights (the colours of the city) which were sponsored by Coca Cola after the citizens of Osijek saved more than 100 000 bottle caps to mark  50 years of Coke production in Croatia. We didn't actually see it lit up at night, when it is supposed to be quite beautiful.

This river was once crossed by the Suleiman Bridge (built by the Ottomans and 7km long, crossing the wetlands on the other side to allow access to the city across those impassable areas.)

We didn't have much time to relax at home before heading out for a typical Croatian dinner of too much food made of mostly meat. Tonight it was venison stew with dumplings. It was rich and delicious.  We had a huge pot of stew and a huge pot of gnocchi like dumplings to share between 5 of us on our table. We were VERY full at the end.

We stumbled home and crashed into bed - well, strictly speaking I was on the couch, to give the invalid some space.   The air con worked well, the sheets were good and we slept relatively well.