Novi Sad

Novi Sad is the Danube's calmest big city: a Habsburg grid of pastel façades on the north bank — the cathedral, the synagogue, the Matica srpska that made it 'the Serbian Athens' — facing, across the water, the rock of Petrovaradin, where the Austrians built the largest fortress on the river to keep the Ottomans on the other side and where a clock tower runs its hands backwards, the long one for the hours, so the boatmen could read it from the water. Every July the fortress fills with the EXIT festival, born in 2000 as a student protest and now four nights of music on the ramparts. In summer the city goes to the Štrand, its own beach on the Danube; on weekends it goes up into the Fruška Gora, a low green mountain of monasteries and vineyards.

The traveller walks Zmaj Jovina and Dunavska streets and sits down at the first terrace that looks right; crosses the Varadin bridge on foot to the fortress and climbs the tunnels and the ramparts for the view back over the city and the river bending away; reads the backwards clock; swims at the Štrand and eats a pljeskavica after; drives or takes the bus into the Fruška Gora for one monastery, Krušedol or Hopovo, and on to Sremski Karlovci for the seminary, the Peace Chapel and a glass of bermet, the sweet spiced wine that went down with the Titanic; and, if it is July, gives EXIT the night.

The Guide's honesty: Novi Sad is easy and inexpensive, and its two days are enough — Belgrade is an hour and a half by train and a different temperament —; EXIT week is the exception: prices double, beds vanish, book in spring; the Štrand charges a small entry and is a proper beach with lifeguards, but the Danube current beyond the ropes is not for swimming; the fortress's tunnels are guided-only and worth it; the 1999 bombing dropped all three bridges into the river and the city rebuilt them — Novi Sad will tell you if it wants to, and does not need to be asked; and the bermet is stronger than the dessert glass suggests. Sail gently.