Weekend in Banat, day one

Two weeks ago, it was my birthday and Mateja & I went on a weekend to Banat. Banat is a part of Vojvodina, located on the northern part of Serbia.

Our main destination was ethno village Tiganjica, authentic replica of an old Banat household with a small farm and a zoo.

They have a bunch of ponies who graze in the yard!

This is the chef’s grill. The whole village was build around a hunter’s restaurant Trofej. With no doubt, I claim – Serbian food is the mother of slow food. And the restaurants here are no place for dieting or being vegan. Try asking for vegetarian dish and the waiter will probably be very surprised. Of, course, he’ll organize something, probably grilled mushrooms, but he will most likely think you’re crazy. And here, you’ll get a normal size portion of your meal. I always wonder, reading other bloggers restaurant’s reviews, how small the portions are. What’s the point of going to the restaurant if your going to go home hungry? Well, maybe I eat too much.

Later in the day, we went to the Kaštel Ečka hunting manor. It is a beautiful English style, 19th century castle that is also a hotel. I will tell you more about it in the next post, but now, I want to show you the castle’s backyard. Strolling through their park we found ourselves in front of a terribly ruined building. We had to go inside, of course

We went in through the basement. It was so dark! And it really didn’t feel like we were in the backyard of a castle.

As from the looks of the inside, I suppose it was some kind of a stable or a garage. The contrast with the restored castle was enormous!

Upstairs was a huge mess. And a second floor. The only way up were broken wooden stairs. As I’m very light, I climbed up and Mateja stayed down all grumpy to take photos of me playing Lara Croft Nothing interesting upstairs I found, though. A bunch of garbage, graffiti and a slight fear of height that I didn’t know I had

This watch tower also belongs to the castle complex and is in the worse state than the stable. There were the stairs to the tower but the lower part was missing and it was too creepy inside.

As the evening was approaching, we drove around. The hunting grounds are all over and the nature is stunning.

We saw this fisherman fishing in the canal on the outskirts of Luka’s village. I have to admit, I was against stopping the car and interrupting the man while fishing. I went fishing a lot with my father when I was little and I always remember how he teased me that I’m scaring the fish away But after a short debate that Mateja won, I decided to get out of the car. It turned out that it was a good call, as Mr. Fisherman was in the village management and he invited us to the Tomato festival they’re organizing in the summer!

Plus, “experienced” fisherman like me had to know about the strange fishing net. It’s called čerenac, and it is used to catch small fish, keder, that will later be used as a bait. Big fish eat small fish ;)

The dinner, finally, at Trofej. This is a bowl of Hunter’s soup for two. Ragù-like, with pieces of beef and peas, very spicy, it could be a meal for itself. But, as we’re eating in Serbia, this will only be an appetizer :D

This is called a Train for two à la Trofej. 1kg of various barbecue goodies. The mushy thing in the back are hot yellow bell peppers in vurda. Vurda is a dairy product, very thick, impossible for me to compare with anything else, but if you get the chance to taste it, trust me and don’t miss it. As for the train meal itself, this is not a typical way they serve it in Sebia. Usually, the waiter brings pieces of barbecue one by one to your plate. And before you know it, you have eaten more than 0,5 kg of meat!

To tell you something, after a dinner like that, you’ll be hardly able to breath

Continued here…