First Impressions of Niš | Serbia Vlog 🇷🇸

Behind me is a tower that the Ottomans built from the actual skulls of their enemies. Right now, I'm in Serbia, and in this video I'm going to give you a tour of Nis, a historic city on the crossroad of Eastern Europe and the Middle East. It's 2pm right now in Nis, Serbia. The interesting thing is that Nis used to be a very important stop for hippies on their way to Istanbul in the 60s and 70s, and it still is an important stop for travelers like me who like to explore this region. It's a pretty historical place, but I want to start off the vlog by talking about probably my second favorite thing about Serbia, the food. Serbian food, or Balkan food in general, is just freaking amazing. And Nis is famous for having some of the best food in Serbia. And I haven't eaten anything today, despite it being 2pm. So, I'm going to start the day off with some burek. I just got the traditional Nis burek, and some yogurt, which cost 150 dinars, which is exactly 1.5 dinars. It just went from being completely rainy to super sunny all of a sudden, and I'm about to try some burek in this place called Targ Kralja Milana. From my 2 months in Belgrade, I know that Targ means square, and Kralja means king, so I guess this square was dedicated to some king, and it seems like this is the main square of Nis. So burek is this heavy, greasy pastry with lots of different layers. It can be made from cheese, or it can be made from minced meat with beef, pork, and ham. I just got the traditional Nis burek, which I think is made mostly from cheese, and this is very hard to eat. If you can tell from the surface, it's very prone to falling apart. Now there is no way to not make a mess, you just gotta eat it, make sure you have enough napkins when you get it. Real cheesy, real good, really good hangover food, for anyone wondering. That's how I discovered burek in Slovenia, 3 years ago, when I was pretty hungover after a night out in Ljubljana, and my life was never the same again. One more very important thing, when you get your burek, get some yogurt with it too, it's the best combination ever. Burek and yogurt. Alright, need to finish this up, and catch a bus to the next spot. So Nis is a crossroad between Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and it's less than 250 kilometers away from Belgrade, Sofia, and Skopje, respective capitals of Serbia, Bulgaria, and Macedonia. So you can see why this location has always been a strategic place to have an important city. And a lot of really famous Roman emperors were actually born in Nis, but none more famous than Constantine the Great, who was born right here. Right now I am in Mediana, which is like 4.5 kilometers from the east of the center of Nis, and you can take a quick bus and get here. This is where Constantine the Great was born. Unfortunately this whole area has been closed for a couple of years, but you can still kinda come out to the side and see the buildings where he was raised. If you need a quick history recap, Constantine the Great is probably one of the greatest kings in history, ruled one of the biggest empires in history, founded the city of Constantinople as the center of the Byzantine Empire, and effectively founded the Byzantine Empire 1700 years ago. If you wanna know more about that, just go back and watch my history vlog from Istanbul. So clearly a lot of history has happened here in Nis, under many different empires, but throughout history the Kingdom of Serbia emerged time and time again as its own identity, until about 1385, when it fell to the Ottomans, who took over the whole region. And it was conquered by the Ottomans for the next 400 years. So right now I'm on the grounds of Nis Fortress. So the Ottomans built a lot of very important structures when they were occupying Nis, but none are more prominent or more important than the Nis Fortress, which was built around 300 years ago. Behind me is this mosque that was also built by the Ottomans. So one important thing to note about this whole fortress complex is that the Ottomans didn't build it out of nowhere, it was built on top of fortifications that were built by the Romans and the Byzantines, and then by medieval people after them. So unlike a lot of the more famous fortresses around Europe, Nis Fortress doesn't really have a big tall building in the center that you can see, it's mostly just ruins of all the different buildings that the Ottomans built during their occupation. The Ottoman occupation finally ended in 1878 when Nis was liberated and became a part of Serbia, but unfortunately that was not the last time Serbia was occupied or a tragedy happened because of this occupation. And the most daunting reminder to the next period of occupation, let's say, is only like a 10 minute walk from here, right over there. So what you're seeing behind me, that's the gate to the Red Cross Nazi concentration camp. It's raining a little bit right now, but I just wanted to recap on what I saw. Quick history lesson. Back in 1941, Hitler and Nazi Germany invaded Serbia the same way they had invaded a number of other countries in Europe. Like anywhere else in Europe, they were starting to wipe out the Jews that lived in Serbia at that point, and the Romanis, and anyone that was considered an enemy of the state, or basically anyone who didn't fit Hitler's idea of what was the perfect race. It included gay people, it included mentally disabled people, and whatnot. But mostly Jews. Jews were the biggest group that was persecuted under Hitler. There were 9 million Jews in Europe at the start of World War II. There were 3 million left alive by the end of it. This one was actually the first concentration camp in what was then the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and it held up to 35,000 people total. So a lot of the other concentration camps that the Nazis had throughout Europe, they often completely destroyed any signs of it before they left. I've been to Auschwitz three times, and there isn't much left of Birkenau, which was the biggest killing camp. But this one's very well preserved. You can still go in and see the rooms in which the prisoners were held. You can go and see the actual prison cells in which a lot of people were held. You can read about the victims and their lives. I was afraid to talk about recent genocide in my previous videos because I was really afraid of accidentally saying a wrong fact and just making a mistake about that. But this stuff is something I read about a lot, and I study a lot. I'm not going to not talk about places like this when I do videos anymore. I'm not going to not talk about the ugly side of the cities because you can't just talk about a city or a place and remember the good things that happened there. You have to remember the ugly things that happened, too. Otherwise, it's not fair to the people who perished in these terrible times. This was not actually one of the concentration camps that was primarily used for extermination. It was not an extermination camp. People were held here, and from here they were taken on to the next location, Bubanch Hill, which is not too far away from here. It's around four kilometers away from the Red Cross concentration camp is this hill called Bubanch Hill, and there's this park called Bubanch Memorial Park. Today, it looks just like any other park. There are people running around with their dogs, playing with their kids, throwing a frisbee around. But this place has a much darker history. So out of the 35,000 people that were staying in the Red Cross concentration camp, most of them ended up getting moved to other camps like Dachau in Germany. But 10,000 of them suffered a different kind of fate. They were brought to these hills in vans, usually in the middle of the night. Then the Nazi soldiers made them stand in lines of 10, facing away from the officers, and they were all shot in the head. And then they were dropped off in bulldozed trenches that were made on this hill. No one really even knows the exact number of people that have died. It's estimated to be between 10,000 to 12,000. But it's probably higher, because there's probably bodies that have still not been discovered in this hill. Whenever you think about the Holocaust and the atrocities, like the ones that happened right on the site, we often wonder, how could people do this? How could anyone be persecuted like that? But the truth of the matter is, that kind of persecution is still going on. Genocide following the same exact methods have happened in this subcontinent a few hundred kilometers from where I am, within my lifetime. Ironically, the second largest group that were killed during the Holocaust, the Gypsies or the Romanis, are still probably the most persecuted people in Eastern Europe. A couple of years ago, I was in Macedonia, or northern Macedonia now, and I was drinking by the river with my friends, and there were a couple of Romanis. And this woman in her thirties, who was pregnant, a Romani woman, she had a heart attack in front of us and collapsed. Thankfully, I was with a friend, she's British, but she spoke a little Serbian, we were able to figure out what was happening, and we were trying to call an ambulance, and they didn't let us call an ambulance. And they just called another friend of theirs, gave us the number of someone they know, who came and took care of them. They didn't call an ambulance because they were afraid they would be deported or put somewhere else if they ended up in a hospital, because they needed to be there for a heart attack. Now I don't know the exact history of everyone in this region, and the reasons why people end up in places like that, but you've got to ask yourselves, how can anyone deserve to have a life like that? What could anyone have done to be persecuted on that level, that you're afraid to go to a hospital in the place you live after getting a freaking heart attack? It's insane. We like to think that all of this stuff, the genocide, the persecution, the ethnic cleansing, is over in the world, but it's definitely not. There's definitely more work we've got to do as human beings. Now for a big change of scenery, we're back in the city center in this place called Tinker's Alley. This is where coppersmiths and metal workers used to work back in the day, but now it's more of a place with a lot of bars, a lot of good music. It's actually where I've gone out for the last two nights, but now I'm just looking for some good food. So this right here is called a pljeskavica. The best food I've had in Serbia, and probably one of the better foods I've had in my life. It's basically one of the Serbian national dishes. The meat is this spicy mixture of beef, lamb, and pork. I eat pljeskavica literally on average more than once a day, because I eat it for lunch every day, and then sometimes when I go out at night, I'll eat it again in the middle of the night after coming back from the bars. It's just the best thing ever. In Belgrade, I thought it was cheap, where I could get a normal-sized mala pljeskavica, which means small, but it's not really that small, for 150 dinars, which is exactly $1.50. But over here, you can get the same thing for 90 cents, or 90 dinars. I just got a larger burger, which cost $1.60. You can never go wrong with pljeskavica. So now for a little bit of a change of scenery again, we're going to go to one of the more fascinating attractions, Inis, which is a very unique Inis, and I've never heard of anything like that before. This place has a really crazy story. Back in 1809, all of Serbia was occupied by the Ottomans, and there was an uprising by the Serbian rebels to gain independence. And at one point, the commander was surrounded and outnumbered by the Turkish troops, and they decided that because they were probably going to die and get impaled anyways if they got captured, they were just going to blow the whole place up. So they blew themselves up, and they blew up all the Ottoman forces around them. So the Ottomans were obviously very mad at this act of rebellion, and in order to send like a barbaric message to anyone who was going to rebel, they ordered the heads of everyone who died, the Serbian rebels, to be chopped off and put on this tower for display for everyone. And, you know, ironically, the thing that was supposed to scare the Serbs almost became like a symbol of independence and sacrifice for them, and it's still something that is celebrated. So they built this other building around it in 1892 to preserve it and to protect it as a symbol of Serbian resilience in the force of Ottoman occupation. So this place originally had more than 950 skulls when it was built, but a lot of the skulls were buried or taken away by the family members of the people who died. Right now there are, I think, 51 skulls still left here, and it's still pretty fascinating. I've never seen anything like this before. This is so cool. Kind of creepy, but still pretty cool. Okay guys, so after about 40 kilometers of walking in the last two days, I'm going to end the vlog here by the Nešava River, which is the main river that sort of goes through the city center by the fortress. And this is actually a really good place to meet other young people in the evenings. On weekends, it's a Sunday, so it's more like a family crowd here right now. Just gonna finish it up here and then head back to Belgrade, where I should see you for the next vlog. Definitely planning a vlog from there. Pretty excited to finally have a vlog out from Serbia after spending so much time here. Now if you want to follow my adventures in more real-time and get more real-time updates on the things I'm doing, the cool places I'm seeing, feel free to follow me on Instagram. If you like this video, don't forget to hit the like button and subscribe to see more videos from me. I'll catch you guys in the next one from Belgrade.