Some time in the night, when we were sleeping there was an accident and the railway bridge we were supposed to use to visit Skopje in North Macedonia collapsed (good thing we didn’t get that far yet). The train had to park in Niš, Serbia … what to do now. It was a nice, sunny day, maybe a little walk along the train platform (that’s our train in the picture).
While we were thinking about what to do Gábor, he’s a musician on the train that keeps us entertained, performed his music for us. He’s amazing! He plays piano, saxophone and clarinet, sometimes he can set up his piano to play a tune all by itself while he plays one of his other instruments. We had front row seats and enjoyed to show!
In the afternoon we headed off to explore a few places in Niš. We rode a bus around and looked at some buildings then we stopped at the Niš Fortress that’s over 2,000 years old. It overlooks the Nišava River, a great location for merchant trade and was originally built by Ottoman Turks.
There are also some ancient Romans ruins around the site that have been discovered over the years, including the ones we got to see on Byzantine Street (named for the medieval occupants) on the fortress grounds.
On the way back to the train we heard about a weird historical site they call a Skull Tower. We had to go see it. We learned that it was built in 1809 during the Battle of Čegar when the Serb rebels were defeated and the Turks built it with Serb casualties to intimidate the Serbians but they have turned this into a memorial instead. It was so creepy.
Well Behaved Kids Travel 