Hey everybody, since I last talked to you I have traveled 2 1/12 hours from Kraljevo to Nis. Since I got to Kraljevo so late on Sunday, I walked around the city center to have a look before departing on Monday morning. The dominating feature is a large statue in the middle of a circle, with pedestrian streets radiating in several directions from the center. It was a bustle of activity, even in the morning.

After doing a little exploring and having some breakfast, I got on the road to Nis. Not quite as pretty as some of the scenery I saw in southwestern Serbia, but also not bad on this stretch.

I arrived at my hostel in Nis, and found that the private room I booked here for 2 nights was fit for a king. By far, the best room I’ve ever had in a hostel. And it’s $23 a night!

After getting checked in to the room, the girl working, Angela, informed me that two of the sights that I wanted to see, the skull tower and the concentration camp, were closed on Mondays. Not a big deal since I would be here for two days. So instead, I just had a walk down to the city center and looked around and went to a local type of eatery that was recommended to me called a kafana. I had the ribs in cream cheese (also recommended by the hostel staff) and it was pretty good, but really fatty.

In the evening, I hung out at the hostel for a bit and then went back downtown to check out the Irish pub, which was rumored to have some good nightlife. While there, I made friends with the waiter and then stayed after hours to have some beers with the whole staff. We talked about Serbia and America and my music and lots of other topics, and then the head waiter offered me a gig there tonight. I jumped right on this, and was super excited to have schmoozed my way into another paying bar gig. But there’s more to this story that I’ll tell you about later..

This morning, I got up and headed to see the touristic sights that I wanted to see in Nis – starting with the skull tower. This is a tower that the Ottomans built after a savage battle called Segar just outside town in 1809 where the Serbs killed many Turks, but were ultimately defeated by a superior force. As a deterrent to further rebellion, the dead Serbs were beheaded and skulls used to create a tower on the main highway for all to see. The tower now is inside an outer building to protect it. Originally over 900 skulls were in the tower, but now there are only 59 left.

After the skull tower, I took a ride up the hill to the Bubanj memorial park. Bubanj is the place where the Nazis mass executed Serbs and Jews during WW2. The Nazis had a policy that for every German soldier killed by Serb resistance, it would cost the lives of 100 Serbs or Jews (50 for every German wounded). It is estimated that 10,000-15,000 from the area of Nis were killed at this location alone. Scenes from the memorial park:

After the memorial park, I went to the Red Cross Nazi concentration camp. This was used to house Jews and Serb intellectuals and resistance members. Many from here were killed at Bubanj, or shipped to other concentration camps to be worked to death or exterminated. This is considered to be one the the best preserved camps in Yugoslavia and, while it was very interesting to look through, it was a very sad experience. Here are some scenes from the camp:

After looking through the camp, I went back to the hostel to rest up a bit and get ready for a little bit of busking, followed by my gig at the Irish pub. Angela was excited for me and decided to make me a sign to advertise the gig tonight:

I headed out to busk, and had the worst experience of the whole trip. I literally made about 3 euros in over an hour. Hardly anybody seemed to care or even notice that I was playing! After about an hour of that, I decided to break down and head early to the pub. When I got there, the guys set me up with some drinks and I wrote my setlist and killed about 90 minutes until it was time to set up for the show. That’s when things went bad. For some reason, when I tried to set up and play, only the vocals were working. I couldn’t get anything from the guitar – no matter what I tried. It had been working completely fine 2 hours prior and now there was nothing I could do to get it to work. Tried different cables, put a new battery in the guitar – but nothing. All the while, the guys had made an event for me, people from the hostel had come to see me, and there were over 100 people at the pub. We had no choice but to cancel the show because there was no other guitar and no other system for me to use. I was as mad and disappointed about this as I have been about anything in a while.

After the fiasco at the pub, I was in no mood to stay out on the town. I came back to the hostel and decided to use the extra time to put this post together for you guys. I’m headed to Belgrade in the morning for the next 4 nights, and I have found a few music stores there that I’m going to go to first thing to try to identify the problem with the guitar/amp. Playing music is a big part of the trip for me, so that is now priority number 1.

I’m hoping that the next time you hear from me, I’ll be back up and running. Talk to you soon.