Ilok Part 3
So we had come to Ilok to leave Serbia to get a stamp in my passport and return to start the 90s that a tourist may stay in Serbia without Temporary Residency. The hotel Rooms at Villa Iva are quite comfortable and lovely. We had a little table out on the balcony I used four typing on Sunday morning. The hotel is located in the center of the town convenient to everything close. The courtyard is a delight for a drink in the evening and was where they serve breakfast in the morning. I had a couple of drinks out on the terrace that evening and you just can get lost in the peacefulness of the garden.
The breakfast in the morning is a buffet of locally produced meats, cheese, bread, jams and honey. They are very proud of that fact and if you show interest will go into great detail describing were the pigs come from and the cheese and honey bees. It is a great interest to me to hear about those details to the hotel attendant/front desk attendant/waiter was more than willing to go into great detail.
After breakfast we walked up to the top of the hill were the old fort, wine cellar, and the Catholic Church are today. Romans settled in this area in the 1st and 2nd century and built what was the beginning of the fortress overlooking the Danube. The Slav arriving in the 6th then ruled by the Romanians until the Kingdom if Hungary in medieval times. It like most of the Balkans was then batted back and forth between the Hapsburgs and the Ottomans over the centuries. In the 20th century, it would become part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes becoming the Kingdom of Yugoslavia then after the Second World War Yugoslavia. Then in 1998 part of the Republic of Croatia.
Ilok Cellars now owns the Odescalchi family wine cellars at the top of the hill which began being built in the 15th century. It is now a tasting room, restaurant and the building next door a three-star 18 room hotel. You can taste even more of their wines here than you can at the actual winery. I recommend trying their dessert wine as well as the Graševina and Traminac. Again, I will probably say this until you are sick of me if you read this blog with any regularity the Balkans can produce world class white wines the red not so much, but no sense in not giving them a try. They produce nothing that you will not enjoy.
A walk over the hill toward St. John Capistrano (or Kapistrano). Capistrano was a Franciscan friar who fought with the Hungarian army against the Ottoman army and later credited with several miracles. We got there just as a service was letting out and it is a delightful church to see. There is also an archeological museum nearby on the history of the town.
You can’t have a trip from Belgrade to eastern Croatia without stopping on the way at one of the various monasteries. Tanja worked for years on the restoration of some of the most important ones in Serbia and they are dotted all over the place in Western Serbia. We stopped at a couple and you will find them all very different based on the inhabitants of the area around the monastery and the priests that occupy them. Many are quite welcoming and enjoy having visitors. There are also some that are very closed off and not particularly fond of visitors. One I can recommend is the Kovilj Monastery a small monastery but quite beautiful in a lovely location. They will sell you Rakia if you ask as most monasteries make their own.
So there you have it the end of the adventure with the great news that I got my new stamp which allowed me to stay in Serbia to finish getting my temporary residence visa. We will have to do the paperwork every year for three years until I can get a permanent residence, but no more trips across the border, sadly.