Yes! Novi Sad edition

Go to a bookshop and look for a travel guide about Serbia or a Serbian phrase book. There’s a good chance you find nothing, and certainly not a travel guide about Novi Sad. Fortunately, I do posses two English-Serbian phrase books for tourists. They’re nice, but being productions with a broad outlook, it is not always easy to find what you are looking for. On internet you can find some information about Novi Sad, but this information is scattered and hence not suitable to print and take along (unless you compose your own guide).

There are, however, some travel guides that can be downloaded for free. Novi Sad in your pocket is one of them. The title and the format suggest that it is a booklet to carry along. The contents, however, are especially useful in preparing your trip to Novi Sad (and surroundings). A large part of this travel guide consists of information on hotels, restaurants, cafés, places of entertainment and coming events. Other information is scarce. Only a few Serbian words are given. And the splendid Galerija Matice Srpkse is not even mentioned.

The website Slovce provides for free two handy phrase books with tourist information. The author called these books Your experience of Serbia, shortened to YES. The first and larger part of these booklets consists of Serbian words and phrases for tourists; the last pages provide essential tourist information. There is a basic edition, listing the major sights in Serbia, and an edition about Novi Sad. YES counts twenty pages only: five sheets A4, folded A5. The information is brief and to the point. I once started writing a Novi Sad travel guide and hence I know how difficult it is to limit the scope. YES succeeded in this. YES gives essential information. Notable are the Don’t miss it! labels: Taste it!, Enjoy it! and Visit it!

Despite its conciseness, YES - Novi Sad edition is a complete basic guide. It even provides ample space to write down your own notes. And this I did right away: an addition to the list Statues of some famous people. Here I miss Mileva Marić, not only because she is a woman (the list contains only men), but because she was a prominent mathematician and a source of inspiration to her husband Albert Einstein. Her bust can be found on university campus, somewhat outside the city centre, which might be the reason why she’s absent.

YES invites the reader to search the internet for more tourist information. For those who read Dutch, I recommend my own blog. Mijn Novi Sad is not set up with the intention to provide tourist information, but it can be used as such. Relevant blogs are, for example, Wegwijs in Novi Sad, Jovan Jovanović Zmaj, De bruggen van Novi Sad, Servisch-orthodoxe kerken, 24 maart 1999, Eten, drinken en 'sladoled', Petrovaradin, Kloosters in Fruška Gora, Musea in Novi Sad, Stari Grad, Het Štrand, Een concert in de synagoge, Het Athene van Servië, Jovan Soldatović.

All in all, the YES booklets seem to be useful and handy tools for those visiting Serbia and/or Novi Sad. YES - Novi Sad edition seems to me a must for foreign music lovers visiting this summer the popular EXIT music festival in Petrovaradin. I will not go to EXIT, but when I set off to Serbia again, with Novi Sad as my operating base, I’ll carry the YES guides in my pocket.