"Boiling Point: 100F in Szobotka" Top 5 Page for this destination Subotica by antistar

It had been a stinking hot week in Hungary, and it was to get even hotter across the border in Serbia, but there can be few places better to wind down with a cool beer than the streets of Subotica. The town has a pleasant relaxed affluence to it, quite at odds to the cities I'd seen in the south of the country. It had all the metropolitan life you could want (at least for just one night), all squeezed into a manageably small center, and without all the traffic and smog of Belgrade.

The buildings are also a world away from the socialist grey blocks of the south. Here art nouveau seeps out of the city's pores, and a flood of Zsolnay tiling colours many of the roofs. The centerpiece is the enormous town hall, again something bigger and more spectacular than you'd expect to find in provincial northern Serbia.

Goran and Tom, Subotica

I'd didn't have enough time to properly visit Subotica. I was there for many hours, but I spent most of that time with some great local company, drinking lots of local wine and beer. I managed to meet the whole gamut of locals in this crazy, mixed up town. Tom, the half-Jewish Serb. Goran, the giant Bosnian-Serb biker and big game hunter. And Zoltan, the Hungarian party animal.

This is a town for people from all over Serbia. It's a town dominated by Hungarians, but with more Slavic speakers than anything else. The range of viewpoints is great: pro-European, anti-European, pro-Serbia, pro-Vojvodina, pro-Hungarian, etc. But despite this they all seem to get along, mostly, and never a raised voice despite of all the differences.

Photo Album on Facebook (better quality).