Sremska Mitrovica was left through the notorious bridge. Weather was doing fine, after some river kilometers we saw an obscure object in the distance. As we came closer it turned out to be the sunken german army boat from first world war, that the Capetane in Mitrovica already had mentioned. Some raft was anchoring next to it and a small beach was around it. The people who were on the raft waved at us and asked if we had beer to share with them. We decided to stop, though we had none. They were there on holiday, fishing, their children and one young female black dog with them. They invited us for Rakija and local sausage, what we werent able to reject. And on we drifted, next stop should have been Drenovac, but we could make it only to Jarak, a village easily to identify from the river, with a fish restoran looking down from a hill. We wanted to leave next day, but then it started to rain heavily, and we sunk into a kind of sundaily trance (though it wasnt sunday), eating pancakes drinking kava. The owner of the mentioned restoran looked friendly at our adventure and invited us for a big pot of fish paprika soup, local favourite. In the afternoon we decided to leave and finally landed in some settlement consisting mostly of weekend houses near Sabac, where we spent the night. Next morning we went on while rain was still pouring on our small cottage. Close to Sabac there were some low waters what hadnt happened to us for some while. We stopped near the ruins of the old turkish Kamicak, a former castle of medieval times. There it came to our minds that something was missing, we had forgotten the anchor... I went back by bicycle, passing some interesting cottages on the banks, which were mostly built on stilts with very individual architectural styles. The anchor was still in place where we left it and we could explore Sabac, which stretches itself away from Sava...
In Šabac we had difficulties with orientation, as the town is a bit away from the beach of Sava. Most of the time we spent in a restoran close to the beach in the part of town called Kamičak after a formerly turkish castle. In Between Sremska Mitrovica and Šabac took place massacres by the german occupants in second world war. During this time, some 5,000 citizens of Šabac and 20,000 more people were imprisoned in the Šabac concentration camp, around 7,000 people have been murdered. When we traveled on we met in one of our next stations close to the river a couple who stayed for holidays in the village Skela. There we were welcomed very friendly. We were visiting a private museum for folk history and memorials for a massacre by german army on august 14th 1941. After an attack on a german police car where the Lieutenant Otto Ehrmann and three other german police officers were killed, the german occupants burned down the whole village of Skela, 350 houses and shot 65 locals. After visiting the village we got invited to try some pears and other fruit from the big plantation that stood next to the house of our host. When he heard that we were about to examine the river and its surrounding he straight away made an appointment with some fishermen and some hours later and a few kilometers down Sava we met them. For me it was a very good experience to talk to this three fishermen, as they were quite friendly and decent fellows. They promised that we could accompany them in their boat to their work in the morning when they would pull out their fishing nets and so they did. After that we waved goodbye and drifted further on towards Obrenovac.
PICTURES OF THE TRIP