Hiya. My boyfriend and I are going back to Novi Sad this week for the EXIT festival (can't wait!!) and this year we were thinking about trying to go see the Fruska Gora National Park and maybe see some of the monestaries there.

Is there any way to get there from Novi Sad via public transport? Or if that's impossible, does anyone know of a tour guide that'll take us around? We would really rather not hire a car.

thanks!

Hey!

It's really easy to get there from NS.

There are quite a few city buses going to different parts of Fruska gora from a bus stop in front of trainstation.

To get to the monasteries, U'll have to walk a bit.

So, U can take 61 or 62 to Sr Karlovci, where U're near Velika Remeta, Krusedol, and Grgeteg, 64 going to Bukovac to get really close to the forest, and monasteries in the east part, 72 and 74 are taking U to the weekend house resort also near the woods, 76 to 84 will take U to the west parts of Fruska gora. With 77 and 78 U're near two monasteries, Rakovac and Beocin.

U can find time table to the buses here

http://www.gspns.co.yu/redvoznje.php?vaziod=2006-07-01&rv=rvp&dan=R

Prices of the buses grow gradualy from the east to the west...

To get to the more remote southern parts, U would need to catch buses to particular villages.

Someone will tell U that more interesting parts are west and south  of Fruska Gora cos they're less populated and visited by campers. There are also few lakes that are more or less worth of seing...

To find Ur way hiking in Fruska Gora, just follow the ridges. It's like some kind of spine with ribbs  :-D

There's one main ridge from west to east, and many small ridges in south-north direction... main ridge is also known as "Partizanski put" or "Partisan road"...

If U need more info, U can contact me via e-mail...

Cheers!

Slaobodan

What Slobodan forgot to say is that it takes about half an hour by bus to get from Novi Sad to Fruska gora. When you enter the bus in Novi Sad, make sure to tell the driver that you need a ticket to Fruska gora, because of the different zone / price. Controls are more or less frequent and fines are high.

There are many scenic routes nearing one or more monasteries and leading through beautiful nature. Here's a simple one:

Take the bus no. 78 to a village called "Beochin". Hop off at the very last station and then follow the same road for about half an hour. You'll bump directly into the Beochin monastery.

A while after the monastery the road becomes a forest path that will take you to Crveni Chot, the highest peak of the mountain. You can go back the same way.

Fruska gora is a tame mountain and it takes a lot of effort to get completely lost. It is traversed by a number of well-trodden paths and each of them sooner or later takes you to the proximity of some main road, where you can always hitch a ride back to Novi Sad.

oh, thank you both so much! That's exactly the kind of responses I was hoping for, but couldn't find anywhere else!

I'm going to print this and bring it with me. I enjoy hiking around rural England on the weekends, so as long as it's not 40 degrees on Saturday, I think this looks like the perfect day trip...

thanks again!

In case anyone's interested in how we got on...

We decided to try the Beocin route since it seemed the most foolproof (difficult to miss our stop since it's the last one, and easy to find the monestary since it's on a road). On Saturday we leisurely made our way to the local bus station up by the train station and met up with some friends who wanted to join us. Only thing is, the bus to Beocin had just left about 5 minutes before, and the next one wasn't for nearly two hours!! So we went to Plan B and took a bus to Sr. Karlovci instead, thinking we could get advice from the tourist information office. But when we got to the office, it had closed at 2pm on Saturdays! So we resigned ourselves to not seeing Fruska Gora this year (and to actually plan things out with the bus timetables in hand next year!) and had a lovely walk through Sr. Karlovci and up to the cemetary and the painted church at the top of the hill instead. Lovely views...

So thanks for all your advice, and even though it didn't turn out as we intended, we still had a nice day out.