Good country, exhausting tourist industry

Serbia is a genuinely beautiful and interesting place. Petrovaradin Fortress is worth every superlative thrown at it. The gibanica pastry is legitimately excellent. genuinely warm Balkan hospitality gave the trip real depth.

What I struggled with: the tourist infrastructure around the headline sites in Belgrade is relentlessly commercial and cashless payment less common outside cities is a genuine friction point. You can feel the gap between authentic Serbia and the packaged version sold to tourists. The authentic version wins, but you have to work to find it.