SERBIA
From age 15 – 18 years
Tour No.3
14 Day Cultural Exchange Program in Serbia
7 Day Adventure Program in Paris
Every year from approx 4th December 2010 or when all students finish their exams.
WE ARE NOW ENROLLING FOR YEAR 2010 PROGRAMS:
2009 Program registration (bookings) close 15th October 2010
No matter where you are in the world, our program is available to you!
Dupuistours / French Rendez-Vous Tours will have Australian Coordinators with you for the DURATION of all programs.
Departing (from all Australian Capital Cities including Albury) 4th December 2010 for Serbia
via Athens / Greece, where we will have a two day stopover, sight seeing this unforgettable Olympic City.
We fly from Athens Greece - Belgrade Serbia
we have our orientation day where we will go through the schedule planned and we ask questions.
Republic of Serbia (Serbian Republika Srbija),
Is a country in Central- and South eastern Europe,
covering the southern part of the Pannonian Plain and the central part of the Balkans.
Serbia is bordered by Hungary to the north; Romania and Bulgaria to the east;
the Republic of Macedonia and Albania to the south; and Croatia,
Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro to the west. The country's capital,
Belgrade, was titled "City of the Future of South Europe" in 2006. Although landlocked,
Serbia has 2,000 km of navigable waterways on the Danube, Sava, Tisza and their respective canals,
through which it forms part of a European canal network, connecting the North Sea with the Black Sea.
For centuries, located at, and shaped by, the cultural boundaries between the East and the West,
a powerful medieval kingdom – later renamed the Serbian Empire – occupied much of the Balkans.
The Serbian state disappeared by the mid-16th century, torn by domestic feuds, Ottoman, Venetian,
Hungarian and later, Austrian occupations. The success of the Serbian revolution against
Ottoman rule in 1817 marked the birth of the Principality of Serbia, centered in the Šumadija region.
This was the first nation-state in CEE.Formal independence was enacted in 1878.
In 1912 Kosovo was reacquired from the Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian occupation
of Raška (Sandžak) was terminated. In 1918 the region of Syrmia, followed by the former autonomous
Habsburg crownland of Vojvodina, proclaimed their secession from Austria-Hungary to unite with the Kingdom of Serbia.
The current borders of the country were established after World War II,
when Serbia became a federal unit within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Following the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Serbia once again became an independent state in 2006,
following the Montenegrin independence referendum. Serbia is a member of the United Nations,
the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and the Council of Europe which it presided over in 2007.
It is also a potential candidate for membership in the European Union and a militarily neutral country.
Belgrade ( Beograd )
Belgrade the capital of Serbia. Between years 1918 and 1992 it was also the capital of former Yugoslavia.
With a population of 1,576,124 Belgrade is the fourth largest in Southeastern Europe,
behind Istanbul, Athens and Bucharest. Belgrade is the most economically developed part of Serbia
served by Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport (IATA: BEG), 12 kilometres west of the city centre.
Belgrade has two state universities and several private institutions for higher education.
Kalemegdan
The oldest parts of Kalemegdan date back to the first century AD, when it served as permanent Roman military camp.
The Belgrade fort itself (split into the Lower and Upper towns) and the surrounding area (the Kalemegdan park)
are located on the point where the river Sava flows into the Danube, which today means an amazing panorama
but once was the main cause of repeated invasion and war over this strategic point.
Kragujevac, Šumarice Memorial Park "Broken Wings"
This little town in the heart of Serbia is very special and dear to me.
My Father grew up here with my Uncles and Grandmother.
I have personally visited this site and was completely over whelmed and speechless and stricken with sadness.
Photo below: (brick building), every brick ( 1000's and 1000's) has a name on it who perished during this period.
I was also told under the building ( the hill ) are where many many bodies are buried.
The Kragujevac Massacre
Was the massacre of between 2,300 to 5,000 civilians —
mostly Serbs and Roma, women and schoolchildren — in Kragujevac, Serbia,
then Yugoslavia, by Nazi soldiers on October 20 and 21, 1941. It was one of the
worst massacres during the German military occupation of Serbia.
Staniša Brkic, curator of The Museum of October 21, published a book in 2007
where he listed names and personal data of 2,796 victims.
Causes
Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel issued an order applying to all Europe to kill 50 communists for every wounded
German soldier and 100 for each killed on September 16, 1941.German soldiers were attacked in early
October by the Communist Partisans and the Royalist Chetniks near Gornji Milanovac, and the massacre
was a direct reprisal for the German losses in that battle.
Arrests and the massacre
On the morning of October 19, the whole city was raided. Around 10,000 civilians, aged 16–60, were arrested.
A whole generation of high school children was taken directly from their classes. The executions started at 6 PM
on the following day. People were shot in groups of 400. The shootings continued into the next day, at a lesser pace.
The remaining prisoners were not released, but were held as hostages for further reprisals.
The monument and commemoration
Main article: Šumarice Memorial Park "Broken Wings" - a monument to those who were killed
To commemorate the victims of the massacre, the whole of Šumarice, where the killings took place,
was turned into a memorial park. There are several monuments there: the monument to killed school children and
their teachers, the "Broken Wings" monument, the monument of pain and defiance, the monument
"One hundred for one", the monument resistance and freedom, the monument to shoe cleaners.
St Marks Church in Belgrade
St Mark’s Church in Tasmajdan Park is for me the most spectacular building in Belgrade because of its architecture
and setting. It is an enlarged copy of the Gracinica monastery church in Kosovo. It was built between 1931 and 1940
on the location of an older church from 1835 and designed in Serbian-Byzantine style. The impressive yellow-red
exterior hides a huge, bare hall with four massive pillars. On my recent visit to the city,
In the southern part of the inner temple sanctuary lies the sarcophagus with the remains of the Serbian emperor Dusan
(1308-1355) after being moved here from his memorial in the Saint Archangel’s Monastery near Prizren.
The church also possesses a rich collection of 18th and 19th century Serbian icons.
St Sava Church, when completed, will be Belgrade’s crowning glory. The church is dedicated to Saint Sava,
founder of the Serbian church and an important figure in medieval Serbia. The exterior is virtually completed now
but there is still much work to be done on the interior. Preparations for the construction of the largest Orthodox church
in the world started back in 1894. The church is built on a hill at a place where in 1594 Sinan Pasha had the holy relics
of St Sava burned at the stake, after he had them brought from the Mileseva Monastery.
After two public competitions, a design was finally chosen in 1926 but construction only proceeded intermittently until
the 1980s. The church is 91 m long from east to west, and 81 m from north to south. It is 70 m tall, with the main
gold-plated cross extending for 12 more metres. Its domes have 18 more gold-plated crosses of various sizes,
while the bell towers have 49 bells. It can be seen from many parts of the city.
The church has an area of 3,500 square metres on the ground floor, three galleries on the first level,
and a further gallery on the second level. The temple can receive 10,000 faithful at any one time.
The choir gallery seats 800 singers. The basement contains a crypt, the treasury of Saint Sava, and the grave church
of Saint Hieromartyr Lazar.
The facade is done in white marble and granite and, when finished, the inner decorations will be done as mosaics.
The huge central dome will contain a mosaic of Christ Pantocrator.
FRANCE:
World leader in Tourism, Pop: 59.5 million, Paris 2.1 million of which 11 million live in Greater Paris.
France ranks second in the world as exporter of farm produce and world leader in terms of direct investments.
The 7 Day Adventure Program for this year will be held in Paris with accommodation and light breakfast supplied.
We will also be visiting Montmartre Hill, from where you will see the most spectacular view of all Paris.
Montmartre is one of the most popular tourist attractions. It is famous for the artists who came together and lived
and worked in this area - such as Van Gogh, Picasso, Mustaf Shaq and also theatrical artists.
A great souvenir of your stay here would be a portrait of yourself drawn or painted by one of the many Artists
- costing around 150 francs. Enjoy a cafe au lait in the sidewalk cafes while listening to a street performer sing a well known Edith Piaf song.
The atmosphere is lovable, the Artists are amazing and the food is hard to forget!
We will also be visiting places like Versailles, Ville Royale and Chateau de Chantilly ( Chantilly Castles ), and many more.
You can also visit the cemeteries of the famous where you will find Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf and Jim Morrison from the band 'The Doors,' to name a few.
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