Serbia is the first real Cyrillic writing country we encounter. Cyrillic is a writing system that is different from the standard Latin system that this article is written in. Cyrillic has a handful of letters that look like Latin letters but the majority of the letters comprise straight lines that will look quite foreign. Serbia uses both Latin and Cyrillic script in fairly equal proportions. Some signs will be written in Cyrillic, some in Latin and some in both. If you see the letters Ћ and Ђ you are in Serbia as these two letters are unique to Serbian Cyrillic. Serbia is quite a poor country with rundown roads and houses being rather common. Many Serbian houses look like cottages with chimneys. Some Serbian cars look fairly old-fashioned. The Serbian landscape is quite diverse but often features corn fields. Serbia is a mixture of flat and hilly. Serbian bollards come in two main styles that superficially look like bollards from many other countries. Serbian bollards stand out though as the red rectangle is off to one side. They often look like cottages and are typically fairly run-down. They often also have square-prism shaped chimneys. Serbia is a fairly poor country. The roads and houses are often run down. Serbian towns regularly have narrow roads. This is the main type of Serbian bollard. It resembles the bollards of a number of other countries but is distinctly different. The red, rectangle is always to one side- not in the centre. This is the rarer version of Serbian bollards. Note that the red rectangle is also to one side. The rear of the bollard has a white rectangle. Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary and North Macedonia have the same looking bollards but instead have the red rectangle centred. Corn fields are a common sight in Serbia. Serbia has quite a varied landscape. Parts of the country are hilly and green whilst other areas appear flat and dry. Old-fashioned cars of the style pictured are a common sight in Serbia. Serbian signs are often yellow with black lettering. They can feature Latin lettering, Cyrillic or both. The backs of large Serbian signs have this corrugated style. Smaller Serbian signs often have a visible white outline. On some corners in Serbia, you will see these distinctive black and white, long signs. This is a Serbian guardrail. It is a B-profile guardrail which consists of 90-degree angles and a narrow central section. In Europe, this type of guardrail is only found in Serbia, Croatia, Poland and Denmark. It is also found in some parts of Turkey, North Macedonia, Ireland and Germany. The internet suffix ‘.rs’ is used in Serbia. This is one of the rare non-intuitive internet suffixes in the world and means Republic of Serbia. The Serbian written language situation can be confusing. Some signs have Latin, other signs have Cyrillic and other signs have both. This sign has Cyrillic. Serbian Cyrillic can be recognised thanks to two unique letters to the language that looks like a lowercase ‘h’ with a horizontal line on top. These are Ћ and Ђ. Serbian Latin has Č, Ć, Š and Ž. 

Serbia has a few bollard designs, however most of them will have an off-centred reflector. The bollards are usually flat, with no depth to them.

Serbia uses B-Profile guardrails exclusively.

North Macedonia does not use B-Profile guardrails.

Serbia uses chevrons with a black arrow on a white background.

Within Europe, these chevrons can also be found in Slovenia, Montenegro and North Macedonia.

Serbian licence plates are white with a blue strip on the left. Agricultural plates, on vehicles such as tractors, are green.

Croatian and North Macedonian plates typically do not have a blue strip.

Serbian is a Slavic language which uses both the cyrillic and latin script. These letters are unique to Serbian:

Ђ ђ

Ћ ћ

These letters are found in Serbian and Macedonian:

Љ љ

Њ њ

Џ џ

When written in the latin script, Serbian uses the special letters Č, Ć, Đ, Š and Ž. Note that all of these letters may also be found in Croatian and Montenegrin.

The bollards in Serbia are unique in the fact that the reflector strip (The red rectangle) is off centered and closest to the road. While this may not always be the case, it seems to happen more often than the other bollards.

Serbia also uses two alphabets, Cyrillic and Latin. You can often find both languages on signs around the country. In combination with the bollards, you will know when you are in Serbia.

Unique Vehicles:

Very characteristic cars for Serbia are the legendary Yugo and Zastava manufactured in ex-Yugoslavia.

These old Volkswagen Golf 2 cars are quite common too.

Road Lines:

Full white.

The ШКОЛА writing on the road alerts you that you are coming close to a school:

Road Signs:

Serbia uses yellow road signs with black text on them.

There are settlement name signs at the beginning/end of each settlement.

Notice how the signs in Serbia can be biscriptal (mostly), only in Cyrillic or only in Latin.
The highway signs are usually green with white text, except when they are pointing towards non-highway roads, when they are yellow, or even blue.

Note that the older Yugoslavian road signs can also be blue.

Serbia has small white kilometer markers by the side of its major roads. They can say the road number (in a yellow box) or not.

The turn arrows in Serbia are black with a white background.

Serbia uses the regular European white warning signs.

However the old Yugoslavian signs can be yellow, as well as the temporary road construction signs.

Very common road signs you will see in Serbia are the “no overtaking” (1st) and “end of no overtaking” (2nd) signs.

Note that улица (ulica) means “street” in Serbian, and it is shortened as ул. (ul.). In the same way, град (grad) means “city” and is shortened as г. (g.). This is useful for searching for street/city names on signs, billboards and shop fronts.

The bridge railings can often be yellow.

River name signs can be found on bridges (река (reka) = river), and they are usually blue.

In northern Serbia (the autonomous province of Vojvodina) you can often find bilingual, trilingual and even quadrilingual signs in the places with national plurality.

The signs are usually in Serbian and Hungarian, but they can also be in Slovak, Romanian, Croatian and even Czech and Rusyn.

Road numbering system:

Major highways have green shields, while other major roads have a yellow shield. 


License plates:

Only one plate type with a blue strip on the left although Serbia is not in the European Union yet.

The first 2 letters on the plate are the abbreviation of a major city where the plates were issued (Belgrade in the picture), and can be useful for guessing if you find an unblurred or partially blurred plate.

Beer:

Jelen (“deer” in English) is the most popular beer brand in Serbia and you can find the ads for it everywhere.

Vegetation/Landscape:

As you can see, the northern autonomous province of Serbia, Vojvodina, is quite flat, and the landscape gets more hilly and mountainous the more south you go. Mostly, the flat parts in southern Serbia are in the Morava River Valley, which goes through the central eastern Serbia, as you can see on the map, but you should still be able to see some hills from it.

The Mountain Zlatibor is characterized by large grasslands with patches of pine forest in-between.

Specific tree:

Black locust is a tree species spread all around Serbia. It was brought there by Austro-Hungarians from Mexico to forest the Deliblato Sands, and also planted on purpose in other parts, and has since expanded throughout the whole region and is one of the most common trees in Serbia and the surrounding countries.

Another distinctive tree species is the Lombardy poplar, which can be found all around the country, but not everywhere, most frequently in the south, and usually not in big numbers. A lot of it can be found also in North Macedonia and other surrounding countries.

Architecture:

Note that there are many unfinished brick houses in Central Serbia.

Churches in Serbia were mostly built in the Byzantine Eastern Orthodox style.

The dominant religious denomination in Serbia is Orthodox Christianity.

In the northern province Vojvodina of Serbia, architecture is heavily influenced by the Austro-Hungarian style, as it was a part of Austro-Hungary for a long time.

Notice how the houses and the sidewalk are a little bit away from the road, that was a standard in Austro-Hungary. Also one side of the house is always on the street facing it parallel to the fence/wall, while the animal pens are always in the back as not to be seen and produce stench on the street.

The church/cathedral style in Vojvodina is also Austro-Hungarian although many of those are Serbian Orthodox churches/temples.

During the Austro-Hungarian reign in this region it was prohibited to build churches in any other style, although some of them were originally built as Serbian Orthodox churches.

General look:

The North of the country is relatively flat. It’s easy to mistake it for another country.

As you get towards the middle, you start to see these rolling hills. They are mostly in the area around Belgrade.

The further south you go, the more mountainous the landscape becomes. 