It finally happened! I had the idea of organizing meetups during my vacation in different parts of Europe, but it is complicated to do... Especially without the help of the locals... Anyway, the idea was to bring together Hivians from the region, and there was an interest, but one of the big issues was my free time... I wasn't flexible, and it had to happen in August, which is traditionally when everyone goes on their vacation trips... Another big problem was a heatwave as temperatures over 40 Degrees Celsius hit the region, and in those conditions, only crazy people were willing to go out... Luckily, we had some crazy people... 😂
The meetup happened in Novi Sad, Serbia, this Saturday... As I don't live there, my trip began around 7 AM, to get to the meeting point around 10-11 AM... What you can see is the Holy Name of Mary Catholic Church, and the bar where we met was a few meters down the street!
When we got some cold drinks, we went toward the Petrovaradin Fortress, optimistically thinking of taking some nice shots from the top... @mipiano, @ugochill, @bil.prag, my son (short-term Splinterlands Hivian), and I went down on the Zmaj Jovina and Dunavska street...
A nice souvenir shop with some hand-made stuff was in the background, and one recognizable HIVE bag was in the front!
Speaking of the red HIVE bag, that was a gift that I got from Amsterdam, HiveFest 2022, where I met these two awesome guys! @ugochill, one of our Hive musicians and a big supporter of @risingstargame, and @bil.prag, our Hive photographer who did some great shots of the Hive rally car, but also some nice photos from Hive meetups which he attended (including HiveFest Amsterdam!)... Luckily, he brought his camera this time too and I hope he will share some photos from this meetup in the next few days... The weather conditions for taking photos weren't the best, and as you can see, the sky was white/gray, which makes photos a bit colorless...
I have to say that it was very, very hot that day... It was around 37-38 Degrees in the shade, but we had one walking route directly under the sun! The best part was through the very popular Dunavski Park, where I took a photo of these three Hivians! 😃
The part where we couldn't hide in the shade was on the bridge over the Danube, and later on when we had to climb on the hill that you can see in the image above! The sun came exactly when we took the climb and I suppose that nobody had the strength to take some photos of that part of the route... 😃
When we reached the top, the first what we had to do was to go to the bar and refresh ourselves with some cold drinks! To be honest, I wasn't thrilled to go out to take some photos, but I know that @mipiano did, so I hope you will get some of that in her post soon...
The next stop was the Pasent restaurant in Sremski Karlovci, on the banks of the river Danube... As we took the car to get there, we were in much better shape when we got there... 😂 You can even catch some smiles on our faces in front of the restaurant... As we knew that food was near, we were more enthusiastic... 🤣
Speaking of food, it was a nice meal, the plates (and the food rations) were big, and it was tasty and exactly enough to fill our tummies to be able to continue... Around that time, I got a message from @clixmoney that he just saw the announcement post and he had a good will to come to meet us... Unfortunately, we had maybe half an hour more left, and he was too far to get to us... We will have to leave that meet-up for the next time!
At the end of the day, we had a short walk to the town center of Sremski Karlovci, where the local guide showed us some of the most important buildings... One of them is Serbia's most famous, Karlovci Gymnasium, which was founded in 1791, and it is the oldest secondary school in the country!
That was the ending point of our Hive meetup and everyone hit the road/train to get to their place of living... I would like to send a huge thanks to the participants of this small meetup, @mipiano, @ugochill, and @bil.prag! It was a lot of fun and we had some great talks about our favorite blockchain, shared our visions of it, and strengthened our bonds with HIVE too! Until the next meetup, guys!!!
Also, I would like to send greetings to others who showed their will to attend the meetup but were unable to do it for personal reasons, @clixmoney, @duskobgd, @vragolana, @alt3r, and @oks2crypto. I hope we will have a chance to meet next year!
And a message for everyone... See you in HiveFest, Split, Croatia!!!
Thank you for your time,
--ph--
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