Vojvodina is an autonomous region of northern Serbia.
Vojvodina is the autonomous province of Serbia, located north of Belgrade, the country's capital, in the farming region called the Pannonian plain. Its western and southern borders are marked by great rivers, the Danube and the Sava, whose banks are often dotted with weekend cottages, and with forests and marshlands, some of which have been turned into wildlife sanctuaries and good hunting grounds. The third river, the Tisa, flows southward from Hungary and cuts Vojvodina approximately in half. These three rivers mark Vojvodina’s three historic regions: Bačka, the region which is shared with Hungary, in the North West; Banat, shared with Romania, in the east; and Syrmia, in the south-west, shared by Croatia and Central Serbia, as part of Syrmia is included in the Belgrade metropolitan region.
The locals here often take pride in their cities and villages having a more European look than those just south of the rivers. This is because Vojvodina entered the first Yugoslavia (after World War I) as an affluent region of the Habsburg Empire, while the rest of Serbia had long been dominated by the Ottoman Turks. Along with the German, Hungarian, and Jewish cultures which thrived in this ethnically diverse region, Vojvodina was the place of the Serb cultural revival at that time. It largely inspired the other Serbs to fight against the Ottoman rule – and achieve their own independence in the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries. And even when what is now Central Serbia proclaimed independence from the Turks in 1875, the cities with most ethnic Serbs were still in the Habsburg Monarchy, except for Belgrade. This included those in the region which is now Vojvodina: Novi Sad, Sombor, Bečkerek (now Zrenjanin), and Pančevo.
Novi Sad is the capital and largest city in the province with over 300,000 residents. It was the largest Serbian city, along with Sombor between the 17th and 19th centuries. Novi Sad was also called the Serbian Athens, as the cultural center of the Austrian Serbs. Subotica was a city of over 100,000 people at the beginning of the 20th century. In contrast to Novi Sad, the Serbs there constituted only a small minority at that time, the rest being the Hungarians, Bunjevci, Germans, etc. When Yugoslavia was formed after World War I, Subotica was the second largest city in the new country, after Zagreb, now the capital of Croatia. Unfortunately, Subotica stagnated throughout the 20th century, and now it is only the second largest city in Vojvodina. It boasts a good old town atmosphere and many Art Nouveau landmarks, and a popular resort by Lake Palić. Bečkerek was renamed Zrenjanin after World War II, after a local war hero, and is now Vojvodina's third largest city. Sombor, another old town close to the Hungarian border, with a lot of greenery and bicycles, has a remarkable theater and the oldest Serbian teachers' college. Like Subotica, its population stagnated in the 20th century and now has about 50,000 people. Pančevo (135,000 people) was, with Zemun, the southernmost Austro-Hungarian outpost bordering first Turkey and later Serbia, lying on the Danube river and very close to Belgrade. After Yugoslavia was created, the Belgrade metropolitan region tried to merge the three cities into one. Zemun merged with Belgrade, and is now part of Central Serbia, while Pančevo remains a separate city. However, the commuter train line connecting Belgrade and Pančevo brings these two cities much closer together.
Now this is something to talk about! First, as a foreign visitor, you will probably find a way to communicate. Most people, especially the younger and in the cities, can speak and understand at least some English. German is also often taught at school, French is restricted to a very thin elite, but Hungarian remains native to 14 percent of the population and is spoken by many more, making them the largest minority group in Serbia.
If you are studying Serbian, Vojvodina may be your best place to start using it. The speech there is slow and clear, indeed it can be so slow that it has become the butt of jokes. But Serbian is by no means the only language you may hear in that province. With over three quarters of the population now claiming Serbian as their mother tongue, it is true that Vojvodina is no longer the linguistic mosaic that it used to be. But it remains ethnically diverse and many Vojvodinians take pride in preserving their various native languages. No less than six are considered official: Serbian, Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian, Croatian, and Rusyn. They may soon be joined by the Serbo-Croatian dialect spoken by the Bunjevci, an ethnic group from northwestern Vojvodina, which is a controversial matter as both Serbs and Croats claim the Bunjevci as their own.
German, or rather its dialect called Danube Swabian, was native to one quarter of Vojvodina’s population before the Second World War, and spoken by many more. But most ethnic Germans were either deported or killed in the war’s aftermath. With just over three thousand local Germans remaining dispersed throughout Vojvodina today, their dialect is all but extinct. Some members of other tiny minorities, hailing from various parts of the Habsburg Empire (the Czechs, the Ukrainians, etc.) and the former Yugoslavia (the Macedonians, the Albanians, etc.) also try to preserve their native languages. Vojvodina is home also to the Roma or Gypsies, many of whom speak their various mother tongues. Last but not least, some of the newest immigrants speak Chinese.
The above mentioned cities and places. EXIT music festival in Novi Sad has been a huge crowd-gatherer since its foundation in 2000; it was ranked as the most vibrant and successful festival in Central/South Eastern Europe.
Vojvodina's cuisine is blend of Hungarian, Austrian and Turkish foods. Famous dishes are sarma (small parcels of minced beef and rice wrapped in picked cabbage leaves), gulaš (goulash, a meat and vegetable stew) and paprikaš (a mix of vegetables, usually pepper and potatoes, and meat — it can be chicken, beef, pork, rabbit, etc.)
Vojvodina is linked with Belgrade, Central and Eastern Serbia in Serbia and with other countries like Hungary, Croatia and Romania. It has an excellent net of motorways: one, A1/E75 runs from Belgrade towards Novi Sad and Subotica to Hungary; the other one, A3/E70 starts in Belgrade and goes towards Sremska Mitrovica to Croatia.