Aljmas Croatia
Frequently Asked Questions
At a simple gangway on the right bank of the Danube, about 25 km east of Osijek. There is no terminal and no line of coaches here: low houses, a few moored boats, and the immediate sense of reaching a Croatia few travellers know.
Precisely for its obscurity. The lines sailing between Budapest and Belgrade added this halt to their itineraries to offer, between two capitals, an hour of rural truth at the river's edge.
The principal pilgrimage site of eastern Croatia, welcoming the faithful since 1704, when Jesuits driven from neighbouring Baranja took refuge here with a statue of the Virgin. More than 100,000 people come each year.
It is surprisingly modern: destroyed during the war of the 1990s, the shrine was rebuilt in 2006 as a soaring arch, like a ship beached facing the river. The statue of Our Lady of Aljmaš wears a small gold crown given by John Paul II during his 2003 visit to Croatia.
On 15 August, when thousands of pilgrims converge for the great open-air Assumption mass. The rest of the year, Aljmaš returns to the quiet of a fishing hamlet.
The shrine, then the calvary path that climbs gently at the entrance to the village. The ascent takes about twenty minutes and everything is done on foot: this is a one- to two-hour stop, not a full day.
The ribbon of the Danube, the forests of the Serbian bank opposite and, a little upstream, where the Drava joins its waters to the great river. Locals still regularly turn up Roman remains here.
Fiš-paprikaš, the paprika-spiced fish stew whose smell fills all of Slavonia, made with carp and pike-perch caught locally. The neighbouring Erdut hills, covered in vines, produce whites poured here without ceremony.
Only if you accept that there is almost nothing to see in the usual sense. The streets take half an hour to walk: tidy vegetable gardens, plain façades, drying nets, stork nests on the poles. This is a call for atmosphere, not monuments.
The euro, which Croatia has adopted; bring cash, as not every village shop is equipped for cards. The Danube cruise season runs from April to October, peaking in activity around 15 August.
