Višegrad, Bosnia and Herzegovina – Priboj, Serbia
Višegrad seemed like a typical post-Communist town. It was in the middle of nowhere, basically. Its river had a hydroelectric dam upstream and the buildings were decaying and architecturally bland with a hint of greyness and concrete. The cars and vehicles were old and dirty, spewing out black fumes from rusty exhausts.
We looked for somewhere that would know about the price of a Green Card into Serbia, and asked in a bank, which was a small room with a metallic desk and bullet-proof glass, who wrote something down in a piece of paper and told us to go there. Presumably it was some kind of office, such as an insurance company. However, we couldn’t really find it, even though the directions were simple: follow the street to the end until we reach a square.
At the square, there was no sign of this place, and then we went into another bank. It was not as dark as the other one, and it didn’t look like some kind of interrogation cell, either. We waited in a queue behind an old woman and a young farmer wearing a faded red baseball cap and denim dungarees, who reminded me of someone from something out of ‘The Deliverance’. We showed the banker this piece of paper and led us outside to show us where it was, but she wasn’t sure herself. Then she called out Billy the Kid and asked him. As he knew where it was, he told us to follow him. I just hoped he wasn’t going to whip out his banjo and tell us to be pigs…
But no, he didn’t. Instead, we went to this office, but as it was empty, we went across the square into this pub, where the guy who ran the office was there drinking and smoking as if it was his day off. Back in the office, there were a few certificates on the wall, a computer on a desk and on the small table in the corner; there were empty whisky glasses and a few cigarette butts in the ashtray. Typical of Eastern Europe. He then took out a cigarette, slowly lit it and began explaining where to go by pointing at the map and how much it was going to cost for a Green Card. His English was very limited and was unable to string a sentence together, and he decided to shout across the square to someone else in the pub.
This second guy began staggering across the road and into the office. It turns out that he spoke German and could tell us more easily about it by the first guy talking in Serbian (or Bosnian or whatever) to the second guy, who then told us in German. It was really confusing, as we tried to ask about things, then going through him to the other guy and then back to us. Eventually, we got things sorted. We had to go off the main road, which wasn’t very main, and then go onto a small country road that took us south through the hills and countryside to a place called Uvaz (or Увац, pronounced ‘oo-vats’). It is a small place, and there it should be cheaper, roughly around twenty Euros worth.
After saying goodbye to the two drunken guys at the office/pub, we headed back to the car and left what was a very amusing and unforgettable encounter. And that’s what I like about travelling amongst other things; meeting random people in random places and trying to communicate with each other through very different languages, and also gaining a much better and detailed map of Serbia and Bosnia & Herzegovina.
Leaving the country to get into Serbia, however, proved another difficult task to get through. We got to the border control, which was in this small village in the middle of nowhere. I parked outside the controls, which were just two small portable cabins with plastic deckchairs outside, occupied by border guards who were either smoking, reading newspapers or playing cards.
I went to ask one of them where I could get money from a bank to pay for the Green Card. He said it would cost about a hundred Euros, not twenty. He said that there isn’t anywhere that would make it cheaper, and the only bank in the area was the one in the village, which closes for the afternoon. To get to an open bank, we would have to drive all the way back into Višegrad, which wasn’t really worth the effort. He also said there was a bank in a town over the border, but it would take about ten minutes by car or two hours by foot.
After confirming this with the Serbian border control over the bridge, I decided we would have to get the Green Card there, but we had to leave the car between the borders until we could get the right documents. And so, we left Bosnia, got an exit stamp on the passports, which looked just like the entry stamp but in blue. The stamps were quite boring, anyway. We expected some kind of different design or layout than the others, but they were very similar to the EU stamps, but with the letters in Cyrillic.
We left the car just before the gates into Serbia, and went to talk to the guard there. She said she would have to phone the insurance woman, who would have to drive to the border, pick us up, then take us into Priboj, which was a five minute drive, then take money out of the bank, then drive back to the border and sort the Green Card out and then be on our way. But the cost was going to be a hundred Euros, plus some money for the woman who was to take us. I had that feeling it was going to be fun!
We waited for the woman to arrive and sat in the car until she did so, and as we waited, we listened to some of the Ricky Gervais Show and played Monopoly on Rob’s phone for at least an hour. We tried to figure out what car she’d drive and whether it would stop at the car park on the other side of the barriers. We wondered what type of car, too. In Bosnia, the cars were old, rusty, cheap, incomplete, damaged, smoky and were just unfit for proper roads. We doubted that the nicer and better cars would be a popular sight, and if they were around, they were probably driven by government officials, banker managers, successful businessmen and some people who make their money in dubious ways.
And then she arrived. We didn’t see what she drove, but we saw this blonde woman walking towards the barriers, crossing the street and out of view. We had no idea why she did this because all that was on that side of the road was wasteland and some railway and the border offices were on the other side of the road. Then the guards called us over.
They explained that we had to go in her car, go to Priboj, get the money, come back to the border and pay for the Green Card, then go. So nothing we didn’t know already. And then off we went. Her car was a white Volkswagen Golf, of the second mark. It had all the tell tale signs that it was being driven in a developing country. Rust, stiff door handles, unclean inside and out, with tapes strewn everywhere as well as tissues, old crisp packets and other wrapping, empty beer cans (I just hoped that they’d been there at least since the day before). The seats were really dusty and not in their original black colour. The tape deck was missing a tape player, and the rev gauge behind the steering wheel was missing the needle and half of itself. I couldn’t tell if the speedometer was working properly, though. And so we just sat in the car for about ten minutes to Priboj, and making a conversation was a lost cause, with us unable to speak Serbian and her not speaking English nor German. It felt kind of awkward.
On the way to Priboj, we passed what seemed more primitive than Višegrad. The first thing that caught my eye was this huge plain and ugly building on the side of the road. It looked very similar to all the other large buildings we have come across so far. I assumed it was a disused power station or something. The windows were either boarded up or smashed and the walls were cracked and dirty. There was no sign of life at the place, apart from weeds and plants sprouting out of the concrete.
There was nothing much spectacular in Priboj, either. It seemed busy, but what was there, I don’t know. We didn’t really go far into the place, as we headed straight back after getting the wad of worthless notes out. And after signing the forms and relevant documents for the Green Card, we got out passport stamped (which looked just like the Bosnian, but smaller), we finally were on our way into Serbia, again.
But no, he didn’t. Instead, we went to this office, but as it was empty, we went across the square into this pub, where the guy who ran the office was there drinking and smoking as if it was his day off. Back in the office, there were a few certificates on the wall, a computer on a desk and on the small table in the corner; there were empty whisky glasses and a few cigarette butts in the ashtray. Typical of Eastern Europe. He then took out a cigarette, slowly lit it and began explaining where to go by pointing at the map and how much it was going to cost for a Green Card. His English was very limited and was unable to string a sentence together, and he decided to shout across the square to someone else in the pub.
This second guy began staggering across the road and into the office. It turns out that he spoke German and could tell us more easily about it by the first guy talking in Serbian (or Bosnian or whatever) to the second guy, who then told us in German. It was really confusing, as we tried to ask about things, then going through him to the other guy and then back to us. Eventually, we got things sorted. We had to go off the main road, which wasn’t very main, and then go onto a small country road that took us south through the hills and countryside to a place called Uvaz (or Увац, pronounced ‘oo-vats’). It is a small place, and there it should be cheaper, roughly around twenty Euros worth.
After saying goodbye to the two drunken guys at the office/pub, we headed back to the car and left what was a very amusing and unforgettable encounter. And that’s what I like about travelling amongst other things; meeting random people in random places and trying to communicate with each other through very different languages, and also gaining a much better and detailed map of Serbia and Bosnia & Herzegovina.
Leaving the country to get into Serbia, however, proved another difficult task to get through. We got to the border control, which was in this small village in the middle of nowhere. I parked outside the controls, which were just two small portable cabins with plastic deckchairs outside, occupied by border guards who were either smoking, reading newspapers or playing cards.
I went to ask one of them where I could get money from a bank to pay for the Green Card. He said it would cost about a hundred Euros, not twenty. He said that there isn’t anywhere that would make it cheaper, and the only bank in the area was the one in the village, which closes for the afternoon. To get to an open bank, we would have to drive all the way back into Višegrad, which wasn’t really worth the effort. He also said there was a bank in a town over the border, but it would take about ten minutes by car or two hours by foot.
After confirming this with the Serbian border control over the bridge, I decided we would have to get the Green Card there, but we had to leave the car between the borders until we could get the right documents. And so, we left Bosnia, got an exit stamp on the passports, which looked just like the entry stamp but in blue. The stamps were quite boring, anyway. We expected some kind of different design or layout than the others, but they were very similar to the EU stamps, but with the letters in Cyrillic.
We left the car just before the gates into Serbia, and went to talk to the guard there. She said she would have to phone the insurance woman, who would have to drive to the border, pick us up, then take us into Priboj, which was a five minute drive, then take money out of the bank, then drive back to the border and sort the Green Card out and then be on our way. But the cost was going to be a hundred Euros, plus some money for the woman who was to take us. I had that feeling it was going to be fun!
We waited for the woman to arrive and sat in the car until she did so, and as we waited, we listened to some of the Ricky Gervais Show and played Monopoly on Rob’s phone for at least an hour. We tried to figure out what car she’d drive and whether it would stop at the car park on the other side of the barriers. We wondered what type of car, too. In Bosnia, the cars were old, rusty, cheap, incomplete, damaged, smoky and were just unfit for proper roads. We doubted that the nicer and better cars would be a popular sight, and if they were around, they were probably driven by government officials, banker managers, successful businessmen and some people who make their money in dubious ways.
And then she arrived. We didn’t see what she drove, but we saw this blonde woman walking towards the barriers, crossing the street and out of view. We had no idea why she did this because all that was on that side of the road was wasteland and some railway and the border offices were on the other side of the road. Then the guards called us over.
They explained that we had to go in her car, go to Priboj, get the money, come back to the border and pay for the Green Card, then go. So nothing we didn’t know already. And then off we went. Her car was a white Volkswagen Golf, of the second mark. It had all the tell tale signs that it was being driven in a developing country. Rust, stiff door handles, unclean inside and out, with tapes strewn everywhere as well as tissues, old crisp packets and other wrapping, empty beer cans (I just hoped that they’d been there at least since the day before). The seats were really dusty and not in their original black colour. The tape deck was missing a tape player, and the rev gauge behind the steering wheel was missing the needle and half of itself. I couldn’t tell if the speedometer was working properly, though. And so we just sat in the car for about ten minutes to Priboj, and making a conversation was a lost cause, with us unable to speak Serbian and her not speaking English nor German. It felt kind of awkward.
On the way to Priboj, we passed what seemed more primitive than Višegrad. The first thing that caught my eye was this huge plain and ugly building on the side of the road. It looked very similar to all the other large buildings we have come across so far. I assumed it was a disused power station or something. The windows were either boarded up or smashed and the walls were cracked and dirty. There was no sign of life at the place, apart from weeds and plants sprouting out of the concrete.
There was nothing much spectacular in Priboj, either. It seemed busy, but what was there, I don’t know. We didn’t really go far into the place, as we headed straight back after getting the wad of worthless notes out. And after signing the forms and relevant documents for the Green Card, we got out passport stamped (which looked just like the Bosnian, but smaller), we finally were on our way into Serbia, again.
