June 2009? Pfft... it’s been a while, and where has the time gone? Well, if there are any readers anymore, I would like to apologise to you. Just been a bit busy in the past year and that was mostly uni. But now that’s finally over and done with, I can get back onto updating this dusty, forgotten crevice of the web!
But, before I go on to what I am up to these days, I thought I’d enlighten the uneducated on how the trip around Eastern Europe went, and I shall try to remember the events that unfolded! I think a consultation with last year’s humble diary is in order... and I’ll put on some Beethoven to get in the writing mood!
Let’s see... the last time I posted was about entering Serbia and making our way to Belgrade. It was Day 7 (still), and after the bureaucratic bother at the border, we could finally make good progress to the capital city of Serbia and also what used to be Yugoslavia.
The countryside of western Serbia was very much like that in Srpska: mountainous, sparsely populated and bad roads, though very much picturesque, and naturally I stopped a few times to take a few photographs.
And has anyone heard of a hitchhiker who doesn’t want to get picked up? Well, we found one about ten miles outside Belgrade. For a couple of miles, there was a car behind us, despite it being clapped out, rusty and just plain old, it was being driven a bit erratically and sometimes got a bit too close for comfort behind us. Anyway, as I was coming up to a garage on the opposite side of this wide road, I thought I’d call in for a bit. I pulled over onto the side of the road to wait for traffic to clear and suddenly, the frantic driver behind me skidded to a halt in front of me. The words ‘hijack’ and ‘Serbian Mafia’ came to mind. A passenger got out, walked towards my car and stopped. He just stood there as if he were waiting for something. Anyway, the old car drove off and I crossed the road to park in the garage opposite.
Soon we realised that he was waiting for a lift, and after some consideration, we decided to ask him where he was going and whether he wanted a lift into Belgrade. With his poor English, he went “no, thanks you. No speak English, I want Serbia speak.”
Fair enough, then. I think it’s one of few hitchhikers who had ever refused a lift, though I can understand the reasons being the language barrier. And maybe he wanted to take in the dusty, roadside environment for a bit longer.
And so, finally we arrived in the Serbian capital after a somewhat interesting drive, with crazy truck drivers who thought it normal and safe to overtake slower (or so they underestimated) vehicles, which were often in a similar or better physical condition, when going around bends, and in the countryside of Serbia, there are many narrow and bendy roads traversing along the sides of the winding valleys.
Hostel Centar will be the new home for the next two nights...
