Saturday, 27 March 2010

 

Start: Slavonski Brod (HR) 08:30

Arrival: Niš (SRB) 14:15

Total: 439 km

 

 

 

 

In the morning, we again got up early. Still no sign of the basketballers, we had the breakfast room all to ourselves. The coffee tasted a bit strange, sort of like nailpolish. Sonia thought that it might be the chlorinated tap water. Whatever it was, I couldn't bring myself to drink the brew. So I had to face the Serbian border control without my caffeine fix. Poor me. :(

 

I had read horror stories on the internet about this particular border control. Long waiting cues, corrupt customs officers who invent spurious rules to make you pay fines that end up in their own pockets, haughty officials who refuse to understand your language and make you wait for hours, who refuse to accept your perfectly fine car insurance policy and make you purchase a Serbian one…

 

 

 

With these unsettling thoughts in mind, we arrived at the border control. There were only a handful of cars in front of us. I drove up to two officers chatting with each other. One of them asked for our passports in English. I meekly handed them over, along with my most charming I'm-just-a-harmless-tourist smile. He ignored the smile, had a cursory look at our passports and waved us through to the next official. Same procedure. He scanned our passports, typed a few things into his computer. I waited patiently, trying to read his inscrutable face. At last, he leaned forward, handed the documents back to me, and asked: “Where are you going?” Why does he want to know that? By that time, I was so nervous, I rattled down all the places we wanted to visit on the Balkans. Quite a long list. He listened patiently, and then smiled warmly. “Great. Have a nice trip.” Completely perplexed, I waited for some corruption or other to happen. None materialized. He nodded again, still smiling, and waved me on. Utterly nonplussed, I veered back onto the Serbian highway. He hadn't even asked for our car insurance!

 

“You forgot to mention Niš,” Sonia said reproachfully. “You could at least have mentioned the only city we are going to visit in Serbia.” I wanted to kick myself. How very rude of me! He must have thought that we were just speeding through Serbia, not the least bit interested in their country or culture, just using their excellent roads to get as fast as possible to the south. I almost considered going back and telling him that this was not so. Too late for that now. But I promised myself, yet again, not to heed that small but vociferous internet community who travel to another country only to self-importantly denigrate each and everything they encounter.

 

The morning had started out cloudy, but by midday it was really warm and sunny. Perfect holiday weather. We always seem to be lucky in that respect. I sped along the highway. Though there were very few cars on the road, I kept telling myself not to drive too fast. The other drivers drove very reasonably, too. Another prejudice, that turned out false: according to many travel blogs, people on the Balkans drive like crazy and the police take a perverse pleasure in fining only the tourists. This is not at all what I experienced on this holiday: the traffic was far less aggressive than in Germany or France for instance, and definitely a lot less crazy than in Italy or Spain. I only got pulled off by the police once, in Albania, though there were indeed a lot of traffic controls in all the countries we drove through.

 

We soon understood where the police-target-the-tourists myth originated. Driving happily along the highway, I saw something approaching rapidly in my rear-view mirror. Was it a rocket? Was it the road-runner? No, it was two Swiss cars, speeding like the devil was chasing them. Driving at least 200 km/h. Quickly, this became a pattern: every ten minutes or so, a German, Italian, Swiss or Greek car would pass us at break-neck speed. I wondered whether they ignore the speed limits in their own country just as blatantly. Somehow, I doubted it.

 

A couple of minutes later, we saw our Swiss racers again. The police had pulled them over and neither party looked too happy. Grinning, we drove on.

 

Before noon, we approached the Serbian capital Belgrade. Unfortunately, the highway passes right through the city. And it was here that we got our first taste of Balkan city chaos. Of the three lanes, one was cordoned off because of roadworks, and the other two were occupied by three, sometimes four rows of cars, all competing to get from one row to the other, in the hope of crawling a bit faster forward. As the traffic was really slow, I didn't mind the bustling, and instead profitted from the stop-and-go to gawp at city sights.

 

 

 

After almost an hour of treacle-like traffic flow, we left Belgrade behind and sped south, towards Niš. We arrived there unexpectedly early and had a bit of trouble finding our hotel in the area around the fortress. The streets were bumpy, narrow and cluttered with parked cars. Finally, we asked a policeman and he pointed us in the right direction. In Serbian. Something with “levo” at the end. Sounded suspiciously like the Russian word for “left”. And sure enough, there was our hotel, My Place Best Western, shiny and modern and new, with a convenient parking space right in front of the building.

 

The girl at the reception desk was very friendly and spoke excellent English. She handed us our key and we headed up to the room. We unlocked, entered, and were completely stunned: a huge room, nicely furnished, with a great view on the river and the fortress. What a bargain! Sonia had a look around the bathroom, while I tried out the bed. Suddenly, I heard her give a little astonished shriek. When I got to the bathroom, she pointed wordlessly to a bag of bathroom utensils. A closer look at the bedroom revealed a man's jeans lying on the sofa. This room was already occupied! We quickly gathered our belongings and retreated. Back at the reception desk, the girl quickly realized her error and apologized profusely. Apparently, this was the room that her boss uses to freshen himself up. My goodness! Just imagine if we had surprised him in the shower!

 

Anyway, after this very funny incident, we took possession of our rightful room, one floor above. It looked identical to the other one, just as roomy and comfortable. Just in case the hotel manager is reading this: don't you dare give your receptionist a bollocking. The episode just managed to endear the hotel and its people to us. Oh, and by the way, you have a very nice aftershave. :D

 

We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Niš. First we walked to the Skull Tower, the main historical attraction in this city and the reason why I wanted to visit Niš in the first place. It was very warm and we had to walk for a good three quarter of an hour. We had to run around a while to find it, as Google Maps had put it in the wrong place. But re-reading this two years later, I notice that they've corrected it and it is now exactly where it's supposed to be, on the Dushana Popovica Road. When we finally spotted the tower, the place was closed! How disappointing. But a sign on the door promised that it would be open the next morning. So we trudged all the way back to the river.

 

By now, I felt parched and famished. Fortunately, there were plenty of little burger shops on our way, one smelling more deliciously of grilled (or charred?) meat than the next. I couldn't resist and entered one of them. I pointed at a huge, yummy-looking meat patty and had it freshly grilled on the spot. I also bought a bottle of mineral water and had a first taste of a) Balkan prices and b) Balkan food. The former was astoundingly low. The burger and the water together didn't even cost one euro! The latter was simply heaven. It was a sort of minced meat with spices, and it tasted delicious.

 

This culinary experience repeated itself all over the Balkans: be it fast food, ice cream, pizza or a more exclusive restaurant: everywhere the food was wonderful, and I’m usually a fussy eater! Even their tapwater was delicious and didn’t taste as chlorinated as for instance in Great Britain. And we never got the slightest indigestion or other belly troubles, as you usually do on a holiday.

 

Back at the river Nishawa, we walked through a little park and along the beautiful promenade next to our hotel. Crossing the bridge, we reached the entrance gate for Niš fortress. Its walls now enclose a vast public park, which is very popular with the locals, it seemed. People were sitting outside, drinking a coffee and enjoying the weather, children and dogs played quietly on the grassy slopes.

 

Speaking of dogs… I was amazed how quiet and unobtrusive the dogs behaved everywhere. Back home in Luxembourg, I'm often apprehensive when I encounter a dog, as they tend to bark or yap irritably and pull on the leash. Not so on the Balkans. There, not many dogs are kept on a leash. Most of them run around freely, with their owners nowhere in sight. But they don't bark! They just mind their own business, walking through the streets, lazing on the pavement and generally enjoying their freedom. I have never felt more comfortable around a dog than on this holiday. A friend of mine who has visited South America tells me that he had the same experience (hello, Marc). The children were also a lot less whiny and nerve-wrecking than in Western Europe. Again, could it be because they are running around playing, instead of sitting squashed in a shopping cart, ignored or shouted at by their time-pressed parents?

 

On the way back to our hotel, we spotted an ice cream vendor who was selling soft serve ice cream. Yuuum. We absolutely had to have one. In Luxembourg, you rarely see these ice cream machines on the streets anymore. Apparently, there are concerns about salmonellosis… But my sister and I were just concerned about our taste buds, so we each had one. It tasted great. And it didn't hurt our bellies at all. The vendor was a real hunk. He didn't seem to speak English, but we understood each other with a mixture of Russian-for-beginners, Serbian-for-tourists, my-first-ten-words-of-English and sign-language. Oh, and I learnt a new word: mozhno (with a zh as in angel), or something very similar. It means “of course, can do”, and it is uttered by friendly ice cream vendors when you ask for a vanilla ice cream, instead of the vanilla-and-strawberry mix most people seem to want.

 

After this very satisfying experience, we walked back to the hotel where we had the most delicious steak I have ever eaten. In the night, the wind howled around the hotel and raindrops pattered on our window, but we lay warm and cosy in our comfortable bed, happily dozing off into our first nap on the Balkans.