Serbia, the real Serbia

Today we arrived in Serbia, the real Serbia. The trip here went surprisingly easy and the roads are in really good condition however Im not jelous of the people who tried to get into Croatia from Serbia. I guess the border control into EU is a bit tougher than getting out of EU. Once we were closing in to Serbia we had a minor discussion, I guess its a generation question, google maps VS old school map. After our discussion we decided to give google maps a try and now looking back at it worked awesome. To get to Serbia we choose the “fast route”, that means drive back to Croatia from Banja Luka and then just head east through Croatia and into Serbia to get to Belgrade. If we had drove this way to Banja Luka it would be much faster but in other hand, we would have missed a lot of the countryside of Croatia.

Once inside Belgrade google maps showed us the way to hotel Moscow and even if its way over our budget we just had to stay at this classic hotel in the middle of the city. The evening was spent walking around in the city and you can really feel that its an bigger city than those we visited earlier on this trip. But even so we found some traces from the war even here, a huge hole in the former military headquarter (Thank you NATO) and you should be kind a careful what you order for dinner, in some way we succeed to order food for the whole hotel and even if its cheap it feels bad to throw away really good food.

I also have to kill one myth, the roads so far while we been driving in Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia is way better than you can expect, actually way better than what I am used to and the worst roads so far has been the smaller roads in Germany, I guess that will change once we get to Albania.

Tomorrow we head for Pristine in Kosovo, it kind a sucks to doing a balkan express tour like this because I feel i’m not done with Belgrade yet but with limited vacation you have to what you have to do, one thing is sure, I will come back to Belgrade.

Lost in Belgrade

Serbia is a funny country, on our way out of Belgrade we decided to visit the mausoleum of Tito. This beloved father of the country Yugoslavia which is beloved and praised (at least in Serbia) has a mausoleum and you could guess that it would be signs so you could find it, wrong! We found the address on internet and google maps and after we checked both the ordinary map and and configured the GPS we started to drive.  We knew that we were supposed to drive past the Red Star stadium and yes we did. We might be be warned here but even around this big stadium it was no signs what so ever about where to park or anything but we found a parking spot and walked over and took some photos of the stadium.

Back into the car and driving using the GPS and when the GPS we arrived, we were in the middle of residential area, not quite right. Well I thought the GPS freaked out which is not uncommon in big cities where the connection to satellites are blocked but nah, we found a park close by but no mausoleum. We drove around a bit using the ordinary map instead and realized that we actually were on the right address but where the mausoleum is located….we have no idea. Serbia, have you heard about signs?!? Anyway, we gave up and tried to figure out how to find our way out of Belgrade instead. Once again we configured the GPS and this time it took us to a half built resident area, probably the fastest/easiest road out from city once the road is finished and now we were really lost. Luckily for us we met a nice serb who first tried to describe how we should drive to find the highway but after a few minutes he realized that not even him understood how to drive so he took the lead and guided us out.

From that point we drove using both GPS and the old school map and once we got to Nis where we knew that we should turn the GPS said follow road 34, the old school map said follow road 25 and the road signs, they said 14. It kind a felt like Servia does everything to make it impossible to relax. The roads however were in good shape and the border control from Serbia to Kosovo wasn’t any problem at all, almost I got disappointed how easy it was to leave Serbia to a country they don’t recognize as a country.

In Pristina were we are right now the feeling is pretty much the opposite from the rest of the countries we visited. The whole city is breathing change and they are building everywhere. Our hotel is as many other hotels newly built and our neighbor next door is the KFOR base and some embassies. I guess you could say we chose the little nicer area in this city but so far I would dare to say that the feeling I get is everywhere in the city, not just here.