19. A short Serbian sojourn (part 2)

Day 105, July 27th.  Sushice, nr. Pristina, Kosovo – nr. Vranje, Serbia, 24 - 38C, sunny

Leaving Kosovo is rather less hectic than entering Kosovo.  The Kosovans casually wave us out without a stamp; the North Macedonians dutifully stamp us back into their country.

En-route north to Serbia, we take a short detour south to Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia.  We’re driving so close to it, it would be discourteous not to pay it a lunchtime visit, at the very least. 

Leaving the higher Kosovan plain, it’s suddenly very hot again.  It’s so hot that even the children stop fighting in the back of the car.  We’re missing Kosovo and its cooler, friendly climate already. 

Skopje’s outskirts are unappealing by any measure: a haphazard array of crumbling Soviet apartment blocks, derelict industrial buildings and arid scrub – linked by a random assortment of potholed roads.  But nearing the centre, things become a little more homely; we find ourselves driving down little streets which feel more Turkish than Slavic: the Ottomans spent 500 years here, after all. 

The traffic is terrible again; we sense that gridlock is never far away.  Clearly the Kosovans learned the art of junction-blocking from the true masters: the North Macedonians.  Perhaps this driving manoeuvre is a mandatory driving skill here, examined during one’s driving test, rather like a three-point-turn or an emergency stop in the UK. 

Once again, Nina must leave the car and this time, she bravely walks directly in front of an oncoming car with her arm out, to prevent it blocking a junction and leaving us marooned at a crossing, perhaps for many hours.

Skopje is just about worth visiting for lunch.  We amble sweatily through its single-storeyed Ottoman quarter, which is pretty enough but without any of the atmospheric charm of Sarajevo.  We then head to the newer part of the centre, where it appears the government has spent the past 15 years desperately trying to make Skopje something that it isn’t: part of Greece. 

Suddenly, we’re confronted with enormous plazas, monumental fountains and statues that are all at least six storeys high, and an array of vast, utterly incongruous neo-classical buildings, adorned with battalions of colossal Ionic columns.  Quite what this ego-maniacal building spree is trying to achieve is beyond us, but we’re sure it must annoy the Greeks: perhaps that’s the intention.

Greece and North Macedonia spent nearly 30 years, between 1991 and 2019, arguing ferociously over the name of the country.  After the break-up of Yugoslavia, North Macedonia originally called itself Macedonia.  This outraged the Greeks, who claimed it confused the country with Greece’s own neighbouring region – also called Macedonia – and accused the North Macedonians of irredentism.  The spat remained a source of continual instability for the Balkans – leading to a UN peacekeeping force being deployed in 1992 – and was only solved through a decades-long UN-led mediation process.

As we wander through this glut of self-aggrandizement, enjoying the cooling mist that drifts off the fountains (some of the water jets are so high they create their own weather systems), we reflect that we’re probably getting a glimpse of what ancient Greece might have looked like, when it was first built.  No wonder it annoys the Greeks.

After a few hours there’s nothing more to see; we return to the welcome relief of our air conditioning and start the long drive north.  Skopje is our final southerly stop; every day’s drive hereon will edge us closer to home.

We arrive at the Serbian border an hour or so later.  Like when we crossed from Bosnia, part of us secretly hopes that the Serbians will give us reasons to dislike them, based on the horrors we’ve heard about them recently.  This time – at the border at least – they don’t disappoint.

The border guards are surly and perfunctory; it’s the coolest welcome we’ve received anywhere in the Balkans. When we stop to buy insurance at the border, I’m greeted by a monstrous old woman with a sculpted hillock of dyed red hair, who puts her cigarette down for long enough to bark at me in mixture of English and Serbian. “Minimum one month.  Two hundred euros.”

Two hundred euros?  We’re only going to be here two days.  A fortnight ago, we didn’t even bother to buy insurance for Serbia – there was no one to buy it from and we were in a remote, rural corner of the country.  Here though, we’re driving on the country’s main north-south arterial route for two days, and far more likely to encounter police. 

As politely as possible, even dropping into Russian (which she understands) I implore her to be reasonable.  Stony-faced, she won’t budge.  I needle her, mentioning that in North Macedonia we only paid 50 euros, and in Kosovo only ten.  She shrugs her shoulders and sarcastically responds “Catastroph”. 

We can’t not pay now.  If we don’t, she’ll call the police ahead and we’ll be flagged down immediately.  I hand over 200 euros in cash, feeling like I’ve been mugged, and grumpily accept the insurance certificate she prints out for us in return.  It’s not like it’ll actually cover anything, anyway.

We drive north, on a smooth, straight motorway, through a nondescript agricultural valley for an hour and a half, before reaching the turn-off to our campsite.  We’d thought about more free camping here, but it’s so hot and unshaded in these parts that it’s not a viable option – not if we want any sleep, anyway.

Our campsite host is polite and very friendly.  The campsite has a huge pool which rejuvenates everyone; we spend the rest of the afternoon and early evening cooling off, whilst the boys bomb into the pool, annoying the surly-looking lifeguards who whistle at them and given them stern wagging fingers.   

Day 106, July 28th.  Nr. Vranje – Dobra, Serbia 31 - 42C, sunny

We’re up and out promptly this morning, packing up before it gets too hot, and enjoying a final dip in the pool before a long day’s drive.  We re-join the same motorway and follow it for hours, Ralph sitting in the passenger seat and bringing a smile to the faces of all the toll booth attendants, giving them a cheerful grin and handing over our toll money.  He loves it – and does much to re-restore our faith in the general Serbian public.

We stop for lunch in a village outside Nis, buying some provisions from a local grocery store and then eating a quick picnic under the shade of a large walnut tree.  Despite the essential shade, it’s still sweltering – 36C – we don’t stop for long.

The afternoon’s drive is similar, albeit we soon turn off the motorway onto country roads, passing through a succession of arid, rural villages and overtaking farmers on tractors which are so old they could be steam-powered.  Not for the first time in the Balkans, it feels like we’re driving through the 1950’s.

Finally, in the late afternoon, we arrive at the Golubec Fortress: a vast, multi-turreted 14th century citadel situated on the banks of the Danube, at the entrance to the ‘Iron Gate’ gorge.  Here, the Danube flows from its widest part – over 5km wide – to one of its narrowest, and deepest (53 metres) sections, through a series of sheer cliffs, encased by the Carpathian Mountains to the north and the Balkan Mountains to the south. 

It's still sweltering despite being well past 5pm, but this is a castle worth seeing, so we entice the children out of the car with promises of ice cream before we even start our tour.  The ice cream does the trick and as luck would have it, the citadel houses an array of interesting amusements for the boys, including falconers, a suitably lethal archery set-up up they can test themselves on, and numerous chambers housing an impressive collection of brutal medieval weaponry.

We read a little of the history of the fortress – it being situated at the juncture between south-eastern Europe’s great powers, the Austro-Hungarians and the Ottomans, etc – but it’s still too hot to take much of it in.  The views of the Danube are beguiling: in one direction it’s like looking out to sea, in the other, this mighty river shrinks to just 230 metres wide, hemmed in by 100-metre high cliffs on either side.

Our campsite – and final night’s accommodation in the Balkans – is only ten minutes’ further downstream, set back in a quiet valley, a few hundred metres away from the Danube. 

We park up, and whilst we’re waiting for Milena, our hostess, to appear, we find ourselves face-to-face with some actual British people.  A rare sighting, indeed.  Upon simultaneously uttering the ubiquitous pan-European greeting (“ha-lo”), we suddenly realise that we all have English accents.  “Where are you from?” we ask. “Croydon!” replies a hearty south-London voice.

Before we know it, Will and Bob – two cyclists from Leicester – saunter up and join us.  They’re camping here and had noticed our British number plates as we drove in.  Barring solo Phil in Kosovo, we haven’t seen a Brit for weeks, and now we’re surrounded by them.  Our faith in the British spirit of adventure is marginally restored.

This evening, we’ve decided to eat out at a local restaurant – recommended by Milena – to celebrate our last night in the Balkans.  And also because we don’t have anything to cook.  Her husband generously agrees to drive us the 5km or so to this friendly, local restaurant, nestled on the banks of the Danube. 

We sit on the terrace, enjoying our lemonades and beers, watching the sun set over the Danube, looking pensively at Romania on the far bank.  It’s a suitably beautiful backdrop for our final evening in the Balkans.

Milena very kindly comes to collect us when we’ve finished.  Driving back to the campsite, she asks us about the previous countries we’ve visited on our Balkan expedition; she’s particularly interested when we mention Kosovo. 

“What was the predominant religion there?” she asks.  It’s an unusual question, but we reply, “well it’s 90% Muslim, since nearly all the Albanians are Muslim.” 

Perhaps she doesn’t quite understand us, or perhaps she does.  She replies in a kindly manner, sensing we are mistaken. “Ah.  It is 90% Orthdox (i.e. Serbian) there.”

She goes on to explain that her father was a soldier and fought in the Balkans War.  “Was he decorated?” I ask.  Perhaps she doesn’t quite understand again.  “No. He came back big hero, you see when it was Yugoslavia we were a big country, more powerful.  Now we are so many little countries, all fighting, it’s better when we were together.”

In our last meaningful conversation with a local in the Balkans – and our first in Serbia – we get a small insight into how a kind, homely, middle-aged lady views the Balkan situation.  Is it representative?  We’ve no idea.  But it sounds like the Serbian government does a great job of painting a very different picture of the ethnicity of Kosovo than is really the case.

As we drive up the gravel track to the campsite, a black-ish looking snake slithers in front of the car.  She stops and we get out to have a closer look; Ralph bounds over a little more fearlessly than he probably should be of snakes in these parts.  Luckily, the noise everyone’s made is too much for it and it slithers away silently, into the dark.

Day 107, July 28th.  Dobra, Serbia – nr. Novaci, Romania 24 - 37C, sunny

Everyone sleeps well.  The combination of cool night-time temperatures (thanks to the Danube), coupled with the nearly dogless surroundings, makes for a comfortable, undisturbed night’s sleep.

In the morning cool, the boys play cricket on the large empty field that is effectively our campsite, while Nina and I pack away the tent. 

The road to the border hugs the Danube as we drive through the numerous spectacular gorges that collectively form the Iron Gates.  We stop frequently to take photos of this huge, murky green river, squeezed between two mountain ranges, and begin to understand why this river’s name is so evocative – serenely dividing up Europe as it makes its way from Germany to the Black Sea.

The border crossing is a non-event: the last Serb we speak to nods formally and waves us out of his country.  We cross the Danube and suddenly realise we’re arriving in yet another country where our linguistic capability is precisely zero.