Accidents and Cons in Serbia, and Chilling in Bulgaria

It has been a while now since my last blog.  For just over 2 weeks now, we have been in Bulgaria, relaxing at our apartment in Sunny Beach and recovering from a near accident and scam in Serbia.

Leaving Ljubljana, we decided to do a long journey via motorway through Croatia and Serbia.  We had found a campsite quite close to the Serbia/Bulgaria border that we would stop at.  The roads were very quiet and the kilometres flew by.  We listened to and sung along to a variety of music, and played quizzes to pass the time.  Hurtling down the Serbian motorway, with me behind the wheel, we started getting flashed by a few cars and pointing to what we thought was the back of the motorhome.  We pulled over onto the hard shoulder and a Serbian car stopped in front of us.  He spoke a little English and explained that our front left-hand wheel was wobbling and buckling outwards.  He was a mechanic and owner of a garage and would take us off the motorway to his garage, which fortunately was only a kilometres away, and right next to the motorway.  A couple of the mechanics at the garage removed the wheel and explained that the whole steering shaft had gone and that if we had driven any further it could have resulted in a nasty accident.

Sonny, with his broken part stripped out (in red)!

The owner explained that one of his men would drive to get the part, replace it and we would be on our way shortly. By this time it was 5.30pm and we were thinking where are they going to get a part from at this late hour?  Foolishly, we didn’t ask them for a price but we needed to get it repaired and we were in a little village (Lapovo) in Serbia so we were a bit stuck. On top of that we had driven 426 miles (681.6kms) that day and we were tired.

Two and a half hours later the guy returned with the new part – apparently, he had driven over a 100kms there and back to a fiat garage to get it.  During those two and half hours Germans, Italians, Romanians and Serbians were pulling into the garage, all with various degrees of damage to their car.  The garage owner explained that this happens a lot because of how bad the road surfaces are in Serbia.  We thought to ourselves you’ve got a good little business going here!

Twenty minutes later Sonny was all back together again and the garage owner gave us the invoice for the part.  As Serbia are not in the EU the figure was in Serbian Dinar and a quick divisional sum told us is was a little over €3,000 for the part - ouch!.  It was a big part to replace and Mel figured it would be about €1,000 but it appeared we had been stung good and proper!  On top of that we had to pay the garage repair costs of a couple hundred euros and to make matters worse he insisted on cash.  So, he drove us to a cash machine where we withdrew the maximum our cards would allow, we then said we would have to pay the rest by card, to which he eventually agreed.

By this time it was nearly 9pm, we knew we had been ripped off but looking at the bigger picture if we had driven much further we could have had a nasty accident and a lot more damage done, not only to the motorhome but to ourselves.  By now we just needed to get to a campsite now, so a quick check on Camper Contact and we found one about 20kms down the road in Predajane (N42.83334 E22.1321).  Fortunately for us he took Euros as we hadn’t any Dinars and our bank cards were maxed out.  It was €18 a night and the owner very nice.  The campsite is basic with very narrow roads getting in and out. There are two parts to the campsite, one area for small motorhomes and an upper area that takes 4 larger ones.  Due to our size he put us on the upper part of the site, which had a Dutch couple with a caravan and a German couple with a large campervan.  We drowned our sorrows that night with a bottle of wine and a few beers.

Campsite Predejane, Servia

The next morning we couldn’t wait to get out of Serbia, which was a shame as last year we had so a good experience when we stopped in Belgrade [link] for a couple of days. So we were back on the road and the motorway was once again very quiet, with very little traffic.

The queues at the border weren’t long but it took nearly an hour to get through the Serbian checks, closely followed by Bulgarian ones.  

Waiting in line at the Serbia border, with Bulgaria in sight

Once across the border, we headed for an Aire on the edge of Sofia (N42.74319 E23.28537).  It’s pretty basic but has all the facilities for 10 euros a night, including a toilet and outside shower heated by solar panels.  On the site were a couple from Israel (Tel Aviv), and they invited us to join them for a drink.  They had come across to Europe by car on a cargo ship, quite a journey they explained.  They had picked up a caravan in Germany and are touring about for a few months.  Their English was very good and they were well travelled, so the night was interesting chatting about where we had all visited.

Aire at Sofia

Before the accident, we planned to stop in Sofia for a couple of days, as we have never visited the capital but we just wanted to get to our apartments and lick our wounds from the incident in Serbia.  Our SatNav took us through the Centre of Sofia, luckily for us it was a Sunday morning so fairly quiet.  The city and buildings looked interesting, so we will definitely be back to visit another day.

It's a drive of 268 miles (428.8kms) from Sofia to Sunny Beach and it was great to arrive 'safe and sound' at our apartment. After a few days relaxing here, we had put the incident behind us and started to relax.  We have spent our time doing lots of walking along the beach, chilling by the pool and visiting nearby towns, and enjoying temperatures of between 24°C-30° C.  The Black Sea can be prone to jellyfish and this time of year you have to watch out for jelly fish being washed up on the beach.  The lifeguards are pretty good at taking care of them though and we have never seen or heard of anybody getting stung.

Mel's foot near a washed up jellyfish

We walked from Sunny Beach along the sand into Nessebar, and across the long, narrow isthumus into old Nessebar, that juts out on a rocky peninsula - a walk we have done many times over the years.  The old town has some interesting buildings and remains dating back to the 5th century and is a UNESCO World Hertitage site.  Its has narrow cobbled stone lanes, pretty squares, two-story houses (stone-built ground and upper wooden floors), along with endless shops selling traditional Bulgarian goods and gift shops.  All of which are traffic free and lovely to amble around.

Approaching old Nessebar

Crossing into old Nessebar passed the ancient wooden windmill

Remains of the wall around Old Nessebar

International Honey Festival in Old Nessebar, that takes place every September

Church of Christ Pantocrator (13th/14th century) 

Traditional pottery shop

A 40 minute bus ride from Sunny Beach takes you into Bourgas.  We spent a day visiting our Bulgarian friends, and took awalk along the beach to the Sea Garden and the sand scupltures.  These have been produced each year for the last 11 years by international artists.  This year 22 from Australia, Turkey, Ukraine, Germany, Poland, Russia, Czech Republic and Bulgaria produced sculptures of 'myths and monsters'.  They are quite impressive when you study them closely.

We took a scooter ride around the coast to Sveti Vlas, about 5kms north from our apartment.  Another big tourist area, and like Sunny Beach very built up with hotels and holiday apartments, but it has a pretty marina, with some nice eating places.

Marina at Sveti Vlas

The wooden 'pirate' boat in the background goes between Nessebar and Sveti Vlas daily

The lovely thing about Bulgaria is you don't have to drive far to get away from the tourists and into traditional rural area. A 20 minute drive took us up in the mountains to the little village of Medovo, which has a fantastic Bulgarian restaurant, within the Complex Starite Kashti (The Old Houses) with traditional style wooden houses, which you can rent out.

I had pork and chicken with vegetables (known as a Sach) and Mel had the pork knuckle - both yummy!

We plan to stop a bit longer at the apartment, as the sun is shunning, with temperatures averaging 26°C.  Nearly all owners/holiday makers have gone home now and so we have the pool all to ourselves and we are in no hurry leave!

View of the pool and pool bar from our balcony

Enjoying our last meal out in Bulgaria (Medovo) with Bulgarian friends we have known for 13 years

When we leave Bulgaria. we plan to head southwest into Greece.

Sally x

Into Serbia and the beautiful capital of Belgrade

We are in Serbia at Camping Centre Belgrade, a motorhome stop 3kms outside Belgrade centre (N44.81780 E20.50363). Its €10 a night – the owner prefers to be paid in Euros to Dinars, as it holds more value than the Dinar.  For this price we get electric, fresh water, chemical toilet, grey waste. and WI-FI.  The downside is that it is by a busy road but it is the only place available for a motorhome to enable us to visit Belgrade.
Over the border from Romania into Serbia and we need to get used to using the Cyrillic alphabet again, as they use the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet. Plus we have crossed a time zone so we gain an hour - result!

We don’t know much about this country, other than it used to be part of former Yugoslavia but due to the conflicts in the 1990s (ethnic cleansing and civil wars) the country broke up and I think we all remember the war crimes committed by Slobodan Milosovic (Serbia’s president)!

The Serbia sticker added to Sonny (the motorhome) map.

The map is starting to look very colourful

Before coming in to Serbia we spent 6 days in Romania.  The country and the people are lovely.  Since visiting here 6 years ago, we can see a lot of investment into the country, notably by EU money with the signs everywhere showing what the money has been spent on.

We have been lucky to do quite a bit of wild camping in the country and felt so safe.

Following on from my last blog, we left the little village of Bazosu Nou and wanted to get as close to the Romanian/Serbia border as possible.  En route we travelled through Timishoara and thought it would be nice to visit but parking for motorhomes just didn’t seem to exist.  It is Romania’s 3^rd largest town and trying to navigate around the city to find a car parking space turned out to be very stressful, so after 15 minutes of trying we decided to give it up.  As we headed out we spotted 'Shopping City', so we thought why not, we haven’t had any retail therapy in a while.  And what do you know we find a Starbucks in here - coffee time!

Timishoara Shopping City - stretch limo must be a good way to travel here!

From here we found a lovely little wild camping spot for the night in Deta (N45.39361 E21.213114).  Not much to see or do in the town but a very quite and relaxing spot to catch up on paperwork, emails and to do some reading.  Next to us there was a motel, an outdoor and indoor pool and a little café.  No signs of the locals using it though. 

Wild camping spot in Deta

Leaving Romania we used up the last of our Ron/Lei on diesel, as the currency isn't worth exchanging back. Once across the border in Serbia we stopped at a bank to get out some currency – the Dinar.
We had no idea what the rate was but gauged it on the fuel price we saw in a garage and knew it was about €1.20 a litre.  As we only planned to be here 3 days we didn’t want to withdraw too much, so we took out 10,000, which turned out to be only worth €83.68 -  €1 = 119.49 RSD.  Too complicated for our brains to work out the cost to Euro at this rate, so we rounded it up to 120RSD to the Euro - much easier!

The following morning we got the bus into Belgrade with a Dutch couple that are parked up on the camping centre with us.  It appears that the bus drivers don’t take money on the buses and we think you must have to buy a bus ticket centrally somewhere.  The driver was happy to take us right into the centre for free though and we were happy to let him!

First stop Skadarlija – an historic cobbled street in downtown Belgrade.  A Bohemian street where in early 1900s poets and actors used to spend their time drinking and seducing gypsy women.  It is often referred to as the ‘Montmartre of Belgrade’

Sign post in Skadarlija - and yes the way to the moon is up!

Artistic drawings on the buildings of Skadarlija

From here we ambled through the town and to the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral

Serbian Othodox Cathedral in Belgrade

Kalemedgan Park, below the Belgrade Fortress.

And up to the Belgrade Fortress, known as the city’s symbol built on a 125 metre ridge above the confluence of two big rivers Sava and the Danube. It has been destroyed and rebuilt over and over for 16 centuries.

18th Century well of the Fortress, built by the Austrian's

Lots of old military arsenal on display

Random Roman statues and sarcophagus' found at the fortress

In the 1960s and 70s the censorship in Serbia and Yugoslavia was hardened.  During these years the country opened up the perspectives of liberalism, but more often, especially in the field of media and culture applied rigid methods from the early communist periods. This sequestered art is now displayed underground in the bunker at the fortress.

Nebojsa Tower - the largest and best preserved tower of Belgrade's Fortress.  Built around 1460 to defend the entrance to the lower town's port.

We loved this stall selling old books and records in the town

Proving your never too old to be a busker in Serbia!

We loved the city of Belgrade.  It was so refreshing not to see loads of tourist groups and to be able to wander around and soak up the atmosphere of the city, where the people are so friendly.  We enjoyed a delicious Serbian Grill at Tri ŝeŝira (Three Hats) in the Bohemian district of Skadarlija.  Perfect end to a perfect day!

Anyone for a shot!

We move on today towards the border of Croatia and then to Zagreb. 

 Sally x