Serbia

Well on we drove through Serbia, initially thinking that the insane Serb drivers had calmed down now that they were in their homeland. No sooner had Ben aired this thought than in the next 5 minutes 2 drivers separately were screeching and swerving as they sought to make an impression in the poor Clio's rear bumper. Unscathed we were much more circumspect about making such comments again.

Although we were enjoying all their new bridges (no doubt thanks to a little NATO air campaign), it was nearly 8, we were low on fuel, weren't going to make it as far as we hoped, and Lonely Planet had nothing on anything between Belgrade & Kosovo; so we decided to rely on our road map. It underlines "Places of tourist interest", so the only place anywhere near where we were with an underline we decided to stop at. Although there was a sign on the side of the road where we turned off for this place, it had seemingly disappeared, and been replaced by Zlatibor. We knew immediately we'd found a "place of tourist interest" though. There were a lot of people, an active market stall area with all shapes of grilled beef (okay, there wasn't much variety on the fast food front), candy-floss, dodgems, bumper boats, trampolines, and, yes, that undeniable measure of tourist interest: Latvian Folk Dancers. Unfortunately the information places had disappeared with the town on the road map, and what with the vast hordes of (mainly Serb) people, Joanna put her pessimistic hat on. Despite this the first hotel had rooms; albeit not at bargain-basement Montenegro prices. But then this did appear to be Serbia's top holiday resort (think a classy Blackpool, though miles from the sea), and it was for friday & saturday night.

Joanna had freshly returned to the "interested in food" bandwagon, and number 2 on her list of "foods she'd like to eat" that she'd been compiling for the entire car journey to Zlatibor, was salted corn-on-the-cob. Well, they weren't likely to have proper Miso Soup, like you can only get in Japan (being number 1), but they did have large amounts of heavily salted corn-on-the-cob. No corn forks, but she coped admirably.

Other than the Latvian dancers (who I'm not sure everybody was understanding when they were issuing their call to visit Latvian Folk Dancing Festivals), English doesn't seem to be that common in Serbia (or Montenegro for that matter), and signs are largely in the Cyrillic alphabet. Ben's 1.5 years of Russian at school have been coming in very handy.

Now, as a resort town there didn't actually seem to be much to photograph. There was lots of walking to be done, and we visited this monument to revolutionaries fighting the fascist insurgents in 1944:

There were men laying a new path up to it, although they largely seemed to be playing giant-sized Jenga with the cobblestones. We waited for quite a while, but the piles never seemed to crash down.

Unfortunately, for the 2nd country in a row, Ben failed the drink challenge. In Montenegro his carefully planned excuse involved only being there one night and Cetinje suddenly becoming far too loud with its 2 competing discos for Granny MacKenzie to stay out. Serbia - well Zlatibor seemed a bit too upper-class to have slivov vitz I think. They didn't even have domestic beer. They did have lots of sports people though, I think it might be a Serbian La Manga too.

After a nice relax, the next day we were off to Bulgaria. Joanna took to not watching the Serbian drivers passing on blind corners, and Ben made good utilisation of his defensive driving skills. We stopped in the place we'd originally scheduled for our Serbia stay for lunch, and were glad we'd found Zlatibor. After lunch the roads improved, and the drivers got more sane, and soon we were safely to the Bulgaria border, about to enter the EU.

In other stories, for those following the Number Plate Scrabble, we've clocked up Illinois & Ontario in Serbia; and Greece, about 20 metres before we reached the Greek border today... Yes, we're in Greece. Mt Olympus. In a very busy gaming cafe, feeling a little bit old with all the 10-year-old kids. Hope to go someway up Mt Olympus tomorrow, see if we can find Zeus. Although if he's at the top, we're not going to reach 2918m; that might be a bit too far.