May 14. This was a very trying day.
We awoke in Sarajevo, had breakfast in the apartment, gathered my clothes from the clothes line and pulled out of the parking lot on time, confident that we were securely on our way to Sofia, Bulgaria and our hotel there. We had no general Internet service in Bosnia, but we had plotted out the route in our apartment using the wifi.
We had a couple of missed turns leaving Old Town Sarajevo, (incredible maze of narrow streets), but we finally got on the correct road thinking that we were heading for the M5. We saw signs for the M5, but we did not meet the turnoff onto the M5. We went several km and then through a tunnel. Then we saw a big sign welcoming us to the Republika Srpska. That should have been a warning sign, especially since we had gone beyond the 8.4km that our directions said would lead us to the M5. Instead of turning around and retracing our steps, I asked a policeman for directions. He spoke a little English and I thought that he understood that we were looking for the M5 to take us to Bulgaria. He (as a representative of the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska was clearly contemptuous of the fact that we were coming from Sarajevo) directed us to a road on the left which he said would take us to the border.
I took that road for a bit, but it did not seem right so I turned back, found a gas station and again asked for directions. Two people there said to take the same road that the policeman had directed us to take to get right to the border. So we took the road to the border.
Turns out they were sending us to the border with Serbia, going north, away from Bulgaria. However I did not realize that until a few hours later when we saw road signs for towns that were near the Serbian border. Not that big an issue, a few hours out of the way since I thought that we could go south through Serbia into Bulgaria and use Internet GPS to guide us. We had taken with us travel books for all the countries that we planned to enter. However while in Croatia we decided to make a change to our plans to go east into Bosnia rather than going south into Montenegro, so we only had small maps of Bosnia from the Croatia book, and no map of Serbia.
We approached the border and the immigration post. No road or border signs in English and the Serbian and Bosnian languages bear no resemblance to English so I did not know if it was a Serbian or Bosnian post. Turns out it was a Bosnian post. No problem there. Crossed the bridge and approached the Serbian post. A small post looking very ramshackle. The Serbian officer spoke absolutely no English. We thought that he was asking for car information after he reviewed our passports, but even after we gave him those documents he still seemed to want us to do something. Finally after a few tense minutes, he just waved us through. I suspect he just got fed up with us.
We crossed into Serbia and made our second big mistake. The GPS Internet did not work ("no service") and we were confronted with a road sign. To the left, and what I thought was north was "Beograd". I thought that was Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, but I correctly thought that it was geographically out of the way. Turns out it would have been better to go there and catch the toll road south. Instead we went right, going south and what I thought would be a path to Bulgaria.
The roads we travelled turned out to be impossibly narrow, winding with no towns beyond small villages and after a while seemingly leading to nowhere. We passed through a medium sized town, but we could not find anyone who spoke English or or a place to buy a map. We continued further on with the same results in another town, even going into a bus station seeking directions. I think that lady was sending us back into Bosnia, but we at least found a map posted outside a public building. That seemed to offer a route to Serbia's southern border. So we continued for a few more fruitless hours until I really had no idea where we were, other than we were generally going south according to our navigation by compass. By this time I had an emotional belief that I would never be able to get out of Serbia.
Finally we stopped in a gas station. No maps, but we found an English speaker, He sighed when I described our situation. He said we would never be able to navigate our way south on these small, rural roads and suggested that we follow the signs to Beograd, which would take us to the toll road which would securely lead us south to Bulgaria. So we turned around and headed north with my hopes now completely dashed that we would get to our Bulgaria hotel that night, since we had to get there by midnight when it closed down and I had no way to contact them.
Along the way we saw a series of large stones that seems to be a monument. Looked like a Serbian Stonehenge. The office was closed so I could only assume that it was a monument to the WWII partisans.
We reached the outskirts of Belgrade by about 8. We had now been driving for 10 hours. Got on the toll road and headed for NIS. We stopped for gas on the toll road. About 400 Serbian dinars to one dollar. My gas bill was 3250 dinars. But we also were able to purchase a map. We were then slowly driving to the adjacent bathroom when police lights began flashing in my rear view mirror. Turns out they only wanted me to get out of the way. I parked near them. While Karen went to the bathroom, I stayed with the car and watched several uniformed security offices jump out of the vans and unlock the rear doors from which emerged scores of men. I asked who they were and was told that they were prisoners being transported to where or why I could not understand. Several of the prisoners approached me and started to talk. They assured me that they were "good criminals." I think they were not pulling my leg. The Serbia toll road was the cheap.
We finally got to the Bulgarian border about 10:00 pm. I was now hopeful that we could get to the hotel before it closed at midnight. Crossing into Bulgaria, we had to purchase a vignette for 5 euro. That and another 5 euro got us a sticker which we affixed to our car and permitted us to drive in Bulgaria for a week.
The road to Sofia was very dark, narrow, winding, and truck-laden. Passing was a white-knuckled affair until I started following a car that was going my desired speed. We got to Sofia almost on time for the hotel, but it did not matter because we entered a new time zone when we entered Bulgaria so we lost an hour. Sofia was pretty much shut down when we arrived. We found one other hotel but it was full. So we parked our car outside our hotel, L'Opera, next to the Opera House, locked the doors and windows, pulled out the blankest and pillows and prepared to sleep in the car. I was tired so I was able to get some sleep. Watching the city in between naps was a bit surreal, an occasional car or pedestrian, the street cleaners walking by and finally at 4:00 am the first trolleys rumbled by. They appeared with increasing frequency as the dawn approached so I got less sleep. The hotel opened at 7:30, we got some breakfast there, checked in and went up to our room (no elevator so we lugged our bags up to the 4th floor, but a nice big room) and slept until 11.
We awoke in Sarajevo, had breakfast in the apartment, gathered my clothes from the clothes line and pulled out of the parking lot on time, confident that we were securely on our way to Sofia, Bulgaria and our hotel there. We had no general Internet service in Bosnia, but we had plotted out the route in our apartment using the wifi.
We had a couple of missed turns leaving Old Town Sarajevo, (incredible maze of narrow streets), but we finally got on the correct road thinking that we were heading for the M5. We saw signs for the M5, but we did not meet the turnoff onto the M5. We went several km and then through a tunnel. Then we saw a big sign welcoming us to the Republika Srpska. That should have been a warning sign, especially since we had gone beyond the 8.4km that our directions said would lead us to the M5. Instead of turning around and retracing our steps, I asked a policeman for directions. He spoke a little English and I thought that he understood that we were looking for the M5 to take us to Bulgaria. He (as a representative of the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska was clearly contemptuous of the fact that we were coming from Sarajevo) directed us to a road on the left which he said would take us to the border.
I took that road for a bit, but it did not seem right so I turned back, found a gas station and again asked for directions. Two people there said to take the same road that the policeman had directed us to take to get right to the border. So we took the road to the border.
Turns out they were sending us to the border with Serbia, going north, away from Bulgaria. However I did not realize that until a few hours later when we saw road signs for towns that were near the Serbian border. Not that big an issue, a few hours out of the way since I thought that we could go south through Serbia into Bulgaria and use Internet GPS to guide us. We had taken with us travel books for all the countries that we planned to enter. However while in Croatia we decided to make a change to our plans to go east into Bosnia rather than going south into Montenegro, so we only had small maps of Bosnia from the Croatia book, and no map of Serbia.
We approached the border and the immigration post. No road or border signs in English and the Serbian and Bosnian languages bear no resemblance to English so I did not know if it was a Serbian or Bosnian post. Turns out it was a Bosnian post. No problem there. Crossed the bridge and approached the Serbian post. A small post looking very ramshackle. The Serbian officer spoke absolutely no English. We thought that he was asking for car information after he reviewed our passports, but even after we gave him those documents he still seemed to want us to do something. Finally after a few tense minutes, he just waved us through. I suspect he just got fed up with us.
We crossed into Serbia and made our second big mistake. The GPS Internet did not work ("no service") and we were confronted with a road sign. To the left, and what I thought was north was "Beograd". I thought that was Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, but I correctly thought that it was geographically out of the way. Turns out it would have been better to go there and catch the toll road south. Instead we went right, going south and what I thought would be a path to Bulgaria.
The roads we travelled turned out to be impossibly narrow, winding with no towns beyond small villages and after a while seemingly leading to nowhere. We passed through a medium sized town, but we could not find anyone who spoke English or or a place to buy a map. We continued further on with the same results in another town, even going into a bus station seeking directions. I think that lady was sending us back into Bosnia, but we at least found a map posted outside a public building. That seemed to offer a route to Serbia's southern border. So we continued for a few more fruitless hours until I really had no idea where we were, other than we were generally going south according to our navigation by compass. By this time I had an emotional belief that I would never be able to get out of Serbia.
Finally we stopped in a gas station. No maps, but we found an English speaker, He sighed when I described our situation. He said we would never be able to navigate our way south on these small, rural roads and suggested that we follow the signs to Beograd, which would take us to the toll road which would securely lead us south to Bulgaria. So we turned around and headed north with my hopes now completely dashed that we would get to our Bulgaria hotel that night, since we had to get there by midnight when it closed down and I had no way to contact them.
Along the way we saw a series of large stones that seems to be a monument. Looked like a Serbian Stonehenge. The office was closed so I could only assume that it was a monument to the WWII partisans.
We reached the outskirts of Belgrade by about 8. We had now been driving for 10 hours. Got on the toll road and headed for NIS. We stopped for gas on the toll road. About 400 Serbian dinars to one dollar. My gas bill was 3250 dinars. But we also were able to purchase a map. We were then slowly driving to the adjacent bathroom when police lights began flashing in my rear view mirror. Turns out they only wanted me to get out of the way. I parked near them. While Karen went to the bathroom, I stayed with the car and watched several uniformed security offices jump out of the vans and unlock the rear doors from which emerged scores of men. I asked who they were and was told that they were prisoners being transported to where or why I could not understand. Several of the prisoners approached me and started to talk. They assured me that they were "good criminals." I think they were not pulling my leg. The Serbia toll road was the cheap.
We finally got to the Bulgarian border about 10:00 pm. I was now hopeful that we could get to the hotel before it closed at midnight. Crossing into Bulgaria, we had to purchase a vignette for 5 euro. That and another 5 euro got us a sticker which we affixed to our car and permitted us to drive in Bulgaria for a week.
The road to Sofia was very dark, narrow, winding, and truck-laden. Passing was a white-knuckled affair until I started following a car that was going my desired speed. We got to Sofia almost on time for the hotel, but it did not matter because we entered a new time zone when we entered Bulgaria so we lost an hour. Sofia was pretty much shut down when we arrived. We found one other hotel but it was full. So we parked our car outside our hotel, L'Opera, next to the Opera House, locked the doors and windows, pulled out the blankest and pillows and prepared to sleep in the car. I was tired so I was able to get some sleep. Watching the city in between naps was a bit surreal, an occasional car or pedestrian, the street cleaners walking by and finally at 4:00 am the first trolleys rumbled by. They appeared with increasing frequency as the dawn approached so I got less sleep. The hotel opened at 7:30, we got some breakfast there, checked in and went up to our room (no elevator so we lugged our bags up to the 4th floor, but a nice big room) and slept until 11.
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