Timișoara, Hungary > Vršac, Serbia 80km

[Originally posted Sept 3, 2014]

"Where are you going?" barked in the most no-nonsense Russian sounding accent.  This was our warm welcome at the Romanian - Serbian border on our way into Serbia.  Of course these kind words were only half shouted at us from a rather stern looking gentleman behind a hazy piece of glass after he motioned to me to put on a shirt.  It was apparent that he took his job very seriously and the idea of two foreigners (shirtless and with a ponytail - no less) coming into his country was no joking manner.  (Every time I meet someone this uptight I always think of my Dad, who among other things, as taught me to never take yourself too seriously.)  "To Belgrade and then to Croatia," Katy answered - sweet as can be.

It was in stark contrast to our border crossing yesterday.  Yesterday at the Romania border we were chatting with the 6 Romanian border officials, asking about local cuisine, how to say Yes and Thank You, even cracking jokes about why the Hungarians were such an overweight population (the three Hungarian border officials were no less than 20 meters away - all rather overweight - while all the Romanians looked fit as can be).  But here in Serbia things were different.  The road was covered by old "Duty Free Shops" that were closed away behind barbed wire and didn't appear to have been in use for the past 10 or 20 years.  The road quality had deteriorated noticeably, even the sky was dark and grey - as if the country and mother nature had joined force to give us a nice, warm Serbian welcome.

Serbia.

An ominous welcome from mother nature.

Four kilometers down the road we pull over to take some photos of the menacing clouds (seriously - they looked like a giant tidal wave rolling over some lone mountains) and a friendly chap pulls up on his motorbike.  At first I think, oh no, what did we do wrong.  But then he asks if we need help, how we are doing, where we are from (which when we say USA he offers his hand in a warm greeting and introduces himself).  A very friendly guy.

Checking into our accommodation at Apartments 135 a similar warm greeting is offered - actually the friendliest hotel/hostel owner we've come across.  He makes sure the room is okay, we have somewhere to put the bike, gives us dinner recomendations (more to come on this) and just an all around great guy.  It always impresses me that wherever we go people are typically 1) so nice and 2) so eager to use their English and continually apologize that they don't speak any better.  (My response in this situation is always the same, it goes like this: the man/woman apologize they don't speak better English and then tell us that their son/daughter is out of town, for which they also apologize, because they speak much better English.  This is always followed up by me saying "Yes, but my Serbian/Romanian/etc. is much worse.")

Dinner - wow.  Some fine eating.  I'm not sure exactly what we had but it sure was good.  I guess I will just let the pictures do the talking.  As we indulged we recounted our favorite eating experiences over the past two months.  It's been a gastronomic indulgence, returning home will sure be tough.

Killer ambience. Killer.