Hotel Car Smederevo

... a tiny village clustered around the cove where the ferry lands. So there's a mad scramble to get off; everyone tears up the hill through the village and ten minutes later peace is restored. Its surreal. The road from here is across rolling green farmland a bit like the UK; I manage to overtake and stay ahead of a tractor and the riding is generally nice.

Once out of the hills the route follows a dyke; the Danube is vast here and the hills ...

... music or Berlinda Carlisle are at number 1.....(you could also be in Germany)....15) .....you can find a copy of When Saturday Comes (a footie magazine) ..... but you cant get it at home.....wierd.....16) ..... red lights are optional....17) ..... your taxi driver tells you not to wear a seat-belt....because ...you know..... your life is in Gods hands and his will is law....18) .....everyone assumes you support Rangers or Celtic..... ....there are more.....p

... be pulling a bit to the left as I took us from Vienna to the Hungarian border. It was suprisingly flat ! We cooked bacon and eggs in the carpark of a Hungarian strip club. At the next fuel stop Bill found out why it was pulling left. We had a flat. The inner tyre, hence we hadn't spotted it. With a good team effort we had the wheel off, the new one hauled down from the terrace, the safety rail broken and a cup of tea made. We were ...

... when we emigrated to the US of A baby!!! very awesome experience, because i did not intend on doing this, and the only reason i knew what the name of the campsite was, because my mom had mentioned it randomly a couple months before my trip, AWESOME!

... told me to ask somebody where the street was; now I know why. So I finally ask three different people and get three different answers on where the street is..Finally, on the fourth attempt, I ask a woman sitting in a coffee shop with her friends. She actually gets up and guides me to the hostel. Everyone is just so helpful and friendly; such a stark comparison from Cologne. It's amazing how a recent, devastation civil war failed to break down these people spirit ...

Flights: Air Berlin, Helsinki-Dusseldorf-Helsinki, 58€ Germanwings, Cologne-Belgrad-Cologne, 74€ Train, Dusseldorf-Cologne-Dusseldorf, around 25€ Beer 0,5l, 0,80-1,80€ L&M cigarettes, 1,20€ Taxi 3km, 3€ Bus from airport to city centre, 0,80€ Great meal at average restaurant with drinks, 8€

Contrary to what it says on this travelblog, the name of the country is officially "serbia" now as they have formally split from Montenegro. If only the same could happen for Kosovo now... I arrived to board my train almost an hour early in Istanbul, checking out the beautiful old 19th century train station where the Orient Express used to terminate and wanting to make sure I got the window seat in the sleeping compartment. I needn't ...

... lazily. There is also a lot of billboards with the same bald guy in them. Very interesting. Is he famous? He's not ugly, but not fantastic either. Why him? So Serbia is in the part of Europe that experienced a very hot summer. I can see the effects. All the corn fields are dried up and stunted. The river is very low, and the creeks are non existent. There are people on the side of the road that have pulled into small turnouts and ...

As I feared, leaving the EU again brought about problems for me thanks to my decision to travel using my Maltese passport. Even though Malta is an EU country, and the entry requirements for Serbia clearly stated that EU nationals didn't require a visa, I still managed to hold up our bus at the border for several minutes as the customs officer checked my visa situation. It was almost 2am and freezing cold so this may have helped speed up the process because before ...

After the long journey with the CCRD sufferer we arrived to Sophia early in the morning. Reading our Let's Go guide book we realised there wasn't much to do here, so with this in mind we booked a train ticket onwards to Budapest for that afternoon. With about five hours to kill we walked into town and headed to the St. Alexander Nevski Cathedral. It was pretty impressive. Outside there was a little flea market selling all kinds of ...