Day 9 (02/06/08) Blagaj (Bosnia Herzegovina) to Nis (Serbia)
BIH border – you need a Green Card which our UK insurance wouldn’t give us so we had to buy at the border and it cost us E20 (plus E10 bribe as we had gone through on a Sunday and the Green card man was “not working” that day so we had to make it worth his while to give us the card or face having to come back the next day.
Part 1 – The morning.
Travelled: 619km
Debbie: We got up at 4am so we could get a head start into Sariavo and drive through the city to see if there were any worthwhile sites to see before the traffic started. We hit rush hour traffic as everyone seems to get up super early in BIH and we also managed to get lost so we saw more than we bargained for. We found BIH to be a poor country so there were lots of run down places and half built houses. Unlike the rest of Europe, BIH don’t like to drive up and over their mountains – they like to drive through them! I kid you not when I type that we went through a minimum of 50 tunnels! Serious. Every single tunnel had no lights, no barriers, no reflectors of any sorts and they were DARK... Once through Sariavo we then drove a further 3 hours to get to a border to cross into Serbia. We knew we needed a green card (3rd party insurance) for Serbia but were told at the border we tried to cross that they didn’t issue them and that we had to go to one 30km away ... so off we tootled and managed to get lost again arriving at a border post but the wrong one and again we were told to go to another border as they also don’t issue green cards. So back we went again, hot and frustrated. The signs in BIH are not at all good and in some places they were non existent. We ended up stopping to ask people all the way until we were sure we were on the right road – no one spoke English so it took a lot of arm movements to communicate. Good old GPS couldn’t help either as we didn’t have a detailed enough map on it for BIH. Eventually at 13.00 we got to the right border and then had to negotiate the green card fee – which ended up costing an arm and a leg – and we were made to wait 30 minutes before one of the 5 officials who were all sitting around picking their noses decided to get up and issue us with the card. We remained calm and unphased through out and I think that pissed them off more. We have found that the people in these parts drive like maniacs. They pass whenever then want regardless if there is an oncoming car or not. Even the Lorries do it! All the way through BIH and Serbia we have noticed many roadside memorials where they seem to put up a picture of the deceased and I’m sure it’s all through head on collisions.
Camped at:
Autocamp Apartmani Tenis, Blagaj
http://www.wimbledon.baibrozalihic@hotmail.comibrozalihic@hotmail.com
Continued under Serbia page ...
