And in this post I'm going to decipher all sorts of random recordings from the dictaphone.
We loaded up and rolled out at 22:30, and on the recording you can hear Doomer's optimistic comment: “We gotta get drunk!”
We arrived a day later in the early morning, around 5-6 AM. The road trip, judging by the GPS tracker, took 31 hours and 16 minutes.
Our van was quite modern and comfortable: it had a computer to calculate the fuel in the tank (we picked it up empty and returned it empty), an auto-hold parking system so it wouldn't roll backward, air conditioning, two cigarette lighter sockets, and other cool perks.
I can't even express how happy I was with the seats. Ergonomic, they recline back, lots of legroom. You can't even compare it to the van we took to Crimea – that one had nightmarish flat seats upholstered in fake leather that made your ass sweat, and there was absolutely zero legroom. From now on, I will always find out what kind of van it is in advance and won't sign up for the awful ones.
Turns out, at gas stations you can easily ask them to pour boiling water into your thermos from the coffee-tea dispenser. Doomer tried it – and voila, no problem. Moral of the story: don't be afraid to ask, people are nice, even the cogs in the hydra of capitalism.
We paid a 10 euro toll in Slovakia to drive on local roads in our vehicle. This toll is called by the French word “Vignette”, and the document representing its payment is a sticker on the windshield. It's valid for different periods in different countries: a week, ten days, for example. But you can also buy one for a year if you feel like constantly driving back and forth.
The EU ends at the Hungarian-Serbian border. There I pessimistically guessed that we'd be stuck standing there for an hour. And for some reason, that's exactly what happened. Interestingly, while we stood in the line for EU citizens, the second line (for the plebs) wasn't moving, and people there had already started honking. For us, this is a bit wild, because it feels like a customs/border officer would get even more pissed off by such a display of emotions and would stall even more on purpose. But apparently, that's just how hot-blooded Balkan guys do things.
As a result of this makeshift protest action, they opened the boom barrier, and the cars waiting in line frantically rushed to the checkpoint, like old ladies at a clearance sale: whoever grabs the coveted item first.
When we finally made it to the checkpoint, they told us to pull over and open the trunk so they could check the cargo. They asked us to unpack a couple of bikes from their boxes, luckily, the ones closest to the door. The officer was satisfied with what he saw, but asked how much the bike cost. Everyone around froze up: it's hard to come up with a number on the fly that an official will like, because it's completely unclear why he's even asking. I was standing nearby, and for some reason I blurted out: “500 dollars”. So that's what they wrote down: 3000 euros for all of them.
My bike, by the way, when bought in Belarus 4 years ago, cost about that much. Right now it doesn't seem possible to figure out its value.
They also scribbled right in Robert's passport that we imported 9 bicycles for that price, and strictly ordered us to demand they confirm it with a stamp on our way out, so there wouldn't be any problems later. Naturally, at the Montenegrin border, the customs officer had never heard of any stamp and told us to just go. On the way back they hassled us over this, but not too much.
We paid 5 euros in Serbia for a toll road, I think maybe even twice. The vignette is better: at least there you're paying for everything, not just for a tiny section.
In the countries bordering Serbia, the writing on the road signs was in the Latin alphabet, but in Serbia itself (and, I think, in Montenegro) it's duplicated in Cyrillic.
Here the real mountains finally began, and the road along them is set up like this: two lanes going up, and one going down. You can't see any traces of the war in Serbia: everything is brand new everywhere, the Americans, apparently, did their best.
Every now and then you come across signs clearly aimed at Americans: “FAST FOOD” and other similar stuff.
The cops' batons light up.
When we finally got to the bridge and the village of Djurdjevica Tara early in the morning, at first we couldn't find our house, because the coordinates we were given were wrong, but after a short phone negotiation everything settled down.
The owner introduced himself as Bronislav, he spoke passable Russian and English, was almost two meters tall, with a tanned and slightly drunk face. It was a pleasure dealing with him, he settled us in, showed us the ropes, how many bathrooms and toilets there were, which rooms were where, and didn't ask for money upfront – apparently, it's not customary to be so blunt.
