Serbia

Serbia is cool. And mostly cool for one reason: our mate Denis. If we hadn´t met him, we may not have enjoyed it as much as we did.

So we caught a train across the border from Montengro to a town called Prijepolje, where we intended to ride across from here to Bulgaria. So I meet this boy on the street and he helps us with some directions, and he speaks really good english, and he takes us to this map shop where we buy a map, and then he says goodbye.

The next day we planned to buy tickets for an overnight train to Nis, after finding out that riding East would be a bit dodgy with shite roads and politically unstable countryside. So we were hanging out that day and bumped into this kid again. And got chatting, and chatting, until eventually he invited us back to his mum´s pharmacy to meet his mum and to have lunch, and then he showed us all around town, and took us to a really old monastery on bike. It was so cool.

Our mate Denis.

Denis is a very politically aware 17 year-old. He´ll probably end up being president of Serbia some day. He´s a leader of a youth group there and they do lots to help young people in Prijepolje. At present he and his friends are organising a big concert with bands, rapping, poetry readings, and other cool stuff.

So that evening we hung out in town with his friends, and they convinced us to stay another night so we could go riding the next day... we couldn´t really say no, and crashed at Denis´s folks house. His family were also super friendly and fed us loads of good traditional Serbian food. His grandma was particularly awesome.

So the next day we went for a mountain bike ride with Denis, his best mate Wildhem, Denis´ little brother Peter, and Denis´ old history professor Faruk. It was a long day´s ride, as Denis and Peter´s bikes were in very bad condition with failing drivetrains requiring Peter to walk up all the hills, and dodgy brakes which meant Denis had to walk down all the hills!

Faruk took us to some great places, I can´t remember what they´re called now. But there was an old trading route between Dubrovnik and Istanbul that ran near here and the fort pictured below was one of the outposts protecting the trade route.

Wildhem, Denis, Peter, Faruk, and me.

Below the fort was a really, really old mosque. Maybe 600 or 700 years old? Maybe older. Anyway, we went inside and had a look at a hand-written copy of the Qu´ran that was perhaps 500 years old or something. Crazy.

Faruk shows us the ancient Qu´ran.

Denis, Peter, Jen and Faruk outside the fort and the mosque.

We took the overnight train to Nis, where we were both knackered and ended up treating ourselves to a 95 euro 4-star hotel, and spent the day escaping the 38 degree heat and watching the Tour de France in blissful air-conditioning. Ahhhh...

The next day we rode for a bit, and then stayed at a small town near the border of Bulgaria. I can´t quite remember what it was called, but I do recall that we stayed in a very communist style hotel. The only word to describe this huge concrete monstrosity is ¨grim.¨ Added to that the nightclub that started pumping out music at about 1am, we were pretty happy to get out of that place.

The next day we rode through a beautiful, but very busy, gorge to the Bulgarian border.

A rare break in the traffic allowed us to take a photo of this beautiful gorge, on the way to the Bulgarian border.