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gsmatthews95 · 6 years

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The most long winded journey of all time

Second piece of the day. Sat in the same chair, under the same tree having eaten my pizza. The one good things about today's saga has been that it has enabled me to catch up on this little blog as I was a few days behind and was too lazy to write it yesterday. The result, we've had two days of complete chill to recharge our batteries. Onto the bustle of the capital city next woo yah.

Ok so the trip from zabljak to Kosovo (pec more accurately) the border town on the kosovan side of the border. So we googled the vest and quickest way to get to Kosovo from the national park. We thought this would be easy. Maybe 2 buses and take a few hours, simple. We were wrong. There were no buses. At all. The journey was long, windy and barely travelled. This country has not got great social mobility we concluded. But with the only recommended option being to travel back down to Podgorica and then get a bus to pec that arrived at 3am we decided to take it on. Coincidentally, this journey while taking a day and night would also have cost us 52 dollars. To get 3 hours east. Ridiculous. We decided to hitch hike. The journey was supposed to be six parts: 1) zabljak to Tara bridge, 2) tara bridge to mojkovac, 3) mojkovac to bijelo polje, 4) bijelo polje to berane, 5) berane to rosaje and 6) rosaje to pec. Easy as. 6 separate hitches in one day. 6 people nice enough to pick us up off the road and take us closer to our destination. We decided to take Lita of food and water and embarked early the next day upon our adventure. Exciting.

We set off. It was early, not even nine yet. We left for the bus station to see if there were any buses or if they even had any info for us. They didn't. We even met some Serbians who seemed scared for our lives that we were going to Kosovo. Great another good omen. It wasn't looking good for us but we persevered and walked to our street, found our spot, put our bags down and put our thumbs up. It was slow, maybe because there were so many cars right next to the town that no one felt empathetic enough to help us, they shifted blame to each other and didn't feel sorry enough to stop for us. Bastards. But then after 30 mins or so we got lucky and a mini bus with people going rafting was heading straight for Tara bridge, sweet. Trip 1 tick.

We got to the bridge, we hoped he'd stop so we could jump out. To our horror he carried on across the bridge (it was really long and quite narrow. I could see the trepidation in Alina's eyes as she was thinking what I was thinking. Were gonna have to walk back along that.) Then he took us further. Down a hill to the rafting and ziplining area. More walking yay. We got there had some breaky as we waited for him to drive back. He wasn't driving back. He shepherded the rafters to their rafts and came back and good us to wait as we asked if he could drive us back over the bridge. Luckily a man in a yute (his mate) was doing this exact journey and the nice bus driver hailed him down to give us a lift. So we made it to point two of our journey. Sat on the road, just past the stalls selling souvenirs with 40km of winding mountain roads ahead of us. We were there for ten minutes. Maybe 6 cars had gone past, all full. God this may be long. This was the scariest stretch of the journey as there are no buses going along it and very few cars as we've established. But after barely ten minutes a car pulls over, speaking English the two women ask where we're going. We reply "anywhere that direction please, but preferably mojkovac". They pull over, we clear the back seats and jump in. The two of us and our two big rucksacks on our laps. Not much space. It turns out the two women were German so they had a nice German chat with Alina while I sat in the back squished between two bags. They dropped us right off at mojkovac where we hoped to catch a bus only for a taxi driver to tell us there were no buses and we should take his taxi instead. No thank you. We ain't got that mulah. Back to the streets and hitchhiking. Point 3 reached and it wasn't even midday. We were confident.

This confidence was short lived. Maybe 10 minutes as we wandered up the windy road in the heat looking for a good place to stand where the cars could stop for us. We walked up and stopped. We tried to hitch. We didnt get far. No one stopped, some people seemed to be angry at us judging by their faces and gestures. Hmm. Bad signs. So we moved up the street to find a new spot. This was so long as we walked further up the hill, in the furnace midday heat, with our fat bags. It was bleak. Spirits were low. We stood on the side of the road at a bad place on the uphill on a curve. It was crap but we were tired. We kept trying then out of the blue pur messiah arrived. An angry looking man in a big white van. Be stopped we jumped in and we drove towards bijelo polje. As we got close, getting tired of his.... Questionable music he asked where exactly so we said berane, the next stop on our journey and we lucked out as it turned out he was heading there too. Easay oh, two legs in one wooooo baybey. Spirits were high, smiles were worn and we relaxed. These were the hardest parts of the journey down. We got there and crossed another bridge to find a spot for lunch on our road we had to head down. We set up legs three and four done, tick tick.

Our much was nice as we chowed down on our bread and cheese, fig rolls and crisps. We were on a patch of grass in the middle of the road basically in the shade under a sign. It was extremely nice, chilled and relaxing as we took advantage of our moments peace on this long day. There was one thing blocking the peace though. The fact that 60% of the passing cars took huge interest in us as they said hi, honked at us and waved. Very bazaar but a nice change nonetheless from the constant death stares and glowers we have been used to from the majority of people in these post communist countries. At one point a police car even went past and shouted hi at us. That was jokes. We felt welcome. If this was a sign of what Kosovo would be like we knew wed enjoy it and have fun. After lunch we moved ten meters up the road and reassumed our positions. Lowbehold 15 minutes later we had a car pull up and honk us. Bangin. We jumped in. This was a funny journey as the guys who picked us up were two early twenties Serbian psytrance heads.... For those who dont know psytrance is a very fast and aggressive style of music. Similar to dnb x10. They were sound tho and with the slight blip of the fact that they told us they hadn't slept for 2 days aside it was a funny journey as they chatted about the Balkans, festivals, psytrance and how they couldn't and wouldn't go to Kosovo cause they would probably be killed owing to the tense nature of relations between the two nations..... Never the less they got us to rosaje the fifth part of our journey. Tick. Onto the final leg.

We got to the bus station and were immediately hailed down by a man in German who wanted coffee with us. As Alina speaks German this is a common occurrence for us as a lot of old men who have worked in Germany and speak Germany and love Germany want to talk about it. Alina gets stuck talking to them and I am left like a lemon smiling and nodding as much as I can. This man told us the buses to Kosovo had all gone for the day and it would cost 20 euros to take a taxi. This didn't seem bad so we sat and ha d a coffee with him as he found us a driver. One came over. He had poor English but enough to say ten, ten pointing at me and Alina. Cool 20 euros for the two of us that seems fine for a border crossing and a 50km journey. This journey was simple. Through the mountains and across the Montenegrin side of the border. It was then a 20 minute drive till we hit the Kosovo side of the border which begged the question who owns this vast stretch of land in the middle?? According to maps.me it was kosovan though. We got to pec in very good time (much better than 3am) slightly underwhelmed because the last leg of the journey was so simple. But stick one more big tick as we'd completed leg 6. As we got out I gave him a fifty euro note expecting to get 30 change. I got 20. Classic. Excuse me. You told us it was 20. We had a heated exchange for five minutes before Alina realised the issue. Every time he said 30 it sounded like ten. So he'd actually said the same the whole time but wed thought he'd said 20. Very annoying. Whatever though. We saved 25 quid, had and adventure and got in at a much more convenient time. A good little journey.

Anyway the saga is now over by the way and all is well. We are on the bus to pristine now, the capital city. All is well.

See y'all soon, under 2 months!! G.

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