26 June 09
Waking up in our awesome hotel room reminded us of exactly where we were. But we had a lunch date that we needed to make. Branka, Lazarov’s mother, was cooking lunch for us and so we had to be there with bells on. We took one more adventurous ride in the lift and said our goodbyes to the Hotel Tamiš. Lunch consisted of no less than 3 courses, more rekija and loads of “eat, eat” as if we were all wasting away and needed to be force-fed to ensure we didn’t die of starvation. We had a fantastic time and got to chat further with Branka and Miloš (Lazarov). It was a wonderful time that made us all feel like we were at home and could forget the worries of the outside world for awhile. All things change and all things end and so our time there had to as well. We grabbed a taxi from the town back to the center of Beograd (cost – $16 even though the fare on the meter said twice that and the ride was 40 minutes).
So we got prepared and got on the bus to Sarajevo. Partway through, when the driver came to check everyone’s tickets it turned out that Emily and Russell had tickets that were invalid. They did purchase round trip tickets but apparently the company that they bought them from, while the same company as the bus we were on, did not cooperate with the company who owned this bus. Because the station they left from in Sarajevo was the not the station we were going to they could not use the tickets they had. Go figure. So there was some confusion and concern about how they were going to pay as they had no money for the tickets. Eventually we managed to get them to stop at a station in a town. Russell caught a cab to a bankomat (ATM) and got the money while I sat chatting with the driver to make certain that the bus didn’t leave without him. They had to pay in Dinar as we were coming from Serbia and so I guess they couldn’t pay in Marka when we got back to Sarajevo. In the end it all got sorted without a problem.
Then we came to the border and we expected tons of problems because the Serbian border patrol is just about the unfriendliest I have ever met. While they maintained their intense unfriendliness we didn’t have any problems. In fact, when you go to Serbia you have to register with the municipal police. If you stay in a hotel or hostel you don’t really have to worry about it as the receptionist will take care of it all for you. So we had these slips of paper that said we were registered and we should have showed them to the border patrol, but they didn’t ask for them so they’re now souvenirs.
We rolled back into Haris’ Hostel in Sarajevo at about 11pm, ate one of the largest pizzas I’ve ever seen in my life and then hit bed.
Iain