Plitvice and pesky passports

We left Belgrade around 08.40 on Wednesday morning to drive to the Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia. The Serbian motorway wasn’t particularly busy but again 5km out from the border the lorries started to queue to get into the Schengen area. It wasn’t too bad for us and only took about half an hour. The Serbian side weren’t too interested in us and the Croatian border control seemed even less so.

After we had sailed through we realised that the Croatian border official hadn’t stamped our passports so there was no record of when we entered the EU again after leaving it in Greece. This might not matter but, again, we had heard some horror stories of people trying to prove how long they were in the EU/Schengen area when their passports had not been stamped. We hadn’t realised until we were already on the motorway and gone through a toll. There was a rest area nearby that also went back towards the Croatian border so we turned around and headed back through the toll. We had only been on the toll for maybe 5 miles each way but obviously the system didn’t realise that and charged us the full amount of €25! We got back to the Croatian border, parked up and went to find the chap who had inspected our passports. Luckily, he was happy to just stamp them this time so we could avoid going back out of Croatia, into Serbia, back out of there and back into Croatia. It all could have been very messy!

Entering back into the EU
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Bemused in Belgrade

Our park up in Belgrade/Beograd was a very large, gated compound on the outskirts of the city with full facilities and friendly hosts. We arrived around 15.30 and, as most museums in the city centre were shut on a Monday, we decided to chill for a couple of hours in the sunshine before making our way to the Danube riverfront 30 minutes walk away for a bite to eat. We found a lovely fish restaurant called Sent Andrea so Liz had perch and I had sea bream. Both cooked beautifully. Another peaceful night’s rest before hitting Beograd on Tuesday, April 2. We’d given up reporting to the police by now and decided we would chance it if we were ever questioned.

Compound in Belgrade

We navigated the digital bus pass app, Beograd Plus, so that we each had an e-ticket (all day ticket for less than £1) on our phones as we didn’t get any Serbian Dinars out for such a short stay. We have been able to use our Wise credit card everywhere so far on this trip and so it was in Serbia. It was an easy 30 minute bus ride from our park up to the centre of Beograd.

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Springtime in Serbia

We left our camp stop in Sofia, Bulgaria on Saturday (March 30th) morning around 09.30 having emptied various tanks and filled with water. We also filled up with diesel as it seemed to be quite cheap in Sofia at around equivalent of €1.35 a litre and we weren’t sure what the price would be in Serbia. (As it turned out, the price for diesel seemed to be fixed at 203RSD in Serbia, which is about €1.64 so good call by us!) It was going to be another hot day but at least we have air con in the cab. We took the motorway to the border crossing at Calotina and waited in line. Even for a Saturday morning, the queue of trucks went on for 4km. It took us about an hour to get through and they even checked that we had bought a vignette (one off payment instead of individual tolls) before our passports were stamped to leave Bulgaria and then entered Serbia. We had downloaded an e-Sim for Serbia from Airalo but couldn’t activate it until we were actually in the country. Touch of relief that it all worked very smoothly and we could have connectivity whilst there. Before we left the U.K. we had purchased International Driving Permits as Serbia supposedly requires it but no one asked us to produce it. Perhaps they would have if there had been an accident. Who knows?

Wait nearly over

According to various government websites (UK and Serbia), we needed to register with the police within 24 hours of entering the country. Usually, if you are staying in a hotel they will do it for you but we had no idea where we were going to stay and certainly not in one place for the duration of our visit. So we drove to Niš as there was a large police station there and also various sights we wanted to visit. We found somewhere to park and hoped we had understood the parking sign correctly!

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