From Belgrade to Skopje

Thursday 27.06.2013

After three nights in Belgrade we decided to head to Skopje. It`s only 440 kilometers far away from Belgrade, so we thought it shouldn’t be a big problem to hitchhike that distance in one day. The first lift gave us a Serbian police officer. He barely spoke german and drove the whole time 200 km/h and said always „radar, no problem, i am police“ and when we saw a huge SUV with dark windows he just said „Mafia! Mafia Scheisse, Polizei gut“. He had to call his „Kollegah“ from „grosse Polizei“ from time to time and then he stopped at the highway and the „Kollegah von grosse Polizei“ stopped at the second line and they had a small chat in the middle of the highway:

Then he got a call and had to work immediately, so we had to leave the car on the highway. It started to get dark and before we left the car he said a couple of times „Dunkel, trampen, Scheisse“ (e.g. „Hitchhiking in the dark is shit, right?“) Thanks for that advice man! We tried to go at least to the next petrol station and we asked him what the Serbian word for petrol station is and he wrote it down for us: „Vladicin han“.

We made a new sign with Vladicin han and an old man stopped and we tried to explain him that we need the next vladicin han on the way to Skopje. He didn`t seem to be very amused and shouted something in Serbian.

Then he stopped and we left his car in a small town in the south of Serbia. We bought something in the supermarket and wanted to search for a quiet place to camp in the wildness. On our way somebody shouted „musicians, musicians, where do you want to go??“ So we met Igor, who invited us to stay at his place. It turned out that he and his whole family are musicians and so we ended up having a jam session at his room before we went out for drinks:

When we arrived at Igor’s home at 5 AM, his mother woke up and prepared a delicious midnight meal for us. Hans appreciated that:

So we slept very well this night after we made a lot of music together and watched uncountable YouTube videos:

When we woke up Igor’s mother made a great lunch for us. Thanks a lot. After that we were not able to move at all and we had to watch Rambo 3. Around 4 PM we had a last coffee with Igor, before we headed to Skopje.

Igor, thank you very much for everything. We had a great time and we wish you all the best for your music career and your future. Hope to see you again.

By the way: when we arrived at Igor’s house and told him that we had some communication problems finding the next petrol station, we figured out that Vladicin han is actually the name of the town where the next petrol station was and not the Serbian word for petrol station. 😉

So we continued hitchhiking and unfortunately it stated raining:

Hitchhiking on that day wasn`t going that well and after 40 kilometers we got stocked in another small town in the south of Serbia. Fortunately we saw a church and we asked the priest if we could build up our tent in his garden. He offered us a place to sleep in a small building beside his house:

Next day was Sunday and at 9 AM some old men from the village came to „our“ room before the church service to have a tea together with the priest. We also joined them:

After a coffee and a chat with the old men we had the first lift with a truck:

He drove us to the Serbian-Macedonian border. We crossed the border on our feet and after one hour of waiting a friendly businessmen who is working in Munich for the last 25 years gave us a lift. He bought us some beers and drove us directly to our hostel in Skopje. Thanks so much!