Belgrade

Before leaving the station, Nikki and I went to the currency exchange office to get this weeks Mickey Mouse money before wondering where to stay. We did have one lead however, Green room hostel which was close to the station, so close in fact that we walked straight past it and had to head back 2 blocks or so until we found it. The lift only went to the 4th floor and so after 2 flights of stairs we crashed into a very smelly apartment where we were greeted by a cross between a 60 year old Richard Branson and Terry Thomas. All of this proved too much to bear and I for one was approaching absolute exhaustion but the prospect of entering into this world was equally as painful as pushing on so we did an about turn and headed back to the street to get out the old Lonely Planet. There were a few old hotels not too far from where we were but one was considerably cheaper and seemed to have more charm than the others. Hotel Moskva is an old Communist style place with poky rooms and archaic decor but at €50 per night, I didn't give two shits about that and so we checked in to neighbouring singles and crashed out for most of the morning. The shower was a total disaster but free wireless sweetened the deal and given that I still had one meals worth of bread and cheese in my bag I decided to stay in the room all day where among other things I discovered a new form or torture. Dripping tap? Waterboarding? Bamboo under the fingernails? No, Serbian television. It's so bad it's barely watchable but I feel sure that it could be used in Bush's 'War of Terror', perhaps it's piped into Guantanamo???

One downside to having done nothing on the Sunday was that everything of interest in Europe tends to be closed on Mondays and Belgrade was no exception. That said, the lack of specific things to do tends to allow you to just wander and potentially see more of the real city than you might otherwise. Having already decided to get another night at the hotel, Nikki and I had dinner in, as far as we could tell, the only nice part of the city, Skadarska. The next morning I headed out to meet Hans and Matt from Sarajevo who had followed in our footsteps but retained their frugal backpacker stance and checked into 3 black catz hostel. I felt I should do the same and so we met up and did the sights together. By this time, Hans and I had persuaded Matt that he should join us in our jaunt to Kosovo as he would find it easy to get down to Istanbul from there and he'd get to see a bit more of Serbia along the way. He agreed and after a couple of nights in Belgrade we got up at some ridiculous hour and got on a train to the Southern Serbian town of Nis (pronounced Nish).