Day 78 - Belgrade

One of M's friends from Melbourne was also holidaying in this part of the world and were only 26km away visiting family at Grocka. Unfortunately we had been warned not to move our car from its parking space on the street or it would be unlikely we would find another one so that meant we needed to catch the bus to Grocka.

We missed the planned bus by a few seconds so had to wait 45 minutes for the next one. It was surprising how we weren't very far out of Belgrade before we were in the countryside, we had imagined that 26km from the capital that we would just be in another suburb.

Unfortunately our sim card didn't have data in Serbia so making contact was difficult and when we arrived at the bus stop in the small town of Grocka there was no one to meet us. We waited a while and since they had shared their location some time earlier we set off on foot. As we passed the neighbours leant over their fences and watched us pick our way through muddy road works, when we reached the spot we had been directed to there was noone there!

We gave up (a bit angry by now) and headed to the bus station. Luckily someone gave us access to some wifi and we finally got in contact, we were collected just as we were considering taking the bus back to Belgrade.

We spent the afternoon on the large terrace of a restaurant on top of a hill looking over the river. The restaurant had been a holiday home of Tito's (we are sure he had lots of them in many countries) so held the prime position in the town. We had a very pleasant afternoon catching up while looking out over the Danube.

Getting in the car to go back to the bus stop we were trying to work out why the front seat belts were done up when they were empty - we were told it was to stop them beeping, but wouldn't it be easier to just put them on?

We wanted to catch the Lasta bus back to Belgrade as it was express and its final stop was near our apartment. We watched a few normal buses arrive and leave but after about half an hour in the cold we gave up waiting and hopped on the next bus. Meanwhile M received an email back from the car rental place about our missing windscreen wiper, they suggested we add water, obviously it was all lost in translation somewhere between Bulgarian and English.

As feared the bus dropped us off nowhere near where we needed to go but fortunately a tram came along that that stopped right near home. Also, as we couldn't work out how to buy the bus or tram tickets the return trip ended up being free.