28.4.2013
Km counter: 44752 today: 434 sum: 9636
N42°15’56” E024°18’31” – N44°40’23” E20°58’06”
I wake up only a few hours later. The sun is out, it smells like spring and the birds are singing. I quickly make some instant coffee and leave. Passing some beautiful rivers again the landscape gets more hilly soon. At the last hill petrol becomes tight again but soon I see Sofia when rolling down. At the city entrance I spend my last money for petrol just to stop in the city center without even a coin. It’s a beautiful Sunday and there are people on the streets so I grab my guitar and half an hour later I have enough money to get a nice breakfast. I like Bulgaria! After breakfast I make a little walk. Soon a flower shop appears so I ask the owner for a flower. It takes me only a second to explain even though he doesn’t understand a word. Of course I can have a flower he makes me understand, and gives me one of the most beautiful roses in his shop!
It is lunchtime when I leave Sofia heading to the close by border to Serbia where I expect cheap petrol. At the roadside of the city limits I see an old couple hitchhiking and of course I stop. Even though we don’t understand one word of what each other is saying we love each other immediately. Petrol is very tight so I have to stop only five kilometers before the border to pay in euro for a crazy exchange rate and get just a few litres. When I get petrol on the other side of the border I find out I was empty then. A few meters after the petrol pump I drop my new friends offering them some dried roses from Pakistan. He offers me a wooden lucky charm in exchange and so we take some of each others energy without any name, address or any possibility to contact. It is fine – this is love!
Between the borders a guy and his incredibly beautiful girlfriend (?) have a problem with their car. Battery is finished and it doesn’t start, she has no driving licence, very high high heels and no motivation to do nothing but looking incredibly beautiful… The guy and I get the engine running within a minute and I continue to enter Serbia. The guys ask me for weapons and as I hardly can stop laughing at them they let me go without bothering me. I get petrol and a few kilometers later I stop in a cosy valley at a restaurant to get the local food: cevapcici! I enjoy a lot and when I go on I feel very sad for having no camera again. I pass wonderful canyons and amazing rivers before I reach the flats of river danube a little after sunset. I get a coffee and half an hour later I am at the banks of my home river, only 800km downstream of my house. I stop at an expensive looking place and get some not that expensive but incredibly beautiful arranged and well tasting zander. The internet signal is strong enough to reach the car so I spend the night at their car park. You can find the place, not far from Belgrad at the destination mark of the map link above – its truly recomended!