Serbia was a country we really knew nothing about, yet it seemed to sit at the very heart of the Balkans both geographically and culturally. We had no idea what to expect, particularly at the border crossing from Romania, but if the tree-lined banks of the blue Danube river cutting between these two countries was anything to go by, we were in for something special.
We pulled up to the Romanian border crossing station, where the man in the booth took our passports and glanced at them for a few extra seconds than needed, probably surprised to see the gold United Kingdom writing emblazoned on the front.
He looked down at his desk then looked back up and said, “Serbia?” as if to confirm to us that we definitely knew which country we were entering. With a shrug and a smile he stamped us through and we were free to cross the Iron Bridge into Serbian territory, where a group of Serbian border officials were waiting.
“Where are you going?” the only English speaker asked. We thought it was pretty obvious, but we told them our travel plans anyway. He asked to look in the back of the van and two other officials came over, one with a torch who began searching through our cupboards and behind the cladding while another grilled Ben on the contents of our hard drives.
They’d probably been expecting us to tell them we had government secrets on there or something, not just photos, but when one of the men saw my 35mm camera he picked it up eagerly and said, “Olympus!”, excited by the fact that he used to own the same one.
By the time they’d finished searching there were now five border guards peering curiously into our van and making impressed murmuring noises. The youngest of the five got chatting to Ben about our van and our travels, possibly reconsidering his choice of work or maybe just subvertly interrogating him.
“What kind of plants are these?” The question threw Ben off.
“Interesting,” was all the border guard replied. Perhaps he’d been expecting something a little more exotic.
With the interrogations over, our passports were stamped and we were on our way to explore our twenty-sixth European country with a friendly “Welcome to Serbia!” from the officials. We were now free to wound our way through the valleys and banks of the Danube river, with our sights set on Belgrade.
