Serbia looks very much like Bosnia-Herzegovina, but with slightly better living standards, the houses and the roads are in better condition.

For a slice of cheese we got a watchdog, barking as soon as someone got close to our car at the truckstop where we parked for the night.

After yesterdays dirt road trip and the last days of rain our car was really dirty. We got it cleaned for only 5 Euro. And the really did a good job.

There are a lot of speed controls. And we mean a lot. In just a couple of hours we have seen eight of them. We do not want to give the police any reason at all for stopping us.

At the border to Bulgaria we bought a Vignette, for 17 Euro for a month. It is a tax for travelling all roads in Bulgaria. Well, no way to get around it here.

We headed striait for the Paki embassy. Rushed in and explained what we needed. The answer was very clear NO, NO and NO! We have to apply for a visa at the Paki embassy in Sweden. That is the only way for us to get a visa. They have clearly changed the rules since the last time we visited Pakistan, 9 years ago. Now we need to send our passports and all the documents to Sweden, and they have to send it back to us again.

Back at the parking lot again we were approached by a man: Hi my name is Nacho. Are you Bert? I am a friend of Andrei. Nacho had seen our car and phoned Andrei, who is on holiday in Greece if this really was our car. Nacho and Andrei are both members of the local Saab club. Andrei is the one who built a mini copy of our Saab and was also sales manager here at Saab and Nacho was the CEO for Saab in Bulgaria.

After some telephonecalls back and forth, Andrei arranged for his realitve Yassen to come and meet us. Also he a member of the Saab club, of course. He took us to Andrei apartment and gave us a key. This was perfect for us, now we can stay in the car and use the shower and the toilet at Andreis place. But it would have been great if he had been at home so that we could meet him in person. We have only been talking over the internet. But Yassen and his wife Dora took us under their wings and invited us for dinner already the same evening. Unfortunately we arrived one hour late for dinner. We hadn’t realized that we had entered a new time zone during the day.