Balkans, Day 2 - Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia

The original plan was to get up early and head to Zagreb, Croatia for breakfast. But, the owners of the hotel had said breakfast was from 8-10, and since we were the only people there, we decided we'd better eat breakfast there. I'm really glad we did, because they had set out a full-sized spread for us, and it would have been super rude not to eat it. They also asked if we wanted some scrambled eggs, and we said yes. The plate they brought out was huge! So, we ate enough eggs to last us for the week. The owners had their baby in the kitchen with them, so we played peek-a-boo with him for a while. As we were loading the car, a couple was driving their cows through the street. It was awesome.

 We were actually in a small village outside of Bled, and I'm glad we were. The drive back to Bled was picturesque. There were Alpine houses and farms, with hand-painted bee boxes and beautiful views of the mountains.

When we came around a curve, we had the most spectacular view of Lake Bled. It had mist coming up off it, and it just looked magical. We were directly in front of the church on the island, and it looked like Avalon. We saw lots of roadside shrines that I just loved.

The rest of the drive through Slovenia was just as beautiful. Mountains everywhere, and the cutest houses. Lots and lots of onion domes for me, though most of them had walls along the freeway mostly blocking them from view. I swear, when I get old, I'm going to come back and take a tour of Slovenia, taking pictures of churches and shrines, and then I'm going to make a coffee table book. Wait and see. I'll do it. I will!

We left Slovenia and headed into Croatia. It was uneventful.

We didn't have anywhere we needed to stop in Croatia, but I wanted to do something there instead of just driving though, so we decided to do look around downtown Zagreb, since we needed to go right past it anyway. There may be some parts of it that are nice, but none that we saw. Zagreb was drab and depressing. The traffic was horrible, we couldn't find a place to park, and it didn't even look worth it to get out of the car. So, we didn't. We drove past a cathedral that would have been nice if half of it hadn't have been covered by scaffolding. But, the majority of Zagreb looked like this.

Or like this

The rest of Croatia looked like we were driving through a boring part of Idaho. Granted, we were driving through the top of Croatia, which is not known for its beauty or its tourism. I've heard that the Croatian coast is lovely. Rick Steves told me so. Unfortunately, the coast is waaaaaay out of the way.

There's a part of the freeway through the top of Croatia that dips very close to Bosnia. How cool would it be to say you've been to Bosnia? The only problem is that neither our GPS nor Google Maps have any road maps of Bosnia. The plan was to drive in, eat some lunch, and turn around and drive out, so we would be on the same road and not get lost. We didn't know if we'd be able to find an ATM on the main road, though, so we stopped at a gas station in Croatia to fill up (we didn't know what the line at the border would be like) and grab some sandwiches to take into Bosnia with us. The border between Croatia and Bosnia is the Sava river. We got through the checkpoint to leave Croatia, no problem. Then, we sat in line on the bridge for about an hour. 

From the bridge, we saw lots of buildings that looked to be bombed out. They were pretty well destroyed anyway.

We got to the checkpoint to get into Bosnia, and all seemed well. Then, he asked for our car paperwork. We handed him our registration, but he said he wanted our insurance paperwork. (He spoke very little English, but between his very little English and our little German, we were able to figure it out.) I went into the glove compartment for it, but it wasn't there! Holy crap, we didn't have the paperwork. We had taken it into the house when we first were planning the vacation to make sure we could drive in all of these countries, and must have never put it back in the car. He kept our registration and our passports and told us to pull over. We sat there for probably 10 minutes. Max had to talk to some guys and try to explain. They spoke no English, but one guy spoke German, so Max was able to use what German he knows, and they decided to let us go back to Croatia. We're soooo lucky they didn't decide to fine us, impound our car for lack of documentation, or even arrest us. That would have been really bad. But, we turned around and went back to Croatia. No problems getting back in, Thank God.

Don't believe that fun-loving font

It was now time for a collective sigh of relief and a trip to Serbia. I looked at our passports, they had Bosnia stamps! Woo hoo! So, we get to count it on our places we've been list. Plus, saying you got kicked out of Bosnia is way cooler than just saying you went to Bosnia, right?

On to Serbia. The rest of Croatia was depressing.

So was Serbia, until we got to Belgrade. Then it was scary and depressing.

The GPS doesn't have any maps for Serbia beyond the major freeways, so I had printed off directions from Google Maps. Unfortunately, the directions said to get off the freeway at some road name, and the signs had no road names. Anywhere. In all of Serbia, there is not a single road name sign to be found. Luckily, Max had downloaded a map of Belgrade on his iPhone (Belgrade was the only place he could find, there wasn't a Serbia-wide map.) So, I was able to get us to our hotel that way. We found the hotel, but the parking was completely full. Again unfortunately, we didn't discover that until we had pulled in, and were then pretty much stuck. While Max was trying to turn around, I went in and asked where to park. She said they had two weddings, but we could try the other part of the parking lot. That was full, too, but as I was walking back to the car, I found a parallel spot along the narrow road in front of the hotel, next to the tennis court. With Max's help directing, I was able to make a 100-point turn and get us out of the other lot (I'm good at those. If you remember, I did one when we got stuck in Paris, too), and I drove to that spot. Max didn't believe it was even a spot, but it was. I made it in, 'cause I'm awesome.

We brought our stuff inside and checked in. The lady took our passports, and said she'd show us to our room. She wanted to keep our passports, but we weren't about to let that happen. We got to our room. The hotel was pretty nice. Nothing spectacular, but nice. It's decorated rather like the Bear Country Jamboree owns it.

The only problem was the weddings. Those weren't even a problem until we decided to try and sleep. Before that, it was fun. Really loud polka music from all directions. Our room was directly over one of the reception halls, and we had opened the window because the room was really hot, so we also got the smoke from people who had stepped outside to smoke. Blech. The music finally ended around 1am. I really think, though, that it would have been a lovely place except for the weddings.

Emma says - Our GPS has no shame in saying things incorrectly, so it was really funny to hear her in Zagreb. (Karen's note - I posted a video of it below) From what I saw of Bosnia, it's scary. Everything was in Cyrillic, and I swear I saw a Russian flag flying. Today was a lot of driving. I couldn't get to sleep because of the weddings. They were really, really loud.