It’s been a while since I’ve visited Serbia so I thought: “Why wouldn’t I drive 650 km and see what’s new over there?”

Well, actually it was a little bit different – the company sent me there since there was some work to do for few days.

So far, furthest south I got in Serbia was some 70 km north of town of Nis where I’m currently at so this is kind of a record. When arriving to a town you see signs towards Thessaloniki, Greece, you know you’ve gone south for real (although truth be told, there’s at least additional 450 km of driving to get there).

The drive to Nis was quite OK since luckily there was almost no rain, and I would have made it in less than 6 hours if it wasn’t for a litlle problem I had just before crossing border into Serbia – my exhaust pipe kind of fell apart.

Considering it was Sunday afternoon, the little problem got a bit bigger. Getting to Nis without a car was an option I really didn’t even want to consider, even if it was possible to do it. That would mean leaving the car, somehow hitching a ride to Belgrade, catching a bus to Nis and probably arriving there in some impossible time of night. Then I’d have to get back by bus on Wednesday, figure out what to do with the car and get my ass back to Zagreb in time to catch a plane Thursday morning (holidays, non-refundable tickets etc.)

Lucky for me, this all happened some 2 kms before the last gas station in Croatia so I managed to get my howling and screeching car there and asked, with not much hope I must admit, if they knew of someone who’d be willing to take a look and hopefully fix the thing. To my huge surprise, elderly gentleman pulled out the mobile phone, called a guy and told me to go another 2 kms and meet the mechanic.

On Sunday afternoon, in the pretty much middle of nowhere. Just one tiny village nearby which just happened to have a mechanic not minding to do some work instead of relaxing at home.

It took him less than hour to do his magic and I was back on the road in notime.

Oh joy, oh happiness.