The Icy Road to Serbia

Our original plan to take the Dover- Calais ferry changed when we discovered the easiest place to get a couple of new tyres fitted was in Holland. We always enjoy taking the overnight Harwich-Hook of Holland ferry - rolling up in Harwich early evening to pick up fish & chips at our usual chippy, then onto the ferry with just time to get a night cap before getting a few hours kip in a cosy cabin. The forecast was for a very choppy crossing but I think we were so tired from the final push to get away that we slept through it.

It was pitch dark when the early morning alarm woke us and still hadn’t quite come light when we drove off at 8 a.m. to a white snowy Hoek of Holland. It was a bit slow getting through the passport control as we, and most people in the queue, were having to get out of our vehicles to have photographs and fingerprints logged for the new European visa system - not entirely successful for us as the camera wasn’t working and my frozen fingers wouldn’t register on the machine.

We had about an hours drive to the tyre depot. We were surprised how snowy and icy the main roads were which slowed our progress. The locals on their winter tyres didn’t seem at all phased by it. On the way to the depot we called in to the company who had supplied the tyres who wanted to give us some split rim tyre rubbers free for our journey. Colin said the guys in the office were very friendly, offering him cigarettes and a coffee, but we were already running late for our appointment at the tyre depot.

The manager of the tyre depot wasn’t a charmer and berated Colin for being late even though we had contacted him to let him know, but they got straight on with fitting the new tyres and swapping round the existing ones and it wasn’t too long before we were on our way heading towards Germany.

Once we managed to get back on the main motorway, the roads had been cleared, but the freezing temperature meant our windscreen washers were freezing up, even with anti-freeze in, so we had to pull over at frequent intervals to clean the screen and wing mirrors.

Our original plan of setting off before Christmas had been to have time to visit some scenic places en route to Serbia, including Lake Konstanz in southern Germany, driving through Lichtenstein, then onto Lake Bled and Ljubljana in Slovenia, but with the conditions looking to be set in for the next few days there seemed little point on deviating off the main roads into even more challenging and dangerous driving conditions to visit places that weren't going to be looking their best in the murky weather, so we made the decision to take the most direct and main route through Germany, Austria and Hungary. We'd be passing some major cities we'd visited previously such as Frankfurt, Vienna and Budapest, but we weren't going to stop off anywhere. This would also mean we got to spend more time with Colin's sister Sara who had to fly back to the UK early the following week.

We had a long non-descript drive through Germany that first day, parking up for the night in a truck parking area at the side of the motorway. The beauty of Lolly is we can get the heating on, close the window screens and we could be anywhere. We were expecting to be woken early by the sound of the trucks around us setting off, so were a bit taken aback to wake up 10 hours later having not heard a thing.

There had been fresh snowfall over night, but the motorway was reasonably clear and we were in for another long uninteresting days driving through Germany, just stopping for brief fuel and coffee stops. We passed some of the time listening to the audio-book of Bobby Bolton - Truck It. I've been following him on Instagram for the last couple of years, but the book is a good listen whetting our appetite for what lies ahead on our journey.

We ended up in another truck rest area park up, fine dining on beans on toast.

We woke again to fresh snowfall, and the roads today had much more snow and ice for much of the route.  We crossed into Austria, stopped at a very swanky motorway services for a coffee, and carried on towards Vienna.

We were expecting to take a ring road around Vienna, but it was closed, presumably due to the bad weather, so we had a painfully slow drive right into the centre of Vienna on very icy congested roads.

It was early afternoon before we got back on track and crossed the Hungarian border onto still painfully slow congested roads. It was dark as by drove past Budapest, and we ploughed on to within 30kms of the Serbian border. We ended up parking up in a car park of a 'Family Hotel' at the side of the motorway which sounded nice but was really just a glorified truck stop with a small hotel and 'bistro' or rather a 70's style canteen buffet to feed the hungry truckers. Too tired to cook in Lolly, we got a bite to eat in the soulless restaurant (cheap if nothing else), but we did get the welcome bonus of being able to have a hot shower in a warm clean shower block. We'd not been able to shower in Lolly since setting off as all the hosepipes in the UK were frozen when we set off and we'd not been able to fill our water tank. We were pleased we had managed to keep warm at night in Lolly when it was -8 degrees with our diesel heating and a couple of extra blankets.

Our final push to reach Belgrade took us around 4 1/2 hours. Leaving the Schengen zone we had a proper border to cross, and got stamped out of Hungary and into Serbia relatively quickly. Sadly we had freezing fog the whole journey, so while there may not have been much to see, we could see literally nothing at the side of the roads.

We pulled into Omoljica, on the south-east side of Belgrade, where Colin's sister and husband Jovica have their Serbian home. The roads around the town were still pretty treacherous, and we were flagged down by a man in a wheelchair who was struggling and asked Colin to give him a push up the road - it was quite a challenge for Colin pushing a fairly large guy on effectively an ice rink of a road. While I was waiting, Jovica's son, Nemenja, pulled alongside saying he'd spotted us driving past and had been instructed to lead us to the house. Colin has been here a couple of times before, and while he has no memory for people, names or birthdays etc, he can always remember a road after just driving once on it.

I had a tumble on the ice when I got out of Lolly - thankfully my extra padding stopped any serious damage. As we walked into the warm comfortable house we both breathed a sigh of relief after a tiring 3 days driving. Our original plan was to be here for the Serbian Christmas celebrations on 7th January, but with their Christmas decorations still up, it felt like our second Christmas. Their house has the most amazing views across a tributary of the Danube with hills in the distance.

As always, Sara & Jovica's hospitality has been off the scale amazing. While Sara was still with us we enjoyed fabulous meals at their house and had a trip out to Vrsac, by the Romanian border, where we visited an old monastery and one of the many vineyards in the area, followed by a traditional Serbian meal (meat, meat and meat). Having grown up in Omoljica, there are not many people that Jovi doesn't know here, so we shouldn't have been surprised that when he wound down his window in the middle of nowhere on our trip to Vrsac to ask a local for recommendations of where to visit, the guy turned out to an old friend from his karate days and he jumped in the car with us to direct us to the old monastery.

We also had some play time with their grandchildren Djuda and Micky.

We had purchased some new parts for Lolly in the UK but ran out of time to have them fitted, so Jovica kindly contacted the Iveco dealer in his local town who has now taken Lolly in to sort out these bits and service her before we get further afield. This has given us an extra week on Omoljica, so we're using this time to explore the area a bit more and for more onward trip research.