Back to the Eighties

Duran Duran, Billy Ocean, Feargal Sharkey, Salt’n’ Pepa, Kajagoogoo, Cyndi Lauper, Rick Astley: we have been in Serbia for over a week and what strikes us, apart from the meat consumption, is the music. Everywhere we go, we hear hits from the eighties, as is the case – or should we say: as is especially the case? – on petrol stations, not a bad condition for hitchhiking.

Hitchhiking is a good way to make contact. How different is travelling by train or plane where conversation with fellow-travellers is short and more informal. If at all.

Bernard Lunkenbein, German attaché in Belgrade, tows our caravan with his Volkswagen to a petrol station, just outside of town. And then it’s making signs, asking, standing, asking, standing, thumbs up. An hour of sunshine later we meet Milica and her father. Milica studies in the capital, but is moving back to her village of birth for the holidays. The result: a car full of student dorm stuff. And this too appears to be universal: we are in the back of the car between a dried plant, a large television, piles of books and a bag full of wrapped crockery. On the road father Sasa drinks pints of lager he conjures up from a mini-fridge behind his seat. Sasa and Milica take us to a petrol station in the area of Smederevo, forty kilometers from Belgrade.

When we are disconnecting our caravan from the car, an old farmer with sacks of potatoes approaches us. He asks for almost the same price as paid per kilo in a Dutch supermarket, however seems happy about it. Also the local boys that wash car windows look happy when we give them an Utrecht-2018 cap.

Not a lot of traffic on the freeway to Nis and even less at the petrol station. Occasionally a touring car stops. The petrol station appears to be the local pick-up point for holidays to Greece. We have a chat with the truckers of the tow away service. Came hitchkining all the way form the Netherlands with that caravan? And after ten minutes: ‘but where is your car?’

Nightfall. Luckily we still have some pasta and a can of peeled tomatoes in the caravan. A slow summer night along the Serbian freeway. It’s like a roadmovie. Soundtrack: ‘I’ve had the time of my life’.