15th of November, 2020.
The spot is great for hitchhiking but there is no much traffic. I worried about freezing cold so I keep moving all the time. And it works because even though I know it is super cold, my body is OK. I am quiet happy and relax, even though I could be very worried of not getting where I suppose to today. But that seems not to be bother me because I am singing, making jokes, making animal sounds… And I am talking with the sheep I see just across the street, in one of the houses. Big property with trees and a fancy gate which, unfortunately, it is not used anymore.
A middle age man is walking around but decide to come and talk to me. Why? Since the first time I look at him, I know he is meat head, but I try to be nice. He does not speak English but try to have a conversation. Why? And he keep talking in Serbian as I could, all of sudden, understand. Anyway, at some point we both let our masks down, he say something which I know is not very complementary, and I stop making poker face with a smile. So he finally leaves.
After a long time, a couple stops. Unfortunately they also do not speak English but at least they seem very nice. They are going to Pozega and drop me exactly where I need to go: a central square from where I know how to walk out of town for a good hitchhiking spot and not far.
The place is in front of a gas station. My sing it says “Nis / Kosovo” now because from here, there are links to Nis (a busy way to Kosovo) or directly to Kosovo. The workers of the gas station (of course) come to “talk” to me. Ai, what is it with people? And to make it worse, at some point, one of the worker say I am beautiful and ask why I do not have a boyfriend.
A very old man stops the car and, in a no English conversation, he says he can drop me in a restaurant where that are trucks and the road is better. Since I have been here for a while now, I accept. The restaurant it is in the mountains. Kind of in the highway but since it is just after a bridge and in a very big rest in area, the cars slow down a lot to pass by. First we drink a coffee and them he leaves. There is no trucks, maybe Sunday is not a good day for them, so I just try my chances in the road.
An older man stop, again no English, and he is going to a town which is in the way to Nis. I take it. At the beginning he seems fine but I do not know, at some point, all of sudden, he changes his behavior into a more sharp one and he drops me in a intersection with the highway. Maybe he changed his mind of helping me or he was simply expecting that something would happen.
It is not a bad spot. Plenty of cars are coming from the intersection and even the ones from the highway are not so fast plus there is a lot of space for them to reduce and park if they decide to stop. I eat one of my sandwiches, eggs, some walnuts and a apple. It is almost one in the afternoon and I cannot believe I will barely make it just until Nis today. Only because of the weather, of course, with the sun going down around 4 o’clock, I cannot carry on much further.
It is when Benjamin stops. It is so curious the games life play with you. Who would say that, out of all the possibilities which could happen to me, Ben sees me and stops. He says something like he could go to Nis, he was thinking about going there, so I get in the car. But once I am inside already, he shows me on the map that he was first planning to go to this monastery near to the border with Montenegro. I tell him that if he wants to go there I understand and I can just get out again, because I cannot go to Montenegro because of the PCR test they are asking. Which by the way he also does not have. But then he decides to go directly to Nis because, according to him, it was also in his plans anyway. And that is when our journey together starts.
Ben is a Taiwan / U.S.A. citizen who is 81 years old. He was born in Taiwan but now he lives in California for a long time. He loves to travel and do that quiet often. Most of the times he takes cruises but any other time he rents a car and drive around, as he is doing now. He arrived in the Balkans 4 days ago and he will be around for 3 weeks. Ben tells me he was feeling very lonely these last 4 days and he prefer to travel with company. So because where to it does not matter too much for him, he rather go where I need to go and have my company than just follow the suggestions of Lonely Planet book. He likes to talk a lot and it is a good thing I am a good listener. Plus, Ben has some severe hearing problem, so even with the device I have to speak very loud and very close to his ear for him to hear me.
Since the beginning I notice that he keeps his eye on the GPS of the phone all the time. Like most of people do nowadays when they drive. They do not follow the road or the signs, they just follow the phone. But since the wi-fi is not very good, the GPS is working badly and we get lost a few times, having to make returns. We suppose to go to Nis but when we stop in a gas station to use the bathroom, Ben decides we can try to cross the border with Kosovo and not stop in Nis. He makes a plan of going to Albania, dropping me at the airport for my flight and after that he will cross to Montenegro and stay in the coast for a few days, because he had travelled around Albania before. I try to explain to him that it is not necessary and that he should keep following his travel plans without worrying about me but he does not listen to me. Not literally this time. As I said before, I think that the company thing was more important to him than anything else plus maybe he also just wanted to help me.
The only possible problem is he is not sure if they will allow him to cross into Kosovo. According to the rental car company, he could not. But he decide to take the risk and say that, if they did not allow him to go, I could carry on and he would simply return to Serbia. Well, I was already planning to camp outside anyway, why not camp at the border? So I accepted. But if we get crossed, the plan is get to Tirana on the 17th (my flight is only on the 19th but I tell Ben I have a few things I need to do), going early to the airport on the 19th, even that my flight is at 18.40 h, but then at least Ben have time to get to the border with Montenegro before dark. I tell him about the place to make the PCR test for 7€.
We make to the border after 7 o’clock. I give the documents of the car and our passports to the police officers. I make all the conversation because of Ben hearing issues. And I explain that to the police officers. They are all very nice. So nice that, when the cars does not start again, the officer who was inside the cabin, checking the passports, come and offers to help, fixing himself the car. I also told them that Ben has a problem in the leg. But even before that, there was a lady measuring our temperature and Ben’s got a bit higher than normal. She measured a few times and when I think we might get in trouble, she says it is fine. But we do wait for several minutes for them to bring our passports. When we start to say goodbye and get one each other contacts, because we believe the problem is about the rental car entering Kosovo, the police officer come and asks us to sign some paper. It is a document which said we will cross Kosovo into Albania in the next 3/5 hours. What? I mean, I did tell them we were going to Tirana, but I did not say we were going especially now. Did I? Another thing was the time. On the paper is written like that 3/5 hours, which for me it means something in between 3 to 5 hours. But the officer wrote down the time of arrival as 19.30h and the time of departure as 22.30h. So we do not know what to think. Ben says it is OK and we just need to make to the border and that is it.
And he is right. It is possible to cross in 3 hours. Much less even. The only problem is the way how Ben drives. Mostly at night. To get to the border of Serbia and Kosovo it took us a long time. I do not know if he just do not like to drive at night, or if he is scared, or if it has something to do with his age. But he drives very slow and keep letting everybody pass us. So just because of that I get a bit nervous about making to the border with Albania in 3 hours.
But we make it! We do get a bit lost but in about 2 hours we get at the border. But then another problem: it seems like the border is closed. I ask to the lady in a cabin what we supposed to do, but she says we can go in. So Ben parks the car and I first walk to the border and ask an officer who kindly answer we can go. I play with some cute and huge dogs on my way back to the car and then we carry on. They do not even ask to see our papers from the other border. And this is just the Kosovo border. The Albania one we do not even see it. We are now in direction to Kukes, my suggestion for us to spend the night.