Travel

My Serbian Trip

As promised on my sneaky little posting, done at the customers PC, I am now ready to reveal to full details of my trip to Serbia, well all the bits that are personal, as I am sure you don't want to be bored stupid by the technical and work side of the trip. So here we go, lets start with the journey out.....

Left for Birmingham International at 7:15, on 2nd August, and was parked up by 8:30, for those who haven't been, Birmingham has just been refurbished and is a nice airport to go to. Unfortunately I was having to fly Lufthansa.
In the words of the Carlsberg ads "Carlsberg don't do...", Lufthansa don't do beers, and if they did they'd probably be the crappiest lagers in the world! I have yet to get onto a Lufthansa flight that has been on time leaving. Luckily as the connection was overbooked, it didn't leave on time so I managed to catch the flight OK. In flight meal on the Birmingham/Munich leg was a cheese butty, and a twix,that's single twix snack size. On the Munich/Belgrade flight it was a ham butty and a snack size twix. Do Lufthansa have shares in twix bars????
Got to Belgrade OK, and was met by the driver, and taken through beautiful scenery to a little town called Paracin (pronounced Para chin), and my hotel for the next 3 nights the Petrus.

Hotel Petrus - Paracin Serbia

Rather resembling a volcano in shape, the Petrus is a hotel, that offers.....that offers ...Err nice cheap food and accommodation. But I think they gave me the worst room in the hotel. I knew there was something wrong when they gave me the remote for the TV with my room key. Then I went to the room via the creaking lift (scary!), and opened the door, not too bad I thought. Until I sat on the bed in the wrong place and my arse nearly touched the floor, luckily I then used the other bed which wasn't so bad. I then checked out the en-suite, quite clean, but the tools were bogging and ripped. The shower was lying on the shower cubicle floor as there was nowhere it could be hung up, and the bog roll was sitting on top of the toilet, as there was no holder. Looks like Bathroom fittings are scarce in this area.

After a lukewarm shower, difficult to do with one hand holding the shower head, and trying to soap yourself with the other! I went to bed, only I didn't sleep all that well as there was no Air-con, I couldn't open the window, and it was around 32 degrees in the room. Cue a sweaty naked body in the bed. Normally I don't mind that if I am performing a certain activity ;) but when you are trying to sleep.......

Next morning after breakfast of orange squash, yes orange squash, and a ham sandwich, I went to work. Nice people the Serbians, very helpful, and for the most part very friendly. The guy I was working with was the spit of Dustin Hoffman. When I mentioned this he cringed, at the prospect of all his chums (also present) now calling him Rainman....Ooooops!

After finishing work was taken out to a nice little restaurant, for a meal and a couple of jars, will 3 or 4, of the lovely Jelen beer. Try it if you can, 5% and NO headache the next day...Lovely Jubbly.

Sorry for the Quality I was 1/2 cut after all

Then it was back to the hotel, where I waved goodbye to the lads, before having a trek around the town, 11pm at night and the place is rocking, I can recommend Paracin to anyone who want to view some eye-candy, there are plenty of beautiful women on show. But don't go if you suffer badly with neck problems, as you can quite easily put your neck out with all the oggling!

Next Day, after a surprisingly peaceful sleep (Jelen does help you sleep too!), I had a nice little breakfast, and then went to work. Rainman, was happy as he didn't have the expected piss taking, and the job I had done yesterday was still OK. So finishing early, I went back to the hotel, and managed to get a change of rooms for the last night. Much better room, cleaner, Air conditioning, Internet connection, ohhhh this was better, now for that shower. NO still no fixings, guess it was a one hander again.

Saturday 5th I left Serbia, for the UK via Munich, surprise, suprise Lufthansa delayed again. But the weird thing was, although the flight was delayed from Munich to Birmingham by 15 minutes, we arrived 20 minutes ahead of schedule! Go Figure!