Serbia and Bulgaria

We leave Croatia with the intent of putting on some miles, skipping our planned stay in Belgrade, Serbia and heading on to Sofia, Bulgaria. We jump onto highway E80 and are at the Serbian border in no time. When we try to cross, the border official asks us for a green card; we have no idea what he is talking about. Recognising our confusion, he points us to a row of little huts where we learn that a green card is car insurance and they can sell it to us. Our insurance from England is no good anymore. 100 Euro later we are on the road. After a quick look at Belgrade and some of the rolling countryside filled with corn and sunflowers we were out of Serbia and at the Bulgarian border. This time it was only a few bucks for road tax and we were on our way. The road quality in Bulgaria is a heavy step down from what we have seen, but still nothing that the pale horse cant handle; also, the drivers are starting to get a bit wild - forcing a 2 lane road to go 3 across when passing seems a normal thing to do. Horse drawn carts become a normal sight, but the people in them don’t seem to like us taking their picture. We roll into Bulgaria late at night and are on the search for a cheap hostel and a shower. After driving around we track one down, but we are in what appears to be a bit of a rough part of town and the is no place to park the car. Fearing there being nothing left of the car in the morning, and swayed by the high price of the hostel we decide to head a bit out of town and find something a bit quieter. A few U-turns and run-ins with wild dogs later we find ourselves at a really nice and cheap hotel with a wonderful front desk lady who gave us cold beer. In the morning we plan to try and make it to one of two campgrounds outside of Istan bul. Bret may have been chewed on by bed bugs.