I love the hot chocolate in Belgrade....

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Woke up at 7am showered, had breakfast and left Ves's house at 8am. When I got to the tram almost immediately there was tram No. 7 to the main bus station. Fortunately it was one of the old trams that you can buy a ticket from the driver.

People as usual do look at you because clearly I don't look like one of them. Got to the bus station at 0840. The bus leaves Zagreb at 0900 and it takes 6 hours. I was hoping to find an internet cafe to download and print Natasa's invitation letter but had no luck with that. The bus left sharp on time. The weather is absolutely fantastic not cold and sunny blue skies.

Scenary enroute to Belgrade was very dry aleast on the Croatia side. After awhile the tall apartment complexes disappears and you get proper houses like in London however nothing to write home about its architecture. Passed loads of leafless trees probably due to the weather all the leaves have fallen and just barren land.

Border crossing to Serbia

The distance between the two Croat-Serb border is about 100m the same bus continued. At the Croat border the bus driver collected all out passports and then gave it back after the police inspection. There was no visible sign of an exit stamp. At the Serb border the border police boarded the bus and started stamping all the passports. The police woman came to me and I gave my 3 passports attached together turned to the page with the Serbian visa. She did not ask me a single question, didn't bother to even look if the passport belonged to me besides my picture is not even on the visa and didn’t even check which country the passport belonged to. All she said was "a big book" and laughed at my 3 passports and carried on. Perhaps would have thought this idiot is going to the centre of trouble.

The bus stopped at a bus station in the centre and i asked the driver if this was the BAS bus station as I had identiifed it in my map of central belgrade. This random guy who got into the bus at the serbian border said come with me. I said ok. I have never spoken to him or even made eye contact but he seemed wanting to help me. As usual I go on my instincts and I introduced myself and his name was Aleksandra. I asked if he knew where the Australian embassy was and he said he was not from belgrade and then he went upto this other elderly person and asked for help. That guy knew where the embassy was and gave me directions in the Serbian language and hand signs.

I started walking in that direction and then I met this girl and I asked for a particular road and she said im going in that direction and that she will take me to the Australian embassy.

Once we got to the Australian embassy there were policeman guarding the embassy and they first said I can't take pictures because I took my phone out to call my friend who worked opposite the Australian embassy.

When they saw that i wasn't taking pictures but making a call they asked me where I was from. I said I was from Sri Lanka and they knew Sri Lanka and asked me if I could take them to Sri Lanka and asked for my number and asked me to find them a Sri Lankan girl.

I went to my friends office. She was really nice and her collegues were really friendly too. Its nice to hear the same question we ask people when they come to our house in Sri Lanla.....”Would you like a cup of tea?”

I heard the protestors and its apparently football fans making all that noise. We went to a coffee shop and as usual I asked for a hot chocolate. This is a real hot chocolate it was like a “Blamage” (I don’t if this desert is called Blamage only in Sri Lanka. Essentially its a thick cream made by heating cocoa powder, milk, sugar and cornflour) and the thickest hot chocolate I have had in my life. Probably 80% chocolate powder and the rest water. I have no idea, it was fantastic. They even give you a spoon with it cause its too thick to drink it. There were loads of Serbian youngsters having coffee and I am thinking about displacing Croatia from the country that has the most beautiful girls.

After coffee we went back to Vesna's home. I had a chat with Vesna and then decided to go out to dinner. We went to a Japanese restaurant and after that called it a day.

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