Hello Serbia

The five men were straight out of central casting. Sunglasses, no, shades, heavy gold watches, Parliament cigarettes and sharp suits and overcoats, even in the warm late spring sunshine.
They were discussing a land deal, in a heady brew of English, Serb and Portugese, in a service station café, only a few kilometres from the Danube.
“The pump station has the entrance,” crowed the largest, but not the most powerful of the men, “but we have the only exit”.
“Time to go,” said Nigel. Damn I thought, now I will never find out who they are, and what they were discussing. That is the problem with people watching. You usually miss the final episode.
Serbia, because that is where we are, is beautiful. I had no idea the Danube, or the Dunav, ran through it. I had no understanding that it was the agricultural heartland of the former Yugoslavia, but that is obvious as we drive through endless acres of flat, fertile farmland, peppered with thousands of wild red poppies.
And everyone we have met has been very friendly, even the border guards, who smiled broadly as they extracted 125 euros from us for car insurance. Not to mention the lads at the motorway toll booths who demanded, again with a smile, 1200 dinar every 100 kms – roughly £12.50 per 60 miles.
We spent last night in the small lakeside resort of Palic, which is just over the Hungarian border.
In the first decade of the 20th century it was a fashionable spa for the wealthy, as the Art Nouveau buildings testify.
It is now struggling to drag itself into the 21st century European tourism market. It has huge potential, but no campsites.
There was one – we even found it on the internet. Karavan camping, 200 metres from the lake, next to the Sport hotel it said. The photographs suggested a delightful little site.
Except it was closed, and had been for at least six months judging by the overgrowth.
What to do? More experienced motorhomers, or people who couldn’t care less, would have simply pitched up by the lake, but we are too polite and too nervous to “free camp”, at least in Serbia.
We eventually found the much advertised tourist information centre, in the reception of a small state-owned hotel.
“Can you speak Hungarian?” asked the tall and rather nervous receptionist hopefully, after he told us he couldn’t speak English.
We disappointed him with our smiling no, and instead drew a very crude picture of a caravan on a leaflet for Palic zoo, and said please a lot.
He accepted the challenge of finding us a campsite with relish. A small blonde woman appeared from nowhere to help and two phone calls later they presented us with a photocopy of an old Palic street map marked with the address for the Pizzeria campsite only a few kilometres away.
We couldn’t thank them enough, until that is, we arrived at the aforesaid Pizzeria campsite and it too was closed.
We gave up, wimps that we are, and booked into the four-star Prezident hotel, which boasted free wifi, a very powerful shower and cable tv, all for less than the average Travelodge. And I forgot to mention the thermal swimming pool, balcony with a view and free chocolate on our pillow.
We felt we had betrayed the aims of our trip, but only as long as it took to log on to BBC Sport to see the pictures of Manchester United winning the European Cup, run a hot shower, and find, on the Sportklub cable channel, a documentary on Eric Cantona.
What more could a girl want?
But tonight we have come back to our roots. We are parked under a cherry tree, in a campsite on the edge of the Danube, the awning is up, the last of the Czech beer cooling in the fridge and the barbecue is waiting to be fired up.
What do we care that it is the industrial edge of the Danube and that the site is an insect infested, overgrown swamp whose heyday was surely under the genial General Tito. We are back on the road again.