My camp is not the most delightful place I've stayed on the trip so I just get up and out pretty sharpish and decide to have breakfast down the road. I don't know if it was the setting amongst derelict barns and houses or the tuna cat food but I had a great sleep and some crazy dreams. A cafe is proving hard to come by and before I know it the sun is beating me into submission after 15km. I stop in a field to have breakfast and decide the small beer I have left over from last night will have to do as a substitute for a coffee. The sun hasn't quite burnt off all the haze surrounding the mountains yet and it makes for a most picturesque breakfast setting. Back on the bike I can still notice the effort required to get up the hills and decide that any amount of faffing about with the stove is worth it for the caffeine fuelled buzz that gets the legs whirring in the morning. Around 11 o'clock I descend into Radnaj and find myself a modern bar with 3 out of 4 wants for the morning. Coffee, Toilet, Power. Again the Kafa Turska is served with a square of Turkish delight and surprisingly is cheaper at 40p than anywhere else I've been so far. Whilst catching up on writing the day's events I hear music out in the square. I go take a look and it being Saturday it has to be a wedding. A Serbian Brass band are giving it some whilst the lovely couple and their guests gyrate outside the registry office. To anybody who was dancing in clubs and fields between 1991 and 1994 the Serbian Brass Band is basically hardcore played on brass instruments, Turbo Folk to some. The Groom particularly is dancing away like he is in a club. I absolutely love it and want one for my own. Another Turkish coffee later and I'm super charged, there really is no substitute for a caffeine crazed ride down the side of a mountain. The view has been quite beautiful all day as I ride into Alexsinatz for lunch. A bit short of cash, I stop at a little shop in search of bread. It's quite normal to ask for just half a loaf and the lady obliges and charges me accordingly. More tomatoes, honey and bread for lunch and after a sit in the shade I head out of what I think is the town, only to find it's quite big when you actually reach it and a cash dispenser is battled with for another 1000 dinars. I catch up on a bit of Thomas Stevens whilst having a coke in the pedestrianised centre with its cafes and market stalls. I've not managed to get very far out of town when a sudden hunger comes over me and so I decide to stop at a small shop for a snack. As I go outside munching on my crisps the owner comes out and asks me where I'm from etc. He is most impressed and offers me a pepsi which I accept. We chat a bit more and we get onto the subject of the cost of cigarettes; between £1 and £2 here for 20 and the cost of beer; usually less than a 80p for a bottle or tin. I tell him I've tried all the beers in the fridge except for one. He gets it out ,whips the top off and before you know it I've got a pepsi and a beer on the go.... tbc
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