Going to Bulgaria May 18-19

I left from Prague with Malcolm (my English friend who lives in Prague works with me on editing video and making DVDs) on Thursday May 18th at 1PM with 200 liters of filtered vegetable oil in the tanks. Our plan was to pick up Ceca (Serbian designer) in Beograd. The roads (mostly highways) and the traffic were good and the car was running great. The freeway was all the way to Serbian boarder and not too much police. The road from the boarder to Beograd is quite good but with speed limits 80 km and police with radars everywhere made it quite a long journey. Last years the police always got me. This time I was quite careful and we managed well. We stopped around 1 AM at gas station outside of Beograd and had our 1st night in the van. Malcolm slept in the front bed. In the morning at 9 we picked Ceca and continued our journey to Bela Rechka. The toll roads in Serbia are quite expensive. I had to pay 18, 10 and 41 Euro. I have refused to pay the last 41 Euro toll from Beograd to Nis. After some arguments and measuring the height of my van (it was 2 cm over the 130cm limit for small andcost 30 Euro more) I had to pay. The main road from Nis to Bulgaria was closed and we had to go through a very bad road in the mountains. The main 130 liter tank was empty and we had to pour the oil from the 2 30 liter tanks. It was quite messy – Malcolm got oil in the face and me over my shirt. We finally reached the Bulgarian borders and passed through without any problems. We played 5 Euro for the disinfection (as usually there was not any) and paid 7 Euro for 1 week toll roads sticker (I hope that this will help to improve the very bad quality of roads). We took the shorter, but very bad road thought the maintains and finally arrived to Bela Rechka at 8 PM right for the dinner. After the dinner there was a premiere of my mobile cinema showing Bela Rechka CD and performances from last year festival.