Daniela at the hostel in Belgrade told me the average monthly wage in Serbia is three-hundred euros. "Most people who visit say how cheap everything is. For us it isn't cheap. Food is very expensive and prices keep rising, while wages remain static."

Three hundred euros or the equivalent of 36,000 Dinar. She asks me how much I spend per day on food. I answer five-hundred and often more. I've spent fifty-thousand Dinar in almost three weeks in Serbia, staying in the hostel most nights, or a total of twenty euros a day.

Slasha the other receptionist says visitors are always asking about the nineteen-nineties. "It is too early to say what happened. It'll take more time before the history books are written. If you ask the same question in Sarajevo, they'll tell you a conflicting story." She also talked about having been a student during the 1999 airstrikes and having to study by candlelight, because there was a shortage of energy like everything else in the country, when I let slip couldn't you have left?

"Leave! Where to? We were under sanctions. No we couldn't leave. For three months they bombed us. Even now when I hear a jetfighter overhead it frightens me. (like when) Our present president had a national celebration and thought a military flyover would be a good idea." she threw her head in disgust "A lot of people here are frightened the same as me and he didn't think for a moment, these planes would bring it all back. You think people look normal, but a lot of people are damaged from that time. I don't have anything against other peoples of the region. Milosevic happened to be the West's man, who just like (West men) in the Middle East, got out of control."

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I put the pannier bags on the bike as the young hotel manager holds the bike steady and then as I set off, he wishes me luck and says "If you pass this way again, you're welcome."

It is shortly after seven o'clock and is cool and will remain pleasantly cool for a few hours before the sun climbs toward noon. The traffic lighter and the road surface a lot better than yesterday afternoon. Though the itinerary is and would remain uninspiring throughout the day: being low hills clad in a thicket of broadleaf herbage and small fields in the leveller parts along the valley wherein hay is being saved for winter fodder. The tractors ancient and small square balers still in use.

There's a supermarket open Sunday in a small place I'm passing through. I stock up on all I'll need for the day. A two litre bottle of Sprite, litre carton of orange-juice and litre carton of the delicious natural drinking yogurt available here. I have also four litres of water on-board.

A kilometre or so further, still within the same town, I stop at a roadside restaurant for breakfast: a bacon omelette with a side salad, more yogurt and turkish coffee for three-hundred and fifty; about three euros.

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By five after a strenuous climb, followed by a lengthy downhill, the road splits at a roundabout. The right is to Cacak from whence I came a few weeks earlier, when I's coming from Montenegro. And momentarily the sky has gone dull with cloud cover and there's a single drop of cold rain, before the cloud moves on as I continue left toward Krajevo. The road follows a wide valley with cultivated fields all along on both sides of the road. No possible camping.

Then reaching a crossroads town an hour later, I'm glad to see a hotel by a petrol station.

The young man in charge in the empty restaurant when I enter, is engrossed in the closing ceremony of the Paris Open tenis final. He has to go and fetch a woman, who when she appears seems to be his mother. She shows me my room while talking away at me in Serbo-Croat, while I try understanding what she is saying. Something about what time I'll be leaving in the morning, as she holds up fingers to indicate a figure.

The room is seven euros, though is like a prison-cell and the shower is only cold water. The corridor outside has an unpleasant stale unwashed odour.

But later I've a good dinner in the restaurant for four euros. Cevapi: sausage-shaped ground meat and freshly cut chips, washed down with a glass of beer.