We spent two days in the city of Timisoara, Romania. The city is beautiful and has a bit of history about it. We felt we were at a bit of a crossroads on where to head next…Our options were Moldova, a few days’ journey; Bucharest, 10 hours on the train, or a 2.5-hour taxi ride to Belgrade in Serbia. While we ate dinner, we decided Serbia was to be the 39th country we visited as a family. This is how we got from Romania to Serbia by taxi.
Why did we choose to travel from Romania to Serbia by taxi?
Options were limited for getting to Belgrade. We were surprised by this, given how close it was between Timisoara and Belgrade. Speaking to our taxi driver, he said it is a legacy of COVID that bus and train services haven’t fully reopened. We could have messed about with connections. However, we decided that for £125 door-to-door, a taxi was the way to go. Our booking was very late in the day for the next morning, but my day trip got us sorted with no issues.
Pick up
Our accommodation address was wrong, which caused a bit of hassle the night before with a food delivery. Knowing this, we headed to the same location where we found our driver sleeping in his car.
He clearly hadn’t fully woken up as he headed down the wrong lane and towards oncoming traffic. I was thinking at this point, Is this the right move? and nearly got out. However, I put my head down, had a beer, and had a brief chat with the driver, and we made our way to the border.
Journey to the Border
I was surprised the roads we went along were no more than glorified country roads, pretty much like the ones you find in the UK between rural villages, only slightly wider.
Sunflower and corn seemed to be big exports from Romania as we passed field after field full of them. It must be a busy season as we overtook tons of combine harvesters and tractors on our drive to the border.
Megan spent the morning eating cereal and playing on her switch, occasionally lifting her head to see where we were.
Romanian Border
I don’t know if the driver picked up on my stunned voice or not. “Is that border control?” I asked as I pointed at an old farm house-style building.
It was, and we were the 4th car in the line waiting to cross at Cruceni. The driver said it would be quick, but it obviously wasn’t when it came to us. The fella working on the border was struggling to find our entry stamps on our three passports, as we had that many stamps. The driver was getting a bit annoyed as it was taking so long, but we finally got there and crossed the border into no man’s land after about 20 minutes of arriving.
Serbian Border
We made the very short drive to the Serbian border at Jaša Tomić. This border control building was no more than a tin hut. Our driver handed over our passports, they spoke a bit of Serbian, our passports were stamped and on we went.
This section took around 5 minutes, our driver mumbled very slow today as we entered Serbia.
Rest of the Journey
We travelled through some beautiful wee villages for the next 90 minutes. Like the first section of the journey, we passed tractor after tractor, which held us up a bit.
Our driver needed a bit of a break, so we stopped for 10 minutes in a wee village. Megan saw a couple of lizards and went to play in a park while I stretched my legs.
Wacky races began on the way into Belgrade. I remember from my previous trip that the same thing happened.
Around 3 hours after leaving Timisoara, we were dropped off in Belgrade at our hotel.
Would we Recommend?
Yes. If you’re travelling as a family like us, or a group of 3 or 4 it is probably more cost and time efficient to use this mode of transport. If travelling on your own or as a couple on a budget, it probably is better to look at public transport options.
The Lewis Family.
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