Thanks for the feedback so far. Here’s the next part of the same chapter (skipping a couple of paragraphs after the section in my previous post). Again I stress this is a draft, and has not changed since I re-wrote it a month ago.

I arrived in Serbia at the end of the first week of May, four days after Tom and a week before John. The sun shone brilliantly through the windows of the airport minibus and I found myself gazing at the afternoon city skyline, drifting into daydreams. It had been over six months since my last visit.

I alighted at the bus station by the river and dragged my suitcase up the bank towards the Old Town. That end of town – like most Central bus and train stations – is where the crazies congregate. In 2015 it would be a tent town as the fake refugees from “Syria” camped out and talked in Albanian and Turkish accents about all the welfare they’d collect and white women they’d rape when eventually landing in Germany. Back in 2014 it was more gypsy and Kosovan – slightly less menacing but just as squalid and dishonest. Skin tones noticeably lightened as the altitude increased, dragging that suitcase over cobbled backstreets thronged with street hawkers selling leather belts, old books, and other junk from atop milk crates.

The whole time I enjoyed building anticipation. I’d made this uphill climb many times before and knew what awaits at the summit. Once you reach the top you’re in White Town (figuratively speaking). That’s the old affluent area where all the people with good jobs (a rarity in Serbia) go to shop and all the young girls go to promenade. As so often happens in Belgrade, after enduring ten minutes of fat, brown, smelly gypsies with crooked teeth and shifty morals, I was suddenly blown away at meeting the full humans.

It was a sunny spring day and everyone was outside. I wandered wide-eyed by the university buildings. Hordes of hot young girls, all aged eighteen to twenty, milled around with their tight clothes, long legs and thick black hair. It didn’t matter whether they were sitting alone on a bench reading a library book or picnicking with friends on a grassy knoll, they were all broadcasting the same message loud and clear.

“Pick us up Nick! Please charm our knickers off and give us a rogering we’ll never forget.”

My landlord was a chilled university student with rich parents. He stood at the door smiling while I explored the little studio with its modern fittings, walk-in shower and a reasonably comfortable sofa-bed. I plugged my laptop into the flat-screen TV, connected to WiFi and gave him the thumbs up. Unlike Minsk, this apartment was not going to chip away at my vibe every morning. Belgrade is a far nicer place to live, even before you look at the girls.

Within ten minutes I was sitting on a rickety metal chair in Boutique cafe at the main square waiting for Tom to show up. He’d arrived four days earlier and gone straight to business. It had been a tough start for him, absorbing fourteen straight blowouts until the fifteenth girl had been an instant date, a Day 2 the next day around Kalemegdan fortress and then sex on his fourth day in town. He likes Belgrade but finds it a bit difficult compared to Russia, whereas I’m the opposite.

“Lovely vibe here, isn’t it” he enthused, wiping a smudge of green peppercorn sauce from this mouth and then diving back into his beefsteak.