That Corporate Life

So I have a job.  Apparently it's in "Finance" or whatever.  I'm already lining up "I Hate Mondays :(" cat memes to send to coworkers, and brushing up on topics to discuss around the water cooler.  Get ready to climb this corporate ladder!

This was my first desktop background.  I mean, just the poster.  I just figured it made more sense if I also included Marge Simpson. 

Back to BP

I woke up on the train just south of Belgrade for like the 15th time in the past year, and when the train slowly entered the station I looked anxiously at the time and worrying I could be just a bit too late to catch the 7:30 train out to Budapest.  But we arrived at some awful hour like 6am, and it was cold, and I walked up the hill to Ruski Tsar for my usual slice of pizza, and then back down to the station to enjoy a coffee and then hopped on my train to Subotica. By the time we crossed the border it had become evident to me that the Hungarians were onto my game and two conductors burst into my cabin before we even crossed the border and demanded payment.  I was trapped.  This was it.  Finally, all my shenanigans had ended here.  I handed over the ludicrous sum of 2,600 HUF and sat in my seat like a scolded child.  Finally my past had caught up with me and the chickens had come home to roost.  It was somewhat fitting, as well, as I would be starting work the next day and legitimizing my life.  As I stared out the window on the snowy landscape reflecting on the past year and what was to come I thought, "UGH, I have to work for a living?  Why can't people just pay me to do this?"

The Struggle of Struga

Actually Albania this time around was just a lot of hard clubbing at the hottest spots in Tirana: Mummy,  Honey (I think this is the name...there was a pole there) and I'm sure some others.  It was such a whirlwind.  And I stayed in some embassy compound house.  It really was an extravagant visit, and I was chauffeured around by US Marines everywhere in a Hummer.  There was nothing more exciting than being a superpower tag-along, especially when in Albania.

After I finished with my antics in Tirana, I headed south to Elbasan, where I stayed with another PCV before  making my way to the Macedonian border.  I got ripped off by a furgon driver, and then walked through the border hassle free.  There were a few taxi drivers around the crossing who wanted an exorbitant sum to go all the way to Struga so I decided to walk.  I did ask a bus if I could hop on but they said that within the border zone they weren't allowed to pick up passengers.  I kept walking and then the bus passed me and asked if I wanted a ride, but for some reason I declined.  No idea why I did that because I ended up walking forever until a nice man in a Yugo picked me up.  His name was Slobodan and he took me right to the bus depot, where I learned that a bus to Skopje had just left.

So I walked to the centre of the city which was actually a really nice touristy town perched on Lake Ohrid (but not nearly as scenic as Ohrid itself) and exchanged a very small amount of money, bought a bit of food, and used some free wifi to find out that MY WORK PERMIT HAD ARRIVED.  Shit.  I needed to get on that train and get back to Budapest fast, because I was, like, a working man and all now.

I boarded the bus and began the excruciating 3 hour trip to Skopje, ideally to arrive at 9pm just in time for the 9:10 train to Belgrade.  My nerves were shot the entire time, so luckily I was placated by a Russian movie shot in Malta that I still can't find to this day but it was really intense.  I even understood parts of it.

We then arrived in Skopje at, like, 9:09, and it was unbearable.  I was so overcome with stress I wanted to die.  But after I leapt up the stairs and onto the train and exploded myself into a cabin, I realised that they were in no hurry and decided to wait for an additional half an hour while this couple near me spoke to each other in horribly accented English and kissed and told each other how much they will miss each other.  Gross.

Lezhe

At the turnoff to Lezhe I hopped out of the furgon and walked across the bridge into the city.  It was at the approaches I realized that this is the city I had always wished I had stopped and visited when I was on the bus from Durres to Shkoder on that cold February morning after sleeping on a neatly stacked pile of bricks in a construction site in downtown Durres.  I was just too tired to deal with Lezhe at that point, and no one can blame me. The reason I was so delighted to be here was that there is the tomb of Hoxha, or Skenderbeg, or someone important and Albanian, and it's on the waterfront and looks quite picturesque.  

Anyway, I crossed the bridge into the downtown, took out some lek with my Raiffeissen bank card, and discovered my phone did not work.  My phone never works.  I actually don't know how to use phones, but I thought that T-Mobile, being everywhere in eastern Europe, would at least be able to accommodate my needs in Albania.  It either couldn't, or I couldn't figure out how to make it work.  In any case, this didn't bother me, because Albania is easily the least stressful place I have ever been in my entire life, so I just went to a cafe, ordered a coffee, asked for the wifi password, and just immersed myself in the Balkan mystique.  

Shortly after emailing Laura, my friend Adam's girlfriend, I received a reply back with instructions on how to get to her place.  I walked up a muddy hill and found a nice row of homes overlooking the plains to the sea, and there was Laura, waiting with some hot tea, or wine, or something.  I dunno.  But she was a gracious hostess, and greeted this weary traveller with open arms.  We made some soup and then another PCV came over and we played cards and enjoyed some of the local raki (made by their landlord) and also listened to some hot jamz.

The next day Adam arrived from Peshkopi, after being caught in some sort of mudslide, and we enjoyed how amazing the city is, and even tried to find me used shoes at the local market but to no avail.  We hiked up to the top of the fortress, drank some delicious chai male, and the next day set off for Tirana.  

Huh. This post was kind of dull. 

I actually do have a bit more to say about Lezhe.  Have you ever seen the 1995 GFSS production of Fiddler on the Roof?  Well, there is the dream sequence where Fruma Sarah chases Tevya through the graveyard and screams "If Tseitl marries Lazar Wolf!" then rattles off a list of things that will happen as a result.  Anyway, what I am getting at is that 'Lezhe' and 'Lazar' kind of sound similar to one another and I always think about that dream sequence whenever I am in or around Lezhe.  See below the clip.  It's actually quite terrifying. 

Albanian Weekend Getaway

Dealing with both central European and Canadian university bureaucracy is almost unbearable, and as a result I needed to get away from all the stress by embarking on an absolutely stress-free excursion to the Balkans to see my friend, Adam, from university, whom had recently been posted to Albania in the Peace Corps.  I sent him a vague email explaining that I was thinking about coming to see him, and then immediately went to the train station and hopped on the first train to Szeged.  The first snows were falling in Budapest at this time, and I dreamed of the warm waters of the Adriatic splashing playfully against the sun-baked Albanian shores.  

The train arrived in Szeged around 10am, and I had decided that for this crossing of the Serbo-Hungarian border I would try the little commuter train that runs between Szeged and Subotica.  As you know, of course, the two cities, while large and close to one another, are not well connected, and the main route to Belgrade from BP goes through Kelebia to Subotica, and does not touch Szeged.  And Kelebia is…not much of a global force.  I knew about this litter commuter train because I had taken it the other way in 2007*, and had arrived late at night to discover no trains were leaving for Budapest and that I needed to wander around the city to find a place to sleep.  There were no hostels but I managed to find a university dorm that I was allowed to sleep in for incredibly cheap.  This time I didn't leave the station because I would be taking the same commuter train back the other way.  I had a bit of time to kill so I went to the restaurant in the station and ordered a beer**.  The bartendress asked for my ID and when I gave her a puzzled look, she gestured that I looked young.  Unfortunately did not know enough Hungarian at this point to have a snappy comeback like, "Younger than what?  6?" because….Europe. 

Anyway, shortly thereafter I was on the little commuter train going to Rozke and then to Subotica, where I detrained and waited at the station for the train to Bar, which was some sort of special train that only left on special days and went directly from Subotica to Bar. This was fantastic news for me, as it would deposit me in Podgorica at 8am.  I ate at some cantina near the station, loaded up on a couple of beers, and got ready to make myself comfortable in a first-class cabin on the train.  I had just uploaded the new Girl Talk album and also the Notorious B.I.G's greatest hits to my iPod, so with fine Serbian beer and a 14 hour train ride ahead of my, I was basically in my comfort zone.  The train even went through Bosnia, but didn't stop, so I didn't get any passport stamps, and therefore was not worth it.  

When I awoke in Podgorica, the weather was balmy, and I was ready for a long and pretty heinous walk to the Albanian border.  Apparently no trains/buses/anything actually goes to the border, so I just toughed it up and decided to walk the 10km to Tuzi and beyond to the Hani i Hotit border crossing.  I passed some winery, which actually produces wines I've seen in Canada, and groups of school kids who giggled at me, and then got picked up by a Mecedes heading to the border.  It was full of boxes of dates and nuts, and I had to really squish in the back.  There had been heavy rains the night before and many areas on the road were flooded.  Just after the border we went though a massive puddle and the car started filling with water.  I immediately retracted my feet, as water began to gush into the floor of the car, and I was worried the car would stall and we would be stranded there, in the middle of a puddle in Northern Albania for the rest of our lives, but we managed to push through and are stronger for it today. 

Once we arrived in Shkoder I was pretty happy to see furgon service to literally anywhere, and I never felt more comfortable about how to get around and what my next steps would be.  I went to give the driver a kindly tip of 200 lek and he refused and said "5 euros."  I was flabbergasted.  I said no.  He pressed for more.  I acquiesced, thrust 300 lek in his hand and shouted, "You have no recourse!" as I darted into the first furgon I saw headed for Tirana.  This is my favourite way to make an exit.  In fact, in the future, I hope I have the opportunity to exit every unpleasant encounter by getting into a Tirana-bound furgon. 

* Oh!  Can we please talk a little bit more about Szeged?  Okay, so the Hungarian "Sz" is pronounced the same way as an English "S" and not at all like the Polish "Sz" which is pronounced like an English "Sh". This isn't even remotely interesting or funny, unless you know Hungarian and know that the word "segged" (pronounced "Shegg-ed" means "you ass" and not the name of a city so when I asked the ticket lady in 2007, "Kaphatok egy egyet Segedbe" I was basically saying, "Could I please have one ticket to your ass?" which, no matter how broken my Hungarian was, was pretty clear.  And for some reason no Hungarian seems to think that there is a remarkably coincidence between the two words.  

**Ugh, whatever.  It was probably noon, and even if it weren't, whatever, who are you to judge?  I was unemployed at this point, and there is nothing unemployed people love more than having a beer at 11am, amirite? ;)

Transiting Transcarpathia

Lviv was a whole lot colder than I wanted it to be, and I realized then what a godsend those Carpathian mountains are.  While they can't keep out Mongols, Huns, Hungarians, Russians, or literally anyone else, they can keep out the fierce Siberian winds that seem to envelope the whole of Ukraine, Poland and Belarus, and keep Hungary nice and toasty through October like a Balkan pizza pocket.  So as you can imagine, I was a bit chilly and wondering what I was doing in this ice palace instead of roasting in the Balkan sun.  

So the next day I decided to worm my way to the Hungarian border and on the advice of the hostel worker, went to Tukhlia, which was rumoured to have wooden churches. I went to the train station and learned that my train left from the suburban train station, the electric lines that cater to the nearby villages.  I ran outside and, in one of my trademark panics, starting howling at people passing by and pressing them with questions about where the "electric railway" station was.  Turns out it was right next door.  I got in, easily found my train and prepared to stand for my journey in the packed carriage.  Standing was actually preferable to sitting, as the seats were wooden and it was a rocky ride.  

The best part about Tukhlia was the weather, over which Tukhlia had little-to-zero control.  What Tukhlia had control over was the availability of restaurants and in that they were sadly lacking.  When the train stopped in the village and I was potentially the only person to disembark, I tried to leave my backpack at the train station so I could wander the city hassle free.  The clerk was less than enthused, as this was likely a part time job for her.  But she acquiesced in the end and I was smugly went on my way, as Tukhlia had just become my oyster.

But what an oyster.  There was so little to do there.  I didn't see a single wooden church.  In fact, all I really remember was a second hand clothing store, a good domed church, a convenience-store bar, and a tonne of farmhouses with these really cool painted wooden crests on them.  I overpaid for borscht and beer, did not get any cabbage rolls, and then waited for the next train to take me away to Mukhachevo, on the other side of the Carpathians. The train wound its way up the hill and down the other side, up past Ukrainian huts, and down past Hungarian and Romanian ones.  On the other side there was no snow, no bracing winds, and things looked decidedly European.  This is also, roughly, the area where the Good Solider Svejk abruptly ends.  When the train abruptly ended in Mukhachevo, I was unsure about what to do with myself, as it was about 9pm at this point.  

I was going to leave Mukhachevo to another post, but I did absolutely nothing there.  I wanderered around forever trying to find an affordable hostel or hotel (I was pooooor at this point, and 10 euros was a stretch.  I was in one of those places in the FSU where backpackers don't go, and people don't stay in cheap hotels, so if you're there it's because you're willing to spend money) and even though hostelworld.com said there was a hostel, the hostel was impossible to find.  And I'm no stranger to hostels that don't exist.  I ended up eating a tonne of perogies in a bar by the train station, buying a train ticket that took half an hour for the clerk to fill out (she had to fill out four different sheets of paper and cut it accordingly) and then bought a bunch of delicious Ukrainian beers in bottles to enjoy over the coming holiday season.  I'm so glad Ukrainian bars do offsales.  

C'est Lviv

It’s hard to even say what I did in Lviv at this time.  There wasn’t a whole lot going on—it was chilly, rainy, deserted.  In fact, all I really felt like doing was eating soup in the hostel.  Well, I don’t know if you know this, but I’m a bit of a whiz in the soup department.  I can eat an entire pot of soup in one sitting.  I’ve been known to eat more.  In fact, packaged soups are one of my guiltiest pleasures, And I usually add something edgy like frozen peas, or diced ham to the packages (and extra baby shell pasta, obviously.  I can’t even imagine a life without baby shell pasta).  Anyway, while I was cooking and eating this soup, I was introduced to a man in his 70s on holiday from the UK who absolutely loved inserting himself into any conversation arguing any statement a person made.  He was drinking something like vodka and V8, or Pepsi and V8, or vodka and Pepsi or…something gross.  It could have been just Pepsi.  Or beer and sprite?  Anyway, it was gross, and he was also asking me lots of weird questions, some of which involved what I am doing with my life.

Well, not much.  I can definitely let you know that 2010 has been the year of taking from society.  He was wondering why I was in Eastern Europe and asked about my studies and then lured me into an argument on ethnicity and linguistics and seemed surprised that I knew anything about the two, considering I only studied geography.  And he said something about maps and didn't understand why I like them and that old maps are not interesting, and then said, "Do you suppose it would be possible, then, to create a map that shows where all the language groups are?  Now that would be interesting."

I stared at him blankly.  Yes, it exists.  It's called a linguistic map.  It's a thing.  

"Yes, that would be interesting if someone could make something like that."

Someone can. 

He didn't believe me, but anyway, this occupied very little of our actual conversation.  He was more focused on talking about the girlfriends he had littered throughout the Ukraine.  He was on his way to meet one of them. Like, for the first time.  He said he had met all of them online through some dating service (you know the one, we all get the emails and google advertising) and now he was going to meet one or more of them.  Some of them had kids.  Anyway, he also told me that he wants to move to Ukraine because the exchange rate was so good.  He's right, it's fantastic, but that's neither here nor there.  The issue I immediately identified was that likely these women were not necessarily looking to stay in the Ukraine. He also expressed serious reservations about the woman who already had some children.  He said he'd also like to have his own--"I may by 67 but I have NO problem in that department, don't you worry."

Okay, good, because your virility is one of my chief concerns.  

Anyway, all this lead me to believe he had absolutely no idea what he was getting into and I could only hope to be there when it all unraveled.

Apart from this I just wandered around Lviv, hung out with a couple of expats, went to a great underground WWII bunker bar, and ate at Puzata Hata a lot.  Like, too much.  And I went to get my jeans fixed because there is nothing I like more than getting services I thought were only for rich people done in Eastern Europe.  They have such high quality cobblers and seamstresses!  You’re literally losing money by not taking your clothes there for repair. I walked into a tailor shop and asked the seamstress to fix my jeans (which, by this point, had holes in the knees, pockets, crotch, and seat.  In fact, these jeans retained almost zero of their original structural integrity).  She told me they would be ready the next day.  In what follows is a hilarious exchange—entirely in Russian—that only captures a glimpse of how amazing and glamorous my life is:

Rory: Hi, I need these jeans fixed.
Seamstress: Okay, I need you to change into other pants and then give me the jeans.
R: Okay, well I will change into these gym shorts I have.  Right here.  Right now.
S: Okay, well the jeans will be ready tomorrow.
R: Okay…but these are my only pants.  So I can’t leave until they are finished.  Because it’s winter.
S: Okay, I’ll need to rearrange my schedule to accommodate you.*
R: Okay.
S: Okay, so it will still take a while.
R: Okay, that’s fine, I have about a third of War and Peace that I really, really need to finish.
S: Okay, so you really want me to do this, like, right now?
R: I mean...yes.

And she did and the jeans were perfect.

*I presume this is what she said.

Lvov is a Battlefield

Well, well, well.  Look who came to greet me in Lviv: my good buddy Steve-o.  Stephen Harper was, for some reason, in Lviv at the same time as me, and I can guarantee he likely did not sleep clutching his belongings with his passport and wallet tucked into his boxers on a massive Soviet train that bumped and grinded through the Carpathians to arrive at 5:45 AM and deposit him in a rainy and cold Lviv with no means of finding his way to the centre or any piping hot vareniki.  So, I'm sorry, Stephen, but you didn't actually "do" Ukraine.

Actually, two things to note from this: my encounter with Steve and his smarmy political staffers was less than pleasant.  They were so rude and treated the whole affair as though a visit from Canada was actually important.  Guys, we're Canada.  Chill the eff out.  Watching him put a wreath on a Holodomor monument is not "top secret official business" so being rude to curious Canadian expat onlookers who want to feel a connection to the motherland was totally unnecessary.  After one whole year of being an expat I was suddenly and mortifyingly embarrassed to be Canadian.  If we were a Scandinavian country, they probably would have invited me for a drink and asked if I had a place to stay.  Canada needs to stop taking itself so seriously.  We're an adorable middle power that influences through multilateral consensus-building.  What could be more adorable than that?  I'm surprised none of these political staffers learned that in their 4-7 years of doing a Poli-Sci degree.  The other thing to note is that I did get piping hot fresh vareniki, in small cantina by the train station where some neanderthal punk stared me down when I walked in and I had to sit next to a sleeping pregnant woman who sat up, started smoking, and then went to the kitchen to heat up my food.  So take that, Stephen Harper.  You jelly?

Anyway, I rolled into the Cosmonaut Hostel, which was in a beautiful old apartment block in the centre, and I was able to shower and change my socks and put down my heavy bag to prepare myself for a day of walking around Lviv in the rain and watching a bus try to stop but instead slipping on the cobblestones and slam into the side of a tram and knock it off its rails and cause glass to shatter and woman to have a bleeding face.  That was all pretty real.  

Night Train to Ukraine

My destination was the Ukrainian border, because for some reason that was the logical next step.  I didn't go to Bucharest, and I didn't go to Moldova, and I didn't even do a Bulgarian dip, as I am often so wont to do.  In fact, I felt rather limited in that I was waiting for my work permit to clear and always wanted to be within Budapest's one-day-train-ride ambit.  Moldova is not in that ambit.  Moldova does't fall into very many ambits, if I'm honest.*  

The train itself was kind of freaky because it was a newish style of train, in which there were no cabins and instead was very open.  It made for difficulties in sleeping, but I did get to talk to some old women and watch some hot young babes get kicked off the train in the middle of the night.  I'm not sure what that was all about.  But I had pizza and beer, and is there any other way to maximize your potential when you're unemployed and highly mobile?  If there is, I don't want to hear about it.  

Apparently this was an actual stop.  

In any case, I woke up in Cluj Napoca feeling groggy and dissheveled (2007 throwback) and forced to de-train and get into a much more enjoyable regional carrier.  You know, the ones with the pleather seating covers and the individual cabins.  My bread and butter.  I couldn't wait to get in and collapse onto a seat and sleep for several hours as the train inched through the Carpathians at a excruciatingly slow pace.  Which it did.  And I loved it. 

Romania is so beautiful.  And the Carpathians are so nice in the fall that I found myself actually preferring to spend my time watching the scenery go past with my head out the window like a dog rather than actually sleep.  We snaked through valleys and past charming villages, one with a group of small children waiting by the tracks to wave--and then flip the bird--at the passengers.  It really was a pleasant experience.  The closer we got to the Ukrainian border, the more multilingual the signs on the train stations became and the more stunning the scenery.  

By about 11am I was in Sighetu Marmatiei and I was able, this time, to walk across the border, because evidently that's all everyone else was doing.  I feel like in this region, people are constantly just walking across border, with those burlap sacks, as if to suggest there are different goods on either side of the border.  I'll be the first to admit that the cookies are better in Ukraine, but apart from that things are pretty similar.  

I crossed into Solotvino and discovered I had just missed the train to Lviv so I decided that this was a perfect time to really soak up all that Solotvino had to offer.  After 15 minutes passed, I decided that all I really wanted was a huge dish of perogies and I had some of the best ones I've ever eaten at a little restaurant nearby.  Then I ran back to the depot, discovered that the only tickets left were the second class ones, and I thought, well, I only live once and I'm on vacation, so why not split a berth with 4 other people?  And I did.  

*Don't worry, Moldova, it's not you.  It's Western notions of ethnocentric territorial nationalism.   Don't ever change.  

Filling the Time in Filiasi

There was something off about my time in Romania.  First of all, no one seemed interested in me and my shenanigans.  There was also a considerably deserted quality to Drobeta, and most definitely to Filiasi. In fact, we throw the term "post-apocalytpic" around so carelessly these days that it's hard to really drill down on what we're talking about.   But if I ever use it in conversation in the future, I am purely benching it on Filiaisi and the feeling of pure terror/hopelessness I got from Filiasi.  I just felt unsafe.  I've never felt unsafe*.

While waiting for the train at the DTS station I noticed that there was an old homeless man rooting around for scraps to eat.  He pulled up a huge plant growing between the railway ties, and sniffed the lengthy root.  I believe he discarded it after.  I would have never thought something growing between railway ties could possibly be edible.  But this is the sort of thing that happens when you're homeless.  You think of doing things to survive that others with security wouldn't.  I couldn't wait to find out what I would be reduced to when my work permit was rejected and I was reduced to scavenging around Europe and writing home and on my blog about how cool and awesome living in Europe is (because obviously I would choose to spend my money on postage an internet cafes than on food or a place to sleep).

Anyway, I did get a pizza in Filiasi because it's well-known that one of my favourite ways to maximize "me" is to race across Romania by train and by night with a whole pizza.  It's my dream job to be an important businessman who needs to be in several Romanian cities throughout the week, so that I have the excuse of needing to take the train nightly, every night, and have to grab a pizza on the way.  And then I would start a blog about pizzerias near train stations in Romania.  I already have the basics for all this laid out.  

Oh, by the way, I got a new passport!  What a relief that was.  My passport was set to expire on October 25 but I preempted that by applying for a new one (a business one).  It's about time I did too.  Did you know that a lot of countries won't let you in if your passport expires within less than 6 months?  Yeah, because I'm going to just stay in ____ country once my passport expires.  I don't think most border guards and consulares really get what I'm trying to do here.  But it's hard to articular myself on a rigid visa application form because there is no box asking for a contingency plan if my passport expires.  Please, if my passport expires I'm not going to stay in your country and leach off your social services.  I'm going to call my parents and fly home and leach off their social services.  

*this statement excludes unrecognized, lawless states

DTF in DTS

The weather was pretty nice while I was there so I thought I would take in all that DTS had to offer for the day.  If I'm honest, there wasn't a whole lot.  Yes, the area is beautiful and it has a nice centre, but it doesn't appear to be a particularly bumping' city, though I always tend to build these things up in my mind.  What I did learn was that there used to be an island in the Danube that was essentially a fortress between the Turkish and whatever empire currently occupied Romania (which…was the Turkish Empire?  I'm really uncertain about the details of this anecdote and I'm not willing to research it further) and it ended up becoming a "smugglers' nest" or some such thing.  It sounded fascinating.  Like, an island fortress made up of winding streets and cubbies and passageways.  Anyway, in the 1970s the Ceausescu regime shut that shit down by building a dam and flooding the entire island.  I've never been more angry at Ceausescu than I was when I learned that.  I would have had so much fun on that island.  

There was also a tower north of the centre that cars had to drive around.  I went into the ground level of it (which…was apparently a mechanic's shop, or the administrative component of a mechanic's shop) and they told me flat out that no, I could not go up the tower.  Why do they get to control the tower?  They weren't enjoying it at all. 

The next adventure involved walking around the old part of town and seeing a beautiful courtyard with an old crone tilling the garden.  She sweetly said hello and I told her that the garden and house were beautiful.  She seemed happy and invited me into the house, which had been chopped up into apartments.  We reached the top of the stairs and three men came out, one on crutches.  One was rather large and surly and asked me a question in Romanian.  I gestured that I didn't understand and he said, "Passport."  Just imagine the range of emotions coursing through me at this point.  I immediately responded with "Oh, F*&K no.  This is not happening" and as soon as he lunged at me I kept down the stairs, one landing at a time, and burst out of the house.  After all the wonderful experiences I have had in Romania involving kindly old women, this one turned out to be a real downer.  What a cow.  

Anyway,  by this time I was ready to gtfo of DTS and catch my afternoon train so I went back to the hotel to collect my bag and make my way toward the train station.  Outside the hotel I saw a taxi and decided that it would be worth it to take it.  Trust me, I don't know what's wrong with me either.  Hotels, taxis--Romania was like opposite world for me.  In any case, the taxi ended up costing me like 30 cents.  Taxis are so cheap in Romania!  I was actually losing money by not taking them.  

In the centre, I had a pizza.  Or else I didn't.  No, I didn't.  I had something with meat and french fries and the outrageous woman next to me had a pizza.  And she was brought ketchup without asking for it, and I got a look of serious disgust when I asked the waiter for some.  She got hers in a bottle (which she squirted greedily all over the pizza and proceeded to devour with a knife and fork) and I got mine in a silver gravy dish with a tiny ladle and what I believe was a $2 markup.  You're killing me, Romania.

Chillin' Out, Maxin', Relaxin' All Cool in a Maxi Taxi

I caught the first group taxi (Furgon in Albania, dolmus in Turkey, marshrutka in the Po-So, and MAXI-TAXI in Romania.  When I first heard this I thought it was the best name ever and told a Peace Corp worker that it sounded like a pad delivery service and instead of bursting out laughing she didn't say anything and subsequently avoided talking to me for the rest of the time we were in each others' presence. Can't win 'em all.) to the city which was packed full of villagers heading who knows where (I mean, obviously they were heading to the city, but why at this hour I don't know) and they were hilarious.  They were happy I studied economy, and told me Romania needs one.  I LOL'd.  

Drobeta Turnu Severin was decidedly gloomy.  I mean, it was a warm evening, but it was so humid that it was warm but felt like it should be cold.  Have you ever played The Colonel's Bequest?  You know how when you're wandering around the grounds of the Colonel's mansion out in the bayou and it's all foggy but clearly warm enough for the main character to not need a coat and it's also the 1920s and there seems to be no one around?  That is exactly what DTS was like.  Anyway, I went to train station to see if there were any leads on later trains to the rest of the country.  There were none.  In fact, DTS is at the complete end of the line so most of the traffic had already cleared.

The woman working the ticket counter was not impressed with me.  I don't know what I did.  It was after 9pm, and I'm sure she was sick and tired of indulging the whims of tall blonds who pass through the station with no clear direction in life.  At this point, I was starting to wonder if anyone really, truly, actually enjoyed putting up with my shit.  She was of no help so I tried another lady working in the station.  I asked her, "Umm, English?" and her head popped up (she looked like the old one from the Golden Girls.  The really old one), cracked an enormous smile, and beamed, "No!"  She also was of no help.  She indicated to me that I should go back to the first lady for help and when I tried to explain that the first lady had some unresolved issues, Crone #2 essentially told me to tell Crone #1 that she was beautiful and then she would help me.  As I'm always looking for ways to reinforce gender norms under the guise of being progressive and post-sexual, I thought I'd give it a whirl.  I wasn't successful and subsequently left the station no better off.  

On the walk into the centre I didn't encounter any more people.  It really felt like a deserted ghost town, and there seemed to be no indicators of where I might find lodging for the night.  The one sign of activity was some sort of discotheque above, I believe, another discotheque, but the one above served pizza and was full of teenagers.  Obviously that's the one I went to.  I didn't like it, however, as the pizza was subpar, the waitress was sour, and I wasn't served any beer, despite everyone around me getting some.  What I did get, however, was free wifi, which tipped me off on where I could find an HI Hostel in the city. 

Had I remembered by gut instinct about HI Hostels in Romania, maybe I wouldn't have spent 2 hours wandering around the suburbs of the city trying to find an address that does not exist.  Almost on the brink of tears and ready to collapse, I spotted the Traian Hotel, one of RomIntour's famous landmark hotels spread across the country and offering, in many cases, perfectly acceptable accommodation at lower-than-hostel prices.  I kind of wanted to shower, and I always like the breakfasts, so I went for it.  Why not?

In the hotel room I cracked open one of the delicious Serbian beers I had been saving for my sister when she visits at Christmas (sorry) because I deserved it and everything really just went wrong for me that day.  Then I turned on the TV and I drowned my sorrows in Romanian television and an incredibly comfortable bed.  I was determined to get everything I could out of this experience, which involved showering (but, like, with soap this time) and taking up as much bed space as possible because I paid for it, so I may as well use all of it.   

Gullible in Golubac, or: how I managed to entirely miss the Iron Gate

The next morning I rose, discovered someone had nicked $90 from my bag, left a passive aggressive note on the door, and caught the early train to Pozarevac.  You may remember it as the birthplace of Slobodan Milosevic.  Lovely little town, but with poor rail connections so it took a considerably long time to get there.  Disembarking from the train with me was a student named Teja from Uzice who, incredulously, was also going to hitchhike his way to the Iron Gate.  Which is exactly what I was going to do!   And he's actually from there.  I'm so local. 

We walked through the town, out of the centaur*, and towards the turnoff to the Iron Gate where we caught a ride with a series of trucks and cars and were given loads of misleading advice by everyone (leading me to believe that no one, at any given time, actually knows anything), and finally made it to a town on the Danube.  This was a pretty big deal for us, and the next car to pick us up happened to be a man who used to be the mayor of the the town of Veliko Gradiste.  He told us all about the developments he implemented during his tenure, and admittedly it was a lovely community, especially during autumn.  He drove us to the far end of town so we would have a better chance of getting picked up, which I thought was incredibly nice so he definitely has my vote in the future. 

Our next ride was in some sort of ambulance, and I learned later from Teja that the driver had been on some popular Serbian reality TV show where he was reunited with his sister, whom he never knew he had.  What a heartwarming tale.  The next car was driven a by a bunch of old people who were delightful and happy to see us.  I also noticed a lot of cars had Austrian plates, and Teja explained that most people went up to Austria to work.  I decided not to bring up the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which is something that I have learned I should never bring up, anywhere, even if it clearly was the best thing for this region, and would have made the visa process so much more simple.  Even if Serbia proper had never been part of the Dual Monarchy, I'm sure there would have been a simplified visa regime.  Austria was so progressive like that. 

We arrived in Golubac and immediately descended upon a small store and bought all the provisions we needed to picnic at the ruins of the castle down the road at the entrance to the Iron Gate.  For me this was some locally made sausage and some green apples.  For Teja it was a huge tube of bologna, a bottle of ketchup, and some buns.  To each his own.  We got one final ride for about a kilometre to the castle, and we sat and ate and took pictures of the fairly impressive structure.  After, we parted--he back to Belgrade and me through the Iron Gate and waited beyond--and I can only hope he's succeeding in life now.  

I set off down the lonely road and was picked up by a Serb who worked in Austria (surprise!) who took me to the small village of Brnjica where I waited for what felt like a month by the side of the road for the bus.  Everyone nearby made a bit of commotion regarding my existence, and when the bus finally arrived I slinked in through the back door and plopped myself into a seat because I was exhausted, the sun had just set, and I was expecting to be brought a Nestle instant cappuccino and pay my fare of 10 euros.  This never came, and once I noticed the driver had breezed past the border and I screamed "STOP THIS BUS IMMEDIATELY!" I awkwardly shuffled myself and my bag out the back door.  While retracing steps back towards the border, I had time to reflect on how it was nice I had saved 10 euros, I also didn'tt get a free Nestle instant cappuccino, and sometimes we need to ask ourselves what is more important**.

Once I got to the border I was forced to fend myself against an enormous lineup of cars all desperate to get into Romania, a far cry from the days of communism when it was the other way around.  Long lines of cars have never been much of a formidable match against me, however, and I simply walked in front of them and presented my passport to the border guard.  This backfired when the border guard rejected my attempts to leave Serbia and told me that pedestrians were not welcome here and could not cross.  I asked him if it was only at this crossing and he just got annoyed at me and screamed, "You cannot walk across!"  I can understand that if you only know three English phrases, that someone asking multiple questions in rapid-fire English is overwhelming, but he should have just made an exception for me in this case.  

Anyway, I was forced into a car with two nice old Romanian men.  We slowly inched through the crossing and onto the Romanian side of the Danube by 8:45pm.  I had been planning on catching the night train from Drobeta Turno Severin to Filiasi at 9:23, and I could see from the line of cars and from the fact that I was way far from DTS that this wasn't going to happen.  The men dropped me off at the turnoff towards the city, and I was on my own, back in Romania, and ready to make waves.  

*Which, when you think about it, is hilarious.  And by "think about it" I mean think about the word Centaur.  If we lived in Ancient Greece, and in the Ancient Greece that included the wonderful mythology as reality instead of what I would assume was actually really a hot, smelly, and miserable reality for nearly everyone, then the idea of a sign telling me that a Centaur was to the right or left would be very useful in navigating myself through the city.  The last thing I would want to run into would be a centaur.  They are so warlike and, while noble and just, are nevertheless a woodland creature I would prefer to avoid at all costs.  

**Obviously Nestle Instant cappuccino.  It's not even available in North America because I have some sort of suspicion the US food checking agency has banned it and they let SO MUCH slips through the cracks so who even knows what they put in that stuff to make it so, so good.  

For Whom the Belgrade Tolls

If cities were booty calls, I’d have Belgrade on voice-activated speed dial.  The number of times I have rolled into Belgrade at some outrageously inappropriate hour, only to leave before, or just as, the sun is coming up is well beyond inappropriate.  I never spend the night, just kind of position myself on the steps of the train station and catch a few hours of sleep before someone angrily brushes me away (usually an old lady, with a brush) and I have to run to catch my train, always promising vacantly that I'll be back soon and we'll one day be together, forever.  I'm sorry, Belgrade, it's not you; I just can't be tamed.  Can't be tamed, can't be blamed.

Belgrade is a sight to behold.  Belgrade is a magical Xanadu poised high above the cliffs taunting the established states of the North.  Belgrade is a cruel mistress with a smoker's cough who leaves ashes in your bed, and tears on your pillow.  Belgrade is everything I have ever wanted.  If you've never been, you need to stop wasting your life and somehow get there right now.  The rich, exotic aroma of the diesel exhaust of trucks ploughing through the centre of the city while you sip your coffee over a cherry pastry will make you fall in love all over again.

I decided to stay at the hostel across from the train station and spend at least two days in the city to get a better sense of it than what I previously had.  I went to sleep immediately and rose early the next morning to head to the Gypsy market in Novi Belgrade, where I revelled in tripping over broken concrete and patches of mud to find the latest trinkets.  One of these was a meat grinder, which I greedily snatched up for the low price of 3euros*.  Then I went back into the city and enjoyed all the cafe culture had to offer, which is an immense amount of culture.  Could you imagine being a revolutionary in the early 1900s in a smokey cafe in Belgrade?  What a dream come true. 

I regret nothing about being in Belgrade.  I would do it all again**.  There was a really cool art gallery opening near the castle that I walked past (repeatedly until I felt it was safe to kind of saunter in and grab some free wine.  I was wearing plaid so it was acceptable) and I realized that Belgrade was on the cusp of being so much better than you or I could either imagine, or even be.  I also went to the smokiest of smoky bars to eat delicious cevapi and raw onions, washed down with beer from Nis and accompanied by a raspy singer whose cigarette stained melodies still ring in my ears.  

*Though, let's be honest: who got the better deal?  Me, who bought this meat grinder, or the seller, who neglected to inform me it was missing the blade and therefore was useless, and who pocketed the 3 euros even more greedily. 

**Some might argue I did.  16 times.  If you know anyone else who has been to Belgrade as many times as I have please pass on my contact details.  We have so much to discuss.  

Balkan Weekend Getaway

There's nothing like waiting for a work permit in a country bracing itself from the 2008 financial crisis and badly exposed to the Euro sovereign debt crisis to the point where the Ministry of Labour was being dismantled and folded into the Ministry of Immigration so that paperwork was getting lost and soon-to-be let go employees were less than eager to process some foreigner's papers for a high-profile job in Budapest's burgeoning financial services industry.  Really, there's nothing like it.  Unless you strip away the details and liken it to, say, being unemployed and living in your parents basement and contributing absolutely nothing to the world.  Because that's what I was doing.  Contributing nothing. 

As I was starting to go stir crazy (also, some mosquito nest had hatched in the owl hole of my apartment and keeping me up all night and on the brink of insanity), I decided that nothing like a dose of the Balkans* would make my entire experience of waiting on my permit and dealing with the Hungarian state seem totally rational.  Since it had been my dream to pass through the Iron Gate at least once in my life, I figured this was my chance.  I also had a week left on my Balkan Pass and I was desperate to squeeze every last penny out of that.  

Still neglecting to realize the hot deal that was the 15 euro BP-BG train ticket, I took a bus to Szeged (which roughly translates to "Your Ass" in Hungarian), and halfway through that trip I realized I had forgotten my Balkan pass on my kitchen table.  In Szeged I then got on a minibus that would take me across the border to the nearest city, Rozke.  This ended being a bad idea, because I was deposited in a village and had to wait for about 3 hours until another bus came to take me to Subotica.  It was late as well, and I was standing next to an old man who kept looking at me, then looking away, then looking at me again and, in a hapless gesture, shrugged his shoulders and broke the silence by saying in English, "We have not bus." 

The SuTrans bus whisked us across the northern Serbian countryside and right to the station in time to see the train I was supposed to be on take off for Belgrade.  I then walked to the bus depot and bought a ticket on another bus that would get me into the city at about 11pm.  I hopped on the bus, regretting all the false steps I had made that day and how ultimately I was not better off for it.  But then I stopped all my grumbling and remembered, "We have not bus."  This made the whole experience worth it, and summed up the experience in ways my stubborn adherence to English grammar never could.

*I had actually initially planned to go to Slovakia because, by all accounts, I flove Slovakia.  I don't know if you know this, but I went to Slovakia in 2007 and it changed my entire direction in life.  I was but a mere imp when I first set foot on Slovak soil, and by the time I boarded a RyanAir flight from Bratislava for the West bidding Eastern Europe goodbye (but most certainly not for the last time), I had emerged as some sort of adult in my own right.  Or at least I knew what it was like to sleep in a corn field and pretend I enjoyed it.  In any case, I did not go to Slovakia because sometimes I make decisions that benefit no one, least of all me.  

Greecey Times

I barely remember what I did in Greece.  I remember mosquitoes, I remember being incredibly sick, and I remember staying in a town right next to the town where Patrick Leigh Fermor was living and I had no idea and only found out after I got back to Budapest and I was kicking myself that I didn't try to captialise on this and kicked myself especially hard after he passed the following spring.  That about sums up Greece.  

What I do remember is my trip back to Budapest and the atrocious sleep I had on the train going back to Athens.  Or from Athens to Thessaloniki.  In any case I was packed into a cabin and it was such a bad sleep and the train was ultimately late and I was so disoriented in the morning I accidentally-on-purpose took the top-sheet with me from the train, and to be fair I have since made great use of it, and have certainly washed it more times than I suspect Greek Rail is wont to.

In Thessalon, I had almost an entire day to spend because the delayed train meant I missed the day train to Belgrade and had to wait for the evening express.  As taking night trains to Belgrade is somewhat becoming my forte I had no problem with this and the opportunity to see the capital of Macedonia.  The other Macedonia.  The Greek Macedonia.

If I'm honest I don't really know how I filled my day in Thessalon.  There was a waterfront, there were a few cafes, there was a bus depot under construction.  I think I was so tired from the train ride that I didn't exactly have a lot of energy to expend.  Falling asleep in a park like a homeless person is all I ever really want to do in any situation anyway, so Thessalon's abundance of greenspace fit my needs.

What I remember most fondly was returning to the station to catch my train and getting out onto the platform.  The station was under construction with a lack of signage so I had to play at a bit of guesswork to determine which train would be mine.  All the German-funded and sleek Greek Rail turbo trains seemed a little too sleek and German-funded to be taking me north, and then I spotted my ride, three badly graffitied cars with broken windows attached to a tank of an engine cast off to the side on a lonely spur line.  The train to Belgrade.  I couldn't wait.

 The ride was pretty uneventful and extremely comfortable, as I slept in a cabin with a Roma family (we collectively folded down all the seats and made an enormous pen) who de-trained in Skopje.  Or somewhere in Macedonia.  I was asleep when they departed.  Then I arrived in Belgrade in the wee hours of the morning, stepped right off the train onto track 2 and hopped right onto the immediately departing train to Budapest on track 3 (like, it was actually leaving.  It had started moving).  This was the most seamless transition of my entire life.   I settled into a cabin and hastily excused myself for casually ricochetting off Belgrade once again.  

The Greeks Are Revolting

They actually were in the midst of some mild rioting at the time, and there was a lot of speculation about a revolution and a wave of fascism sweeping over the Balkan tip*.  Getting to Greece was a chore in and of itself, but navigating Greece was just a pain.  I walked around Thessaloniki for a few hours and waited for my train to depart for Athens, where I was to connect to another train to Corinth in the evening.  When the conductor asked for my ticket, he started freaking out and kicked me off the train because I was on an "Express" train or whatever and the Balkan pass was only good for milk-run trains.  I was subsequently escorted off the train at the next station and told to wait.  

The town I was deposited in was called Platy and was hardly worthy of express-stop status but it was a nice enough place to wait, only a bit deserted.  I walked around for two hours and got harassed by high school students (par for the course these days) and then boarded the train to Athens.  I was seated next to a very glamorous woman who talked loudly on her phone to a woman talking even more loudly and then suddenly, mid conversation (I could hear the other woman screaming) she decided to snap her phone shut, smile and me, reach into her purse and hand me an enormous pomegranate.  Perhaps she was sent by the Ministry of Tourism to apologize for the terrible treatment I had earlier with the conductor.  I took it.  

*Greece is the most Balkan of the Balkans.  I know a lot of times political geographers and travel brochures will try to glaze over this fact and title things "Greece and the Balkans" or strangely leave out Greece when referring to the Balkans, but Greece is the only country in the Balkans that didn't have to own up to its own chronic under-productivity and start massive industrialization programs at the hands of postwar communist governments and instead got to go the Mediterranean tourism-focused route.  

There But For the Greece of God Go I

So the Balkan Pass grants extensions to Greece, which means that by the time I rolled into Thessalon like a plump Turkish sultan advancing on Christendom I wasn't exactly dead-ending.  I had a plan, and that was to catch the later train to Athens or wherever.  Anyway, I really can't be bothered to talk about Greece right now because the only thing I care about is how amazing First Class on Serbian Rail is.  SO AMAZING.  If you ever find yourself in that magical socio-economic position where you don't have enough time to hitchhike, but not enough money to fly, but just enough money for a train ticket, and you need to traverse Serbia by the cloak of darkness, then I highly suggest First Class.  You don't even need a First Class ticket.  You just need to assert yourself and start making things happen for you.  The only thing standing in the way of you and achieving your dreams is you.  

So I did just that.  I asserted myself and sat in the First Class cabin and just revelled in the plush velvety seat covers that FOLD DOWN.  You can fold down both seats on either side to form a bed.  And if you do all three, you form a pen.  Like, a playpen.  Do you know what I mean?  A pen.  There was a Facebook group about this years ago (back with both Facebook and Facebook Groups were a thing)--not specifically about the magic of Serbian Rail, but about building pens in your room or other places with cushions and things.  But come to think of it there was also a FB group about the Balkans and all their hijinks.  I think I posted on it.  

Anyway.  I had bought a couple of beers, grabbed an empty cabin, and was ready to get down to business (sleeping) when suddenly somebody burst in screaming about needing 9 euros so he could get to Skopje and the train was taking off and I just didn't have time for all this drama so I pretended to not speak English.  I fell asleep pretty quickly and woke up on the middle of the night to find some old man using my ankles as a pillow.  I was thankful I had stuffed my passport and wallet into my boxers but I also realized that there really was no danger, he just needed a pillow.

Crossing into Macedonia was pretty standard.  Got the stamps, I was happy (new passport, btw, so I was thirsty for stamps), and then we rolled into Skopje's super modern train station at around 9am.  Then we bisected the country of Macedonia on our way to Thessalon with reckless abandon, except for the several hours we were stopped at the Greek border because the Greeks think that being in the EU makes them less Balkan.  If you ask me, it has made them more Balkan, seeing as they have never had to face up to the challenges of modernity and actually develop an industrial sector.  

In any case, by 11pm, I had come face to face with the Agean Sea.  

Balk Up Off Me!

On the morning of the 23rd, I woke up and realized it would probably a good idea to get to Greece, seeing as I wasn't quite sure how I would get there.  The rest of my family would be flying in, but Budapest is just on the cusp enough of the Balkans to justify a fun and zany train adventure.  Not that anything involving trains or zaniness ever needs to be justified.

I'm pretty good at organizing train logistics, and probably had I grown up on the other side of the wall, I would have found myself streamlined towards railway administration.  And along with that, colonial administrator and scribe make up my trifecta of historical dream jobs.  In any case I purchased a ticket to Kelebia on the border with Serbia for some outrageous price, then stayed on the train breathing heavily and suspended in pure terror while the train rolled along no-man's land toward the clutches of Serbian border patrol.  We were held for a bit while they checked the train and stamped my passport, then I ran off to the ticket booth to purchase the Balkan Pass, which, if you're under 26 presents the entire Balkan peninsula to you on a silver platter like a tasty oyster for you to slurp up.  

But, surprise!, they didn't sell the Balkan pass there.  Only in Belgrade.  There are a lot of things that make the Balkan pass actually quite useless*, but that didn't stop my resolve.  Very little does.  I bought a ticket to Belgrade, which I believe maintains a constant cost of 1088 dinars, or 10 euros.  Then I hopped back on the train and we began our slow crawl across the northern serbian province of Voyvodina towards Belgrade at a crippling pace.  

We finally rolled in at 9pm, just an hour before my next train, to Skopje and ultimately Thessaloniki, was departing.  I purchased the 50 euro Balkan pass, I had a couple of Serbian beers in my backpack, and a fully charged iPod.  I was ready to bisect the Balkans and not even treacherously slow Serbian rail was going to stop me.  Just make the process a whole lot more arduous.  


Oh, but the way, I seem to have gotten a job.  The guy I'm renting from has a girlfriend who works at a company who needs English speakers.  I'm a shoe-in.  Who cares that I don't even know what "risk management" is.  If there is one thing I have learned about business, it's that I can just fake it.  The only thing they need is to arrange for my work permit, which requires my degree.  Should be easy enough.  

*LOLz at the Balkan pass.  When you're an impressionable young 23 year old with more good looks than sense, you see this deal on peeling poster in a remote Balkan train deport advertising the hot dealz, you think, "omfg I need to buy that!  The Balkans are mine!" but the cold reality is that for 50 euros you are given 5 days of travel in a month, and it's a lot harder to find ONE train in the Balkans that takes less than five days to complete its full route.  It's also hard to find enough train stubs that would ever add up to 50 euros total, considering my usual non-bribe fare is around 8 euros.  The bribed rate is considerably lower.  Furthermore the lack of viable train routes, the lack of connections to Albania, the categorical denial of Montenegro as its own country, the absence of track service in Thrace to Constantinople and subsequently Turkey, and the Greeks (The Greeks!) make this a "deal" I've only been stupid enough to fall for twice. 

Fröccs Fest

So in the past two weeks I have been in London, the Netherlands, and now back to Budapest.  All I can really say about my time is that the British immigration services are not interested in having me in their country, and that I have spent the last of my fortune and have no idea what I am going to do with myself.  In the meantime I am renting an apartment in Budapest because I am tired and I am waiting to meet my parents in Greece in September and presumably go home.  

Budapest is obviously amazing, and I spend most of my time drinking cheap wine and catching up on the past year in television shows.  This is me doing Europe!

Sleepless in Subotica

I've been to Subotica, and I have seen the big yellow building in the square, and I have eaten a pizza there (all 2007), so when I rolled in around noon on the 20th I was all hungry for Hungary.  My whole plan was to just start walking towards the border and then hop on a train once I got there.  Ugh.  Not so easy.  

I walked along what I had determined to the bus route and was finally able to catch a bus to the border after a considerable distance.  At the border, the Serbo-babe border guard followed instructions and stamped where she was supposed to, but the unruly Hungarian guard stamped with reckless abandon, upsetting my system.  

The crossing by car is at Tompa, but the train crosses at a village called Kelebia.  I had to walk from Tompa all the way to Kelebia which proved to be longer than I thought and I ended up hitching a ride from a very nice man and his son.  I was deposited in the centre of Kelebia at a bank and then I waited around for the train to take me to Budapest.  Totally an unnecessary trip on my part, because the cost of the ticket to BP was 3088 forints (~$12) and it would ahave been similar with the cost of the ticket between Belgrade and Subotica to have gone BG-BP direct.  Live and learn, I guess.

Budapest was a sight for sore eyes indeed.  I feel like I had closed a loop: After arriving there in November, 2009,  and thinking to myself that I was finally in "the East" I was now coming the other way after 8 and a half months and nothing ever felt more Western in my eyes.  I was greeted with froccs and given a tour de force of the city.  I felt like I had arrived home, and to a degree I had.  

Making the Belgrade

There is something really exciting about taking the night train through Southern Serbia.  There is always so much intrigue and hijinks going on with the conductors, border guards, passengers trying to bribe and evade paying, while the poorly-afixed windows are so rattly that as we race along it feels like we're going too fast and are on some sort of runaway train (see: The Caboose Who Came Loose.  Lots of parallel themes).  It fills me with a sense of excitement and adventure, as though I have no idea where or how we are going to end up.  The laughable part of all this, of course, is the concept of going "too fast" on a Serbian train--unless we're all willing to remove our Western lens (and let's face it--none of us is) and rearticulate in our minds the concept of how a train should run, and that a train in Serbia moving at all is indeed "too fast."*  

Anyway, I wasn't able to enjoy as much of the hijinks as usual because I was so exhausted and trying to avoid the Erasmus students who ended up de-training at Nis.  They had burst into my cabin to give me more Fisherman's Friend liqueur and ask how they would know when we arrived in Nis.  I told them the station would say "Nis."  They asked how it was written.  I wrote, "Nis."  So, Europe's future is in good hands.  

After splaying myself out on the bench seating and passing out, I had a rough and not totally fulfilling sleep and arrived in Belgrade at around 5 or 6am.  It was jam-packed full of backpackers.  Ugh!  Suddenly, and without warning, Serbia was the hot new destination.  This is in direct contradiction to 2007 when I arrived in abandoned, rainy Belgrade and was nearly murdered by taxi drivers outside the station and had to wander the streets looking for a place to sleep.  I would give anything for it to be 2007 again. 

I slept on the bench outside the train station because the Serbs let me do that (take note, station personnel in Bourgas, Bulgaria) after figuring out my plan to get home.  I would take the 11am train to Subotica and then walk across the border.  I refused the 7am Budapest direct train because I assumed it was going to be super expensive--something I learned later was incorrect--but that's a story for another time.  In any case at this point I had gotten really, really good at reading train boards and schedules, and I want someone to finally ask me either how to get between the various Eastern European countries by rail, or to simply tell me I am doing a good job and to keep on truckin'.

*WHAT was that Wellington quote about how it was unsafe to move too fast so trains were actually bad for peoples' health?  Or else that was just the prevailing logic at the beginning of the 19th century, logic that has been firmly embedded in the Serbia transportation authority's mandate ever since?  Can someone look this up for me please?  I am asking, not telling.  As I'm sure you can tell I try to encourage this blog to be a forum for open discussion.

Dmitrovgrad

Apparently I had some sort of plane ticket to the UK from Budapest with an expiry date of the 22nd so I really needed to get up there.  This is why in the wee hours of the 19th I walked down to the train station and waited for a train to Sofia with a couple of Brits and a Peruvian-German for a really long time because it's Bulgarian rail*.  When we finally did roll into Sofia I had no time for coffee or food at Kartofi Kron.  Instead I had to walk at a fairly quickened pace to the Northern Bus depot which was way out in the industrial zone and required me to take a bunch of shortcuts I wasn't comfortable with taking.  I managed to get there to find a line of people waiting for the same minibus, and for 7 lev we set off, stopping in front of the central train station to pick any stragglers up.  Huh. 

As we inched closer and closer to the Serbian border I worked up the courage to coax the driver into turning off the main road and driving me right up to the border so I could get out.  I bought some orange juice and got ready for Serbia.  As usual I was apprehensive because 1) I had three (3) Kosovo stamps in my passport and I wasn't entering Voivodina, but the southern part which may hold some animosity towards the breakaway state; and 2) Serbia.  The Bulgarian guard gave less of a shit about anything than anyone I have ever seen in my life.  The Serbian border guardress looked through my passport, frowned a bit, asked me how much money I had (trust me, not much), and then sent me on my way.  I was back in the Exoslavia.

Not far from the border had I walked before some Mercedes or BMW screeched to a halt right in front of me ("A" or "D" on his licence plate) and some young Turk asked me in whatever language was our current medium which country we just crossed into.  I did not have patience for this.  You're driving a car.  I am walking.  Check your passport.  What the hell?  How are you a functioning adult?

A bit further I made it into Dmitrovgrad where I learned the train to Belgrade (there was two per day) would leave at 7pm because I had just missed the 1pm one.  It was coming from Sofia.  Everything I had attempted by getting up early in Sofia had been thwarted.  No buses were leaving, and I was trapped in Dmitrovgrad for several hours.  

Things could have been a whole lot worse though.  I love small Serbian towns, and in this one I got my hair cut, had an ice cream, coffee, and ate a huge cevapi fry-up which also included liver even though I was adamant that I do not want liver.  In the end I got liver and ate about half of it before giving it to an elderly gentleman who had walked past my booth and asked me if I was going to finish that.  I wasn't.  

At the appointed hour I got to the train station with a couple of cans of beer, found my own cabin to spread out on, and was about to fall asleep when some atrocious foreign students piled into my cabin and insisted I have a shot of some Danish alcohol that tasted like Fisherman's Friend cough drops.  Ugh, Erasmus!


*I don't know why I say such things.  Bulgaria has a perfectly acceptable rail network, and after crouching on the floor of a dirty Georgian train packed to the brim, this Bulgarian train was absolute luxury even if it was 3 hours late.  

Vulgarities in Bulgaria

Hold the phone--if you think you have met a bad American, then think again.  The worst American currently in existence is in Plovdiv, Bulgaria (as of Jul 18, 2010).  Bulgaria tends to be the country in the world where I encounter the most terrible Americans. In 2007 there was some ox from Los Angeles who couldn't properly articulate a sentence and got into a fight with an equally atrocious British woman about whether people around the world were speaking English or American as a language.  American.  The language.  To be fair to him, his linguistic prowess was such that I wouldn't feel comfortable calling it English in its purest form, so maybe he is correct.  

In any case, that was 2007, and now it's 2010 (It's actually January, 2014, but backdating paperwork is my forte).  And in 2010 I rolled into a boiling hot Plovdiv at 11pm and went straight to the only hostel in town.  I don't think I had a reservation, as I rarely do, and they told me that there was one room they could put me in but it may pose a few difficulties.  The "difficulty" they were referring to was a guy from Philadelphia who just could not for the life of him handle any form of uncontrolled externality.  In fact, my entire stay in Plovdiv was full of people who had just had too much excess in their lives and had for some reason ended up in Bulgaria.  It really upsets me that the Bulgars have to put up with all this garbage because they deserve better.  

So in the end I ended up sleeping down in the common room because it was cheaper, cooler, and the American had had a nervous breakdown of sorts and I did not want to be near that.  So instead I sat in the common area and talked to a British girl who was on a crunk tour of Eastern Europe and didn't know a single thing.  About any subject.  She actually did not know a single thing about anything.  Potentially one of the least-informed people I have ever met in my entire life.  Then some van rolled up and a bunch of North Americans spilled out, including someone from Ontario. That was the final straw for me and I resolved to eat a pizza and hit the old dusty trail the next morning.  

Oh, another thing that happened to me in Plovdiv is that I was approached by someone who works for the Ministry of Tourism in Bulgaria and wanted me to answer a questionnaire about tourism in Bulgaria.  She told me that it's still a dangerous country and that I should not be wandering around from town to town but instead staying at resorts.  I told her I didn't want to and she argued with me and told me they are trying to discourage backpackers!  Ah!  Things are not going well for me socially.  While I know all of these people are unreasonable and I feel that way to this day, I know in some way it's not them, it's me. 

Plov-Diving into Plovdiv

Sadly enough there wasn't a single dish of plov in Plovdiv to dive into, and I have been subsequently scathing of my review of the city ever since.  I love Plov, despite what I was told by an old Russian cafe proprietress in Simferopol who told me that it was no good.  I suspect she was a bit racist, though, and just didn't like the Tatars.  Anyway, I actually did like Plovdiv, plov shortage notwithstanding, mainly because I really love Bulgaria and as always I regretted not spending more time in the country.  

Getting to Plovdiv was no treat, however, only made worse by the lack of plov upon arrival.  Walking from the border and trying to catch a ride was particularly difficult because no one had time for me.  Some even gave me a thumbs down, which I think reflects poorly on their upbringing.  Everyone transiting between Turkey and Bulgaria were just a bunch of busy assholes, and I ended up walking for a really long time in considerable heat.  The highlight of this walk was in a sort of abandoned retail strip zone where two men emerged from behind a container and demanded to see my identification.  Guess how I reacted.  Just guess.  

I was pretty set on not giving them my passport, despite the fact that they looked like Olympic weightlifting coaches, but when the badges and guns came out I thought, "Fine.  I will show you my passport, but if you keep it I will do something that will make you have to kill me and then you'll be greatly inconvenienced by having to dispose of my body" which I like to think guided their decisions wisely.  It turns out they were part of the EU's "green border" patrol and had to ensure any suspicious characters weren't in the country illegally.  While I tried to explain that obviously I wasn't in the country illegally, because it was Bulgaria, I just let the whole ordeal happen because getting in fights with police officers is something I've decided is no longer worth my time. 

After this brush with EU internal security I continued on the long and lonely road towards the town of Svilengrad.  After being rejected for several rides, even from a van full of French hippies, I was picked up by a man on his way to the Svilengrad casino.  He could not wait to get there and burn all his cash.  He let me off in the casino parking lot and I was forced with the very uphill task of getting myself out of Svilengrad.  For such a small town, you would expect this to be easy, but sometimes Western geography degrees have zero application in the East.  Because geography is, like, different over there. 

Ugh.  Everything makes so much sense with a bird's eye retrospective view.  The blue line represents where I should have gone and the red line represents some totally needless anabasis on my part that only exhausted me physically and emotionally.  

Outside of Svilengrad I absolutely broke down and bought a Coca-Cola, which to me is an entirely insane gesture.  I think I can count on one finger the number of times I ordered a Coca-Cola in the past year.  In any case, it was starting to get dark, I was starting to panic, and no was was starting to indicate they would like to have me along for a ride.  Suddenly, and without warning, a car U-turned in front of me and a man picked me up.  He was a border guard, and seeing as I had been having such luck with them all day, I eagerly agreed to go along with him to Plovdiv where he lived.  He told me all about guarding Bulgaria's frontier from the wily Turks and said that I looked like one of the least threatening people to cross a border.  I suppose if lined up with human and drug traffickers and other swarthy brigands banging at the gates, that would be true. 

He also told me a number of fantastical stories: a Japanese man who had been walking across Asia to Europe for three years and had budgeted to spend $3/day and had lost a couple of fingers due to the cold and carrying his rickshaw ("it was not rickshaw, but yes, let us call it rickshaw"); a 90 year old Turkish woman found stuffed in the ceiling of a train who was trying to visit her husband in Bulgaria; how his mother's father had been aristocracy and had studied at the Sorbonne but had been sentenced to hard labour once the communists took over, while his father's father came from the peasantry and was a diehard communist.  In fact, this car ride to Plovdiv was incredibly pleasant and I feel like a better person for it.  He dropped me off at the train station and I was free to find my way to the centre of town and the hostel I was to stay at.