Kickin' it in Kikinda

Kickin' it.

 All the negative PR I have propagated against Serbian rail in the past had become so ingrained in my psyche that it gradually became accepted as given; Serbian rail was a constant, like an unchanging National Geographic photo in my mind’s eye and I factored this into all my transportation planning regarding the entry, exit and traversing of Serbia.  So imagine my lack of delight, as it were, to be dropped off in Belgrade on time rather than the usual 6 hours later.  Wholly unprepared for this massive paradigm shift, I could barely focus on the task at hand while the foundations of what I thought I knew about the world, about life—about myself—crumbled around me.  At this point, all I was certain of was that there was a train from Belgrade to Timisoara in Romania at 4am which would be the perfect base to launch an attack on the Ukraine.  This was true in 2007, so why shouldn’t it be now?


To backfill a bit of requisite information, from Repulika Hrvatska I had crossed with ease into Serbia.  I bought a ticket to the border and simply “forgot” to de-train when we reached the Croat border.  My eyes fixed on the Croat conductor who left the train in the town of Tovarnik and the border patrol came on to stamp my passport, I sat nervous and painfully self-aware as we left the town behind and the train rolled along the plains into the heart of my would-be captors and potential aggressors.  Instead, nothing could have gone more smoothly.  The Serb border patrolman entered my cabin and, so delighted at the prospect of stamping a Canadian passport, did not even look at it but placed a small, rectangular, Cyrillic-befonted stamp bearing the proud monogram for Sid, Vojvodina Autonomous Province, Serbia, and marvelled in my thorough knowledge of Serbian (‘thank you’ was back to ‘hvala’ at this point).  Serbia was my oyster—provided they let me out.

In Šid, I traded some euros for dinar (after being laughed at when I asked where the nearest ATM was) and settled into the Grill Kod Ljub for a chicken sandwich and some local entertainment.  Actually, I was the local entertainment as everyone tried to communicate me with me with little to no success.  One young student spoke English and he was on his way from Belgrade to Zagreb for St. Patrick’s Day.  He had forgotten his passport and was waiting for a friend from Belgrade to arrive on the train and bring it to him.  20 years earlier, a passport would not have been necessary, and now because of the regime change, Šid was experiencing an inadvertent tourism boom (after all, two people in one day were at the Grill Kod Ljub).  

In the Belgrade station I was as horrified as anyone to find that there was no train to Timisoara (accelerating my existential downward spiral), nor to anywhere remotely close to the Romanian border.  The tracks were laid and featured on the network map as if to tease me, but not so much as a parliamentary service existed to the eastern marches.  A woman approached me and was absolutely amazed that a Westerner had wandered into Belgrade at such an unseasonable time of year and insisted on advising me of the best place to eat for breakfast and how to find the bus station.  She said, “I will be your guide” as she took me to the bus depot.  As soon as we had exited the train station she said, “And now I kill you!  No! Ha! I make joke!”  It was exactly the welcome I wanted in Serbia.

Serbia, the outro.

I slept in an almost empty hostel across from the train station, ate salty goulash for dinner and opted for the breakfast recommendation in the morning, loaded my bag with cherry pastries and boarded a bus for Kikinda, which I assumed was a great launching point to get into Romania.  Surprise!—it wasn’t.  I assumed there would be the following things in this border town: a sign indicating the border; a bus to the border; a border crossing.  Unfortunately, people who live in villages in the Banat don’t really care about moving around much, even if they live directly on a border shared by Hungary, Romania and Serbia.  As such, I was in a bit of pickle in getting across.  After a bit of hitchhiking I learned that I needed to go to Ruskoe Selo, a village to the south, where I could cross.  I hopped on a bus and attracted a fair amount of attention from some teenagers.  One walked with me and tried to figure out what I was doing there.  Suddenly, a pimped out SUV came tearing down the road and an over-tanned young gentleman, presumably on his way to an audition for the Serbian version of Jersey Shore, picked us both up.  The two were friends and they were beyond belief that someone from Canada would ever be walking in this village at such a time of year that they insisted on driving me right to the border crossing and pumping some hot electro beats the whole way while they tore into the parking lot of the customs house and tore off, base pounding and the border guards perplexed.  I wouldn’t have arrived any other way. 

If you like flat, arable land and the opportunity to see Hungary, Romania and Serbia (and invading Turks) from one point of vantage, consider the Banat.

The border guards joked with me over who knows what and sent me on my way into Romania, where for some reason the border guard made me sit and wait in a little portable.  He was younger than I was and new to the border guard scene, I suspected.  He was overrun with work and it took a while to process my passport.  He also asked me lots of questions, not in an interrogating tone, but more of a why-on-earth-are-you-at-the-Jimbolia-crossing-on-foot-in-mid-March sort of way.  You know what I mean.  He asked what my plans were and where I would sleep.  I told him probably Timisoara if I couldn’t find a night train north.  Nonsense! he insisted.  He gave me his number and told me that I could easily stay with him in Timisoara when he got off work later that evening.  I thanked him and said I would contact him later after I checked the train schedule.  I continued my walk to Jimbolia and gazed out in amazement at just how flat and arable the Banat is.  So arable!  My eye also caught a large cluster of trees and a tower in the distant that I have come to learn was part of some sort of forest-gravel pit complex known as the “Babin Raj”—my dream to own a quarry had just come prophetically closer.  Walking into Jimbolia from the border, I was feeling entirely unstoppable, until I was stopped by a car driven by two men who offered me a ride.  They picked up some other guy as well and then they said in extremely broken English that they were charging me 30 euros.  I said no.  They said 30 euros.  I said no, I am a student.  And I don’t want to pay 30 euros.  They said they would take me to Timisoara for 30 euros.  I demanded to me let out of the car.  In fact, this was my dream situation.  I have always wanted to become entirely inconsolable and start screaming and swearing in rapid-fire English and thrashing about.  Unfortunately, they let me out after my third demand, but could you imagine how much fun that could have been?  Anyways, the good news was that they left me in the centre square, close to the train station.  I spoke with the station master who assured me a train would be leaving.  The “taxi” men returned to holler at me but the station master put them in their place.  And so he should.  Someone needs to keep order around here, and the Romanian national rail network does not need competition from these free-market upstarts.  

Old Romanian women have strong thigh muscles.

Upon exiting the station, a fat man hollered “Timisoara!” at me (story of my life) but I wasn’t to be swayed by their persuasive ways.  I was in search of something to eat when a young gentleman stopped me and started speaking German to me.  Surprised that he wasn’t aggressively offering to drive me to Timisoara, I ventured to find out what was amiss.  If someone in this village didn’t want to drive me to Timisoara, something was amiss indeed.  As it turned out, he spoke English (and French, and Serbian, and Romanian) but thought I was a German like himself.  He was from Bavaria but his family had originally come from this area—his father was a Banat German and his mother a Romanian who grew up in Serbia.  They met at medical school and moved to Germany where they reared this polylinguist who was spending his spring break visiting the village where his family was from.  And not to disappoint or stray from what I perceived at this point to be a well-honoured local tradition, he also asked if I was going to Timisoara.

The Timi Gara du Nord

He invited me to have dinner at the home of his father’s friend’s sister, who lived in a grand old estate in the centre of the town.  We entered through the former carriage doors, up the stairs and into the apartment she had carved out from this mansion.  Evidently, her family had been very prominent prior to the communist takeover and had produced the first prefect of Timisoara in Austro-Hungarian days.   She served up a delicious feast of traditional Banat food—aubergine spread, cabbage salad, stew—and homemade wine, and then Martin and I caught the rickety commuter train to Timisoara.  I called my border guard friend who was unable to host me due to working late, so I instead stayed with Martin.  He gave a personalised tour of the city, we saw the museum of the Banat and then made way for the brutalist train station to buy my ticket north.  Upon our tearful departure he asked, “What happens when you arrive in a city at night and have nowhere to sleep?”  I simply replied, “Oh, I drop a couple of F-bombs, drink a few beers and then find a place where I can curl into a ball and cover any exposed skin.”  He was and I think continues to be worried about me.  Then I clambered onto the train, wedged myself between two formidable babas carrying everything they owned in those plastic burlap bags, and plotted my next move.  

*Unfortunately, I seem to have lost all pictures that I may or may not have taken at this time.  It is possible that a battery shortage, or the sheer thrill of fleeing from Bosnia and evading the clutches of Servian border patrol led me to forget to snap any shots of the landscape, but unfortunately I am missing all my photos from this leg of the trip.  But for reference, perhaps a quick Google Image search of “Esterhazy, Saskatchewan in March” will paint a picture my words never could.