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.