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.