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.