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.
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