Balkan Weekend Getaway

There's nothing like waiting for a work permit in a country bracing itself from the 2008 financial crisis and badly exposed to the Euro sovereign debt crisis to the point where the Ministry of Labour was being dismantled and folded into the Ministry of Immigration so that paperwork was getting lost and soon-to-be let go employees were less than eager to process some foreigner's papers for a high-profile job in Budapest's burgeoning financial services industry.  Really, there's nothing like it.  Unless you strip away the details and liken it to, say, being unemployed and living in your parents basement and contributing absolutely nothing to the world.  Because that's what I was doing.  Contributing nothing. 

As I was starting to go stir crazy (also, some mosquito nest had hatched in the owl hole of my apartment and keeping me up all night and on the brink of insanity), I decided that nothing like a dose of the Balkans* would make my entire experience of waiting on my permit and dealing with the Hungarian state seem totally rational.  Since it had been my dream to pass through the Iron Gate at least once in my life, I figured this was my chance.  I also had a week left on my Balkan Pass and I was desperate to squeeze every last penny out of that.  

Still neglecting to realize the hot deal that was the 15 euro BP-BG train ticket, I took a bus to Szeged (which roughly translates to "Your Ass" in Hungarian), and halfway through that trip I realized I had forgotten my Balkan pass on my kitchen table.  In Szeged I then got on a minibus that would take me across the border to the nearest city, Rozke.  This ended being a bad idea, because I was deposited in a village and had to wait for about 3 hours until another bus came to take me to Subotica.  It was late as well, and I was standing next to an old man who kept looking at me, then looking away, then looking at me again and, in a hapless gesture, shrugged his shoulders and broke the silence by saying in English, "We have not bus." 

The SuTrans bus whisked us across the northern Serbian countryside and right to the station in time to see the train I was supposed to be on take off for Belgrade.  I then walked to the bus depot and bought a ticket on another bus that would get me into the city at about 11pm.  I hopped on the bus, regretting all the false steps I had made that day and how ultimately I was not better off for it.  But then I stopped all my grumbling and remembered, "We have not bus."  This made the whole experience worth it, and summed up the experience in ways my stubborn adherence to English grammar never could.

*I had actually initially planned to go to Slovakia because, by all accounts, I flove Slovakia.  I don't know if you know this, but I went to Slovakia in 2007 and it changed my entire direction in life.  I was but a mere imp when I first set foot on Slovak soil, and by the time I boarded a RyanAir flight from Bratislava for the West bidding Eastern Europe goodbye (but most certainly not for the last time), I had emerged as some sort of adult in my own right.  Or at least I knew what it was like to sleep in a corn field and pretend I enjoyed it.  In any case, I did not go to Slovakia because sometimes I make decisions that benefit no one, least of all me.