Sarajevo in the summer was an absolute joy. My feet weren't soaking wet this time around and I managed to find a nice hostel, across the bridge and up the hill in a part of town I had not yet explored. Okay, well actually, I didn't go to this area to find the hostel. In fact, I walked into a storefront advertising a hostel, paid, and then discovered the hostel was a good ways out of the centre and that I would be shuttled there. After I had paid I learned this. Anyway it was by no means a bad place to stay, and it had a kitchen so I was able to make chicken soup, and I can't imagine what else anyone needs in life, if I'm honest.
The one drawback of this hostel was that we were each given a key and we couldn't lose it because the front desk was in the centre of the city. I was sharing the room with a Polish girl and she was studying Serbian and she then left to go partying but left her key behind I realized nothing would be more annoying than her banging on the door at 4am because she had left her key so I grabbed it and ran down the street after her. She had made it a good way, almost to the bridge, and when I gave her the key she gave a disinterested, "Oh, thanks" and kept walking. At the time this really annoyed me but I seem to have really lost steam about the whole thing and now am on to bigger and better issues to be annoyed about, like the escalation of tipping culture and why milk comes in bags in Ontario.
Oh, but then the girl still did bang on the door at 4am because she didn't know how to use the key. To her credit Eastern European keys and locks are really wild and it takes some getting used to, but on the other hand she's from Poland and she should have been better equipped to handle this situation.
The next morning I rose at 5am (so really, she did sort of a favour to me by waking me up) and went to the train station to catch the train to Budapest. Can you believe there is a direct train to Budapest from Sarajevo? I cannot. There is only one carriage and it chugged along through the Bosnian hills, past Zenica and to the Croatian border. I was at first worried this wasn't going to Budapest but then I saw an old couple and the woman was eating a yogurt with Hungarian writing on it. This comforted me, especially the idea that she had brought enough yogurt from home on her trip to Sarajevo to last her the whole way through. When we arrived at the Croatian border the guards lethargically looked at my passport and then neglected to stamp it, so I basically was never in Bosnia.
I sat adjacent to a Slovak couple who I absolutely loved and we talked about Bratislava, and Eastern Europe, and Hungary, and everything that I love. It turned out that the train was late (surprise!) so we would be late getting into Budapest and the Slovaks were at risk of missing their transfer. The conductress was a savvy old girl equipped with many life skills (except proficiency in English) and she asked me if I was Hungarian. Thinking she had asked if I spoke Hungarian, I responded with "Yes, a little." She stared at me blankly and then found someone else to translate. Whatever, it's a hard language so good for me for even trying. Anyway, she led them through the train to the front of the carriage so that they'd be the first to presumably leap off the train and onto the one departing for Bratislava.* Anyway, once I disembarked at Deli, my adventure had ended and I resumed that mundane life of living and working in one of the great capitals of Europe.
*Though, as we all know, this probably did not help because trains from the South arrive in Deli, and in order to get to Bratislava they needed to hop on the metro and go to Keleti to catch the train to B-slav, so I think it's safe to say they were effed but I guess we will never know.
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