Gullible in Golubac, or: how I managed to entirely miss the Iron Gate

The next morning I rose, discovered someone had nicked $90 from my bag, left a passive aggressive note on the door, and caught the early train to Pozarevac.  You may remember it as the birthplace of Slobodan Milosevic.  Lovely little town, but with poor rail connections so it took a considerably long time to get there.  Disembarking from the train with me was a student named Teja from Uzice who, incredulously, was also going to hitchhike his way to the Iron Gate.  Which is exactly what I was going to do!   And he's actually from there.  I'm so local. 

We walked through the town, out of the centaur*, and towards the turnoff to the Iron Gate where we caught a ride with a series of trucks and cars and were given loads of misleading advice by everyone (leading me to believe that no one, at any given time, actually knows anything), and finally made it to a town on the Danube.  This was a pretty big deal for us, and the next car to pick us up happened to be a man who used to be the mayor of the the town of Veliko Gradiste.  He told us all about the developments he implemented during his tenure, and admittedly it was a lovely community, especially during autumn.  He drove us to the far end of town so we would have a better chance of getting picked up, which I thought was incredibly nice so he definitely has my vote in the future. 

Our next ride was in some sort of ambulance, and I learned later from Teja that the driver had been on some popular Serbian reality TV show where he was reunited with his sister, whom he never knew he had.  What a heartwarming tale.  The next car was driven a by a bunch of old people who were delightful and happy to see us.  I also noticed a lot of cars had Austrian plates, and Teja explained that most people went up to Austria to work.  I decided not to bring up the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which is something that I have learned I should never bring up, anywhere, even if it clearly was the best thing for this region, and would have made the visa process so much more simple.  Even if Serbia proper had never been part of the Dual Monarchy, I'm sure there would have been a simplified visa regime.  Austria was so progressive like that. 

We arrived in Golubac and immediately descended upon a small store and bought all the provisions we needed to picnic at the ruins of the castle down the road at the entrance to the Iron Gate.  For me this was some locally made sausage and some green apples.  For Teja it was a huge tube of bologna, a bottle of ketchup, and some buns.  To each his own.  We got one final ride for about a kilometre to the castle, and we sat and ate and took pictures of the fairly impressive structure.  After, we parted--he back to Belgrade and me through the Iron Gate and waited beyond--and I can only hope he's succeeding in life now.  

I set off down the lonely road and was picked up by a Serb who worked in Austria (surprise!) who took me to the small village of Brnjica where I waited for what felt like a month by the side of the road for the bus.  Everyone nearby made a bit of commotion regarding my existence, and when the bus finally arrived I slinked in through the back door and plopped myself into a seat because I was exhausted, the sun had just set, and I was expecting to be brought a Nestle instant cappuccino and pay my fare of 10 euros.  This never came, and once I noticed the driver had breezed past the border and I screamed "STOP THIS BUS IMMEDIATELY!" I awkwardly shuffled myself and my bag out the back door.  While retracing steps back towards the border, I had time to reflect on how it was nice I had saved 10 euros, I also didn'tt get a free Nestle instant cappuccino, and sometimes we need to ask ourselves what is more important**.

Once I got to the border I was forced to fend myself against an enormous lineup of cars all desperate to get into Romania, a far cry from the days of communism when it was the other way around.  Long lines of cars have never been much of a formidable match against me, however, and I simply walked in front of them and presented my passport to the border guard.  This backfired when the border guard rejected my attempts to leave Serbia and told me that pedestrians were not welcome here and could not cross.  I asked him if it was only at this crossing and he just got annoyed at me and screamed, "You cannot walk across!"  I can understand that if you only know three English phrases, that someone asking multiple questions in rapid-fire English is overwhelming, but he should have just made an exception for me in this case.  

Anyway, I was forced into a car with two nice old Romanian men.  We slowly inched through the crossing and onto the Romanian side of the Danube by 8:45pm.  I had been planning on catching the night train from Drobeta Turno Severin to Filiasi at 9:23, and I could see from the line of cars and from the fact that I was way far from DTS that this wasn't going to happen.  The men dropped me off at the turnoff towards the city, and I was on my own, back in Romania, and ready to make waves.  

*Which, when you think about it, is hilarious.  And by "think about it" I mean think about the word Centaur.  If we lived in Ancient Greece, and in the Ancient Greece that included the wonderful mythology as reality instead of what I would assume was actually really a hot, smelly, and miserable reality for nearly everyone, then the idea of a sign telling me that a Centaur was to the right or left would be very useful in navigating myself through the city.  The last thing I would want to run into would be a centaur.  They are so warlike and, while noble and just, are nevertheless a woodland creature I would prefer to avoid at all costs.  

**Obviously Nestle Instant cappuccino.  It's not even available in North America because I have some sort of suspicion the US food checking agency has banned it and they let SO MUCH slips through the cracks so who even knows what they put in that stuff to make it so, so good.  

For Whom the Belgrade Tolls

If cities were booty calls, I’d have Belgrade on voice-activated speed dial.  The number of times I have rolled into Belgrade at some outrageously inappropriate hour, only to leave before, or just as, the sun is coming up is well beyond inappropriate.  I never spend the night, just kind of position myself on the steps of the train station and catch a few hours of sleep before someone angrily brushes me away (usually an old lady, with a brush) and I have to run to catch my train, always promising vacantly that I'll be back soon and we'll one day be together, forever.  I'm sorry, Belgrade, it's not you; I just can't be tamed.  Can't be tamed, can't be blamed.

Belgrade is a sight to behold.  Belgrade is a magical Xanadu poised high above the cliffs taunting the established states of the North.  Belgrade is a cruel mistress with a smoker's cough who leaves ashes in your bed, and tears on your pillow.  Belgrade is everything I have ever wanted.  If you've never been, you need to stop wasting your life and somehow get there right now.  The rich, exotic aroma of the diesel exhaust of trucks ploughing through the centre of the city while you sip your coffee over a cherry pastry will make you fall in love all over again.

I decided to stay at the hostel across from the train station and spend at least two days in the city to get a better sense of it than what I previously had.  I went to sleep immediately and rose early the next morning to head to the Gypsy market in Novi Belgrade, where I revelled in tripping over broken concrete and patches of mud to find the latest trinkets.  One of these was a meat grinder, which I greedily snatched up for the low price of 3euros*.  Then I went back into the city and enjoyed all the cafe culture had to offer, which is an immense amount of culture.  Could you imagine being a revolutionary in the early 1900s in a smokey cafe in Belgrade?  What a dream come true. 

I regret nothing about being in Belgrade.  I would do it all again**.  There was a really cool art gallery opening near the castle that I walked past (repeatedly until I felt it was safe to kind of saunter in and grab some free wine.  I was wearing plaid so it was acceptable) and I realized that Belgrade was on the cusp of being so much better than you or I could either imagine, or even be.  I also went to the smokiest of smoky bars to eat delicious cevapi and raw onions, washed down with beer from Nis and accompanied by a raspy singer whose cigarette stained melodies still ring in my ears.  

*Though, let's be honest: who got the better deal?  Me, who bought this meat grinder, or the seller, who neglected to inform me it was missing the blade and therefore was useless, and who pocketed the 3 euros even more greedily. 

**Some might argue I did.  16 times.  If you know anyone else who has been to Belgrade as many times as I have please pass on my contact details.  We have so much to discuss.  

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.  

Greecey Times

I barely remember what I did in Greece.  I remember mosquitoes, I remember being incredibly sick, and I remember staying in a town right next to the town where Patrick Leigh Fermor was living and I had no idea and only found out after I got back to Budapest and I was kicking myself that I didn't try to captialise on this and kicked myself especially hard after he passed the following spring.  That about sums up Greece.  

What I do remember is my trip back to Budapest and the atrocious sleep I had on the train going back to Athens.  Or from Athens to Thessaloniki.  In any case I was packed into a cabin and it was such a bad sleep and the train was ultimately late and I was so disoriented in the morning I accidentally-on-purpose took the top-sheet with me from the train, and to be fair I have since made great use of it, and have certainly washed it more times than I suspect Greek Rail is wont to.

In Thessalon, I had almost an entire day to spend because the delayed train meant I missed the day train to Belgrade and had to wait for the evening express.  As taking night trains to Belgrade is somewhat becoming my forte I had no problem with this and the opportunity to see the capital of Macedonia.  The other Macedonia.  The Greek Macedonia.

If I'm honest I don't really know how I filled my day in Thessalon.  There was a waterfront, there were a few cafes, there was a bus depot under construction.  I think I was so tired from the train ride that I didn't exactly have a lot of energy to expend.  Falling asleep in a park like a homeless person is all I ever really want to do in any situation anyway, so Thessalon's abundance of greenspace fit my needs.

What I remember most fondly was returning to the station to catch my train and getting out onto the platform.  The station was under construction with a lack of signage so I had to play at a bit of guesswork to determine which train would be mine.  All the German-funded and sleek Greek Rail turbo trains seemed a little too sleek and German-funded to be taking me north, and then I spotted my ride, three badly graffitied cars with broken windows attached to a tank of an engine cast off to the side on a lonely spur line.  The train to Belgrade.  I couldn't wait.

 The ride was pretty uneventful and extremely comfortable, as I slept in a cabin with a Roma family (we collectively folded down all the seats and made an enormous pen) who de-trained in Skopje.  Or somewhere in Macedonia.  I was asleep when they departed.  Then I arrived in Belgrade in the wee hours of the morning, stepped right off the train onto track 2 and hopped right onto the immediately departing train to Budapest on track 3 (like, it was actually leaving.  It had started moving).  This was the most seamless transition of my entire life.   I settled into a cabin and hastily excused myself for casually ricochetting off Belgrade once again.  

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.