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Published: April 28th 2008
I've always known that every travel experience has one of those 'oh my god' stories that nobody can believe. I just never thought this one would involve being taken away in a Serbian police car...
Nate and I headed for the bus station in Dubrovnik to find out that no bus was headed to Bar that day, despite the online timetable saying there was. The lady at the ticket booth suggested Budva, Montenegro which is a big tourist attraction known for its beaches. Without much other option, Nate and I forked over the exorbitant cost for two bus tickets and headed south. We met an Australian girl and American guy who were both traveling alone and chatted with them for a bit. We also met another guy who had just come from Budva and said we shouldn't go there...it was dirty, touristy and there wasn't much to do. Fannntastic! The bus took only about 3 hours and we arrived to a sketchy looking town. There was construction everywhere and despite the beautiful mountains in the backdrop, Budva looked kind of industrial and run down. We were still determined to get to Kosovo and the only bus that could get us close was to Nis, Serbia. It didn't leave for 5 or 6 hours so we decided to just spend the day in Budva, much like we did in Venice and then hop the 12 hour overnight bus ride to Serbia. How bad can a 12 hour bus ride be, right? Budva itself wasn't bad...we walked along the beach and took photos and headed into town to find some food. We ate at a local restaurant; Nate having Montenegro's take on a burger and me having some meat and potatoes goulash. We found the old city walls which had been turned into a mini Dubrovnik-like shopping district. We both find a treasure to take home, mine being a gorgeous green necklace from a little colorful hippie shop. On our way back to the bus station we managed to get lost and had to trek through construction sites and unfinished roads asking everyone we saw 'autobuska?'. We found the station with a few minutes to spare, we both used the restroom, bought some snacks and prepared ourselves for 12 hours on a bus.
The bus. We were expecting a coach bus with a toilet and air conditioning. We got an India bus, with a few more seats. When it arrived it was already quite crowded and the only 2 seats next to each other were in the very back. We made our way to the back, being gawked at like the foreigners we are the entire way. There was no bathroom, the air conditioning was sketchy at best and hand sanitizer and baby wipes were my saving grace. It was so ridiculous I wrote in my journal about it...this was about 4 hours into the trip. I wrote: "So I'm on a bus. Possibly in Montenegro. Possibly the grossest bus ever. I'll be off this bus in approximately 9 hours, assuming we don't drive off the side of a cliff between now and then. Nate's quite nervous about the possibility of that prospect. So this bus...people are anal about seat assignments here! Two middle aged women almost had a WWF smackdown next to us because of a minor disagreement over seating arrangements. In fact, a police man just boarded the bus and gave everyone a stern look before returning to his chain smoking outside. Nate and I are not in our assigned seats. We know we are not in our assigned seats. But we're both too stubborn to move, so when people come up to us talking Serbian, we just stare blankly like we have absolutely no clue what they're talking about. (A few minutes later). This bus smells of stale cigarettes, body odor and modly basement. It creeks to the point of scaring us and Nate even just prayed because he thought we were literally going to die."
I ended up paying for my seat choice. An extra large women plunked herself down right next to me (remember, we were in the back where there are 5 seats next to each other in a row) and she almost literally squished me to death for a good 7 or 8 hours. She would doze off and fall on top of me...I had to wake Nate up a few times to have him help me push her off. Sometimes she'd wake up when I gave her a good enough shove and she'd stare at me like I just killed her cat. I just wanted to shake her violently and tell her she could not sit on my seat, she could not sleep on my lap and if she continued to do so, my bones might start breaking! I was not pleased. It seemed like every time I'd doze off, I'd be abruptly awakened by 300 pounds of woman slumping onto my lap! To top it off, a rather intoxicated man sat on the other side of this rather large woman and snored and made weird noises all night. At one point he even managed to curl up in a ball on the floor/aisle area and sleep.
It gets better. The last 10 minutes of our 12 hour journey I could feel that goulash making a re-appearance. I could tell from the way my stomach was gurgling it was not going to go well for me. We got off the bus just in time and Nate realized his wallet was missing. He went to search for it on the bus and I had to pay a man 1 Euro 50 to use the toilet, which wasn't a toilet but one of those Eastern hole-in-the-grounds with no toilet paper. I finally was done being ill, managed to pull myself together and walked outside to see Nate surrounded by 10 Serbian men. One of them spoke some broken English and he just told us the police were coming. No sooner did he say that than a cop car pulled up and two officers emerged. They pointed to the back so we got in and zoomed off to the station. Needless to say, Nate did not find his wallet on the bus...we aren't sure what happened to it other than when he got on he had it and when he got off he didn't. We sat in the police station for a long time...Nate was stressing out about his cash and credit cards and I was stressing out about my frequent bathroom trips. We had to wait at least an hour for a translator to arrive and we spent another good hour, maybe longer, describing where we were coming from, where we were going and what happened. Nate ended up losing a good amount of cash but we got his credit and debit cards stopped without any charges and contacted the American embassy about his military ID (he Dad was in the Army and he has an ID that has his SS number and everything on it). I am just so thankful I was in possession of both of our passports. I don't even want to think about being stranded in Serbia. We weren't planning on staying in Nis tonight, but just using it as a transfer point to Pristina...we took this chain of events as a sign that we were meant to stay here and just head to Greece, bypassing Kosovo. It's disappointing that we'll miss it, having come this far, but with one of us money-less and the other sick, we don't want to run the risk of anything else bad happening.
A police officer told us of a hostel we could stay in...we made our way to the hostel and the guy that runs it was so great to us. We still weren't sure we were going to stay the night but after explaining our situation, he told us we could use the internet, shower and anything else we needed free of charge. When we decided to stay, he gave us a nice discount on our room and said if we need anything else to just let him know. It was so refreshing to have such a kind person help us out when we both felt we were at the bottom.
So that's been our 24 hours...pretty crazy, right? I'm glad to report Nate is feeling optimistic and is currently napping in the bunk above me. I'm impressed with the way he handled himself today...it would have been so easy to get really upset and mad and frustrated but he kept a level head and wrote it off as a learning experience. I'm also feeling much better and I will be in charge of all wallets, passports, monies and other important things from here on out 😊 We're both going to shower and go explore Nis and make our way to Greece tomorrow (hopefully!) I think we've just experienced the worst this trip has to offer, so things can only get better from here!
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Dad
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Policia
Megan: keep your head down and STAY OUT OF TROUBLE! These stories make a father nervous