Last Minute - Bulgaria and Serbia

For the past few weeks I've been hit with the Wanderlust bug. While I'm living in Istanbul, that doesn't necessarily mean I'm traveling all the time... I've adjusted here, so the insanity that is this city seems normal, and sometimes you just need a change of scenery to recharge your batteries.

Back in the States, it's getting cold, most of the leaves are off the trees, and it's beginning to snow. At least, that's what it usually is like this time of year. So I've had this hole in me... I needed a fix of cold weather and Istanbul is simply chilly and rainy right now... I decided to head North.

I'd decided to go to Bulgaria with some friends, when they had to bail due to some academic reasons. My friend Emily told me on Tuesday night that herself and Jan (pronounced Yan, a German guy) were headed up to Sofia, Bulgaria the next evening and then on to Belgrade, and I was invited.

So of course, I said yes.

Wednesday came, I went to class, packed my bags, and met Emily and Jan in Etiler. We hopped on the bus to Taksim, in the rain (foreshadowing, as my dad would say), and hung out at Jan's place while he packed his bags. On to get train tickets, stocked up on some groceries, and then hopped on the train at around 10 pm.

While we were waiting for the train to pull out, there was this middle-aged man yelling in Serbian at this girl in the car next to us, and yelling at the conductor as well. The conductor obviously couldn't understand (he kept saying "English, please!," so the Serbian man just got angrier and angrier. Finally another Railway employee showed up and escorted the Serbian man elsewhere.

The train rolled out of the station, I walked into the little wood paneled hallway to watch the last bits of Istanbul drift away in the night. The Serbian girl stepped into the hallway and started apologizing profusely to me for the disturbance.

"What are you talking about? He was yelling and screaming at you and you'd done nothing wrong. He was an asshole."

She kept apologizing, so, showing her the universal sign of forgiveness, I offered her a beer. She joined Jan, Emily and myself in our car and we all introduced ourselves.

Dragana was born and raised in Belgrade, Serbia. When she was younger it was tough to get out, so she had wanted to leave and never come back. As she grew older, Serbia went through political change and it became possible to travel, so now she no longer wanted to leave.

She was in Istanbul for a tango festival, her true passion. Whenever she'd say the word "Tango," her eyes would open up and you could see that there, in the back of them, someone was throwing gasoline on the fire, and sparks and flames were shooting up and over and every which way until she could get a few seconds to steady herself... Even when the festival ended and all of her friends went home, she stayed on for a few days with dirty clothes and no sleep, hitting up every Tango joint this city has to offer.

So, after we killed all the beer and the rakı, and froze our way through a border checkpoint, we all went to sleep, Dragana leaving us with a phone number to call when we got to Belgrade.

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