Day 59 - Midnight border checks? Sign me up :D

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A full day of playing tour guide to my mother was a bit more challenging than I expected. In truth, it was something I should have seen coming, judging from the way she gave a decidedly unladylike snort when I told her that Belgrade has been called "The New York City of the Balkans."

I think she's been spoiled by Athens, so nothing can compare now, naturally :P.

We looped around the Kalemegdan and strolled down the Knez Milhailkova, where we had lunch at a little tavern tucked away underground. Food was great! Yum, my stomach remembers that lunch fondly, lol.Cevapi (ground beef and pork, served in balls), Pljeskavica (spiced hamburger meat), paprika salad...what more could you ask for?

And then night came...

Somehow I don't quite believe that my mom and I learned our lesson from our previous overnight traveling excursion.

Remember that one? The one where you slept in hastily-pushed-together lounge chairs on a boat? A BOAT, for Chrissakes?? Remember what little sleep you actually got out of it?

It seems that we both have some sort of weird selective amnesia (it's gotta be hereditary, I swear :P) for this, since at midnight (once again), we found ourselves staring up the ceiling of the night train to Podgorica.

Oh, wait. Scratch that. We couldn't actually see the ceiling, since the cot above us was blocking our view of peeling yellow paint. Silly me.

After a mini-crisis with our tickets (we somehow booked the wrong date >.<), we were stuck with two middle beds in a 6-bed compartment, which we shared with a family of 4, who occupied the lower two beds.

lol. It was then we realized that floor space was a precious commodity in a 10-hour overnight train ride...one we didn't have at all. Not that it would have mattered too much, seeing as floor space was minimal to begin with (I could literally reach over to my mom in the adjacent bunk).

Border checks were predictably ill-timed (3am-ish), and I'm not too sure how I managed to squeeze in a few hours o' shuteye when it sounded like a screaming banshee permanently latched itself outside our window (lol).

In the end, it actually wasn't too bad -- somehow I managed not to feel too trashed the next morning when we arrived in Podgorica, which was more than I could say about our night on the ferry from Santorini. But next time, I'm claiming a bottom bunk :P.

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Photos

LUNCH!
Cevapi

MORE LUNCH!
paprika and traditional Serbski salads

AGAIN WITH THE LUNCH!
Pljeskavica

Central Station Hostel
my 3rd time staying here! but this time in a private double, lol. I think my mother was scared out of her wits :D

the bridge over the Sava
...again