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Published: October 18th 2012
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Purgatory!
the place I spent several hours of this day July 23rd
Ah the joy of cockroaches; there’s nothing like turning on the light and seeing them scurry away.
Made my way down to the sports store where Ildiko works to say goodbye. she has been great and I’m really going to miss her; she has been guide, translator, animal sympathiser :p
the train isn’t exactly the Ritz, it’s grubby, a couple of the seats are busted, and there’s a faint aroma of urine on the air… but hey, it’s cheap, I’m on the right train, and the ticket collector DIDN’T frown at my ticket and tell me I was in the wrong place, so I’m happy.
There is an interesting mix of old and new in Serbia; I just saw a horse drawn wagon full of hay amongst all the cars stopped at the railway crossing, and yesterday Ildiko and I saw a fire engine that MUST have been active in WWII, but later we saw another, fairly modern one.
~Later~
Ahh gotta love the old “stop the train in the middle of nowhere for no discernible reason and turn off the air conditioning” trick.
~Laterer~
Ah now
Burek!
fatty, meaty, pastryish goodness I see the discernible reason; an ambulance has shown up and someone from one of the later carriages is presumably about to be carted off.
~Slightly later~
Hmm, the ambulance left about 10 minutes ago and there are police on the train… the plot thickens!
~Slightly laterer~
Now there’s a plainclothes detective, I feel like I should see Hercule Poirot walking by soon!
~Frustratingly later~
Oh good grief! We’ve been here LITERALLY an hour now, I feel like yelling out “What the hell is the hold up?!” …of course I’d be greeted with blank looks or maybe a flow of Serbian/Hungarian that I couldn’t understand, but at least the yelling might make me feel better.
~Even more frustratingly later~
Okay, we’ve been here for TWO hours now, the police are back (having left at one point) and a camera crew has shown up… glad everybody has their priorities straight; don’t bother getting the train (which is obviously blocking the tracks for other trains and is turning into a fly filled sauna) moving, let’s focus on getting on the 6 o’clock fucking news!
View from the top
from the balcony of my hostel ~A bit further up the tracks… so to speak~
Okay… now we’ve lumbered ahead to the next station and stopped again; the chap with the camera is here again so everyone who hasn’t already can get their 15 minutes, oh joy! Are we ever getting to Belgrade?! My original schedule was to arrive around 2pm, plenty of time for a look around… now my schedule seems to be “sit in a smelly, fly-infested train all day.” …oh we’re moving again, hopefully all the way this time.
~Unfortunately, later~
Now what?! The ticket collector came in and said something, I apologised and said that I couldn’t understand, he rolled his eyes and said “no Belgrade.” What the hell does that mean? I mean obviously when you get on a train bound for Belgrade, you expect that it will reach Belgrade, that ticket collectors will say happy things like; “Yes Belgrade” or “Belgrade all the way!”
~Much laterer~
We had to get off the train (I guess that explains “no Belgrade”) and wait half an hour for another, more crowded train to arrive and take us on to our destination, while the train we had arrived in sat idle (?!)
The new train took us the last 2 stops… I mean honestly, why did we have to go through all that malarkey?
Anyhoo; several hours late, we got to Belgrade. My hostel is right opposite the station (convenient) the girl at reception is lovely, she made me a Turkish coffee to make up for the fact that the (free) computer at the hostel is a bit shit… which she obviously didn’t have to do.
I made the most of my few hours of daylight; had some burek (I hadn’t eaten since the morning) and wandered around for a couple of hours. The part of the city I saw was pretty flash, if I’d had a few more hours I’d have explored further afield.
Hmm, so summing up Serbia; beautiful place, lovely people, good food, cheap (within a few years there will probably be many more drunken tourists ruining the place with pub crawls). The Serbian trains on the other hand… well I think I’ve ranted about that enough.
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