Belgrade – The Destination

I’ve decided the best way to share my adventures are posts detailing a few of the adventures, instead of trying to recount the entire trip. Plus I’ve forgotten a lot of it so this way I can just recount the bits I remember. Today I’ll be sharing the story of how I ended up at a train station in a city I couldn’t pronounce and can’t remember the name of at 3am in Serbia with Americans, Spaniards, and luckily a few Germans who could read Cyrillic letters trying to find a train to Belgrade.

The story starts in Sofia, Bulgaria at about 8pm. I had booked a ticket to Belgrade on an overnight train including a couchette (seats converted to beds). The train was supposed to arrive at 5:30 the next morning and I planned on making my way straight to my hostel in order to catch a little shut-eye before exploring the city. I arrived at the train station and met an elderly Japanese-American man whose name eludes me. We got to talking and I learned he was on a bit of a round the world trip, at least insofar as he was crossing Asia and Europe. We found our train with relative ease and got on board to drop our bags off in our compartments.

According to one of the employees, there wouldn’t be very many people on the train and he was right. In the end it was us, another American, four ERASMUS students, and a family. The family mostly kept to themselves but the rest of us chatted before the train rolled out.  Shortly thereafter, the older man went to settle in his compartment while I spent some time getting to know two of the Erasmus students and the younger American. The two students were both Germans studying medicine in Sofia and the American was a 20-something programmer working for Google in California. The other two students were both Spanish but kept to themselves, presumably because one was feeling ill.

For the first few hours of the train ride we sat around and passed a bit of whiskey. Not much, but enough to make it feel a little bit rogue. The four of us we’re from fairly different backgrounds despite sharing similar views on a lot of things and the time passed quickly. At around 1:30 I decided to make for bed, hoping to get some sleep before we got into Belgrade. I had a compartment all to myself so things were looking pretty good, but as you might guess I didn’t sleep for four hours and wake up in Belgrade.

Instead I was woken minutes after dozing off by a train worker coming into my compartment, saying something I didn’t process, and leaving. I grudgingly stuck my head outside to learn something had happened to our train and we needed to get off and board a different train. I packed up all my stuff and got off the train, expecting a wait for a different train. To my relief (at the time) another train was waiting right there for us to board. This one was modern but a regional train – no couchettes for us.  All in all it wasn’t too bad, we were heading to Belgrade and we’d only been slightly delayed. The train was still somewhat comfortable, albeit bright and loud, so we settled down and all tried to get some sleep (except for the older man – he was wide awake after getting a few hours sleep).

Happy ending right? We get to Belgrade maybe an hour behind schedule and go about our lives right? Not quite. Apparently this train wasn’t going to Belgrade – it was just going to some city in the middle of nowhere Serbia. As romantic as a midnight train going nowhere might sound, I was pretty annoyed that we we’re being kicked off another train. If this were a Western European train journey this part might be straightforward but this far East customer service isn’t a priority. After being dropped off at this random train station we were left to find our own way to Belgrade. It was at this point that I made a joke about us exploring this random city the next day because we were stuck there.

Luckily for me, I’d made friends with the guys who could vaguely read the signage around us meaning all hope was not lost. They found a sign suggesting a train to Belgrade would be leaving at around 9am – not good, but it was something. At least we wouldn’t be stuck in Nowhere, Serbia for a full day. After waiting at this station for a good half hour we found an attendant and asked them if they could help us – we weren’t confident enough with the vague language skills to trust them. And for the first time that night, we got good news! A train would be leaving for Belgrade in about 30 minutes! We were elated – at this point it looked like we might get there only 2-3 hours behind schedule! Huzzah!

Naturally we were wrong, but for a solid hour we thought things were good. Sadly it turns out that we’d been put on another regional train and this train was the opposite of express. Whereas our original train was supposed to take maybe 2.5 hours to get from Nowhere to Belgrade, this train took closer to 6. Before getting on this train, we tried to get couchettes (we’d paid for them and this train had multiple sleep cars – it seemed fair to us) to no avail. The language barrier was insurmountable and we were turned away. So there we were, on a six hour train leaving Nowhere and headed for Belgrade in a dirty, cramped, bright, and loud compartment. Not my finest hour.

In the end the train made it (shockingly) and I got to Belgrade. Remember that 5:30 arrival time? Well I made it to my hostel at around 11:00 – emotionally destroyed, tired, hungry, and just looking for sleep. But I made it.

There are probably a few morals to this story, but I think the most important one is that you’ll make it. Travelling is supposed to be an adventure and every adventure has its missteps. If Frodo had made it to Mount Doom without a problem, the Lord of the Rings would have been pretty boring books. Enjoy the journey, make memories, and one day you’ll look back at it all and smile.