I woke up this morning and I honestly did not know where I was. Seriously. For a few moments I actually had a bit of a panic, it was quite unnerving. Especially as I couldn't even remember what country I was in, let alone where I had last been.It's no wonder, we're in our 8th or 9th country in3 weeks. We've been averaging about 3 days in each country, and I'll be honest with you, I'm knackered.
When I last blogged I was about to get on the overnight train to Belgrade. I don't remember too much about the journey now because since then I've been on an overnight train to Sophia as well, and all these train rides are starting to merge together. I think the journey was fairly uneventful, except that no one here in Eastern Europe seems to understand what 'no smoking' means. There were people lighting up everywhere in our non smoking carriage. I would be interested to know whether Eastern Europe has the world's highest number of lung cancer deaths or something, because really, its a joke. So many people everywhere disregarding 'no smoking' signs, and just smoking anyway. You try getting a 'no smoking' table in a restaurant. Mission Impossible, more like.
We arrived early morning to Belgrade and checked into the "Full Moon" hostel which I found on hostelworld.com. Turns out this is just some woman's flat, she's converted the 2 bedrooms into dormitories and she herself sleeps on any spare bed or if there isn't one, the couch. What an existence. And there's only one bathroom - no separate toilet, so with the possibility of 10 guests, plus herself and her boyfriend, it's pretty mental in the morning.
You could tell she's only just started out, she was offering free internet and free laundry (thank you very much, we'll take advantage of that) and all she wanted in return was for us to give her a good rating on hostelworld. Interesting woman though, had quite a lengthy discussion with her about the piano, seems she is / was? a pianist of sorts, she was going on about how much she likes playing Bach (hey, I like playing Bach too, but prefer Mozart or Chopin). I had to try hard not to laugh though when she went on about practising up for the Rach 3 - I mean seriously, if she was some great pianist able to play that one, what's she doing running a youth hostel out of her own apartment?
You sure do meet interesting people in hostels. We haven't really been in many hostels since we started this trip, mostly because its been just as cheap (if not in some cases actually cheaper) to stay in pensions or even in people's homes (like in Split, Dubrovnik, Kotor... where people actually approach you at the station with the offer of cheap accomodation). This way we haven't had to fight anyone for access to the powerpoint to recharge camcorder batteries and the like...
Anyway, in most hostels you'll get fairly similar sort of people, kind of like this. You'll get usually an Aussie or Kiwi just off the boat, who has never really spent a night away from home and is basically out to drink their way across Europe. Then you'll get another Aussie or Kiwi (sometimes even a Pom) who will want to brag about everywhere they've been, how cheap they got this or that accomodation for, and basically thinks that they are the world's greatest traveller. Then you'll get someone else, usually a couple of Poms, who are there on some sort of stag do, or to attend some music festival or something. And finally you'll get some 'normal' sorts, the ones who are there to see as much as they can, as cheaply as they can, and let the city / country / people touch their hearts a little.
Sound about right? So in our hostel we had (1) the Aussie who was fresh off the boat, looking for someone to go out to the local bar with. She was also the one who thought she was the world's greatest traveller "oh yeah, I went to Croatia, but it was seriously overrated" - that sort of thing. (2) A couple of Kiwis who spent the whole evening comparing everywhere they've been to NZ (with NZ ultimately coming out on top, in their opinion). (3) A couple of Poms who were enjoying the nightlife in Belgrade before going to some rock / grunge / whatever festival in Budapest. (4) An American who was tracing his roots by travelling through Eastern Europe, and who basically down played his American-ness.
Then we had the not so obvious ones. Like Maria, a lovely girl we met who is studying in Manchester. She's there for a month studying for her PhD on the apocryphal letter of Job. Until now I didn't even know there was an apocryphal letter of Job. And then one of the Poms turned out to be some sort of environmental theologist, so we ended up having quite a good discussion about Christianity, the environment - culminating in a discussion about Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" - if you haven't seen this DVD, do so, please. For the sake of the world.
Anyway, I digress. So that was our hostel.
Back to Belgrade. I think that in the breakdown of Yugoslavia, the Serbs got the best deal, because Belgrade is the one capital city that doesn't look like a tip. Well, not so much, anyway.
So as I said, we checked into our hostel after our long overnight train trip. Had to fortify ourselves with breakfast at the Orient Express Hotel to get over the shock of the journey. Had a lovely traditional breakfast (lots of sausage) - and then hoped like mad it wouldn't affect the digestive system like the burek did - before heading off to see the town. There's a lovely park, the Kalemegdan park - while we were there we saw an interesting outdoor art gallery of photos taken as a bird's eye view of various parts of the world, including carpets in India, the Great Barrier Reef, icebergs in the Antarctic, the results of Hurricane Katrina - it was really quite diverse but terribly interesting. It was interesting also to see the old men in the park, crowded around a table playing chess - in the rain.
We also saw the St Sava church, the 3rd largest orthodox church in Europe, but a bit like La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona, in that it still isn't finished, so it looks like a construction site. It was started in the late 19th century, but Hitler, WWII, communism and lack of funds has seriously hampered its completion. Went also the St Marko's or something, and was quite happily looking at all the icons and stuff inside when suddenly the most diabolical sounding trumpet blasted out (this guy seriously had no idea about tone quality) and then there was loud banging of drums and more blasted brass. Turns out there was a gypsy wedding taking place outside the cathedral (yeah, right, normally you'd have the wedding INSIDE the church, wouldn't you?) - lots of dancing, loud, traditional music - actually it was quite interesting.
Finally we wrapped up our Sunday in Belgrade with a ride on the Number 2 tram, which does a circular journey of the city, so that was quite interesting, before we braced ourselves for our night in the hostel. All in all, a pretty good day.
The next day we allowed ourselves the luxury of a little sleep-in (actually in part it was a forced sleep-in as the bathroom was in constant use) before heading off on a day trip to Novi Sad. There wasn't any real point in staying in Belgrade today as, being a Monday, all the museums are closed. This is pretty standard in most of Europe. The trip should've taken 1 1/2 hours but Eastern Europe trains are not renowned for running to time, so, it was more like 2 hours. At least it wasn't so hot today because it had been raining the past few days.
I was quite surprised to learn that outside of Belgrade, Novi Sad is Serbia's 2nd largest city. It didn't seem all that big to me. We spent a nice afternoon wandering around the town, admiring the architecture and all, before heading to the Petrovaradin fortress just across the river. This was very interesting and afforded some nice views of Novi Sad.
One thing I didn't quite get about Novi Sad, though, was all the cows. Lots of painted cows. Just around the main square, nowhere else. We asked someone about it and it turns out it's a competition, apparently last year it was horses. Wonder what it'll be next year?
Had dinner (of sorts) in Novi Sad - the rain suddenly came down so we sought refuge in a little cafe which served some sandwiches. We asked for a table in the non-smoking area, and the expression on the girl's face was one of pure shock. Of course there is no dedicated non-smoking area. She put us upstairs, away from everyone else, which was fine for a time, until the cafe got full and people started coming upstairs, and you guessed it, smoking. Right while I was eating too, thank you very much.
Made our way back on the train to Belgrade and headed back to the hostel. Got up again at a leisurely pace (steady on now, two days in a row with a sleep in? What a luxury!) and then headed off to see Tito's grave. This was actually quite interesting, as in one building there was kind of like a folk / ethnographic musuem which turned out to be a museum of cultural gifts to Tito (including a Burmese gong, Indonesian gamelan, lots of different country's folk costumes and stuff), and then we literally stumbled onto the memorial. It was in a different building adjacent to the ethnographic one and in there, there was a room set out like Tito's office, a chinese room, and then this huge room full of relay batons. Turns out Tito had a bit of a thing for them. I believe that what used to happen was each year, there was a 'relay of youth' for about 2 months, starting in different Yugoslavian towns, with this baton being passed from runner to runner, until finally it was given to Tito on the 25th May. Boy were there some interesting batons too.
So anyway, after this we headed back to the train station for our overnight train to Bucharest. We had again arranged for a couchette (2nd class sleeping compartment where the beds fold down from the wall, the bottom bunk serves normally as the chair for the compartment until the time the beds are made up - there's normally 3 passengers per compartment) and were hopeful that we would have one to ourselves. Turns out we should've been in with some bloke, but the conductor put us in a different compartment. Thank you very much, I'll take that.
No one else joined us (just as well, as its too difficult to lift the luggage up into the storage compartment so we have to leave it on the floor as a potential trip hazard), but this time I was on the second bunk. The driver must've been an Albanian minicab driver in a previous life, I swear, as this dude had no concept of speed limits - we rattled along there at quite a pace, so the journey was not so smooth). Couple that with the noise of the carriage, particularly the wheels on the track - and the motion too - and I got (no word of a lie) absolutely zero, zilch, zippo sleep.
Would've been a lot cheaper to just have sat up all night in the normal seats... probably would've slept better too...
1 comment:
Good read...
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