After confronting my loss, and rethinking the possibility of walking back through the streets of Salzburg to get my hat back, I gave up and I got on a train to Budapest.
After several hours reading Deception Point (it was getting quite Hollywood now) I soon arrive in Budapest-Keleti Railway Terminal. With an hour between trains I have plenty of time to sort myself out and buy a ticket… or not. The international ticket sales area was rammed and although a kind man offers me train times, this talk took a lot longer than expected. Finally I manage to buy my ticket to Belgrade, unable to buy one from Belgrade to Sofia, and rush to the departure board only to see my train to Belgrade is delayed. This wouldn’t be a problem but I only have 1 hour and 1 minute to get off, find Serbian money, buy my reservation (and possibly food supplies) and find my train.
I grow weary as the delay increases. 10 minutes grows into 20 and I’m praying to the train gods that’s the limit. I know that delays can build and build and one leads to another. The clock ticks and I start thinking of alternative plans. Maybe I can spend a night in Budapest or Belgrade. Belgrade may be interesting, although arriving around midnight it may not be so easy to find somewhere. Eventually, the train gods hear my cry and it arrive and departs with 30 minutes to spare.
I think I end up in a carriage of six other girls because survival instincts bring us together. Four others were ‘travellers ‘ like myself and the other two seemed more accustomed to the trains and the language.
The scenery rolled out before us as, it was flat for miles. It started off as natural landscape with no real order and soon becomes agricultural as the train slowed to a snails pace. It felt like we could see deer hopping across the landscape at a faster pace.
Continual stops for passport control and the glacial pace of the train was dissipated by discussions with my fellow passengers. A Czech journalist and a German student of medicine. We discussed the stereotypes of Serbia: “Won’t they sell you” said the mother of Petra, the Czech journalist when she discovered that she was meeting friends in Belgrade. We talked about travelling, friends, ancient Greeks and Berlin hipsters as well as the general concept of trying to be cool. We finished with some key, and handy, phrases from Petra’s Serbian guidebook “Can I kiss you” – “No thanks, not tonight”, “Please don’t touch me” and extra vocabulary such as a love bite. Key phrases were learnt just in time to arrive in Belgrade and fortunately, or unfortunately, just in time for me to catch my next train…
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