Speeding Up the Pace - Pitstop 3 (1b)

I’ve finished writing this email and I’m afraid I got carried away and waffled a lot!! I’ve decided to put a summary at the top - which will probably be more coherent than the stuff below anyhow!

8 & 9/12 - Sofia, Bulgaria. Bizzare first Eastern Europe Train journey. Cold! Language difficulties. Police ID checking. Kids trying to nick my stuff.

10/12 - Bucharest, Romania. Freezing fog. Cold! Ate in a 5* hotel with all the trimmings for 9GBP! (Had run out of cash, didn’t want to get more out, and it was the only place i found that took Mr MasterCard)

11/12 - Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Meet Kuli. The beginning of the entire Balkan experience, a truly memorable couple of days and valuable experience.

12/12 - Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herz. Accidental meeting with journalist Dragan. In depth history and stories from the people themselves. True mix of cultures, and craziness of the war.

13/12 - Sarajevo & journey via Split to Zagreb. Sarajevo day 2.

14/12 - Zagreb, Croatia. The final part of the Balkans Experience. The silly journey via Ljubjana to Budapest (excessive dollars, and a 680 pace long platform)

15/12 - Budapest, Hungary. Got cleaned up in the Baths! Much needed after silly journey into Budapest. Met Californian Skyler.

16/12 - Budapest & Vienna, Austria. Walked the city in -2°C. Late night arrival in Vienna.

17 & 18th Vienna, Austria Been chilling and taking it easy. Doing photo album and planning the Christmas & New Years weeks in Poland.

PS. The usual disclaimer - all spelling errors and type-os are intentional. If I’ve changed the spellings of cities during the email, that’s fine as well!! I CBA to go back and alter it!

Until this point I’d been Inter Railing Western Europe seeing places, friends and people that were familiar.

I was aiming for trying to cover not a city and day, but now a country a day!

****** Europe Part 1b (Central & Eastern Europe) *******

8th December, Athens/Sofia Now the real adventure begins! At 5pm I left Athens, (less tired & smelly than when I first arrived) fully stocked on Gyros and Orestis’ Mum’s cooking (where does that apostrophe go in that sentence?!) and started the 14hr journey to Sofia (Bulgaria) via Thessaloniki (North Greece).

When I switched to the Bulgarian Train in Thessaloniki (11pm), the situation that I found myself in did make me laugh - it was too much like a stereotype! There was this guy hammering the crap out of the toilet door with a crowbar because it was jammed. When he finally did bust through and open the door, the ceiling panels had fallen in, the bog bowl was all rusty and none of the lights were working...but at least people could get to the loo! Also during the journey the lights kept going off, so most of the train journey was in total darkness with very little heating!

But in a way I wasn’t expecting this section to be ’comfortable’ where things would work normally! But the cold train did piss me off! Especially since I’d just come from Athens where it was 16° at 11pm, to Sofia where it was barely going to reach 2° during the day!! My face might have actually experience Onion Skin Weathering with the quickness of the climate change!

Finally arrived in Sofia just before 8am, and were massively hounded my taxi/accommodation/information touts who just hang around the station. The most difficult thing I found here was that Bulgarian was almost entirely written in the Cyrillic Alphabet using characters that I’ve never seen before. So trying to orientate and get around the place was quite interesting to say the least!

This place was cold! I had to sit in the Tourist office for a while reading my Lonely Gimp guide to warm up! Managed to have this city in a day again. The two things that stick in my mind the most are:

1) The number of times i got spot-check by the Police. There was a point where nearly every 10/15mins I was asked by the Police if i had any ID with me - this was a nuisance to begin with, but then it really started to piss me off!

2) The number of street kids who were around begging. There was a group of kids outside this church who’d asked me for money and stuff, but I wasn’t prepared to give them any. Later that evening as i walked back to the station, (maybe the same kids?) this girl cut infront of me when i crossed the road and basically tripped me up and held onto my legs. Luckily my wallet & things were in zip-pockets, otherwise it would have all fallen out and I’d probably have lost it all!

I had an interesting journey to Romania with a Bulgarian family and an old woman. We tried to have a conversation (using English, German, Russian and doodles on bits of paper!), but the old woman seemed to think that I would understand Bulgarian if she kept repeating what she was saying louder and louder to me! Made me laugh at the irony of the situation!! (normally people repeat English louder & louder, to make themselves understood!)

Halfway through the night the heating broke in the carriage and we were told to move to another one. Whilst walking down the train a ceiling panel had fallen in and smashed a load of glass in the train!! Then I had to share a compartment with this Russian (whose own compartment stank of the drunken inside who’d passed out and pee-ed himself !) whose arms kept trying to get things out of my pockets!! Bastard! In the end I lost me temper and told him to sort his arms out, then he left!

10th December. Bucharest, Romania. Bucharest at 7.30am was cold as well!! Basically manged to walk the city, seeing all the stuff, but getting lost in the thick mist that was covering the entire city. ((...getting bored of typing now...!)). That night it was a train to Belgrade. On this train I met this Japanese guy, Kuli, who been traveling for 6months.

I spent the day with Kuli and had a good walk around the city. Spent ages trying to find a phone card vendor so i could call that guy i met in Barcelona who lived here in Belgrade-, but couldn’t find one. Knowing some of the Balkan history, it was quite an eye opener to see how this region was now getting on so many years on. It was a last minute decision, but that night i got a bus to Sarajevo.

12th December, Sarajevo, BH- At 06:30am I arrived in Sarajevo. However i didn’t know that I was at a bus terminal about 6km form the center (and from where I thought I was!). I bumped into this guy who offered to buy the bus fare to get me into the center. (At this point i still thought i was near the city anyhow!). It turned out that he (Dragan) was a Bosnian journalist who also rented out a guest room in his house. I got chatting to him about various things, the conflict, people, the before & after, the history of the city - I’d realising this was a golden opportunity to actually hear someone’s story from the ’inside’ and so decided to stay the night in Sarajevo - a decision I’ll now never regret!

Basically I had a full-on guided tour with all the history, stories, reports and long chats with him about the conflict. I really can’t begin to put into words how powerful & emotive this day was. Walking around Sarajevo, knowing the history, seeing some of the scars of the war, seeing the people and how they now think and get along was a very memorable experience - that I really can’t express in words (nor would I even try to - somethings you’ve got to experience for yourself!) Traveling on to Split & Zagreb the following day completed my Balkan visit. It’s impossible to describe it, but i was very lucky to have the chance to stay with Dragan and talk with him about so many things.

13th December, Zagreb, Croatia- The next day was Zagreb. A very (almost western) modern place. What sticks in my mind the most was the journey out of Zagreb. I had to travel via Ljubjana- to make an overnight journey to Budapest. In my train there was this guy (from Bosnia) who was trying to get over to Norway to be with his Fiance. However, he’d been refused the Visa and was now trying to make his own way over there without being caught, aka illegally. He need to get off the train before we crossed the Slovenian border. Together we were trying to figure out where he could do this, and more importantly where we were at the moment. In the end when he did get off, but got brought back to the train by the guards. And when the Border Guards came on the train, he got taken away! - I wonder what happened to him? Fairly shocking, and it makes you realise how lucky we are to be able to travel freely on a GB/EU passport.

My journey got funnier as I arrived Ljubljana at 23:00. I already had a ticket to here and was told at the station in Zagreb that I could get my connecting ticket to Budapest from Ljubljana upon arrival. A blatant lie! Everything was closed and locked up and there was nothing on or around the station! I had no idea how much the ticket was going to cost, and no means asking someone. The few train staff on the platform where absolutely no help whatsoever! The Mistry Rage started to bubble.......then i found a poster that advertised the Ljubljana to Budapest train, yes! - finally some information. It leaves at 2am....ok, another 2 hour wait.....and costs...21,000 SIT (about £60GBP!) I was pissed-off now and wasn’t even certain if you could buy the ticket on the train! Sod it! Got the cash out and waited around on the longest platform in the world, Platform 6. I had to keep warm somehow, so decided to see how many times i could walk the platform. In total, Platform 6 at Ljubljana station is 680 paces long (about 650 meters), it takes 7 mins to walk one side of it, i walked it 6 times!! (incase you were wondering!)

Me was not a happy bunny! The train finally did arrive and I found a couple that I would shared a compartment with. The conductor came along, I asked for a ticket to Budapest, he said he couldn’t sell me it! He could only sell a ticket up to the Austrian border (this train went via Granz), which only cost 2000SIT!! Okay but now I’ve got a whole load of currency that I now don’t need! I ended up doing a bit of Blackmarket changing with this couple and converted it into Euros! IWIO!....(i ended up having to by lots of little tickets along the way to piece the journey together to Budapest)..

15th December, Budapest, Hungary-When I finally did arrive in Budapest i was really looking forward to a long hot soak in those Turkish baths. I found a nice hostel near the center and also met this Californian guy and went off for a massive 6 hour chill out in these amazing Turkish Baths. The baths are naturally at 38 degrees, with a hot-hot Steam Room (after that you jump into the Cold Water Plung Pool for that proper ’wake up feeling!’), and 3 Dry Saunas which increase in temperature to about 70 degrees! All of this for just £5GBP! It would be rude NOT to have a massage here - so my little body got broken and put back together again by this huge gorilla-like Hungarian guy! It did actually feel really good and sorted out my back!!

Later we found an All-You-Can-Eat Mongolian BBQ to feast on later that night, but we were both so tired at the end of the meal, we couldn’t manage a night on the town (it was also about -2 degrees and we were now a long long way from the bars area). Had Budapest again on the morning of the 16th , then got a late train here to Vienna-.

17th December, Vienna, Austria- Here I’ve mostly been catching up on sleep, rest, healthy food and writing boring long emails! I don’t know if anyone will bother reading down to here, maybe I’ll put a summary at the top....

Planned out the next leg of this journey. Going to Poland on Sunday night. I’ll stay in Wroclaw-) on the 28/29th for New Years. Maybe a night in Warsaw- with someone else on the 3rd Jan. Then I’ve got to somehow plan a route from there to Tallinn (Estonia) by the 12th Jan for my return flight!

Midge