Carpe feckin diem

I'm not sure when we'll get the opportunity to do this in the next few days, so I'll rush this blog to have it updated. We board a train to Sofia, Bulgaria tomorrow at 8:40. It arrives at 18:20. So we'll get one day in Bulgaria after all that travel. Then on Wednesday we head to Bucharest, Romania from Sofia on a train that takes 9.5 hours. And that's if the trains are on time. Which I hear they never are.

Right, be present be thankful.

Hard to be at the moment cause we're a bit burnt out. We booked an extensive trip this month and we're feeling it. 1 day of travel, 1 day of sightseeing and so on and so on. We booked our flight to New Zealand and all of our hostels for the month, so we have to stick with the schedule. We'll get through it, gladly. But it's draining.

The train from Bled, Slovenia to Zagreb, Croatia was easy enough. We had an hour to anticipate Croatia. But it was in that hour that we realized there are no trains to Dubrovnik. We therefore sacrificed Dubrovnik to use it as an excuse to come back to this area of the world another time, and in better weather. It's been cold and rainy so far. So in this pickle, we consulted the map in our Lonely Planet guide and said, well, we're booked into Sofia, Bulgaria on Monday 6th, we have two days to kill in a place that must be between Zagreb and Sofia?

Where is there such a place?

Serbia.

Belgrade, Serbia is in between Zagreb, Croatia and Sofia, Bulgaria.

I said to Dermot I'm not going to Serbia. Did they or didn't they execute Slobodan Milosevic? And what about his cronies? I'm not going to Serbia.

But we're not going to Dubrovnik. We only booked two days in there and it's an 11 hour bus ride to Dubrovnik from Zagreb, who knows how much it's going to be to another country. Gotta stick to the schedule.

Okay, we'll go to Serbia, but I'm not telling my mom.

Alright, so we arrived in Zagreb to our hostel and instantly booked our hostel for Serbia off of hostelworld.com, making sure it got high ratings for security and so forth.

My mom text me 'watch out for the bad guys' in Zagreb. I thought to myself, wait til she calls and finds out where we're going next. AH!

Okay, okay, I'm prejudiced. It's out of ignorance and fear.

Belgrade's been fine.

Zagreb was wonderful.

Everyone is friendly. Everyone speaks English. Yes, there are a few assholes wearing anti-USA t-shirts, but there are assholes everywhere. And who knows what they've seen in their lives, let alone the stories their parents may have. I'm not gonna judge. I'm just gonna sit here in my humility. I'm humbled.

And tired.

In Zagreb, 2 double rums and coke each was a fiver. We took advantage. And we met a lovely Croatian couple who bought us some of their national shots - one tasted like honey, one tasted like a pine cone. They taught us how to say cheers in Croation, some saying that sounded like giggly puff. They had been talking to some turd sammich at their table that was trying to convince me that Tony Iommi the guitarist from Black Sabbath was the most overrated guitarist of all time and all he played was a bunch of power chords. Needless to say the conversation with this turd didn't last very long, so Dermot and myself alongside the Croatian couple left him and headed to a Croation chipper. I think I ate a burger, I wasn't going to ask. They showed us around the city at night, inadvertently, because Dermot and I were so drunk we didn't remember where our hostel was. But it was nice, for us anyway. We thanked them profusely once we did find our hostel and we went to bed.

The next day we explored the surprisingly small Zagreb. We took some pictures, played some Scrabble in the park, then hit the pub again for some more double rums. The bartender remembered us from the night before.

We left for Belgrade on Saturday morning. The train was packed. And to our disdain you could smoke. There was one man who took the liberty, every 3 minutes. I asked Dermot how was he still alive? Eventually the train thinned out and Dermot and I could close the door to our cabin. Dermot said the Serbian countryside could've been Ireland 50 years ago, or Ireland if Hitler had had his way. Endless, endless corn fields.

My IPOD had died and I was finishing my book while Dermot was in his own little world listening to his IPOD, I heard Bob Marley faintly. Suddenly our cabin door gets pushed open and in walks this 6'5'' Serbian guard who asks for our passports, border patrol. I give them to him. Dermot takes off one of his ear phones to hear something if there was something to be heard. He was in fact listening to Bob Marley.

Don't worry pssssssssssh...(something in Serbian) Dermot. O'Connor....(something in Serbian)...psssssssssh. About a thing. Cause every little thing, gonna be alright...

The Serbian border patrol man was ringing through his walkie talkie. This Irishman listening to Bob Marley on his IPOD looks nothing like his passport. It must be a fake. Let me ring intelligence to see if he's a wanted man. He has a beard now, and long hair, it must be a disguise. Nothing like his passport.

Nothing comes over the walkie talkie.

We're good to go. Hvala, and welcome to Serbia.

Anyway, I'm gonna go get some sleep. Early train tomorrow, not really lookin forward to it, gonna need some energy.

I'm thankful for every tired minute of this trip.

Sofia, Bulgaria is tomorrow (night). Then Bucharest, Romania on Wednesday morning.

New pics are up. There are bombed out buildings near the train station here in Belgrade. I'm gonna take some pictures of them tomorrow and post them in the Belgrade album.

Goodnight.