Serbia: Belgrade

From Bucharest we headed by a 13 hour night train to Belgrade. Finding our seat on the train was an adventure in itself. We couldn’t sort out the car numbers, but when we found our seat numbers, we figured we were in the right place. When the conductor came by she started pointing us down the corridor towards the next car. So we continued our journey with the giant bags occasionally hitting a few of the seated passengers over the head and stopped two cars down at seats that again contained our numbers. This didn’t last long since when the conductor came by again we were informed that we had to keep on going. Moving from a semi new car to a rickety old one we thought we had the right spot only to be informed that no, we should continue on further. On second thought the conductor took pity on us and indicated that since this part of the train is nearly empty we should stay where we are and make ourselves comfortable.

We did exactly that. Our compartment had two cushioned benches running along either side. Paulina stretched out on one and Julita and I on the other. After about ½ an hour Julita decided that the floor would be more comfortable and took out her rain poncho, stretching it out on the floor, pulled out her sleeping bag and proceeded to fall asleep on the floor of our compartment.

This comfort lasted until about 2am when they decided to turn on the heating. The vents must have been directly under the benches as both Paulina and I were getting roasted alive and all the hot air was blowing directly onto Julita. There truly was no helping it. We opened the window in our compartment as much as possible; opened the compartment door to have some breeze; and opened every window in the corridor. Yet we continued to roast. Finally at around 4am someone must have realized that a trainload of roasted passengers is not the best way to cross a border and the heat was turned off.

We arrived in Belgrade semi-refreshed and were greeted by Ray, our next couchsurfing host.
Belgrade proved to be a much nicer capital city than Bucharest. It was much smaller, had a pleasant old town, quaint pedestrian streets, nice citadel, beautiful government buildings, an amazing Orthodox cathedral as well as some fantastic food.

I think the highlight of our visit was our dinner at the Little Bay restaurant. This restaurant is designed as a small opera house, with our table being located in one of the balcony booths. Normally, every day of the week there is live opera performances. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to us, on Sundays this only takes place during lunch. As such we had to make do with fantastic three course meal and opera music from the sound system. It has been a long time since I had a meal like that: artichoke and mushroom salad, shrimp and avocado salad, stuffed sweet peppers, duck with vegetables, cheesecake and some fantastic Serbian wine. You can’t go wrong when the bill comes out to a mere $25CAD per person.