The journey began uneventfully. The first part, from Prague to Budapest, took 7.5 hours; the train left and arrived on time, probably because it was a German train in fact, which started its journey in Hamburg, passed through Berlin, picked us up in Prague and made its way on schedule through Bratislava in Slovakia to the Hungarian capital.
In Budapest we changed for the night train to Belgrade. We had reserved sleeping compartments and since it was just before midnight, we went to sleep pretty much right away. At 3 AM we were awakened by knocks on the door; the man behind it was saying “Passporrt Kontrrol”. That was the Hungarian border police, asking to put exit stamps in our passport. We were leaving the Shengen zone for a while. Half an hour later we were woken up again by the same phrase; this time it was the Serbian border police. Two stamps later we were back asleep.
In the morning I found out that our train had been delayed for an hour and a half during the night, and I found that out from a fellow traveler who turned out to be Lebanese. He was a talkative fellow, perhaps even a bit too talkative, on his way to Turkey just like us. Our connection in Belgrade was just one hour, which means that we would have missed our next train to Istanbul, except that that train went through Sofia, Bulgaria, and our train had two cars destined to Sofia, so the train to Istanbul was going to have to wait for us. Indeed, as we pulled at the station in Belgrade, the train was split in two, another part with a locomotive was connected to the Sofia-bound cars, and this became our next train. We re-boarded and found a seating compartment that was relatively empty — one guy occupying one seat out of the six.
The guy’s name was Jug (pronounced “Yug”, meaning “south”), and he was a Serbian fellow, on his way to Vietnam. Jug was an endless source of information about Serbia. One piece of trivia, which indeed looked completely true from our experience, was that an EU check found the average speed of Serbian trains to be 45 kph. The train moved agonizingly slow, stopping once in a while without any apparent reason.
Outside the window were the views of the Serbian cities and countryside. The look of the cities, alas, was appalling. Massive gray concrete Soviet-style blocks dominated the skyline; the ride felt like a journey back in time. Serbia evidently had not yet recovered from the tumultuous years of Yugoslavia and its disintegration. The countryside looked pastoral but obviously very poor. This is the backyard of Europe; this is where you find Europe’s less pleasant sights. This is something that one needs to see after the manicured gardens of Germany and the grand architecture of Prague, in order to gain some sense of perspective.
The train remained relatively empty until the last station before the Bulgarian border. On that station many people boarded and a large commotion began. They pulled out electric screwdrivers and started dismantling the panels that cover the walls and the ceiling of the car. Jug was on hand to explain the events: these were smugglers, bringing cigarettes from Serbia to Bulgaria, where the taxes on tobacco are much higher and thus cigarettes are much more expensive. They hid their wares behind the panels and screwed them back on. Now everyone was waiting for the customs officials to board the train at the border.
The customs officials, of course, were not dealing with the smugglers for the first time. And by dealing, I mean dealing. They unscrewed some of the panels and searched under the seats and behind the headrests (that is one place where you definitely couldn’t stow anything even if you really wanted). However, most of the merchandise remained in place. Jug was helpful again: as it happens, the officials are bribed to find only about 20% of the stock. They put on a show of searching thoroughly, take what they have to take and leave. After that the circus commences again: the panels are unscrewed, the cigarettes are taken out, accounts are settled quite loudly, and silence descends on the train once again.
Jug was talking to a lady in our compartment who explained him the financial side of the business: she was a small-time smuggler, carrying only six cartons, four more than she is allowed. Each pack costs about one euro in Serbia, and about three in Bulgaria; from six cartons she’d make 120 euro. Do that just a few times every month, and you reach the average Bulgarian salary. In a passage for which I didn’t even need Jug’s translation, she lamented that a retired university faculty member receives 300 leva a month as his pension (about 150 euro). And who could live on 300 leva a month?..
Those events revealed what is probably the real purpose of this train, and that in turn explained a fact that created for us a great difficulty: the train, which takes 24 hours to reach Istanbul, didn’t have a restaurant car. This was something I did not expect, based on my previous experiences in China and Russia. The stops between stations were sometimes very long, but at stations the train never remained for more than a couple of minutes — not enough to buy anything to eat or drink at the platform. Thus, since we hadn’t eaten since the previous evening, we were facing a day and a half without food. Jug helped us with some snacks but didn’t eat his sandwich for the whole day, perhaps out of consideration for our hunger, which made us feel uncomfortable. As we approached Sofia in the evening, we were very starved and somewhat dehydrated. The prospect of spending another night on the train without supplies looked very dim indeed. As we learned that we would have to switch trains in Sofia anyway, we made a quick decision: we’d stay there for a day to recuperate, and catch the next train to Istanbul the following evening.
Jug showed us which way we should walk from the train station to reach the city center. We had been to Sofia two and a half years earlier, but only for a few days, and didn’t remember much of it. It was past 9 PM, and the streets looked deserted. We didn’t have a map, and didn’t really know where we were going; we needed to find a hostel, but the atmosphere looked way to seedy to pull out the laptop to look for information. However, as we walked towards the center of the city, things were starting to look more and more familiar. I did remember that we stayed in a very nice hostel on our previous visit, and wondered whether I could find it just by memory. As we walked, we passed by Sofia’s Great Synagogue. From there I remembered the way to the market. From the market I found the hostel. I don’t even know how I remembered all that. Unfortunately, at the place where the hostel used to be, we were confronted with a locked door. Our hostel was not operating anymore.
We walked into an Asian restaurant, one of the few establishments around that were still open, and asked whether they knew any hostel in the vicinity. They were very helpful, made a couple of phone calls and directed us towards a place a few blocks away. Indeed, there we found a hostel, a somewhat unusual one: ran by an elderly couple, this was essentially their home, in which they were renting out rooms. The home was furnished with the best of what the early 80’s had to offer, but it was functional and had all we needed. They pointed from the window at the closest restaurant, 15 meters away, and off we went.
The recuperation idea was a definite success. We ate, slept, ate, and visited the market to stock some supplies for our next train ride. On the edges of the market there were people standing, without any visible merchandise on offer, but still obviously selling something to the passers-by, uncharacteristically silently. As we came closer, we heard them asking in a low voice: cigarettes? cigarettes?
Our train to Istanbul left only about an hour late, a pleasant surprise. A very friendly Czech couple was on that train, also going to Istanbul. We had with us a bottle of wine which Kamila had sent to our room after our marriage (probably the first time in history that a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates are sent to a hostel dorm room), and we split it between the four of us. The train dropped us at the Turkish border, which we crossed by bus because of railway repairs on the bridge connecting the two countries. A Turkish train was waiting on the other side with lush sleeping compartments, which came very handy at 4 AM as we boarded. In the late morning, the train rolled by Aya Sofya, the Blue Mosque, the Topkapi palace, and into the Sirkeci main train station of Istanbul.
April 5, 2011