It is 1 a.m., and I will not be sleeping tonight.
I’m writing this on the overnight train from Belgrade, Serbia to Bucharest, Romania. There’s no bed, no heat and no electricity. It’s very cold, so I’m wearing everything I carried with me: four shirts, two coats and two pairs of leggings. I am eight hours into my 13-hour trip. Every hour, a conductor or policeman shines a flashlight into the compartment, slides open the door and asks for my passport or ticket.
The last time I wasn’t moving, I was at the gara in Belgrade, Serbia. I bought my train ticket to Bucharest, which cost about 11 euro. The schedules and signs marking the platforms were in Cyrillic, so I wandered the platforms looking for the stenciled sign on the side of the train.
Then I used an eastern toilet, which is a hole in the ground, covered with ceramic. There is one platform for each foot, and you squat and hope you don’t lose your balance. The tan tile floor in the bathroom was damp. I would have had to pay ten dinar (10 cents) to use it, but the man handed me a roll of pink toilet paper and pointed toward the stalls (bathrooms in eastern Europe are mixed-gender). When I returned to pick up my backpack, which I had left in his office, he pointed at my hair and patted my head. I told him “Hvala,” thank you, and left.
Being blonde in a nation of dark-haired people once again has its advantages. It also brought me free food at the Serbian restaurant I went to last night in Skadarlija, the bohemian area of Belgrade. A plate with three green feferoni — a type of pickled, Serbian chili pepper equivalent to a jalapeno in heat — appeared with a basket of thickly-sliced bread on the white tablecloth. “Try it,” the waiter told me, pointing toward the peppers. “Very hot.”
They were quite good — not as hot as I expected, but the spiciness was welcome. I ate two with my ćevapčići, the national dish of Serbia. It’s made from minced, spiced mixed meats that have been shaped into sausage-like forms and grilled. It’s very fatty — nothing like the 93 percent lean ground beef I typically buy for myself – but rich and hearty. It came with boiled potatoes. I was full after eating only four of the 10 pieces of meat, but I wanted to try slivovitz, a plum brandy Serbia’s known for. The waiter brought me a glass of it, poured into what looked like a large shot glass. He also brought a plate of assorted mini-pastries, which I hadn’t ordered. I looked up, confused. “On the house,” he said. The baklava was heavenly — I could only eat half of the small piece. The original recipe must have floated north from Greece — the two countries are separated by only Macedonia. I couldn’t manage any of the rest.
The brandy was interesting — I’ve never had regular brandy, but you could taste the plum. It took me about 25 minutes to sip the small amount. I found out when I got back to the hostel, slightly tipsy after one glass, that it’s 50 percent alcohol by volume, or 100-proof. The men at the table next to me had had three rounds and were none the worse for it.
But I was none the worse upon waking up and spent today, like the past day and a half, exploring the city. It’s hard to get bored walking the streets here, because each one is a surprise.
The city has been bombed so many times that the oldest building is a house built in 1787. Because of the constant rebuilding, a Victorian hotel, modern office, communist-era apartments and a shelled store can all be found on the same block. There is a park-like space on the northern edge of the city that is lovely, called Kalmegdan. It is the top and inside of a fortress overlooking the Danube. I went twice. It’s an oasis from the city, a distraction from dirt and cars. I got lost the first time, since my map was in English and the streets in Cyrillic, but one of a dozen amazingly nice Serbians actually walked me there. The people in this country are nicer than any I have met elsewhere, and I felt safer on Belgrade’s streets than I do on Dublin’s.
The rest of the city is not beautiful — the polluted air, dirty streets, run-down buildings and poverty exclude it from the typical definition. But it is hard to be well-rounded if you only expose yourself to beauty. I have seen more and learned more in Belgrade and Naples than I could in Paris or in Dublin. Though I wouldn’t live in those places, they have opened my eyes to life not photographed in travel guides. After I visited Naples, some family members couldn’t quite grasp that I liked a place that was dirty and poor and polluted. They said, “I’m sorry you didn’t care for it,” when I had said nothing of the kind. I had simply described it to them.
I’ve also realized my favorite places are the places I know nothing about before I book my ticket. I have not booked a trip to Spain yet because after 15 years of PowerPoint projects in Spanish classes and hundreds of vacation photos, I feel like I know the place already (though I will go at some point). People ask me: “Why Serbia?” and “What’s in Poland?,” and I respond, honestly, with, “I don’t know.”
My curiosity makes me go.
For better or worse, my curiosity has also gotten me on this train. There are only three hours now until Romania, another place where I don’t know what I’ll find.
The flashlight is shining into my compartment again.
