Who woulda thought--Belgrade??

Hey folks--this is not a real entry, just letting all of you who rely on this to make sure I'm still alive that yes, I am! I have been in Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia the past few days, and it's been cool and I will write about it, but I just haven't felt like it, sorry! And all these keyboards have the keys mixed up in a very annoying fashion that makes it hard to type...so I promise, more soon. Ciao!

REAL ENTRY!

The story of Belgrade starts with the story of the crappy 24 hours or so it took to get there from Istanbul. My 14 hour train from Istanbul left at night, and even though my stomach was hurting a bit from either some food or some water in Turkey, I had my own train compartment and everything seemed fine. Then, at around 3 am, we stopped and had to get off the train for about 2 hours to get our exit visas from Turkey...then started going again and stopped about half a mile away for another couple hours for our entrance visas to Bulgaria! I had read in the guidebook that there can be lots of hassles at the Bulgarian border, so I was kind of prepared, but still annoyed, when a border guard came into my compartment and pretty much accused me of being a drug smuggler and proceeded to rip apart my bag and throw my stuff all around while asking, What's this? What's this for? What are you hiding in there? What aren't you showing me? etc etc...no fun. But that was finally over, and the train finally got to Bulgaria, late of course.

I was kinda annoyed with Bulgaria already, and didn't even really know much about it or care to see it, so I was like, screw Bulgaria! and went to get the next train to Belgrade. On my way, this guy who claimed to be a station official started "helping" me even though I told him I didn't need it, and of course wanted compensation for his troubles...so I gave him a little and he complained that he usually got more! So I told him what I thought of that...then with any remaining money I got a hot chocolate that looked really good...which I promptly spilled all over myself, my stuff, and the poor innocent train conductor guy as I was trying to get into the train! Then, the train, which was supposed to take 8 hours, took about 12, so I got into Belgrade in the middle of the night, in the pouring rain, with the streets already flooded because the Danube is flooding that whole area. I knew the name of my hostel and directions, but it was far and the middle of the night, so I tried to take a taxi, but I had no Serbian money. No one I asked knew where an ATM was, except for a taxi driver who was trying to convince me that the nearest one was 11 kilometers away and that he would take me there then to my hostel for only 20 euros...luckily, I didn't fall for that. I found an ATM just a couple minutes away and got in a cab to the hostel...which was full. SO, I headed out to another hostel, which luckily had rooms!! So, over 24 hours later, I was finally settled.

So, that was getting to Belgrade. Nothing horrible, just annoyance after annoyance, enough that I was really burnt out by the time I arrived. The city was lovely though. It was very bright and nice, with lots of parks and open space. It was pretty much like any other European big city...not really what I was expecting, I guess. I saw a palace and lots of parks and some churches...not much detail here because at this point, I was feeling pretty touristed out and did not particularly feel like trying to run around to every sight in the city and take pictures. Just a bit of travel burnout, I think--moving from place to place every few days and sightseeing, while very nice and yes, relaxing, also can get a little old, and a bit tiring, believe it or not! And at this point, it had been about a month that I had been going non-stop, and it was definitely getting to me. (And it continues for a little while--see next entries). Another thing that made touristing in Belgrade difficult-- all the maps, directions, etc had street names in our alphabet, but every single street sign etc was in Cyrillic! I got lost so much...I was exhausted of it at the end of the day.

So that was Belgrade. It was nice, but overall, nothing too special--nothing to come back to. Next, on to Sarajevo!