Rijeka, Croatia! Is a medium sized port town on the western side of Croatia. It is pretty…
We got to Rijeka early in the morning, walked from the train station to the bus depot and found that there was a nearby island called Rab. We got on the next bus to Rab. From what we saw of Rijeka, it was quite pretty with very nice old buildings and such… but there wasn’t much time for exploring as the bus was leaving…
Rab here we come…
Arriving utterly exhausted in Beograd early in the morning we staggered from the train station into the refreshingly beautiful Serbian capital. Confused about the name being either Beograd, Belgrade, or some other version we found our way through the streets up to a beautiful cathedral, and a few other sights specific to Beograd, we then found a very helpful tourist information help center which suggested we take a bus tour of the city, we figured it was a good idea and walked around the town a bit more looking at the sights, the more we explored the more we realized that this city was breathtaking! It was absolutly gorgeous. We headed back to catch the bus and jumped on. The tour around the city took right around an hour, since we were only staying in Beograd for a few hours we figured that this would be the only way to see all the big sights of the city. Driving down the streets you see magnificent buildings from the past, along side buildings that are quite drab with obvious communist influence. A bit further there are buildings from the war they have decided not to repair or demolish. It is quite a sight to see buildings with the sides completly crushed in because of artillery smashing into the side of them. It even looked like you could see where the bombs entered the buildings. We also saw from a distance the largest orthodox church in the world. It was beautiful! Along the ride whenever there was traffic the narration would pause and they would play classical music, I of course coming from a long tiring train ride, courtesy of EXIT, would fall asleep at such intersections 
… just like I do in school.
After the tour we headed to find some Krempeta, which is a delicious dessert made with a custard-like cream filling with a flaky crust on the top, with a touch of whip cream, it was amazing! Our Serbian/Canadian friend on the train told us about this speciality. Oh, plus we had ice cream, ummm great flavors!
After our dessert meal, we headed for the Nicola Tesla museum, which was quite small however very interesting, his works with electricity were astonishing and found a way to disperse FREE and wireless electricity! However, according to my knowledge of this, it is quite dangerous to have lightning always randomly going through the air from one tower to another, I guess his vision would have looked something like an electrical storm all the time, with lightning… REAL LIGHTNING! (for all of you powerthirst drinkers out there). Unfortunately because we needed to catch a train at 3:30pm we couldn’t stay long enough to see the video. We dashed out of the museum and headed toward the train station. We got our tickets and were on our way to Zagreb, Croatia!
Arriving from a night train to Budapest we started looking for our hostel, we walked from the train station to the hostel which was quite a walk, but as most everyone knows, I am very cheap and dont like to spend money on public transportation plus I just prefer walking, you can see more cool buildings that way. Speaking of cool buildings, Hungary has a lot of them, it seems that every time you turn a corner you will find a statue or a very ornate building with many statues on it, which makes Budapest superb for sightseeing. In addition it has several bridges over the Danube which at night light up and just turn the city ON. The whole of Budapest looks like a gem at night, the vibrant colors of the buildings and the lights reflecting off the water make it one of the prettiest cities to photograph.
Train Station
After arriving at the hostel, we set our bags down and headed to one of the famous bath houses nearby. It was amazing, we bought admission to the swimming pool and wave pool area, the wave pool area was outside and was the size of a normal wave pool but it had old statues surrounding the entire grounds, also there were statues peering into the pool, it was absolutely breathtaking stepping out of the locker room and seeing the detail surrounding a swimming pool. The pool on the inside was even more amazing. It was surrounded by columns and there was a second story balcony looking over the pool and an open glass ceiling. It was very relaxing to float on my back and look up at the beautiful blue sky while inside surrounded by decadent statues. After spending about 5 hours in the complex we cleaned up and walked around outside at night, walking along the river taking pictures every few feet of the bridges, the buildings the water etc. We arrived at a nice dinner restaurant that was about to close, but got in just in time to eat a delicious meal, they are known for their dishes with goose meat, which I of course needed to try, it was fantastic!
(Parliament)
The next morning we walked up a nearby hill to the citadel it was quite a hike up to the top, but the views of the city were well worth it. We also walked to a nearby castle and explored the castle and the grounds of the national art museum, under the castle there is a labyrinth of passageways, we went in and explored a ways, it was very cool but unfortunately you could only go in so far before you had to pay, at which point we turned around. We explored the city a bit more and went back to the hostel to grab our bags and headed to the train station.
THE TRAIN STATION
The train station in Budapest is very nice on the outside just like all of the other buildings in Budapest, so we were very happy going in, and were just generally happy being in this city which is good. We bought a ticket to Beograd, Serbia, which they were having a special for which was great, so the ticket price was greatly reduced, awesome! We even found a place inside the train station that sold amazing gyros and raspberry fanta, the gyros were so good I decided to go back and get another one, and another one, and another one.
While we were eating and drinking we noticed that there were a plethora of young backpackers at this station, which was very unusual because typically I dont see too many others, and most of these people were Brittish and almost all of them were making “Beer Runs”, going to the grocery store down the street and coming back with armfuls of beer and other alcohol, we were wondering where the heck are these people going? We figured they wern’t going to Beograd.
When we got to our train platform we saw between 200-300 backpackers filling up the platform, ah crap! All these drunk backpackers were going to be on our train! This was a night train and we were looking forward to getting some sleep, we knew now that this was probably impossible. When the train arrived people just rushed the train like it was filled with gold. People were pushing and shoving people out of the way, pulling people off the train, and after one or two people from a group got on they would open the window and yell “we got a carrage!!!” following which we heard loud cheering from a small group. I knew this was not going to be pretty. Originally I thought, okay, we have tickets which ensures us a seat, no big deal we are in a civilized society they likely have these things worked out, HA! was I wrong. We got on the train and ended up in a hallway standing for most of the journey. All of the seats were taken, most people were sitting 2 to a seat, people were on the floor the cabins, and I was sitting in the hallway with my backpack and an unpleasant look on my face. There were people sitting and standing in the hallways of the entire length of the train. Sitting on the disgusting floor, thinking back to the reduced ticket price, HA Beograd Special, JERKS!
I ate 3 of these
So we sat next to a Canadian who was originally from Novi Sad Serbia, which apparently all these drunk people were going. There is a huge music festival there called EXIT several days of big name bands playing and 100,000 people from all over head to this concert in this small town. Hence the reduced fair on the train, and all the drunk people.
Throughout the night there were all these people walking over us trying to get to the bathroom and because they were drunk I dont think they understood that we were fairly upset with them plowing through us every 5 minutes, most all of them were Brittish so we heard ’scuse me, sorry love, sorry mate, etc. Although they kept calling me their mate, I certainly didnt feel like it, considering they were stepping on me and my stuff. It was very nerve-racking having the drunk people smoke a few windows down because the smell and the ashes would blow right into my area where I was sitting and attempting to relax. Later at the stop where the border police boarded to check passports two really drunk British guys were wandering around the train looking for old beer bottles and drinking what was left in them. It was really disgusting seeing them finish off other peoples backwashed beers. They were talking to each other about getting through the crowd of people in the hallway to get to their bags in a different train car to get their passports. We tried to tell them that they couldn’t get through the hoard of people in the hallway because there were already people standing there plus there were people waiting to get off at that stop (mostly older people). After we told them we couldn’t get through they said, “what? I can’t understand her” after several times trying to convey the message we were told the same thing, “what?” They decided to just plow through us anyway, they didnt get very far, just to the other side of me and then stopped. One of the guys was leaning out the window looking like he was going to ralf everywhere the other one was a bit more spastic and was talking a lot “this is so boring we’re just standing here, its just so boring, we need to get moooving” the other one a bit more reasonable retorted “no no no we cant go anywhere there are all these people in the way, lets just wait until they get off and then we can go” “no no, we need to get mooving this is so bloody boring, I can’t believe it” “what do you want me to do? there is an old bag in the way” “well just push the old bag out of the way, just step on her, we need to get mooving! I dont care, I’m going” and he crawled under him and then started falling on everyone and pushing people out of the way “scuze me, scuse me, sorry coming through” They plowed through everyone including the “old bag” they got off the train, and we didnt see them again. I suspect they got off the train, took a nap on the pavement and then woke up in Serbia at the station dazed and confused. Later after a few people got off we managed to squeeze into a cabin so we had a seat, two other Brits jumped in with us and one of their friends was singing and carrying on and was told to shut up by another guy… one thing led to another and they almost got into a fight, the two Brits inside the cabin with us were absolutely shocked at what their friend called the other guy. They were both British and speaking English, but we had no idea what they were saying. It all sounded like jumbled up English. So we are sitting there stunned that we couldn’t understand any of their insults. Later the two drunk Brits inside the cabin with us asked the serbian guy about Novi Sad, “Are there Rostels there” “Whats a Rostel?” Pronunciation of “Hostel” was a bit difficult for them. Later he asked where I was from I said “America” he replied “I can’t understand you.”
Later when all the drunks got off the train we acquired a cabin to sleep in for the hour and a half we had left on the train ride. On the floor of the cabin were all sorts of beer bottles, and every time the train would speed up or slow down or stop, they would go crashing from one side to another, startling us and waking us up. Later when i got up to go to the bathroom I had to walk through the rubbish that was left of the train, there was trash everywhere, all over the train, beer bottles, etc, in the bathroom someone took their poo and flung it on the walls and ceiling, yes thats right poo on the ceiling, it was so gross. It was the worst experience I have had on a train. But I got a good story out of it We arrived in Beograd utterly exhausted.
Beograd Special… HA! real special
