The thing about travel is; it is NOT always easy. Looking at my instagram account of course it looks like all rainbows and butterflies but in reality getting from one place to another can be hell sometimes. Like a train that actually feels like an inferno because there is no AC and you really don't know if you will survive to your destination. Let me back up a bit..So Jen and I loved Budapest so much that we decided to cut out Serbia, continue on to Sofia then fly off to Greece for our work with the refugees. Seemed like a great plan, had a blabla car to Sofia all set and everything..but then our Blabla car cancelled on us 😐So we were left scrambling, trying to figure out how the heck we were going to get to Sofia in time for our flight to Greece in a couple of days. We had heard that the public transport in Serbia was really unreliable (it's Eastern Europe after all) so we decided let's blabla car to Belgrade (the place we originally cut out of our plans) We'll get there early evening, have time to walk around and see the city a bit, get a good nights sleep and then take the train to Sofia in the morning and everything will be great..Fast forward to our bla bla car driver arriving FIVE hours late, he's a Serbian man who speaks zero English but knows Italian..so we are forced to throw it back to our study abroad days and conjure up that Italian we learned in David's class. Apparently Serbian driver now lives in Florence, which is where he is coming from and has been driving since 5 AM..it is now 9pm. A couple hours into the drive I realize that he is swerving lanes and he eventually pulls over because he is falling asleep at the wheel. I genuinely did not know if we were going to make it to Belgrade. I was literally throwing out any Italian phrase I knew "mi piace pizza" (I like pizza) just to keep this man awake. FINALLY we got to our hostel at 3;30 AM. We explained what had happened and apologized for how late we were. We asked about trains to Sofia, and the worker informed us that the ONLY train the next day was at 9 am..seeing as we did not have tickets yet nor had any idea where the train station was we were looking at a solid 3 hour night sleep. "It's OK" I told myself "you can sleep on the train tomorrow". at 8:15 AM Jen suddenly woke me up. "I missed the alarm!'' (typical snooze queen😅) we rushed to pack our backpacks ran out the door and headed to the train station. We had two power bars and one Nalgene bottle for the 11 hour train ride ahead of us. We had no time to stop but figured we could buy stuff on the train..ohhhhhh how sadly mistaken
we were.
I want you to imagine the oldest freight train you have ever seen, the kind of train that would transport animals..no AC on a 100 degree day and certainly no snack bar or vending machine..That was what we were stuck on for this 11 hour ride. We did our best to sleep but I can not even explain how hot it was in there and adding insult to injury we had no breakfast and it didn't seem like there was hope for lunch or dinner either. About 7 hours in I heard a girl begging the train worker to stop for water. At this point what was left of the Nalgene was like hot tea so I got up and begged with her. He informed us that we would be stopping soon.. An hour later we pulled up to a station and there was a water fountain! I have never been so excited to see water. After chugging an entire bottle of water and hoping that the water was clean I set out to find some food. I asked the conductor how long the stop was and if i had time to go to the ATM. He replied that there was a delay with the train and I should have plenty of time. Oh perfect! I thought..not knowing that this "delay" was going to be a FOUR hour ordeal 😡. We got our snacks and more water and sat down to wait. One hour went by, two hours went by..and still we had heard nothing. So we went inside to the information desk and asked what the deal was. We were told that a train down the track was stuck on the track so our train couldn't go anywhere. Buses were "on their way" and we had to be patient. We politely explained that we have already been patiently waiting for two hours but that we had an early flight out of Sofia the next day and simply wanted to know if we were going to make it. She said she did not know. COOL. After four hours of waiting, one bus pulled up and it was like a stampede to get on this damn bus. Somehow we made it on, but other passengers said that this bus wasn't taking us to Sofia it was only bringing us to the border and then we were on our own..wait WHAT?! None of the drivers spoke English so for about an hour and a half we were on a bus without knowing where the heck we were going. Eventually we got to a train station and followed everyone else hoping they knew what was going on. FINALLY we got to Sofia at about 2 am but arrived at the train station with no hostel and no idea where to go. We walked toward a light up sign that said Hotel and hoped for the best. Luckily the man at the front desk spoke really good English and we were able to get a room for a few hours before we had to get to the airport. I can't tell you how good it felt to get in that room and blast the AC and take a shower. 😍 After about 2.5 hours sleep we got our wake up call and it was time to head to the airport for our flight to Greece. We ended up making our flight but when we got to the airport in Athens we fell asleep on the benches like homeless people before doing anything else.😅😁
And there you have it, as awesome as travel can look via social media, sometimes it is just plain awful. But it is in these moments, that you learn about yourself. You learn that you can handle SO much more than you ever thought possible. You learn to appreciate the simple things, like air conditioning and water. The lessons and blessings are there if you choose to find them, even in the most awful moments. Also, I am BEYOND thankful for a friend like Jen. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being the ying to my yang, for keeping me calm and just being there through thick and thin. We now have a story that we will forever look back on and laugh..saying "Remember that one time in Serbia...?"
we were.
I want you to imagine the oldest freight train you have ever seen, the kind of train that would transport animals..no AC on a 100 degree day and certainly no snack bar or vending machine..That was what we were stuck on for this 11 hour ride. We did our best to sleep but I can not even explain how hot it was in there and adding insult to injury we had no breakfast and it didn't seem like there was hope for lunch or dinner either. About 7 hours in I heard a girl begging the train worker to stop for water. At this point what was left of the Nalgene was like hot tea so I got up and begged with her. He informed us that we would be stopping soon.. An hour later we pulled up to a station and there was a water fountain! I have never been so excited to see water. After chugging an entire bottle of water and hoping that the water was clean I set out to find some food. I asked the conductor how long the stop was and if i had time to go to the ATM. He replied that there was a delay with the train and I should have plenty of time. Oh perfect! I thought..not knowing that this "delay" was going to be a FOUR hour ordeal 😡. We got our snacks and more water and sat down to wait. One hour went by, two hours went by..and still we had heard nothing. So we went inside to the information desk and asked what the deal was. We were told that a train down the track was stuck on the track so our train couldn't go anywhere. Buses were "on their way" and we had to be patient. We politely explained that we have already been patiently waiting for two hours but that we had an early flight out of Sofia the next day and simply wanted to know if we were going to make it. She said she did not know. COOL. After four hours of waiting, one bus pulled up and it was like a stampede to get on this damn bus. Somehow we made it on, but other passengers said that this bus wasn't taking us to Sofia it was only bringing us to the border and then we were on our own..wait WHAT?! None of the drivers spoke English so for about an hour and a half we were on a bus without knowing where the heck we were going. Eventually we got to a train station and followed everyone else hoping they knew what was going on. FINALLY we got to Sofia at about 2 am but arrived at the train station with no hostel and no idea where to go. We walked toward a light up sign that said Hotel and hoped for the best. Luckily the man at the front desk spoke really good English and we were able to get a room for a few hours before we had to get to the airport. I can't tell you how good it felt to get in that room and blast the AC and take a shower. 😍 After about 2.5 hours sleep we got our wake up call and it was time to head to the airport for our flight to Greece. We ended up making our flight but when we got to the airport in Athens we fell asleep on the benches like homeless people before doing anything else.😅😁
And there you have it, as awesome as travel can look via social media, sometimes it is just plain awful. But it is in these moments, that you learn about yourself. You learn that you can handle SO much more than you ever thought possible. You learn to appreciate the simple things, like air conditioning and water. The lessons and blessings are there if you choose to find them, even in the most awful moments. Also, I am BEYOND thankful for a friend like Jen. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being the ying to my yang, for keeping me calm and just being there through thick and thin. We now have a story that we will forever look back on and laugh..saying "Remember that one time in Serbia...?"
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