Balkan Odyssey 2010 I: Belgrade to Bar by rail

One train, 13 hours, 476 km, 3 countries and countless crazy people!

The morning after saw me heading to Belgrade’s Central Train Station for that epic 10-hour ride to Bar. My victory was near! Beaming, I showed my ticket to the train conductor and jumped onboard.

The starting point: Belgrade Central Train station

Waiting for the train to depart in Belgrade

Just a random train conductor

The adventure began as soon as I had entered my compartment. An old man already sitting there seemed to take a very keen interest in my persona. He greeted me by tearing the luggage out of my hands and piling it onto the overhead shelf. My attempts to reclaim my bag were unconditionally refuted; ladies and lifting bags did not seem to go nicely together for Uncle Miloš (as he introduced himself). After unsuccessfully presenting the case of having carried the same bag all the way from London, I gave up, sighed and tried to forget the breakfast snacks I had so thoughtfully saved in my bag. Uncle Miloš would not take no for an answer.

What followed after was an invaluable cultural discovery. Uncle Miloš told me everything about his family. His youngest daughter Marta apparently looked every bit like me and would love to meet me, albeit without having even heard about me yet. I was asked for a telephone number (for Marta, of course), and, more out of amusement than anything else, handed a business card to my neighbour. Uncle Miloš immediately grabbed it with both hands, kissed it (!) and pressed it to his heart. It looked a bit eccentric but the old man actually meant it well, and I was touched.

Uncle Miloš enters my life

Uncle Miloš proving a point. Not sure what the point was

In the meantime, a man and a woman joined us in our compartment and introduced themselves as Milica and Dejan. They, too, were heading to Budva. I was soon being shown the pictures of Milica’s youngest niece Lana (should anyone care) and, once again, within minutes of the first-time encounter, asked for my phone number. I gave Milica a fake one. For goodness sake, I cannot have the whole of Serbia calling me.

By then I was getting somewhat tired of the unsolicited “društvo” (Serbian for “a company of friends”), and exited the compartment. Against all the publicly displayed rules, I stuck myself out of the train window and started taking pictures. For everybody’s benefit, the pictures were actually the reason I was doing that darn, 10-hour train ride – my triumphant networking with the locals was more of a bonus. If one can call it a bonus, anyway.

Passing Serbia’s Valjevo…

…and Užice

Was the Belgrade-Bar train really my idea?

The journey went on. I will not blame anyone now. All my friends had warned me NOT to take the Belgrade-Bar train. I had been told that it regularly broke down and held in the middle of nowhere for hours. That it was old and noisy. That it was always late. And that it was full of very strange people. On top of it all, the memories of the Bioče train disaster of 2006 were still fresh. Back then, a train derailed near Podgorica, crashing into a 100 m deep ravine and killing over 40 people. Yes, I had been given plenty of warning.

But I resisted: authentic train rides were part of the adventure and local crowd was the best company to experience it in. Right? As for the lateness bit, wasn’t I already used to the regularly delayed English trains? I was fearless. Especially as far as some cute retro Serbian trains were concerned.

And I paid for my stubbornness.

I will preface this by saying that no trains went as far as derailing that day. But our train did break – and it did not break once. At some point we sat waiting, at the peak of a day’s heat, for over an hour – while the two train conductors kneeled down fixing the tracks ahead. I did not even realise that some train conductors also came qualified as engineers! When the train eventually carried on, the two continued watching every wheel get past the mended rail patch. Somehow we got away with it, but I am glad I was not sitting on the train right behind us.

Patience, plenty of patience before a red light

And the problem is…

Next, because of the repeated engine failures, we were running late. No, not as in the “your National Rail service is running with an eight minute delay” kind of thing. I mean seriously LATE. By the time we left Bijelo Polje (the first station in Montenegro after the border with Serbia), the train was already THREE HOURS behind schedule. It was getting dark, and I had better forgot the scenic mountain photos I had planned for Montenegro. Oh well.

The people aspect was also somewhat more irritating than expected. After getting near-adopted by my compartment neighbours, I could only avoid their regular invitations for a fag (what an honour) and the resulting smoke by avoiding the actual compartment. What a waste of a seat reservation for RSD 321 (about 3 euros)!

Oh well, let’s just stand here, then

Eventually I had had enough and moved to a different compartment, where two Montenegrin women were already sitting. One was snoring louder than my dad after a friend’s 50th birthday party. The other was quietly smoking in the corner. I appreciated the relative peace, but that unfortunately soon ended as the first woman woke up and burst into tearfully emotional discussions about religion. Needless to say that she, too, was a smoker.

Chain smokers and unexpected exhibitionists

The smoking was an interesting frivolity in what was meant to be a “non-smoking coach”. I was nearly fooled into believing the passengers were actually planning to refrain from the killing habit. Little did I know! First the conductors’ compartment became an unofficial “smoking corner”, where passengers would sneak quietly in and out. Some heavy smokers even moved their luggage permanently there. Then everybody relaxed to the point of ignoring the ban altogether, and piped away. Heavily overdosed on smoke and +30C temperatures, my head had by then turned into a kind of a single exposed nerve. I grabbed my bag, tripped on the stretched legs of one of the Montenegrin women and ran. Ran for my life towards the other end of the train.

“Russian! Russian!” was showering from the open doors during my amok run. How come everyone seemed to think I was Russian? I remembered revealing the fact to one of the train conductors earlier. He let me take photos of the Kumanica Monastery in the Vrbnica village through the windows of that famous “smoking corner” of the train, the conductors’ compartment. Apparently, border crossing points were otherwise a non-photo material. While I was snapping away, he asked me if I was Orthodox. I had been baptised Orthodox some 21 years ago, so I played my Russian card and confirmed. He shook his hands in the air in a moment of speechless appreciation, clutched me a bear hug and kissed me on the cheek. “Sestro!” he exclaimed, wiping the tears of joy from his face. Oh those emotional brothers Serbs.

Kumanica Monastery in Vrbnica, near Serbia’s border with Montenegro

Anyway, the whole train seemed to have been informed that I was Russian. “Русская?” I heard for the “nth” time at the very end of the train. “Сам русский!” I elegantly returned, finally giving my heritage away. One day I will even learn to embrace it properly.

My eyes accidentally wandered outside the window. There, a middle-aged man was standing by the tracks with his little son. Everything seemed normal up to – literally – the man’s waist. Below, he was exposing, to the entire train, the part of his body which chose to remain unnamed. What was the poor child only thinking watching the daddy smile as he shook the symbol of his manhood to the many pairs of eyes inside the passing train? I felt sick and considered jumping off the train right now – but the risk of running into that trainspotting maniac somehow stopped me.

Finally some peace

My final compartment was more or less civilised. I shared it with a very pleasant woman, who turned out to be Montenegro’s First Secretary of Mission in Serbia, Ms. Stanica Popović-Lola. Our ladies’ talk about life was soon joined by one of the conductors, visibly bored by the prolonged journey. Having offered us both a sip from his mini bottle of “Vinjak” brandy (which we politely declined), he drank it up in one shot himself. He then got into a long nostalgic recollection of what it was like “back in one strong country” (Yugoslavia, what else) and how his “red [Yugoslavian] passport” would open many more doors than his Montenegrin one ever will. Definitely a fair point there.

The “Vinjak” says it all

Slowly but surely, the train was progressing on its way. As expected, numerous tunnels awaited us. I soon learnt to predict the approximate length of a given tunnel by the temperature inside – in the over-30 temperatures in the sun, longer tunnels were true oases of coolness. Some were also quite damp, with water condensing on the walls and sprinkling into the curious faces of the passengers. Several tunnels were so close together that the train would enter the second one without even pulling its other end out of the first. In-between, there was some truly spectacular mountain scenery. And so we went on: dived out briefly into the light, barely had the time for an uncontrolled “wow”, and emerged into the depths of the earth again.

Holding our breath for yet another of those 254 tunnels

The breath-taking Lim River near the Montenegrin border

Passing Prijepolje, Serbia

Just before the Serbian/Montenegrin border at Vrbnica

It was getting dark when I started feeling that familiar sea breeze on my face: the Adriatic was near. We had passed Montenegro’s capital, Podgorica, and continued along the final leg of the route, to Bar – when at last the Adriatic blinked at us with its moonlit face. The moon was full that night, and the feeling most surreal.

Sunset over Montenegrin mountains

Worlds apart

Finally my feet touched the platform in Bar. The 13-hour trip was over! I had safely completed another Balkan railway experience. Somehow all the less positive episodes of the journey evaporated from my memory, leaving only the best ones: the dramatic mountains, the cosy old stations, the cooling, monotonously echoing, tunnels and the charming fellow passengers.