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After a good night sleep, I woke up and teamed up with Gabriel to confront the Serbian railway network. She buys her ticket, but as I have the Interrail Pass, I don’t need to. Although, it’s worth to note that this year Serbia, along a couple other countries, didn’t send their train timetables to the centralized European thingy. That means that Serbian trains don’t appear in the Interrail mobile app. It doesn’t matter much, as you can just manually enter the departure and arrival cities and times, and off you go your merry way. So I did exactly that.

Oh, what have I done?

You see, Serbian train tickets are printed with barcodes, which the controllers can scan with their gear. However, the Interrail Pass is a QR code. It’s a tricky situation for the controller to handle, I can tell. She tries to tell me something in broken english, which I don’t quite understand. After that she used her phone, which I assumed was to scan the QR code. Nah. She called some higher authorities to whom she had sent a picture of the pass. And suddenly, she handed me her phone, as I found myself speaking with a woman from the train company who was actually talking english. I tried to explain the situation, but the only answer I got was a polite way to tell me that I could stick my pass where the sun doesn’t shine, for some bullshit reason (« there are promotions currently, the pass doesn’t apply right now » or something). So I was told to buy a ticket online.

The irony of the situation being that you CAN’T buy train tickets online in Serbia.

Still I tried again after the controller left, giggling at the situation with my travelling buddy. Apparently the controller didn’t want to engage in the situation any further and never came back, and I didn’t end up in a Serbian jail.

I don’t understand why is Serbia acting like that, slowing their European integration. By doing so, they are loosing tonnes of potential travelers, depriving also Montenegro, Albania and North Macedonia by blocking the road. Abby, Kora, Nina and most other travellers I’ve talk to so far all told me the same thing: « We wanted to go to the Balkans, but apparently it’s really difficult/impossible by train ». All these possible tourist money revenues, they just kill ’em all. I’ve heard those stories too, that’s kinda why I took the challenge to cross Serbia, and now I have a better understanding.

All this actually took most of the travel time to Београд (Belgrade).  I had a couple of hours to kill, so I accompanied Gabriel to the Saint Sava Cathedral, which was not a too long walk, but a steep one for sure! It looked like the railway and the church are on the peak of two different hills. It was around noon when we reached it, and, being surrounded by an hospital and an universirt campus, the place was very busy. One thing I noted immediately when entering Serbia, was the change in religious buildings architecture. We’ve left the land of pointy, sky-piercing belfries to enter the territory of the more massive square-with-round-roofs-somehow orthodox churches. To be honest, it looks really nice from outside!

I grab lunch in a restaurant nearby, and hike back to the station. This time, I resign myself to buy a ticket. Oh well, nine euros to cross pretty much the entire country, it’s not that bad. Still three times (!!!) cheaper than seat reserveration on Chambéry-Torino (Turin). I understand what Internet meant by « Serbian trains are slower than buses », as we blast at a whopping 30 km/h. But it matters not, I’m in no hurry. Just the fact to be advancing, by train, through the cute countryside, is good enough for my morale, and makes the six hours go pretty fast. Also I gasped in astonishment as we stopped in a village that almost bears my name: Алексинац (Aleksinac)!

As soon as I set foot in Ниш (Niš), I go straight to the bus station (rail link to Bulgaria is also closed for renovation), not wanting to be stuck again. It’s pretty far away, and so will be the hostel for tonight. I had planned to take tomorrow’s 4 PM bus to Софија (Sofia), but nope. Full. Baaah… Why is everything complicated in this country? I’m starting to have enough of it for now, so after some quick thinking, I opt for the 4:40 AM bus. As I didn’t feel like crossing Ниш by night alone with all my stuff, I chose to cancel the hostel and stay in the station waiting room for the night.

I headed back downtown, found a commercial center, sat at a café and started to make plans for the following days. But a shivering realization arise: all trains for İstanbul (Istanbul) are full until who-knows-when. I begin to understand that going there and be back in time for work will be actually very tricky and maybe not even possible. But after two hours of frantic research, I managed to come up with a plan, all the way to my return in Toulouse on next Friday. Fingers crossed!

The center closes and I head back to the bus station, to try to sleep a bit on the floor.