Blog

Too much happened in this 80th day and the next, and I’m too late and too tired to give a complete account. So here’s a brief summary:

During night and most of the morning, I had kind of breakdown, and was feeling very down. Sometimes when travelling, you just feel miserable. I walked at the entrance of Pirin NP, had a delicious dinner, came back to the hostel and talked to the owners and pet the adorable dogs, and felt better.

I went to the bus station to take the 1.5 h bus to Благоевград [Blagoevgrad]. Yes I cheat, I’m not taking the 11 h train through София [Sofia]. Typically the bus driver only spoke Bulgarian, and shouted at people. I fucking hate the bus. At least he was driving slowly, and the scenery was nice through the mountains.

My airbnb host was awesome and came to pick me up by car because it was raining mad here! It was my first time in a car since February 2.

After getting dinner and almost not finding the airbnb back, I called Kamel, a second time, to plan the Montenegro part of the trip. We did it again, remolded it, because I had stumbled upon several crucial pieces of information that I somehow missed in the last two years of planning.

First, the Бар [Bar, Montenegro]-Београд [Belgrade] epic train, said to be one of the most beautiful in the World, and that I was so eager to take, only runs by night outside of summer.

But second and much more impactant, the only one train left in Albania only runs Friday to Sunday. Which means 26-28 April. That really sucks. After over an hour of planning, I came up with a plan that will probably not work out, and that implies way too many buses.